NY Times Suckered Again

The NY Times is having a rough time with accuracy lately. Just the other day they published a story on a guy claiming to be a famous Iraqi prisoner (he wasn't and that was quickly proved by other sources), and now Powerline points to a correction in the Times concerning another story about a supposed Katrina victim unhappy with the government response:

An article in The Metro Section on March 8 profiled Donna Fenton, identifying her as a 37-year-old victim of Hurricane Katrina who had fled Biloxi, Miss., and who was frustrated in efforts to get federal aid as she and her children remained as emergency residents of a hotel in Queens.

Yesterday, the New York police arrested Ms. Fenton, charging her with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Prosecutors in Brooklyn say she was not a Katrina victim, never lived in Biloxi and had improperly received thousands of dollars in government aid. Ms. Fenton has pleaded not guilty.

For its profile, The Times did not conduct adequate interviews or public record checks to verify Ms. Fenton's account, including her claim that she had lived in Biloxi. Such checks would have uncovered a fraud conviction and raised serious questions about the truthfulness of her account.

An article about her arrest and the findings from additional reporting about her claims appears today on Page B1.

For the Times, some stories are just too good to check out. Why? Because they fit the paper's preconceived ideas about a particular story, and therefore must be true.