Janet Cooke (born 1958) was an American journalist who became infamous when she won a Pulitzer Prize for a fabricated story that she wrote for The Washington Post. Journalism is a discipline of collecting, verifying, analyzing and presenting information gathered regarding current events, including trends, issues and people. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-04-13, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Washington Post masthead The Washington Post is the largest and oldest newspaper in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. ...

In 1980, she joined the "Weeklies" section staff of the Washington Post under editor Vivian Aplin-Brownlee. To secure this post, she claimed to have a degree from Vassar College, an alleged stint at Sorbonne University and to have been the recipient of an award at The Toledo Blade newspaper. Closeup of the Vassar Main Building Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college situated in Poughkeepsie, NY. Formerly a womens college, Vassar is the only fully co-educational member of the Seven Sisters. ... ... The Toledo Blade is a daily newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, first published on December 19, 1835. ...

In an article entitled 'Jimmy's World', which appeared in the Post on September 29, 1980, Cooke wrote a gripping profile of the life of an 8-year-old heroin addict. She described the "needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin, brown arms." The story engendered much sympathy among readers, including Marion Barry, then mayor of Washington DC. He and other city officials organized an all-out police search for the boy which was unsuccessful and led to claims that the story was fraudulent. Bizarrely, Barry claimed that 'Jimmy' was known to the city and receiving treatment. September 29 is the 272nd day of the year (273rd in leap years). ... 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... Heroin or diamorphine (INN) (colloquially referred to as brown sugar, junk, babania, horse, golden brown, smack, black tar, H, big H, lady H, dope, skag, juice, jude, diesel, boy, etc. ... Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. ... ...

In spite of growing signs of problems, the Post defended the verity of the story and Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward nominated the story for the Pulitzer Prize. Cooke was named winner of the prize on April 13, 1981. Bob Woodward Robert Upshur Bob Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is one of the best-known journalists in the United States, thanks largely to his work in helping uncover the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon, in a historical journalistic partnership with Carl Bernstein, while working as a reporter for... April 13 is the 103rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (104th in leap years). ... 1981 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

When the editors of the Toledo Blade, where Cooke had previously worked, read her biographical notes, they noticed a number of discrepancies. Further investigation revealed that Cooke's credentials were false. Pressured by the editors of The Washington Post, Cooke confessed her guilt.

Two days after the prize had been awarded, Washington Post publisher Donald Graham held a press conference and admitted that the story was fraudulent. The editorial in the next day's paper offered a public apology. Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward said at the time: Donald E. Graham is chief executive officer and chairman of the board of The Washington Post Company. ...

"I believed it, we published it. Official questions had been raised, but we stood by the story and her. Internal questions had been raised, but none about her other work. The reports were about the story not sounding right, being based on anonymous sources, and primarily about purported lies [about] her personal life -- [told by men reporters], two she had dated and one who felt in close competition with her. I think that the decision to nominate the story for a Pulitzer is of minimal consequence. I also think that it won is of little consequence. It is a brilliant story -- fake and fraud that it is. It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes." [1]

Cooke resigned, the prize was returned and the reputation of the venerable Washington Post was sullied. She appeared on the Phil Donahue show in January 1992 and claimed that the high-pressure environment of the Washington Post had corrupted her judgment. She claimed that her sources had hinted to her about the existence of a boy such as Jimmy, but unable to find him, she eventually just created a story about him in order to satisfy her nagging editors.

For a while after the incident Cooke worked as a salesclerk in Washington. She married a Washington lawyer and briefly moved to Paris with him, but the marriage failed and she returned in 1996. She moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan and became a salesgirl again. Cooke was the subject of an interview by Mike Sager, appearing in GQ magazine in June of 1996. Sager's article was republished in an anthology Scary Monsters and Super Freaks, 2003. The movie rights for her story were reported to have been purchased for $1.6 million dollars by Columbia Tri-Star Pictures to be divided up between Cooke, Sager, and their agents, with Cooke getting 55%. The film has not yet been produced. GQ can refer to several things: Gentlemens Quarterly, a mens magazine The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for Equatorial Guinea GQ, a replacement Quake 1 game engine This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

The playwright, Tracey Scott Wilson wrote a play in 2001, entitled "The Story" which is purportedly based on the topic of journalistic hoax inspired by the Janet Cooke story and that of another journalistic interloper, Stephen Glass formerly of the New Republic magazine. Stephen Glass was a reporter for The New Republic magazine during the late 1990s. ... New Republic can be: The New Republic, an American magazine. ...

Sources

New Yorker, September 18. 1995

A Good Line by Ben Bradlee

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/day/04_17_2001.html

Southcoast Today, June 5, 1996