On Friday, the Boston Globe fired one of its freelance writers, Barbara Stewart, after it was discovered that Stewart fabricated large parts of a story she wrote about the Canadian seal hunt.
In her article, Stewart described Tuesday’s hunt in vivid detail, describing how hundreds of Canadian hunters in boats shooting seals until the waters in the area turned blood red.
The only problem is the hunt never happened — the weather was too bad on Tuesday, so the hunt didn’t get underway until Friday. Stewart apparently called an official to confirm when the hunt would actually begin and then just used her imagination to fill in the details.
The Globe, of course, is owned by the New York Times. It turns out that before turning to freelancing, Stewart was a reporter at the New York Times for 10 years.
Jayson Bair, Round II?
Source:
Globe suffering tough Times: Fabricating freelancer came from N.Y. paper. Brett Arends and Jay Fitzgerald, The Boston Herald, April 16, 2005.
Paper apologizes for fake seal hunt story. Reuters, April 15, 2005.