Cox's Tale of 'Fixer' Misconduct Abroad Has Familiar Ring

By: David Paulin Cox News Service has joined the list of news outfits owning up to unethical reporting. None of Cox's employees, to be sure, were involved. Here, the protagonists were a "contract" foreign correspondent and his freelance Syrian news assistant, or "fixer," as such folks are known in the trade.

Does the term "freelance" ring any alarm bells here? It should.

For readers who missed Cox's correction or E&P's post-mortem, here's a recap: On Nov. 20, Cox moved a story on the New York Times News Service about an Arab version of the venerable Barbie doll. The only problem, according to Cox, is that the story contained fabricated quotes and plagiarized material from the St. Petersburg Times -- all supplied to Cox's unwitting contract freelancer, Craig Nelson, by well-known fixer George Baghdadi, who also has worked for Time magazine and USA Today, among other news outlets.

Cox placed the blame squarely on Baghdadi, but Baghdadi pointed the finger at his news assistant, Hussein Ali, whom he claimed had supplied the offending material. Baghdadi declined to make Ali available for questioning, although he said he had fired Ali, which was the same treatment Cox gave Baghdadi.

The news service may be shocked, shocked to learn of such chicanery in its midst. But anybody who knows how foreign reporting has worked in recent years, amid an era of cost-cutting and increasing reliance on freelancers, won't be surprised.

Consider how the process of foreign news gathering works these days -- a process I learned about firsthand while working as freelance foreign correspondent and, on rare occasions, a fixer in Venezuela in the 1990s.

First, fixers are the weakest chain in the news gathering process. Generally, they're local hires who get their jobs through an informal word-of-mouth process -- not through the organized vetting process news organization use to hire editorial staff. Indeed, it appears this was how Baghdadi got his job with Cox, or, as Cox's Washington bureau chief, Andy Alexander, told E&P: "Because of the reputation of George Baghdadi and the fact that he was used by many Western news organizations for years and years, we felt we were dealing with someone who was trustworthy."

Baghdadi was probably like fixers I have known in another respect. He apparently played a major role in shaping stories, doing just about everything in the news gathering process except for writing the finished piece. Indeed, fixers may decide who to interview, set appointments, lead visiting reporters around by the hand, and provide translation services -- all things Baghdadi apparently did for Nelson, Cox's contract reporter. Fixers also may provide quotes and local color to staff foreign correspondents holed up elsewhere, perhaps across town in hotel rooms or in offices in another country -- also something Baghdadi did for Nelson, although in this case it was fabricated or plagiarized quotes.

Fixers may be local residents or expatriates, and their journalism experience may be extremely limited. Those who are proven journalists and do terrific work are in demand, although proven and busy freelance journalists, to be sure, are often reluctant to work as fixers.

One day in Caracas, I got a phone call out of the blue from a staff reporter from The Washington Post. He'd just gotten into town and was in a panic to find somebody to go to Congress there, cover the proceedings, and send quotes back to him at his hotel room. He had gotten my name through the grapevine. Sight unseen, he seemed ready for me to go to work for him.

I was intrigued. But I rejected the offer: I was busy and, most importantly, I regarded myself as an able reporter, not a fixer who did gopher work for other reporters. I also reacted skeptically to his claim that doing fixing work for The Washington Post could "lead to something" at the paper. It's a line other expatriates in Caracas had heard from staff writers from big-time papers. None of the experienced journalists bought it, knowing as we did something about the hiring preferences of papers like The Washington Post.

Presumably, the Post guy got somebody more gullible or at least eager to please: somebody who needed the work and who, most importantly, could provide translation services.

This little anecdote is fairly typical. Caracas, during my seven years there until 2000, was at the time full of aspiring journalists eager to give their careers a quick start: American and British expatriates along with a few English-speaking Venezuelans. Most were recent college grads with limited journalistic experience. Most badly needed an extra paycheck to supplement whatever work they scrounged up: teaching English, working at the local English-language newspaper, or writing for a few English-language business magazines. Most were eager to work for a big-time foreign correspondent.

However, one can imagine the potential for abuse among freelances living from paycheck to paycheck.

Once in Caracas, my checking account was nearly empty. Yet up at The Dallas Morning News, a business editor was sitting on a story that was supposed to pay my rent. To give the story additional balance, she explained, I needed to provide extra quotes from a new source -- one that I could not immediately locate.

Relating my frustration to a Venezuelan journalist, he responded with wide-eyed surprise: "Why don't you just make up the quotes?"

Concocting quotes was not my style. But no doubt about it: I could have gotten away with it. Nobody would have phoned the paper to complain. My editor, as it turned out, tweaked the story to eliminate the need for additional reporting. I paid my rent.

How many fixers in Iraq and elsewhere, struggling to support families amid chaotic conditions, would be tempted to cut corners to ensure that a check arrives on time?

In an age of layoffs and declining profits, freelance "contract" reporters such as Nelson and freelance fixers such as Baghdadi are here to stay. How can the system be made more honest?

One would be to require that fixers be trained journalists. Besides working as fixers, they should write for the papers which contract them. Editors should vet them as carefully as they do perspective staff reporters, and they should meet the same professional requirements as new staff members. A base salary would deter the temptation to cut corners, such as fabricating quotes, to help maintain a cash flow.

Finally, fixers who provide quotes should be credited in stories as having done so; it's something some papers don't do. In the case of Cox's Barbie doll story, for example, Nelson failed to credit Baghdadi with having provided quotes, which was described as contrary to Cox's sourcing policy.

This reflects a problem inherent in foreign reporting as practiced today. Media giants such as The New York Times and Hearst regularly publish articles by freelancers -- yet fail to note those reporters are in fact freelancers and not on staff. In the case of one Hearst paper for which I have written, I was amused to see under my byline that I was part of the paper's "foreign service."