Our Word - Our Apology Student Newspaper duped in hoax (for 18 months)

The Daily Egyptian is the student-run newspaper of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. For 18 months they ran letters from a 10 year old girl whose father was allegedly fighting in Iraq. Except the story was a lie, made up to boost the career of a student writer. No one checked the facts. These are the heirs to the fourth estate?

A student newspaper producing the media personnel of tomorrow.

No doubt from The Jason Blair Chair.

Interviewing for the New York Times.

.
Huh?

What bothers me is the fact that dyed in the wool liberals will ignore the falsehoods and go on to spread the tragic news of the little girl only leaving out the minor fact that she didn't exist.

Why would you excerpt something from a student newspaper? Not only is it likely that the newspaper will flush it down the memory hole, but it's not likely that it will come after FR with a copyright complaint.

But she could have existed! Have you no compassion? Heartless evil conservative!

"These are the heirs to the fourth estate?"

Looks as if they're right on track with their
training and education, doesn't it?

All she wanted was some attention.

Well, she finally got some at age 27.

They get credit for coming clean. The slimeballs at

and

should emmulate these kids.

Excellent point. Let's get the whole story here:

Our Word - Our Apology

It was a heart-rending story--a blonde waif, her mother dead, entrusted to the care of a family friend while her father fought with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. The youngster was intelligent, friendly and engaging, and developed close bonds with many of the newsroom staff.
Then a week ago came the news that her father had been killed in Iraq.

Every war casualty leaves a trail of pain, but the story of a 10-year-old girl losing her only parent to the war is particularly poignant, and the Chicago Tribune showed interest.

In the course of checking out the details, a troubling problem appeared: The story wasn't true. What began as a nightmarish possibility became impossible to deny. There was no record with the Department of Defense of the death.

The father who was called Dan Kennings was not killed in Iraq. We checked with central command in Baghdad. There was no Dan Kennings in the 101st Airborne. No Dan Kennings in the entire Army.

We checked with Cathy Gramling, media relations officer at Fort Campbell, Ky., who in turn checked with the Army Human Resources Command.

"We cannot find a record of a Dan Kennings on active duty or having been killed in Iraq," Gramling said.

She directed us to a Web site maintained by the military, listing all the casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and the attack on the Pentagon. No Dan Kennings.

We had been duped.

Not only was he not in the military, we could not verify he existed at all. Suddenly, everything about this story was in question.

Over the course of a year and a half, we published news stories, columns and letters to the editor about Dan Kennings and his daughter Kodee. All of them were rich in real human emotion, and all provided moving details in the life of a young girl trying to live her life without her parents. They portrayed a precocious child, fiercely proud of her father's military service.

Each one of these stories, columns and letters contained an essential inaccuracy -- but when we published them we believed them to be true.

How could this happen?

We blew it.

There is no pleasant way to put it. We didn't check the facts carefully. We believed what we were told without verifying. We weren't as skeptical as we are supposed to be. We were fooled by a little girl with a cute smile, surrounded by a group of adults who acted the hoax with her.

We published unverified assertions, and they turned out to be false. For that, we apologize to our readers.

The basis of journalism is truth. Not partial truth, but 100 percent truth on every page, in every story. As it says in our mission statement, we are committed to being a trusted source of news. In this case, we failed.

Admitting this, however, is not enough.

We also retract all the stories and commentary concerning Kodee and Dan Kennings, people we now know never existed, and we pledge to redouble our efforts to regain and keep your trust.

Second story, linked at the bottom of the above

DE duped in hoax

Daily Egyptian staff

DE_Editor@dailyegyptian.com

Over nearly two years, the Daily Egyptian told the story of a precocious little girl whose mother was dead and whose father was fighting in Iraq.

Members of the newspaper staff befriended the girl known as Kodee Kennings and she was given an occasional column in the DE. The column, at times funny and at times heart-rending, talked about her father in the military, her fears about monsters under her bed and her life with her guardian, Colleen Hastings.

None of it was true.

The Daily Egyptian and its readers were taken in by a bizarre, elaborate hoax.

There was no Kodee Kennings. There was no Colleen Hastings. And there was no father named Dan Kennings in Iraq.

The web of lies began to unravel about two weeks ago when the staff of the newspaper was told that Dan Kennings had been killed in battle. Sources at the Department of the Defense and at Fort Campbell, Ky., where Kennings was supposedly a member of the 101st Airborne, said no man by that name has served or died in Iraq.

Reporting by this newspaper and others since then has found that Hastings is actually Jaimie Reynolds of Marion, a 2004 graduate of SIU. And Kodee is actually the daughter of a pastor in Montpelier, Ind. The man portraying Dan Kennings is Patrick Trovillion of Vienna, who says Reynolds paid him for his role.

