By: Joe Strupp A reporter at The Bakersfield Californian has been fired for apparently making up quotes, lifting comments from an Associated Press story, and even stealing four paragraphs of an article published 10 years ago.
Nada Behziz, who wrote the story about teen smoking that appeared on Page One of the Californian's Sunday paper, lost her job after a reader informed Executive Editor Mike Jenner of one of the ethical breaches. In an editor's note that ran Wednesday, Jenner explained that the reader had determined that a quote in Behziz's story attributed to a 10-year-old matched one that had been attributed to a four-year-old involved in a study of preschool views of smoking.
"A simple Internet search revealed that the reader was correct," Jenner wrote. "The quotation appeared not only in a summary document about the survey, but in an Associated Press story that was published in many newspapers."
Jenner revealed that further investigation by the paper found that the reporter had also apparently lifted four paragraphs from a San Francisco Examiner story published in 1995. He also said that the paper has been unable to verify the existence of at least two people quoted in Behziz's story.
"It's hard to express how embarrassed I am by these discoveries," Jenner added in his note. "That embarrassment is shared by the management and staff of this newspaper."
Behziz denied that she had intentionally plagiarized, the paper reported. "To me it was sloppy journalism," she told editors. "It wasn't intentional."
She also claimed that she "did not fabricate sources," and that her notes support the existence of the sources that could not be found, Jenner wrote. He added that the entire incident has prompted the paper to review its internal review policies for checking sources and stories in the future.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here