Season 5 of The Wire must be really popular on the OSU campus.
The Daily O'Collegian, the student-run newspaper for Oklahoma State University, issued an editorial retraction and apology for several stories that recently appeared in the school's paper. Apparently, some lazy student reporter got bored and fabricated quotes and sources for news articles.
From The Daily O'Collegian:
As journalists, our sole purpose is to relentlessly pursue and present the truth, but last week, one of The Daily O’Collegian reporters violated that goal.
Over the course of two semesters, this reporter wrote six articles for the O’Colly and fabricated at least one and as many as five sources in three of the articles.
After finding discrepancies in one article and being unable to prove the existence of a source, the O’Colly staff fact-checked the other five articles and was unable to verify four more sources.
In the article “Outdoor Adventure hosts ninth annual triathlon,” published Sept. 30, the reporter wrote a source participated in the swimming portion of the triathlon.
From the article: “Saturday’s race started with a swim in Lake Carl Blackwell that consisted of a down-and-out one-half mile into Turkey Hollow and finishing at Camp Redlands.
‘It’s safe to say that I am out of shape,’ psychology major Jackie Clay said. ‘I thought I was going to drown but at the same time, I was having so much fun.’”
The reporter’s deceit came to our attention via social media shortly after we posted the story online, when Twitter users informed us the swimming portion of the race was canceled....
The O’Colly staff found another student source in the same article and three student sources in two more articles who had no record of attending the university.
That's pathetic. For one, what out-of-shape person participates in a triathlon? And two, if you're going to make up sources for a stupid article about a triathlon, you should probably go all out and have fun with it. Even Jenni Carlson could write better copy than that. What other articles and quotes did this student who should obviously not pursue a career in creative writing or journalism fabricate?