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Media Credibility

By Callimachus | Related entries in Media

An article in The Metro Section [of the New York Times] on March 8 profiled Donna Fenton, identifying her as a 37-year-old victim of Hurricane Katrina who had fled Biloxi, Miss., and who was frustrated in efforts to get federal aid as she and her children remained as emergency residents of a hotel in Queens. (Go to Article)

Yesterday, the New York police arrested Ms. Fenton, charging her with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Prosecutors in Brooklyn say she was not a Katrina victim, never lived in Biloxi and had improperly received thousands of dollars in government aid. Ms. Fenton has pleaded not guilty.

For its profile, The Times did not conduct adequate interviews or public record checks to verify Ms. Fenton’s account, including her claim that she had lived in Biloxi. Such checks would have uncovered a fraud conviction and raised serious questions about the truthfulness of her account.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Media Credibility”

reader_iam Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Ugh. (That’s directed at the NYT, not this post.)

Just what we need–one more example of the truly execrable job–in the aggregate, of course, not in every case–of reportage concerning Katrina.

It’s been sloppy, irresponsible, lacking in rigor and just plain embarrassing from the start. What a disservice to hurricane victims. What a disservice to all of us.

What a disgrace for (capital J) journalism.

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