The US: A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter in the New York Times is resigning after being accused of using the work of other reporters in his articles without attribution. Conor O'Clery in New York reports
The departure of Rick Bragg, one of the Times's best-known and talented feature writers, comes on the heels of a scandal over reporter Jayson Blair, who invented details and quotes for at least 36 stories from locations around the US, some of which he never visited.
Bragg said the procedures he followed of relying on stringers, researchers, interns, clerks and news assistants were common in the Times.
However in the wake of the Blair affair, a "poisonous atmosphere" had descended on the newspaper, he told Howard Kurtz, media correspondent of the Washington Post, and he said he would resign.
A senior reporter in the New York Times told The Irish Times that it was not common practice to use freelancers and that "most of us do our own leg-work". He said a witch-hunt was being conducted in the wake of the Jayson Blair affair which had led to an upheaval against the editor, Howell Raines.
Bragg, a long-time associate of Raines, was suspended for two weeks after a complaint that a story he wrote last June about Florida oystermen should have been shared with a freelance reporter he hired who spent four days getting quotes and details.
For years his mission was to "go get the dateline", even when that meant leaning heavily on the reporting of others, Bragg told the Post. "My job was to ride the airplane and sleep in the hotel. I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic'."
The controversy has ignited a debate over routine reporting practices in the Times which has embroiled other reporters and put their careers in jeopardy.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday said it was standard practice to identify people who contributed significantly to articles.
In a survey of other newspapers by the Journal, the Chicago Tribune said a stringer or freelance journalist who helped a reporter would be named as a contributor. The Washington Post said it would sometimes identify which parts of a story were contributed by non-staff journalists.
The Times said that non-staff journalists did not get their names on stories when their assistance was "routine".
A CNN/USA Today Gallup poll yesterday found that 62 per cent of Americans feel that the media often gets the story wrong, compared to 44 per cent in 1998.