Columnist invents 43 people? (Sacramento Bee can't locate many profiled by Diana Griego Erwin)

WorldNetDaily ^ | 6/27/05 | WorldNetDaily

[wagglebee]

I think the press should create a "Dan Rather Award" for the person each year who does the most creative job of making up the news, in time it would be as big a deal as the Pulitzer.

[Swanks]

Just because they were fradulent people doesn't mean the content of what the said isn't accurate.

[wagglebee]

Most of what Jaysun Blair wrote was probably accurate, it was still fabricated though.

[inlightnd]

"Their stories frequently reflect a theme taken from current headlines – wildfires, for example, or prison brutality, school shootings, murderous road rage or a high-profile trial."


Ripped from the headlines. ;)

She should stick to fiction and stop trying to write NEWS!!
Busted!!

[afnamvet]

Erwin wrote to the Bee in a June 9 e-mail: "The story has been told and I am sad that The Bee continues to pursue this." She took issue with the continued scrutiny, saying it is undeserved, and then concluded: "Surely there are more important stories out there than another about me. I know there are. Even now, I come across them every day."

Possible help for Diana would be medicinal marijuana.

[proxy_user]

Well, was she a news reporter, or a columnist?

If you're a columnist, is the content of your column supposed to be literally true, or can you just rehash stories some guy told you in a bar?

[stevem]

There are so many real stories of people that surmount obstacles day after day it should be easy enough to find them and get some bio info. Still it's understandable when a columnists decides to conjur people up out of thin air. Why go out when you can work in. Why take a chance your pulitzer potential story have an unsympathetic twist to it. That can't happen if you control it from start to finish.

Besides, if such people don't really exist, they ought to.

[moog]

Guess we shouldn't believe everything we read.

[wagglebee]

Besides, if such people don't really exist, they ought to.

That's probably what Dan Ratherbiased was thinking about the Bush memos.

[marty60]

If you intentionally fabricate a story without identifying it as fictionalized, that is the height of unethical Journalism. she lead her readers to believe these people existed. If they were in fact HER first hand accounts why not write as such. the MSM and it's minions have gotten away with this slick little trick of lying for to long. Now they are getting outted for the dishonest propagandist they really are.

[blueberry12]

Columnist invents stuff

This is not uncommon nowadays.

[Made In The USA]

The 43 are probably registered democrats disenfranchised due to some right-wing conspiracy to only allow actual living persons the right to vote.

[stevem]

That's probably what Dan Ratherbiased was thinking about the Bush memos.

No doubt. Reporting the Rather way is so slick and efficient. All you need is half a dozen or so anti-Republican or extremely liberal story lines. Then you pick them at randon day after day, change the names and dates and run with them.When you get old like Rather, you hate to have work cut into your nap time. Wait, Rather was perfecting this technique decades ago.

[Leo Carpathian]

She was working for me under covers. After the story was published, we executived the people.

[baseballmom]

Exactly.

[staytrue]

Another graduate from the Dan Rather/Jayson Blair school of journalism

[Semper Paratus]

Mike Barnicle had the same problem writing for the Boston Globe.

[fso301]

How much worse is it for the unnamed sources?

[Edit35]

Guess we shouldn't believe everything we read.

We should only believe a small portion of what we read.

[RavenATB]

I hear she's about to complete a major work exploring newspaper journalists who are falsely accused of fabricating their stories.