By: A sports reporter who admitted fabricating stories has been fired for breaching The News Leader's journalistic ethics policies, Executive Editor Dave Fritz said in a column Friday.
An investigation by the daily newspaper's editors turned up "significant evidence" that Blair J. Parker fabricated at least four stories and plagiarized from others on the Internet, Fritz said.
Contacted Friday by The Associated Press, Fritz said he could not comment beyond what he said in the column.
Parker, who had worked for The News Leader since September 2006, was fired on Tuesday.
In his column, Fritz said the investigation of Parker's work began after it was determined that part of a story about deer hunting and trout fishing during the drought came from an Illinois newspaper's Web site. Other portions of the article came from other Internet sites, he reported.
'Only one source was clearly real and correctly identified, and he disputes the quote attributed to him,' Fritz wrote.
When asked about the story, Parker took full responsibility for her actions, Fritz said, adding that she later admitted the other fabrications.
A telephone message left by the AP at the home of the only Blair Parker listed in Staunton was not immediately returned.
'Our goal from the first sign of wrongdoing was to quickly and transparently understand the scope of the problem and to take firm action,' Fritz said. 'It's our responsibility to our readers.'
The newspaper, owned by Gannett Co. (NYSE:GCI) , has a circulation of about 21,000.
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