transgendered, military women—as the object of a journalistic sensitivity that often becomes solicitude.
In a March 2006 news feature, Nicholas Confessore described the plight of a Hurricane Katrina victim from Biloxi, Mississippi, who had been stranded by bureaucratic ineptitude in a New York City welfare hotel with four of her children and her oldest son’s fiancée. Although she called FEMA, the Red Cross and the city welfare office, no assistance was forthcoming. Her health had deteriorated, requiring numerous hospital stays. But in reality, the woman was a con artist. She had never lived in Biloxi, did not have custody of her children, was on probation for a check-forging charge, and was under investigation by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. She was arrested shortly after Confessore’s report ran in the paper.
The Times has fallen prey to several literary con jobs as well. A 2004 profile of the cult novelist JT LeRoy said the author had been a cross-dressing hooker who was rescued by a bohemian couple in San Francisco and a prominent psychiatrist. In 2006 it was revealed that JT LeRoy was a publicity invention, and the actual novelist was not a man. Then in 2008 there was the case
of Margaret B. Jones and a memoir about a life submerged in the world of guns, crack, gang violence and police brutality in South Central Los Angeles, followed by a scholarship and graduation from the University of Oregon. In fact, Margaret B. Jones was really Margaret Seltzer, who had grown up in a Los Angeles suburb and graduated from a top private school, and got her “experience” of the gang and drug culture from conversations with people in coffee shops.
In a report from Iraq, the Times got snookered by an Iraqi human rights activist who claimed to be the Abu Ghraib detainee infamously photographed standing on a box with wires attached to his body. In fact, he was not that man, but was using the photo on his business card to whip up anger on a publicity tour of the Arab world. Another hoax related to the Iraq War came in a Times Magazine cover story about American servicewomen in Iraq. One of the subjects, a Navy construction worker, claimed to have been raped in Guam while awaiting deployment to Iraq, saying it was the second time she had been raped in the service. She also claimed to be suffering brain damage from an IED in Iraq. In fact, the Navy confirmed that she had never been to Iraq.
Ghosts of Frauds Past. In addition to contemporary hoaxes, there were phantoms of frauds from earlier days, when they were still a rarity, that returned to haunt the Times. One of the most egregious involved Walter Duranty, the paper’s Moscow correspondent for twelve years who won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Stalin’s Russia. At the time, the Pulitzer Prize Board said that Duranty’s work showed “a profound and intimate comprehension of conditions in Russia” and was consistent with “the best type of foreign correspondence.” His contemporaries in Russia saw differently. According to Malcolm Muggeridge, a British reporter, Duranty was “the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism.” In exchange for access to Stalin and material privileges, his critics said, Duranty wrote favorably about Soviet policies of forced collectivization that later resulted in the deaths
of millions due to famine in 1932 and 1933. To many, he became known as “Stalin’s Apologist.”
Duranty’s Pulitzer had long posed a dilemma for the Times, although a portrait of Duranty still hung on the eleventh floor of the 43rd Street building, near the executive dining room. In 1990, an editorial on Duranty’s apologetics chastised him for “indifference to the catastrophic famine . . . when millions perished in the Ukraine.” There was discussion about giving the Pulitzer Prize back, but the Times stonewalled.
In 2003, pressure from Ukrainian American groups, who liken their famine to the
In a March 2006 news feature, Nicholas Confessore described the plight of a Hurricane Katrina victim from Biloxi, Mississippi, who had been stranded by bureaucratic ineptitude in a New York City welfare hotel with four of her children and her oldest son’s fiancée. Although she called FEMA, the Red Cross and the city welfare office, no assistance was forthcoming. Her health had deteriorated, requiring numerous hospital stays. But in reality, the woman was a con artist. She had never lived in Biloxi, did not have custody of her children, was on probation for a check-forging charge, and was under investigation by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. She was arrested shortly after Confessore’s report ran in the paper.
The Times has fallen prey to several literary con jobs as well. A 2004 profile of the cult novelist JT LeRoy said the author had been a cross-dressing hooker who was rescued by a bohemian couple in San Francisco and a prominent psychiatrist. In 2006 it was revealed that JT LeRoy was a publicity invention, and the actual novelist was not a man. Then in 2008 there was the case
of Margaret B. Jones and a memoir about a life submerged in the world of guns, crack, gang violence and police brutality in South Central Los Angeles, followed by a scholarship and graduation from the University of Oregon. In fact, Margaret B. Jones was really Margaret Seltzer, who had grown up in a Los Angeles suburb and graduated from a top private school, and got her “experience” of the gang and drug culture from conversations with people in coffee shops.
In a report from Iraq, the Times got snookered by an Iraqi human rights activist who claimed to be the Abu Ghraib detainee infamously photographed standing on a box with wires attached to his body. In fact, he was not that man, but was using the photo on his business card to whip up anger on a publicity tour of the Arab world. Another hoax related to the Iraq War came in a Times Magazine cover story about American servicewomen in Iraq. One of the subjects, a Navy construction worker, claimed to have been raped in Guam while awaiting deployment to Iraq, saying it was the second time she had been raped in the service. She also claimed to be suffering brain damage from an IED in Iraq. In fact, the Navy confirmed that she had never been to Iraq.
Ghosts of Frauds Past. In addition to contemporary hoaxes, there were phantoms of frauds from earlier days, when they were still a rarity, that returned to haunt the Times. One of the most egregious involved Walter Duranty, the paper’s Moscow correspondent for twelve years who won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Stalin’s Russia. At the time, the Pulitzer Prize Board said that Duranty’s work showed “a profound and intimate comprehension of conditions in Russia” and was consistent with “the best type of foreign correspondence.” His contemporaries in Russia saw differently. According to Malcolm Muggeridge, a British reporter, Duranty was “the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism.” In exchange for access to Stalin and material privileges, his critics said, Duranty wrote favorably about Soviet policies of forced collectivization that later resulted in the deaths
of millions due to famine in 1932 and 1933. To many, he became known as “Stalin’s Apologist.”
Duranty’s Pulitzer had long posed a dilemma for the Times, although a portrait of Duranty still hung on the eleventh floor of the 43rd Street building, near the executive dining room. In 1990, an editorial on Duranty’s apologetics chastised him for “indifference to the catastrophic famine . . . when millions perished in the Ukraine.” There was discussion about giving the Pulitzer Prize back, but the Times stonewalled.
In 2003, pressure from Ukrainian American groups, who liken their famine to the
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