WHAT'S A FELLA TO DO?:

USA Today Reporter Resigns Over Probe: Editors Investigated Jack Kelley's Stories (Howard Kurtz, January 8, 2004, Washington Post)

Jack Kelley, a USA Today correspondent who has repeatedly risked his life in war zones around the world, resigned Tuesday after the paper's top editors questioned whether some of his stories were fabricated.

Kelley, 43, has been under scrutiny since June, when an anonymous letter accused him of falsifying stories. Another USA Today reporter, Mark Memmott, was assigned to try to verify Kelley's earlier work, according to sources familiar with the paper's internal investigation.

Kelley insisted yesterday that he had done nothing wrong. "Recent allegations were raised in the form of an anonymous letter, but they were proven to be false, as evidenced by the fact that no retraction or correction has been published," he said. "Nonetheless, USA Today and I have decided to go separate ways and I wish USA Today all the best." Kelley has told colleagues he felt that the atmosphere had become too hostile for him to continue. [...]

Seven stories were initially selected for investigation, but only four were actually examined, say sources familiar with the inquiry. This led to a long period in limbo -- Kelley has not had a byline since October -- as Kelley hired a lawyer and spent December working at home, trying to defend stories filed from Israel, the West Bank, Cuba and the Balkans.

One story that sources said was confirmed by Memmott, a former top editor, was Kelley's presence at the suicide bombing of a Sbarro's pizza restaurant in Jerusalem in August 2001. Kelley, who reported that he was with an Israeli official 30 yards away, has said that he and the official had left the restaurant moments earlier and that the blast knocked them to their knees.

USA Today also examined Kelley's report during that period on 13 Jewish settlers in the West Bank who he said opened fire on a Palestinian taxi, with one of them quoted by name as saying it was "our Jewish duty" to "eliminate all the Muslim filth." Sources familiar with the inquiry say an Israeli official has confirmed the incident to USA Today.

But the paper ran into difficulty trying to confirm a 2000 report in which Kelley wrote that he accompanied nine Cubans "under the dim light of a crescent moon" as they waded toward a boat to try to escape to Florida. Kelley used only first names to describe the Cubans, including a pregnant woman who he said fell into the water as she tried to climb into the smugglers' boat. A condensed version was later published in Reader's Digest.

Memmott went to Cuba but received little cooperation and left without resolving the matter, the sources said.

The most serious questions involved a 1999 Kelley article about a human rights activist in Yugoslavia who, he wrote, showed him a diary in which a Yugoslav soldier recorded that he had been ordered to "ethnically cleanse" a village in Kosovo. The woman in question initially told USA Today that she had done many interviews but did not recall speaking to Kelley, the sources say.

At that point, they say, Kelley flew to Belgrade and found a former U.N. official who was able to confirm the diary story. This former official flew to Washington and met with Memmott and Executive Editor Brian Gallagher and also provided a written statement, the sources said.

Some of Kelley's colleagues are angry about his treatment and upset that top editors have told the newsroom nothing about the Kelley inquiry or his resignation.

But even some colleagues sympathetic to Kelley, who is universally described as a nice person, say they have long been skeptical of some of his stories. They describe him as a something of a cowboy, a risk-taking foreign correspondent who was a favorite of management, highly paid and given leeway -- especially when it came to quoting unnamed sources -- that other reporters did not enjoy.

These colleagues say they were troubled by a number of articles in which Kelley was the only journalist at the scene, or in which he reported seemingly perfect details that no rival was able to match. [...]

Kelley, who told [Christian Life magazine] he attends an evangelical church, was quoted as saying: "Journalism is a calling. I feel God's pleasure when I write and report. It isn't because of the glory, but because God has called me to proclaim truth, and to worship and serve him through other people."

Given the climate of distrust afoot in journalism and the quality of the scoops, he certainly should be looked into, but how much more can the guy do to clear his own name while they leave him twisting in the wind?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2004 7:50 AM