My job as a journalist would be much easier if I could just make up stories and pass them off as true. That would never work, though, because I'm not a very good liar.
Of course, neither was Jack Kelley. On March l9, USA Today published the fruit of a seven-week investigation of former correspondent Kelley's international eporting.""
Like a globetrotting Jayson Blair, Kelley made up quotes, fabricated events and claimed to be in places he wasn't. For a decade, USA Today printed Kelley's stories from distant and exotic countries. Until this year, the paper never publicly questioned how exotic Kelley said those locales were. Kelley's readers, it seems, ate it up.
In his most inspired piece of fiction, Kelley claimed to have been detained by Cuban authorities. He said the Cubans held him at a prison with a ""30-foot-high sculpture of an AK-47 at its main gate.""
Needless to say, upon review by another USA Today reporter, the statue doesn't exist. But I need to ask Kelley and USA Today-why the hell would it?
I imagine Kelley dreamed up the statue to authenticate his far-fetched story. Why he chose to make the statue a gun rather than, say, Castro, is beyond me.
He must have realized that almost none of his editors or readers had been to Cuba. I imagine he also knew that the only thing most Americans know about Cuba is that it's communist, dangerous, corrupt and communist. Even the humidity is oppressive.
Kelley could have reported seeing Castro eat a litter of golden retriever puppies for breakfast and then wipe his mouth with a picture of Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, and it wouldn't have raised any eyebrows.
But Red Island Hell Cuba wasn't the only territory ripe for Kelley's inventions.
In a story turned in from Jerusalem in August 2001, Kelley claimed he was standing 90 feet from a pizzeria when a bomb exploded. He said the blast tossed three men from their chairs and decapitated them. USA Today said March 19 that in the story's rough-cut, Kelley said the heads rolled down the street where he observed to continue blinking.
Kelley asked to be caught in this lie. The bombing was witnessed by hundreds and reported by every major paper in the world. USA Today's editors thought they had a great story. They missed an obvious truth that they acknowledged last week-that even if victims were decapitated, Kelley wouldn't likely have seen individual eyes blinking from 90 feet away through the dust and smoke that go along with non-fictionalized bombings.
Kelley's lies are the stuff of bad cinema. His world is a Chuck Norris movie, where foreign armies detain journalists beneath enormous assault rifles and heads snap cleanly from bodies and wink at you while they roll around on the street.
For Americans, this violent world is as real as the papers and television say it is. In this world, Cubans monumentalize their guns and normal Iraqis would enjoy occupation if it weren't for all the ""isolated terrorist incidents.""
Speaking of Iraq, I'm glad Kelley wasn't ""embedded"" with U.S. forces. He probably would have lied about the situation there too. And Lord knows Americans don't tolerate lies about Iraq.
Dan may be reached at dlhinkel@wisc.edu.
