Fired over false stories

By: Joe Strupp Reporter admits fabricating cancer and AIDS battles

A Kentucky newspaper's decision to fire a reporter who fabricated columns about a fictitious battle with cancer - claiming she lied to hide the fact that she had AIDS - drew mixed reactions from journalism veterans over what the incident means to newspaper credibility and how newspapers can protect themselves from future deception.
Her credibility was further damaged when it was revealed her AIDS claim also was fabricated. Reporter Kim Stacy told newspaper editors last week that the recent lies were the latest in a string of false stories about her health she began spreading years ago "to make friends."
"I don't know where the idea came from," Stacy told the Owensboro (Ky.) Messenger-Inquirer in a story published in the paper's May 14 edition. "I don't remember thinking and planning it."
The 31,000-circulation newspaper fired Stacy on May 10 after she revealed that six columns she had written since April 4 were hoaxes. News executives there say they had no choice but to let her go to keep the newspaper's credibility solid.
"We didn't have much of a discussion," says Ed Riney, publisher of the A.H. Belo Corp.-owned newspaper. "Our credibility as a newspaper is important to us, and we had to deal with it in a direct way."
Newspaper observers agree that any suspicions about honesty automatically make a reporter unsuitable for the job.
"When one lie is revealed, all things are suspect," says Keith Woods, an associate in ethics at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. "I don't know that the newspaper had many alternatives."
Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, strongly agrees. "It's reprehensible when people falsify the public media," he says. "It risks the trust."
But Schell also says that more false stories are not a surprise given today's newsroom pressure to break stories and draw readers in the age of Internet and 24-hour news competition. "We are speeding things up to get a big story, get it first, and personalize it," Schell says. "All of these things make it a slippery slope."
Stacy, 33, had worked at the newspaper for just over a year as a bureau reporter covering a variety of local news beats, according to editor Bob Ashley. He says editors asked Stacy to write the columns for the Sunday paper after she told them several months ago that she had terminal cancer.
Ashley says five columns were published, including one that was picked up by The Associated Press and sent to newspapers throughout Kentucky. He says a sixth column had been scheduled to run on May 9 but was held after Stacy called the
newsroom the night before to advise that it be held.
When Ashley and Riney met with Stacy on May 10, she told them she had falsified the stories because she did not want to reveal her true illness - AIDS. Ashley says the newspaper had received no medical confirmation that Stacy had any terminal illness but felt sympathy for her.
"We've spent a lot of time talking about whether we could have prevented this," Ashley says. "You have to trust your co-workers, and this was someone who did good work. We became emotionally involved in this story."
The paper reported on the fabrications and Stacy's firing in a front-page, above-the-fold story published May 11, which also included an apology letter from Riney. The story discussed how the columns began and also reported that Stacy had revealed the hoax after friends at her former newspaper, the weekly Appalachian News-Express in Pikeville, Ky., began to question her story.
The Messenger-Inquirer also reported that Stacy had claimed to have cancer several years ago while working at the News-Express but told her employers there that it had been cured just prior to surgery.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Stacy apologized for the deception but said she feared retribution if she revealed she had AIDS and is a lesbian. "I grew up in a small town atmosphere where you are crucified for having AIDS," she said.
A second Messenger-Inquirer story published May 14 revealed that the AIDS claim also was a hoax and quoted Stacy as saying she began lying about her health when she was "having trouble with my blood sugar and going to the doctor a lot and everybody was real nice to me."
Ashley says this incident will cause him to scrutinize reporters and fact-checking policies more in the future. "We don't have to begin doubting every reporter," he says. "But I hope we can be skeptical in a way that doesn't challenge the trust of one another."
Stacy's situation is the latest in a string of fabrications that have rocked the newspaper world in recent years.
The most recent examples were at The Boston Globe, which saw Patricia Smith leave the newspaper after admitting she fabricated characters and quotes, and asked Mike Barnicle to resign after he passed off some stories that he received from others as his own.
Trust in newspapers also took a hit recently when former Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Mike Gallagher revealed a confidential source he used in a series on the Chiquita Banana Company that drew complaints when it was revealed Gallagher stole voice mail tapes from the company.
Some say newspapers still haven't gained back all the credibility they lost in 1981 when Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke resigned and gave back a Pulitzer Prize after it was revealed she made up a story about a drug-addicted child.
"It is considered the major sin by journalists, and it should be," says Deni Elliott, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter and director of the practical ethics center at the University of Montana.
Wendy Myers, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, says one of the ways to prevent similar fabrications is to encourage more news ethics training.
"I think it needs to take place in writing classes as well as legal affairs classes," Myers says. "It should be a part of core reporting courses."

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