Reply #6: slate.com on Rick Bragg [View All]

[realFedUp]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2083607/

The suspended New York Times reporter insists—wrongly—that everybody does it.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 4:27 PM PT


On Friday, New York Times reporter Rick Bragg insisted to the Columbia Journalism Review he'd done nothing wrong in claiming 1) the byline for a story that an unpaid free-lancer had reported for him and 2) the dateline "Apalachicola, Fla.," after visiting the town only briefly. (See "Rick Bragg's 'Dateline Toe-Touch.' ")

"I wouldn't have done anything different," Bragg tells CJR.

Bragg reiterates that position to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz again today—as he pre-announces his resignation from the New York Times. He tells Kurtz:

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." … Those things are common at the paper. Most national correspondents will tell you they rely on stringers and researchers and interns and clerks and news assistants.

Bragg continues his defense, saying Times stringers and interns "should get more credit for what they do," but in "taking feeds" from such assistants, "I have never even thought of whether or not that is proper. Maybe there is something missing in me. ..."

I will take it from a stringer. I will take it from an intern. I will take it from a news assistant. If a clerk does an interview for me, I will use it. I'm going to send people to sit in for me if I don't have time to be there. It is not unusual to send someone to conduct an interview you don't have time to conduct. It's what we do.

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