On Thursday, after nearly a week of reporting, the Daily Egyptian learned that the girl is 10-year-old Caitlin Hadley. Her parents are Rich and Tawnya Hadley, who met Reynolds in Tuscola. The Hadleys said they believed Reynolds was making a documentary with their daughter about a girl named Kodee Kennings and that they had become close friends with Reynolds. Rich Hadley, who is pastor of Montpelier Church of the Nazarene, said Reynolds had even stayed at their house.

He said he is considering seeking a restraining order to keep Reynolds away from the family.

Hadley said his daughter is having trouble coping with the situation.

"She's very sad. She will just burst into tears out of the blue. At one point she turned to me and asked, 'Did Jamie like me?'" he said.

Reynolds, who invited members of the newspaper's staff to a memorial service for Dan Kennings Saturday at the American Legion hall in Orient, insists she did not act alone. She said that the Daily Egyptian reporter who first wrote about Kodee, Michael Brenner, met her in a bar in early January 2003 and later asked her to help him with the deception.

Reynolds said because Brenner paid attention to her she was willing to help, saying he "said all the things I wanted to hear. It wasn't a crush. But he looked at me, and looked twice. He became a friend and didn't care I was fat."

In a five-hour interview at her home, Reynolds accused Brenner of creating the characters and writing the "Kenningsology" columns. She said he threatened her to go along with the lie.

Reynolds said Brenner, who went on to serve one semester as editor-in-chief at the Daily Egyptian, wanted to get his byline in a section of the paper other than sports.

Brenner, the recipient of state and national student journalism awards, denied her accusations and said he did not make up anything.

Brenner, who graduated in December 2004, developed a personal relationship with the girl he said he believed to be Kodee Kennings.

"Many of the people I have been talking to the last couple of years have completely betrayed me," Brenner said. "I guess there was no relationship there in the first place, since they didn't love me. I can't believe Kodee isn't even real."
Walter Jaehnig, the director of the school of journalism at SIUC, said in a statement "the staff is shocked by these revelations because we stress fair, accurate and complete journalism in our courses and in the Daily Egyptian. In this instance, the student reporters and editors failed to verify the essential facts of the story."

Brenner's first story about Kodee Kennings appeared on May 6, 2003. The story relived heart-wrenching details of the 8-year-old's good-bye to her father as he left for Iraq with the 101st Airborne. In the story, the DE detailed how, with Kodee's mother dead, Dan Kennings was her only remaining blood relative.

However, the DE did not verify the facts of the story.

After that story appeared, calls from a young voice saying she was Kodee Kennings were often placed to the Daily Egyptian and staff members would talk to this person, often for hours. E-mails from family members of Dan and Kodee Kennings were sent to numerous members of the Daily Egyptian staff and the girl was also allowed to sit in on classes by journalism instructors.

In summer 2004, Trovillion, posing as Dan Kennings, visited the Daily Egyptian newsroom, thanking the staff for taking care of his daughter while he was in Iraq. He walked through room, shook hands and hugged staff members. Trovillion said Reynolds paid him "about $100" to appear in the Daily Egyptian that day. Reynolds insisted he was not paid. Both said the two met through her cousin.

"I am absolutely floored by this," Trovillion said. "It really does piss me off."

The last of Kodee's columns appeared in the newspaper in July 2004.

How do you Spellcheck Heiroglyphics?

"We weren't as skeptical as we are supposed to be."

They so desperately wanted it to be true that they avoided finding facts that didn't fit the agenda.

ping

"...contained an essential inaccuracy..."
man, i gotta remember that one for future use.

SIU, huh figures.

Who said party schools' are long gone. Looks to me like they're all 'still on the pipe' down there.

Lemme try t'explain, as enny fool kin plainly see.

While sittin' on a po'ch one day, a yo'ng blonde woomin was warin' her on oversized maroon sweater an' jeans.

Someone axed her whuffo' she had done whut she did, cuss it all t' tarnation.

Now this hyar yo'ng blonde woomin lacked fo' attenshun an' was offered a oppo'tuity t'play a role in a hoax.

When th' yo'ng blonde woomin had doubts about her role, th' blonde woomin axed fo' a re-write. Th' direcko' of course refused an' thrett uped t'cast someone else.

Th' yo'ng blonde woomin commenced t'make 3 dozen phone calls, accidentally phonin' th' media of which yo' is readin' th' results

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1471205/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1471444/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1471700/posts

Mzzzz. Reynolds has a bright future with the Associated Press. She's Editor material for sure.