By: Joe Strupp Former reporter Kim Stacy, who lost her job at the Owensboro (Ky.) Messenger-Inquirer after fabricating columns about a fictitious battle with cancer ? and later made up a story about having AIDS to cushion the hoax ? does not have AIDS, according to results of a blood test made public last week.
The Messenger-Inquirer, which fired Stacy on May 10 after she revealed that she had lied in five columns about a phony cancer fight, published a lengthy Page One story on May 19 detailing the results of the blood test with Stacy's permission. The story also quoted Stacy, 33, as saying she had made up the lies to make friends after moving to the newspaper in 1998.
"I had been here two or three months and hadn't made any friends," Stacy told the newspaper. "We were friends at work, but we were not close friends."
Stacy revealed to editors on May 8 that her cancer was a hoax when she called the newsroom to stop a column scheduled to run on May 9. When she went to work on May 10 to discuss the columns, she told editors she had lied to cover up a real battle with AIDS and her homosexuality. Editor Bob Ashley and publisher Ed Riney said, at the time, that they sympathized with Stacy but would have to let her go to keep the paper's credibility.
On May 11, the newspaper published a long, Page One story detailing the hoax, along with a letter of apology from Riney.
On May 14, a second story ran with comments from Stacy saying that the AIDS story also was false and she had taken a blood test to see if she had the disease. The results of the test were returned on May 18 showing that she did not have the deadly virus.
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?(copyright: Editor & Publisher May 22, 1999) [Caption]
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