Sunday, June 26, 2005

Meet Diana Griego Irwin: California's Jayson Blair

UPDATE: It has come to my attention that it's Diana Griego Erwin, not Irwin. Sorry!

Huge hat tip to Third Wave Dave!

Another big hit against mainstream media credibility, Diana Griego Irwin, former Sacramento Bee columnist, is the latest MSM serial plagiarizer. As the New York Times did with Jayson Blair, the Bee in investigating Irwin's columns, and his finding that she made up a whole lot of stuff.

From the Sacramento Bee (free registration is required.) Register just for this article, as this one is a must read. An excerpt:

From Jan. 1, 2004, until her final column on April 26, Griego Erwin wrote 171 columns. The Bee's investigation found 30 names in 27 separate columns that could not be verified during that time period. The people could not be found in voter registration rolls, property records, telephone books, identity databases or through scores of phone calls.

In light of those findings, the review expanded to include a sampling of columns spanning her 12-year tenure with the newspaper, and 13 additional cases in another 10 columns were found.

Many of the columns in question fit a template: essays, often with a surprising O. Henry twist, about a singular person who faces a challenge and surmounts it. Their stories frequently reflect a theme taken from current headlines - wildfires, for example, or prison brutality, school shootings, murderous road rage or a high-profile trial.

Oh, one more detail, Irwin is a Pulitzer Prize winner!

1 comment:

RadRich said...

It's Erwin, not Irwin.