NY Times reveals more fraud by reporter

In an editor’s note, the newspaper said that checks of Blair’s stories before October revealed further fraud. Blair resigned on May 1 and on May 11 the Times published a detailed account of plagiarism and fabrications in his articles during and after October.

“Ten additional articles by Mr. Blair have since been found to include misstatements or possibly borrowed passages, or quotations that have been denied by the speaker to whom they were attributed,” the note said.

Executive editor Howell Raines and national editor Gerald Boyd resigned on June 5 amid the scandal of Blair faking dozens of stories that were published in the newspaper, considered by many to be the most influential in the United States. Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer Rick Bragg also quit after charges of using dishonest reporting.

The newspaper published a list of the 10 articles by Blair, dating back to April 2000 on its website.

In one from August 5, 2001, the Times website said Blair appeared to have borrowed from passages written five years earlier in The Wall Street Journal. The passage it cited was, “In 1987, for example, the federal government decided to blitz the American people with a frightening message: anyone could get AIDS.”

The Journal story of May 1, 1996, said, “In the summer of 1987, federal health officials made the fateful decision to bombard the public with a terrifying message: Anyone could get AIDS.”