We were able to verify sourcing in many stories written by Jeffrey, mostly police and court news, political stories, and recently a series on returning war veterans. The stories with suspect sourcing were typically lighter fare – a story on young voters, a story on getting ready for a hurricane, a story on the Red Sox home opener – where some or all of the people quoted cannot be located.Cape Cod Times Publisher Peter Meyer and Editor Paul Pronovost • Discussing their findings regarding reporter Karen Jeffrey, a 31-year veteran of the newspaper whose stories have been found to use questionable sources. The paper found fabricated or nonexistent sources going back to 1998, where the paper’s archives end. “We must learn from this painful lesson and take steps to prevent this from happening again,” they write. “Moving forward, we will be spot-checking reporting sources more frequently; choosing stories at random and calling sources to verify they exist.”
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
13 notes from really cool Tumblrs like ours: