Paper says reporter forced to resign after deception

[Judi Lynn]

Paper says reporter forced to resign after deception

Tuesday, January 13, 2004



(01-13) 01:30 PST ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) --

Foreign correspondent Jack Kelley was forced to resign from USA Today last week after he repeatedly misled editors during an internal investigation into some of his stories, the paper's top editors said.

Kelley told The Washington Post he concluded he should resign because he "panicked and used poor judgment" by encouraging a translator who was not present during a 1999 interview that had come under scrutiny to impersonate a translator who was there and confirm his story to USA Today investigators. He told the Post he realized his error and apologized to the paper's top executives two weeks later.

"The reason for ending Kelley's employment was that he engaged in an elaborate deception during an investigation into his work," USA Today editor Karen Jurgensen said in a lengthy statement posted Tuesday on the paper's Internet site. "He admitted that he engaged in conduct designed to deceive the investigation."

Her statement said the paper "had chosen to treat the issue as a confidential personnel matter, but because Kelley made it public and because some published accounts have contained inaccurate information, we are providing a summary of the central events that led editors to end Kelley's employment."
(snip/...)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/13/national0411EST0445.DTL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

August 2000; Volume 24 Issue 07

Truth in the trenches
By Randall Murphree - AFA Journal Editor

"Truth is the first casualty of any war," said Jack Kelley to his audience of Christian journalists. I wish I'd thought to ask him if that applies to culture wars. Kelley, a foreign correspondent for USA Today, is regularly in the first wave of journalists dispatched to every war-torn spot on the globe. He runs with the big dogs of world news. I wonder if he thinks Truth is a casualty of this moral turmoil that afflicts our culture today. I wonder if he sees Christian media using Truth selectively, stretching or manipulating it to serve our own ends.

At age 21, Kelley had a story in the first edition of USA Today in 1983. So, he's a real veteran, not only of the world's most dangerous war zones, but also of spiritual warfare as well. For Jack Kelley is a committed Christian. At this year's Evangelical Press convention, he mesmerized his audience with his experiences--scrapes with death, miraculous escapes, interviews with the world's elite.

We won't forget his stories, but I hope the principles he espoused have a more lasting impact. Again and again, Kelley emphasized that it is imperative for Christian journalists to be people of integrity, writers who are certain of every detail, believers who stay the course set by Christ Himself. It's a principle that should be true for any believer in any career. But we in activist ministries, if we let our calling become a crusade, are vulnerable to the temptation to shape Truth to fit our will, not God's.
(snip/...)

http://www.afajournal.org/cover/media_3.asp



http://www.newseum.org/warstories/interviews/mp3/journalists/bio.asp?id=5

[johnfunk]

1. Another pious hypocrite exposed

Makes my day. Maybe he can get a job with Pat Robertson's bogus news operation -- sounds like he'd fit right in...

[Red State Rebel]

2. Yippee! Another Christian Bashing Thread ....

Let's alienate some more voters!

[Ernesto]

3. Ah Gee, let's give him a break.

NOT!

[Red State Rebel]

8. I Never Said Give Him A Break....

Just leave his religion out of it. People on DU Forums simply cannot wait to jump up and down on Christians backs at every chance. I find it offensive. He cheated on a story - what a crappy and stupid thing to do - no matter what his faith.

[northzax]

5. yeah, calling the falsely pious hypocrites

another one of those anti-christian things Jesus didi:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his followers,“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees have the authority to tell you what the law of Moses says.So you should obey and follow whatever they tell you, but their lives are not good examples for you to follow. They tell you to do things, but they themselves don’t do them.They make strict rules and try to force people to obey them, but they are unwilling to help those who struggle under the weight of their rules. (NCV)
Matt 23:1-4 (NCV)



darn it, I hate it when Jesus contradicts me, I guess he's not a good christian.

Perhaps it's worth noting that the previous poster was just doing what every other "christian" should be doing, calling Mr. Kelley on his channeling of the Pharisees.

[PATRICK]

4. outstanding meltdown

With any brains or shame he would have not fed that hilarious bio.
So what were their real reasons for nailing this scapegoat to the wall? Not part of the CIA crowd, an invader from another propaganda factory?

Well, if it's that hard to get a truth loving Christian over one small incident I can see why the ethics whitewashers can't be bothered with the big picture of slant and disinformation for the Agenda.

They don't need flyswatters, they need harpoons.

[Bandit]

6. Sounds like good Ambassadorial material for this Administration

LIARS love LIARS and work sooo well together.

[Bill McBlueState]

7. in Friday's USA Today

there was a little blurb about this on page A3. It sounded pretty sketchy, like they were definitely making a point of not saying everything. I wonder if there's been anything since then in said newspaper.

