Another Bad Slip for 'NY Times': Katrina Victim Unmasked (fraud)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002235060

For the second time in less than a week, The New York Times today admitted to a serious error in a story. On Saturday it said it had misidentified a man featured in the iconic "hooded inmate" photograph from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Today it discloses that a woman it profiled on March 8 is not, in fact, a victim of Hurricane Katrina--and was arrested for fraud and grand larceny yesterday.

As it did in the Abu Ghraib mistake, the Times ran an editors' note on page 2 of its front section, along with a lengthy news article (this time on the front page of Section B). Again mirroring the Abu Ghraib episode, the newspaper revealed a surprising and inexplicable lapse in fact-checking on the part of a reporter and/or editor.

... The editors' note states:

... "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."

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Is there anything other than Krugman worth a damn in the NYT? They should pay for years and years for employing Judy Miller who makes Jason Blair look like a Boy scout.

Frank Rich is a stud, and I like Maureen Dowd too.

And the paper's local coverage is real good. As are some of its investigative pieces. I think both Miller and this latest example are indications of what happens when you try to create a national newspaper -- not a newspaper that does national news, mind you (I think any paper with a good budget and a great editorial staff can do that), but a paper with national circulation. Such a paper's reach begins to exceed what's possible in a 24-hour, daily news cycle, and corners are cut.

I think the Times, and papers like it, would be better served by concentrating heavily on the home turf, perhaps getting in the occasional Katrina story, and otherwise picking up stories from, say, the Times-Picayune -- of course, given the nature of newspaper competition, that hardly seems likely.

He's terrific.

If you were going to try and defraud the goverment for disaster-felief money, why in the world would you tell your story to a newspaper and put the spotlight on yourself?

You know, conmen of any sort are disgusting, but I at least have a strange sort of respect for the really, really good ones. But if you're both a conman AND an idiot, why not just go down to the local police station and turn yourself in? It'll be a lot easier on everybody involved, including you.

For Katrina Evacuee, Getting Help Is a Full-Time Job

Donna Fenton no longer consults the scrap of paper in her pocketbook when she needs the phone number for the Red Cross, or New York City's welfare office, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"I know them all by heart," said Ms. Fenton, 37, who left Biloxi, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home there. "I call them every day. That's my job."

She starts in the morning, calling from the rooms she and her family share at a Ramada hotel near La Guardia Airport, or from the hotel's basement conference room. She knows what numbers will lead to someone helpful and the ones that will plunge her into a thicket of indifference or incomprehension. She keeps going for hours, sometimes until 3 o'clock the next morning.

The days and nights can blur together, a fog of dial tones, beige wallpaper and overly cheerful automated voices. "Everything they asked for, I sent in," she said. "I sent it in the second time, and then I sent it in a third time."

What she wants, she says, is enough money to move into a new apartment in New York, so she can begin anew the life that Katrina ripped apart. "It wasn't like we had any luxuries," she said. "But we were scraping by."

...more...

and

Woman Claiming to Be a Victim of Katrina Is Charged With Fraud

The police arrested a Queens woman yesterday, saying she had falsely claimed to be a victim of Hurricane Katrina and had taken thousands of dollars in aid from state and federal agencies.

The woman, Donna Fenton, 37, was charged by Brooklyn prosecutors with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny, the latest additions to a long record of fraud, arrests and legal disputes stretching from Mississippi to New York.

Ms. Fenton was the subject of an article in The New York Times on March 8, more than a month after Brooklyn prosecutors, prompted by suspicious officials at the city's welfare agency, began investigating her.

That article described what Ms. Fenton said were her efforts to re-establish her family in New York after fleeing from Biloxi, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the article, Ms. Fenton, who said she had attended high school in New York, described what she said were her efforts to obtain rent assistance and emergency cash aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other government agencies and several charities.

<snip>

A reporter originally obtained Ms. Fenton's name from the Rev. Donald Hudson, a Queens pastor active in efforts to secure aid for Katrina evacuees in New York. Mr. Hudson had described her as an evacuee who might be willing to be profiled, after the reporter asked him for possible interview subjects. A reporter visited Ms. Fenton on two occasions, in late February and early March, and spent several hours with her, even watching her battle with FEMA officials on the phone.

Public records indicate that Ms. Fenton may have used as many as 18 addresses in half a dozen states since 1989, including nearly a dozen in Brooklyn and in Columbus, Miss. She has at least two criminal convictions, for fraud and for grand larceny, and has left behind a trail of creditors and angry landlords.

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n/t

Basic fact checking is mandatory. Are they TRYING to destroy themselves?

Papers are horrible places to work. I'm surprised there aren't more mistakes...

damned if you don't...

Fact-checking a homeless person is problematic, but apparantly the story DID alert officials in NY state to this fraud artist...

What would be the alternative? The NYTimes, after fact-checking discovered the fraud, and then turned over the information directly to the authorities?

Wouldn't that be worst than simply being a reporter that was fooled like so many other bureaucrats...

Just asking... ;-)

It was remarkable that his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, did such a good job after being handed control of the paper by the grandfather, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Usually, business skills, like all skills, are seldom transferred to the offspring, regardless of conventional myth.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. has definitely not inherited his father and grandfather's publishing skills.

You're right on the money about Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. He's a decent fellow, but a man of modest intellectual power and no instinctual sense of how to lead a newspaper.

Moose, anyone?

Peace.

I have better ways to spend what little spending cash I have. Before the New York Times stuck it up our asses with their "exciting changes," I used to be able to read Krugman in seattlepi.com - is there anywhere else he shows up where I don't get charged to read him?

Good move, NYT - reduce your best people's readership and fuck up one investigative story after another. Is there a good paper left in this fucking country?