Reply #7: Rick Bragg.....whose doing Jessica's Book is a Plaigerist! Fired from NYT! [View All]

[KoKo]

Rick Bragg's Lousy Alibi
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. ..."

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

.........only the donkey knows.......


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