[Say_What]

9. "...because God has called me to proclaim truth,". Hmmm, so Jack, was it

god who told you to deceive your editors and readers?

This guy and SmirkBoy would make quite a pair--god appointed SmirkBoy to have endless wars and this nutcase to write about them. Oh, brother. :crazy:

<clips>

...In yesterday's article Kurtz again brought up Kelley's religious beliefs. But unlike earlier reports, this time it's not a non sequitur—it's a counterpoint. "He is an evangelical Christian who told Christian Reader magazine three years ago that he is in journalism 'because God has called me to proclaim truth,'" Kurtz reports near the end of his article. "But he now concedes that he participated in a lie while trying to vindicate the accuracy of his reporting."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/102/12.0.html

[Judi Lynn]

10. Interesting to see Christianity Today ran an article on him

You're right on target about this waste of skin. How could ANYONE sensible imagine people who condemn him and his LIES and deliberate attempts to mislead others, are anti-Christian?

He's anti-"Christ," HIMSELF. It really takes all kinds. :silly: :crazy: :dunce:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~NY Times article snippets:

NEW YORK An investigation by USA Today into the accuracy of reporting by Jack Kelley, a foreign correspondent, has concluded that he "repeatedly misled" editors during the inquiry.
.
(snip) But the draft of the article said Kelley had resigned after his editors discovered he had "set in motion a plan to deceive them" as they sought last year to fact-check a 398-word article that he filed from Yugoslavia in July 1999.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/124797.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Makes you wonder how someone sees the perpetrator here as actually being the victem, doesn't it? The victem is any unsuspecting reader who actually swallows his bilge.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Is it any surprise they found ANOTHER problem with this guy?

New story today:

USA Today finds new concerns about former reporter Jack Kelley


By the Associated Press

Published January 14, 2004

ARLINGTON, Va. -- USA Today says it is investigating similarities between a story by a star foreign correspondent who recently resigned and one published by The Washington Post.

The September 1998 story by former USA Today reporter Jack Kelley was about arms dealers in a small town in Pakistan. Two months earlier, the Post reported from the same town, USA Today reported Wednesday.

The similarities included references to dogs not flinching after the sound of gunshots because of the frequency of gunfire in the town, USA Today reported.

The newspaper said it learned of the similarities on Tuesday.

USA Today Editor Karen Jurgensen said in Wednesday's editions that her review of the stories "raises significant concerns."
(snip/...)

http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-usatoday-reporter0114jan14,0,7203533.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So he has added plagarism to his list of journalistic god-given talents.

[Judi Lynn]

12. The investigation of Jack Kelley's work continues

(snip) Kelley became a roving foreign correspondent, dispatched from the USA Today headquarters in northern Virginia to report on the biggest international news of the day - the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Haiti, Kosovo - from which he would file front-page scoops and amaze his editors with tales of derring-do.
.
But back in northern Virginia, skepticism about Kelley's work grew.
.
Tales of how he had stumbled upon the diary of a Serbian girl he likened to Anne Frank, or narrowly survived a death threat from the Russian mafia, engendered more than the jealousy typical in newsrooms.
.
Some of Kelley's colleagues were so suspicious of his dispatches that, as long ago as the mid-1990's, they began keeping crude dossiers on him - questioning the plausibility of his battlefield descriptions, clipping articles from other newspapers that contained phrasing similar to Kelley's and even making copies of his correspondence with editors. (snip)

(snip) It was only after the resignation from The New York Times last May of Jayson Blair, who was found to have fabricated or plagiarized parts of at least three dozen articles, that USA Today's editors responded to an anonymous internal complaint about Kelley's work by asking a former deputy managing editor to investigate some of his articles. (snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/125666.html
.

[Say_What]

13. Uh oh, more trouble brewing for the not so honest Kelley--who hopes the

investigation is *full and fair*. Well gee Jack, you moron, you shoulda thought about that when you were making up the fiction for your articles.


From the article:

...."In the days since Kelley's termination, new questions have arisen," USA Today's editor, Karen Jurgensen, and its publisher, Craig Moon, said in a statement Friday. "They raise enough concerns that we feel we need to vet Kelley's record completely and report the results publicly."

[Just Me]

14. I believe people can recognize their mistakes,...

,...and take action to correct them. I believe people can change. If this man survives both the consequences of his actions and the storm of persecution that will be laid upon him,...and still chooses to pursue the one valuable asset that should never, ever be lost in war, "TRUTH",...along with personal integrity,...

I guess that I would separate myself from this board and take a stand for him.