The Intercept is apologizing to readers after an investigation revealed one of its reporters fabricated multiple quotes and even created a fake email address for a source to deceive his editors.
The online news site is retracting and correcting several articles by former staff writer Juan Thompson, who was employed there from November 2014 until last month.
In a note issued earlier today, editor Betsy Reed revealed some details of the results of the investigation to readers:
An investigation into Thompson’s reporting turned up three instances in which quotes were attributed to people who said they had not been interviewed. In other instances, quotes were attributed to individuals we could not reach, who could not remember speaking with him, or whose identities could not be confirmed. In his reporting Thompson also used quotes that we cannot verify from unnamed people whom he claimed to have encountered at public events. Thompson went to great lengths to deceive his editors, creating an email account to impersonate a source and lying about his reporting methods.
The publication has corrected four stories and retracted one, and says it will issue further changes if it discovers more problems. There’s now a note that appears atop the retracted story, about Dylann Roof, the man accused of murdering nine black people at a church in South Carolina. In the story, Thompson quotes a source who says he was Roof’s cousin, and claims Roof was once jilted by a girl who started dating a black man. That may not actually be true, according to the note:
After speaking with two members of Dylann Roof’s family, The Intercept can no longer stand by the premise of this story. Both individuals said that they do not know of a cousin named Scott Roof.
The problems with this story reflect a pattern of misattributed quotes that The Intercept uncovered in stories written by Juan Thompson, a former staff reporter. We apologize to our readers.
Reed offered another apology in the note to readers, out today:
We apologize to the subjects of the stories; to the people who were falsely quoted; and to you, our readers. We are contacting news outlets that picked up the corrected stories to alert them to the problems.
Thompson wrote mostly short articles on news events and criminal justice. Many of these articles relied on publicly available sources and are accurate; others contain original reporting that held up under scrutiny. Thompson admitted to creating fake email accounts and fabricating messages, but stood by his published work. He did not cooperate in the review.
The Intercept deeply regrets this situation. Ultimately, I am accountable for everything we publish. The best way we can see to maintain the trust of readers is to acknowledge and correct these mistakes, and to focus on producing journalism we are proud of.
The four corrections note where editors couldn’t confirm sources’ materials, such as this one from a story reporting that activists from the Black Lives Matter movement couldn’t enter a Virginia rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump:
An earlier version of this story included quotes attributed to a woman and her husband, described as Trump supporters. The woman was identified by her first name, Kathy, while the man was identified only as her husband. The reporter had provided a real individual’s full name and identity to editors but said the source did not want it to be used. When contacted, this individual said she did not support Trump, had not attended his rally, and had never spoken to our reporter.
The relevant section, which has been removed, read: “‘They need to be monitored and surveilled,’ said the woman, who was only willing to be identified as Kathy from Buckhall, Virginia. ‘We don’t need an influx of this in America. We’ve got to stop it.’ Her husband noted, ‘That’s what we like about Trump, he’s not afraid of the backlash. He tells the truth.’”
This piece includes additional quotes that The Intercept could not verify, including several from unnamed sources. We have been unable to confirm the existence of theBlack Lives Matter activist named Aaron Geeding, and we have not found clear evidence that an Anna Ramirez was interviewed or that she attended this rally.
We have also added attribution to language taken from the news website Philly.com.
The case hearkens back to another infamous incident in journalistic misconduct by Stephen Glass, told in the film “Shattered Glass.” That resulted in the first retraction by Harper’s magazine last year, for a 1998 piece by Glass. And it also reminds us of how some scientists have created fake email accounts so that they could review their own papers.
It’s difficult when a publication has to come to terms with this amount of malfeasance. But we appreciate The Intercept‘s efforts to keep everything transparent.
Co-founded in 2014 by three award-winning journalists, the site’s mandate is to be a home for “adversarial journalism:”
The Intercept, launched in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, is dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism. We believe journalism should bring transparency and accountability to powerful governmental and corporate institutions, and our journalists have the editorial freedom and legal support to pursue this mission.
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He’s a danger to the good name of others. He should shift to fiction writing from investigative writing.