Saturday, April 16, 2005
Barbara Stewart, former freelance reporter for The Boston Globe, was dismissed this week after adding fictitious details to a story about events which actually did not occur at the time of her writing. The Boston Globe’s Executive Editor Helen Donovan called the incident a “significant breach” and said, “We should have noticed the lack of attribution on a couple of key facts and should have asked questions we didn’t ask.”
The story in question was about a Canadian seal hunt that was supposed to take place, but actually did not occur that day because of bad weather. Stewart wrote about it anyway as though it had actually happened. Her article, dated April 13, began, “Over the vigorous protests of international animal-welfare organizations, the largest seal hunt in a half-century resumed yesterday off Newfoundland and Labrador. Hunters on about 300 boats converged on ice floes, shooting harp seal cubs by the hundreds, as the ice and water turned red. Most of the seals were less than 6 weeks old.”
“When I read the article, I was kind of shocked,” said Phil Jenkins, spokesman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, according to The Washington Post. Jenkins said he told the Globe that “the events as described in quite vivid detail had not taken place.”
The Canadian hunt for harp seal cubs is an annual event that has been drawing protests from animal rights activists since the 1960s. The hunts take place on ice floes and sometimes in weather conditions that can deter protesters from visiting the event.
James Smith, Foreign Editor at the Globe, says that the Globe will now institute stricter hiring practices for future part-time correspondents. He reports Stewart as saying after the incident was uncovered: “I don’t know why I did this. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Stewart has been a reporter for The New York Times’ Metro Desk between October, 1994 and May, 2004; according to the Boston Herald, the Times denied that Stewart fabricated any parts of stories while she was employed there. This was Stewart’s third article for the Globe.