Further proof that journalistic integrity begins and ends with Luke Ford
 

From www.lukeford.net:

Khunrum writes: Jayson Blair, former New York Times reporter who resigned recently after he was accused of falsifying information, was on the network news last night. He was a freelancer for the Boston Globe recently, and a review of 85 stories written by him suggest a pattern of falsification. He lied in stories for both papers. Another big story was on 60 minutes last Sunday about Stephen Glass who was a reporter for the New Republic. He admitted he lied about every story he did for 5 years there, making up people, facts, events, etc. He did it for the adulation.

Dean Wakefield - The Jayson Blair of LA Times, SF Chronicle

Jim Sleeper writes 5/13/03 for the Hartford Courant:

Nearly seven years ago, the editor of The Washington Post Book World phoned to ask if I knew how 12 paragraphs from my June 2, 1996, Post review of Marshall Frady's "Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson" had wound up a few weeks later in the San Francisco Chronicle under another reviewer's [Dean Wakefield] byline.

I was mystified. The Chronicle's reviewer was that paper's deputy opinion page editor. Trying to imagine the heist, I pictured an overeager 26-year-old, in way over his head, writing desperately on deadline.

A more convoluted explanation came from the Chronicle's books editor: Its reviewer had downloaded my Post review to study it but had gone on vacation without finishing his own. The editor, searching for his review, had mistaken some of my paragraphs (mysteriously shorn of my byline and the Post's headline) for his and pasted them in.

That sounds like some of the explanations we're hearing from New York Times editors about the work of Jayson Blair, a young black reporter who cut a devastating swath of mendacity through the newspaper of record before resigning.

When I called the "author" [Dean Wakefield] of the Chronicle review for his account, he stunned me: "As an African American, I would never `lift' a story, because we are already under the cloud of Janet Cooke," he said, referring to The Washington Post reporter who had fabricated her Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of a young boy on heroin. Recovering my voice, I said simply, "I really don't care what race you are." He insisted that his editor's story of a mix-up was true and promised to send me his original version. It never came. And he remained at his post for several more years.

Serge is this you?

No, the English is too good.