Mugging Truth

A New York columnist resigns

Filed from Northern Ireland, the column had the vivid detail and emotional wallop that readers of the New York Daily News had come to expect from Michael Daly. Titled "On the Streets of Belfast, the Children's War," it described how British soldiers had wounded a 15-year-old boy when they used real bullets instead of plastic ones to disperse youngsters throwing gasoline bombs. But Daly's account did not ring true at the London Daily Mail. After an investigation, the Daily Mail labeled the column "viciously anti-British" and "a pack of lies," with at least 14 errors or outright fabrications. Its chief accusation: Daly's principal source, a British soldier named Christopher Spell, did not exist.

Coming less than a month after the Washington Post returned a Pulitzer Prize because it had fabricated a story, the Daily Mail's charges rocked the ailing New York newspaper. Daly was summoned to New York and questioned for more than three hours on Friday by News Editor Michael O'Neill and others. He insisted that his story was "essentially correct," according to O'Neill, but admitted using a false name for the soldier, a practice he said he had followed numerous times in the past. When Daly could not substantiate his story, O'Neill, the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, asked for his resignation. Daly complied, "with the hope I will save this newspaper from any further embarrassment." Said O'Neill: "We cannot condone the use of techniques that imply that some things are fact when they are not."

A graduate of Yale, Daly, 29, worked for the Village Voice, then the News, where he quickly distinguished himself as a gung-ho reporter. Early last year, he was rewarded with a column. Questions had been raised about his reporting in the past, News Managing Editor Bill Umstead told TIME, but "Daly had always defended his stories to my satisfaction." Said one friend: "He was under a lot of pressure. He was trying to hit a home run every day. "

At week's end another long-ball hitter's work was under investigation. New York Post Columnist James Wechsler raised questions about an article last year by Teresa Carpenter of the Village Voice, and said he was forwarding his misgivings to the National News Council. Carpenter was awarded a Pulitzer this year for three feature stories, including the challenged piece, after the Washington Post had forfeited the prize.

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