Detroit Free Press star columnist Mitch Albom not only used unchecked, fictitious material in a recent piece, he's been using quotes from other news reports without attribution, and sometimes enlivening quotes from other sources, as well. More here from AP. Albom is also the author of the bestselling books, "Tuesdays With Morrie," and "The Five People You Meet In Heaven."

The Free Press' competitor, The Detroit News, reports some Freepers were dissatisfied with their paper's coverage of the internal investigation of Albom. Here's the Freep's report, in which Albom says lifting quotes without attribution is standard practice, and was approved by his editors; and that his enlivened lifted quotes were still "essentially accurate."

Albom is one more celebrated, lazy journalist. New York Times star reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg resigned after being outed for using quotes and reporting by freelancers as his own. It was common, he argued - and some Times stringers confirmed - for a reporter to quickly visit a town to get the dateline, and then rely on the uncredited fieldwork of freelancers for much of the story.

More recently, former 10-year NYT veteran and Boston Globe correspondent Barbara Stewart was caught making up a bloody lead to a story on a Canadian seal hunt.

USA Today's Jack Kelley was nailed last year for plagiarism and fabrication.

In Puget Sound, the Seattle Times' Stephen Dunphy (plagiarism) and the Tacoma News Tribune's Bart Ripp (fabulism, restaurant review ethics transgressions) left their papers in disgrace.

Under dishonest, as opposed to lazy, came the news last month that a NYT reporter wrote about a Columbia University inquiry into alleged anti-Semitism by professors there, under a special deal. The school released an internal report to the Times only on the condition that students alleging anti-Semitism not be interviewed for the article. The piece ran under the agreed terms, suspicions were aroused, and The Times subsequently fessed up.

The Mainstream Media: where there's smoke (see above), there's fire.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 18, 2005 12:44 PM

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