tinyurl.com/e3ksv -> story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1896&ncid=1896&e=15&u=/nm/20050415/us_nm/media_bostonglobe_dc
US National - Reute rs By Greg Frost BOSTON (Reuters) - A Boston Globe freelance writer fabricated large chunk s of a story published this week, the newspaper said on Friday in the la test incident to embarrass the US media. The story datelined Halifax, Nova Scotia described in graphic detail how the seal hunt began on Tuesday, with water turning red as hunters on som e 300 boats shot harp seal cubs "by the hundreds." The problem, however, was that the hunt did not begin on Tuesday; it was delayed by bad weather and was scheduled to start on Friday, weather per mitting, the Globe said in an editor's note. The newspaper, which received a complaint from the Canadian government, s aid it should not have published the story and should have insisted on a ttribution for details because the writer was not reporting from the sce ne. "Details included the number of hunters, a description of the scene, and the approximate age of the cubs. The author's failure to accurately repo rt the status of the hunt and her fabrication of details at the scene ar e clear violations of the Globe's journalistic standards," it added. Canada is extremely sensitive about the hunt, during which hundreds of th ousands of seals are beaten to death or shot for their pelts every year. US activists, who says the seals are killed inhumanely, are urging co nsumers to shun Canadian seafood until the hunt is stopped. Canadian Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan said his officials had called the paper to point out the error. "We've been trying to get the facts out about the seal harvest, the fact that the herd is very healthy ... that in 98 percent of cases it (the hu nt) is done in a humane way," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. Officials with the newspaper were not immediately available for further c omment. US media organizations have been hit with a series of high-profile case s involving plagiarism or fabrication. In 2003, The New York Times' top two editors, Howell Raines and Gerald Bo yd, left the paper after it was disclosed that reporter Jayson Blair had fabricated and plagiarized material. CBS News, The Washington Post, NBC News, CNN, the New Republic magazine a nd USA Today are among the other media icons caught up in celebrated fla ps over inaccurate reporting.
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