A Fraud in the Pulitzers

By Ellie McGrath

The Washington Post returns a prize, with apologies

It was every young reporter's dream come true: a gripping Page One story in the Washington Post, a public outcry, an investigation by the city and, finally, the Pulitzer Prize. For a glorious Monday last week, Janet Cooke, 26, hit the jackpot. Her sensational account of "Jimmy," an eight-year-old heroin addict, had won the Pulitzer for feature writing, and she seemed destined for stardom at one of the nation's most respected newspapers.

But the fairy tale began to unravel Tuesday afternoon, when Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee received a phone call from Vassar College. Cooke, he was told, had not graduated from Vassar, as she had claimed in the biography submitted to the Pulitzer judges. At about the same time, Managing Editor Howard Simons learned from the Associated Press that Cooke had not received a master's degree from the University of Toledo, as she had also claimed. Questioned by her editors, Cooke admitted that she had exaggerated her credentials (she had attended Vassar for one year and earned a B.A. from Toledo). Nearly eleven hours later, after more grilling and a fruitless search for Jimmy's house in southeast Washington, Cooke admitted that the boy did not exist and that she had invented most of the story. Cooke resigned and went into seclusion. The Post promptly returned the award and apologized in an editorial: "This newspaper . . . was itself the victim of a hoax--which we then passed along in a prominent page-one story . . . How could this have happened?"

How, indeed, could a responsible newspaper be duped into publishing fiction as fact? As it turned out, the Post's main failing was having absolute faith in its reporter. This might be considered a virtue ordinarily, but the circumstances surrounding the publication of "Jimmy's World" were anything but ordinary. Though bright and ambitious, Cooke was rather inexperienced for such a sensitive story, having worked only 2 1/2 years at the Toledo Blade and nine months at the Post. In "Jimmy's World," she described how a black youngster was given heroin injections by a drug dealer as his mother looked on. Cooke had earned the assignment by writing what one editor described as a "brilliant" story on 14th Street, N.W., which is in a Washington section known for its pushers and hookers. The article on Jimmy was reported during several weeks last fall and was approved by Metropolitan Editor Bob Woodward, who helped win a Pulitzer for the Post with his Watergate reporting. When "Jimmy's World" appeared, many Post reporters were incredulous. Most suspicious were Cooke's fellow blacks, who felt that her depiction of ghetto life rang false.

The Post usually insists that reporters tell editors the names of sources, but exceptions are made, most notably with Deep Throat, Woodward's key informant on Watergate. In this case, the editors made an exception because Cooke said Jimmy's drug supplier had threatened to kill her if she revealed her sources, even to them. Says Woodward: "You have to build a chain of trust with your reporters. If you attempt to re-report stories, you erect a barrier. I was sympathetic."

D.C. police immediately called upon Cooke to identify the boy so that he could be helped. When the Post invoked First Amendment protection of confidential sources, Mayor Marion Barry assigned a task force of hundreds of police and social workers to locate Jimmy. From the start, narcotics agents doubted that any drug dealer would provide costly heroin to a talkative youngster who might tip off teachers and friends. After three weeks and thousands of man-hours, the search was called off. Says Barry: "I was very firm in my conviction that Miss Cooke's article was part myth, part reality."

At the Post, City Editor Milton Coleman was "very frankly surprised" that the police had not located Jimmy, and he wanted another story on young addicts. He teamed Cooke with Courtland Milloy, a streetwise reporter. Says Coleman: "Milloy came back with a lot of doubts. There was no real indication that she knew the area." Although increasingly alarmed, the editors were comforted by letters from readers who claimed they knew Jimmy or children like him.

Concerned that Jimmy might die while the Post was standing behind the First Amendment, Cooke's editors told her that she would at least have to point out Jimmy's house. When the appointed day came, Cooke told Coleman that she had already gone to the house alone and that the family had moved. Her editors felt misled, but nevertheless decided to nominate "Jimmy's World" for a Pulitzer. Says Coleman: "We had some doubts, but we weren't able to prove our suspicions. If we did not nominate the story, there would have been questions asked."

Entered in the local reporting category, Cooke's story lost out to the Longview (Wash.) Daily News, which was cited for its coverage of the Mount St. Helens eruption. But the Pulitzer Prize board was so impressed with Cooke's work that it gave her the award in another category, overturning the feature writing jury's choice of Teresa Carpenter of the Village Voice, who was belatedly given the honor after the fraud was discovered. Says Board Member Osborn Elliott, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism: "It was a very dramatic telling and a moving piece. I figured that the Post had verified it." It was the first known fakery in the 64-year history of the Pulitzer Prizes.

When to use confidential sources is one of the most ticklish decisions faced by any newspaper editor. Usually the decision is made on a case-by-case basis, factoring in the experience of the reporter, the nature of the source's information and the likely consequences of the story. Although only a handful of newspapers have written policies on the use of unnamed sources, many editors insist on being told who the source is. Says Miami Herald Editor John McMullan: "Editors ought to run the newspapers, and that means insisting on credible sources known to them. It's part of the checks and balances of the newspaper." Adds New York Times Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "If a reporter wouldn't give [his source] to me, I wouldn't print the story--and I'd probably suggest that the reporter find another editor and paper he trusts more."

The Post's handling of the Cooke affair struck most editors as inexcusable. "The practice [of using blind sources] is valid if the source can help you expose criminal conduct," says Dallas Times Herald Managing Editor Will Jarrett. "It is not valid if your source is the person perpetrating the crime." Notes Los Angeles Times Editor William Thomas: "The part that boggles my mind is that a reporter who has been with a paper only eight or nine months can refuse to tell an editor her source."

The Cooke hoax unfortunately lent credence to the old adage that you cannot believe everything you read in the papers. Says Michael Gartner, editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune: "When you damage the credibility of the Post you damage the credibility of the Des Moines Register and every other paper in the country." Shaken, many papers began re-examining their own policies on sources. "We are working at putting something in writing," says Boston Globe Editor Thomas Winship. Nowhere was the process so intense as it was at the Washington Post. Bradlee reminded the staff last week: "The credibility of a newspaper is its most precious asset. It depends on the integrity of its reporters. We must begin immediately the uphill struggle of restoring our credibility."

Before the Cooke controversy, the most talked-about Pulitzer Prize was the posthumous fiction award to John Kennedy Toole for A Confederacy of Dunces. Toole was unable to get his comic novel about New Orleans published and died in 1969, an apparent suicide at the age of 31. For ten years, his mother tried to find someone to bring out the book. Finally Novelist Walker Percy read it and persuaded the Louisiana State University Press to publish it last year.

The prize for meritorious public service went to the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer for its series on brown lung disease among textile workers. The New York Times won two awards, for John Crewdson's reporting on America's immigration problems and Dave Anderson's commentary on sports. The criticism prize went to Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Star for his book reviews. Shirley Christian of the Miami Herald won the international reporting award for her coverage of Central America.

--By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Jeanne Saddler/Washington with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by Jeanne Saddler/Washington

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