Posted on 01/14/2004 8:47:30 PM PST by cinnathepoet
NEW YORK (AP) - 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 Sept. 2, 1998, story by former USA Today reporter Jack Kelley was about arms dealers in a small town in Pakistan. USA Today, in a story in Wednesday editions, printed side-by-side comparisons that showed similar passages in a Washington Post story from the same town two months earlier.
The similarities included references to dogs not flinching after the sound of gunshots because of the frequency of gunfire in the town.
USA Today editor Karen Jurgensen said in an interview the paper was looking into the concerns raised by the similarities and would report back to its readers. The similarities were pointed out by an unidentified USA Today staffer.
Jurgensen said she asked USA Today staffers last week to raise any concerns they might have about Kelley's reporting, but she declined to say what other concerns might have been raised or whether the newspaper was investigating more stories of Kelley's.
On Tuesday, the newspaper ran a lengthy statement from Jurgensen about Kelley in which she said the reporter had resigned after he tried to deceive editors looking into a story he wrote from the former Yugoslavia in 1999.
She said in the statement that Kelley's work first came under scrutiny in May after executive editor Brian Gallagher received an anonymous note questioning whether Kelley was making up or embellishing stories.
Lisa Banks, a lawyer representing Kelley, said, "Jack's story and the story in the Post are completely different. ... It's clearly not plagiarism. Jack didn't do anything wrong."
Kelley said in a short statement published in the newspaper Tuesday he regretted the mistake he made in the course of the investigation but added that he stood by the stories he published during his 21 years at the newspaper.
Kelley was one of the best-known reporters at the newspaper, and had been with USA Today since 1982, when he started out as a news assistant. He was named USA Today's staffer of the year in 2001 and was nominated for the Pulitzer prize five times.
He is married to the newspaper's top advertising executive, Jacki Kelley, and has spoken to groups of young journalists as well as advertising and circulation clients several times on behalf of USA Today's company, Gannett Co., according to newspaper spokesman Steve Anderson.
Gee, I'm shocked, Shocked (/end Claude Rains impersonation).
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