JACK KELLEY vs. JAYSON BLAIR….Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter Jack Kelley of USA Today turns out to have fabricated a whole bunch of stories:
“The evidence strongly contradicted Kelley’s published accounts that he spent a night with Egyptian terrorists in 1997; met a vigilante Jewish settler named Avi Shapiro in 2001; watched a Pakistani student unfold a picture of the Sears Tower and say, ‘This one is mine,’ in 2001; visited a suspected terrorist crossing point on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 2002; interviewed the daughter of an Iraqi general in 2003; or went on a high-speed hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2003.”
The paper said that “significant parts” of a purported eyewitness account of a suicide bombing, that made him a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, “are untrue.
….In an effort to cover up his work, the paper reported, “Kelley wrote scripts to help at least three people mislead USA Today reporters trying to verify his work.”
I know that everyone ? and I mean everyone ? is probably tired of this comparison even before it’s made, but, um, Kelley’s fabrications are actually a lot worse than Jayson Blair’s, right? And they went on for a much longer time, right? And there are a lot more of them, right?
But, er, um, Kelley is white, isn’t he?
I really don’t think it’s unfair to ask Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan when they’re planning to start their 24/7 coverage of this affair. Surely, at the very least, they should start baying for editor Karen Jurgensen’s resignation, shouldn’t they?
