Bogus: Boston Globe's Most Unexcellent Adventure In Reporting

A Boston Globe freelance writer fabricated large chunks of a story published this week, the newspaper said Friday in the latest incident to embarrass the U.S. media.

The Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Co., said it stopped using writer Barbara Stewart because of a story that ran on Wednesday about a seasonal hunt for baby seals off Newfoundland -- a hunt, it turns out, that had not taken place.

The story datelined Halifax, Nova Scotia, described in graphic detail how the seal hunt began Tuesday, with water turning red as hunters on some 300 boats shot harp seal cubs "by the hundreds."

Among the chunks fabricated are that the seal hunt took place, that the sea ran red, and pretty much everything else that the Boston Globe ran (and other outlets picked up by the way).

This is yet another example of editors not doing their jobs in policing the newsroom, of fact checkers who do not take the time to vet stories, and journalists who are more interested in getting copy than tracking down the story that actually happened, not what they wish would have happened.