From the whowouldathunkit files….
“..The Guardian has been hit by a journalism ethics scandal after the newspaper admitted a reporter fabricated interviews and made up quotes in articles. Guardian admits reporter fabricated stories–The Australian.
Lee Glendinning, editor of Guardian US and a former Fairfax Media journalist, said reporter Joseph Mayton also falsely claimed to have been present at events he wrote about.
The former deputy editor of Guardian Australia apologised to readers and to the “people whose words were misrepresented or falsified”.
The newspaper, which was instrumental in campaigning for a British inquiry into press standards, has now removed 13 of contributor Mr Mayton’s articles from its website. Other articles have been amended to remove unreliable material or correct inaccuracies.
Ms Glendinning hired an independent fact-checker to investigate all of Mr Mayton’s prior work, compromising 37 single-byline articles published between 2015 and 2016, seven shared byline stories from the same period, and 20 opinion pieces written from 2009 to 2015.
“In an investigation that included approximately 50 interviews, our fact-checker found articles that contained likely or confirmed fabrication, including stories about two events that organisers said he didn’t attend,” Ms Glendinning wrote.
The incident offers a chilling echo of Jayson Blair, the disgraced New York Times reporter, who was accused of concocting stories, and lifting stories from other newspapers.