A reporter for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch was fired Friday for fabricating portions of a story about reaction to President Bush’s immigration speech earlier this month, as well as lifting part of a Washington Post story for the report. A front-page editor’s note in Saturday’ paper stated, in part, that the reporter had reported on a “fabricated interview and portrayed a scene at a job center [in Herndon,Va.] as though the reporter had visited it. He had not.”The note went on to say that the reporter, Paul Bradley, “did not interview Bill Threlkeld, site director for Project Hope and Harmony, as reported in the [May 17] article."
The note stated that Bradley had interviewed the other sources in the story but had not visited Herndon as the story's dateline said. “A sentence in the story that described 50 workers sitting at picnic tables waiting for work was taken from a Washington Post story reporting on the town election this month,” the note added. “A job center for immigrants was a major issue in the election. Also, the pavilion that the story described as protecting the workers from the elements has been planned but not built.”
The note added that Bradley, a reporter in the paperÂ’s Northern Virginia bureau, was dismissed Friday and a review of his past work had begun to see if previous fabrications or incidents of plagiarism had occurred.