Janet Cooke

Template:Short description Template:Infobox person Janet Leslie Cooke (born 1954 or 1955)<ref name = Green/> is an American former journalist. She received a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for an article written for The Washington Post. The story was later discovered to have been fabricated and Cooke returned the prize, the only person to date to do so,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> after admitting she had fabricated stories. The prize was awarded instead to Teresa Carpenter, a nominee who had lost to Cooke.

Early life

Cooke grew up in an upper-middle-class, African-American family in Toledo, Ohio.<ref name = Green>Bill Green, ombudsman (April 19, 1981), "THE PLAYERS: It Wasn't a Game", The Washington Post</ref><ref name = Dutka>Template:Cite news</ref> She said her upbringing was stressful and strict, with constant pressure from both the predominantly white preparatory schools she attended and her father, whom she described as domineering; as a result, she claimed that habitual lying became a childhood "survival mechanism".<ref name = Dutka/><ref name = Sager>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name = Kurtz>Template:Cite news</ref> She enrolled at Vassar College before transferring to the University of Toledo, where she earned a bachelor's degree. However, Cooke would claim later that she received her bachelor's degree from Vassar and a master's degree from Toledo.<ref name = Green/>

In 1977, Cooke began writing for The Toledo Blade. Two years later, she interviewed for a job with The Washington Post, and was hired.<ref name = Green/> She was assigned to the "Weeklies" section staff of the Post managed by editor Vivian Aplin-Brownlee in January 1980. There, she quickly gained a reputation as a prolific journalist and a strong writer, filing 52 articles in her first eight months. Aplin-Brownlee later remarked that Cooke was also "consumed by blind and raw ambition".<ref name = Green/>

Fabricated story scandal

In a September 28, 1980 article in the Post, titled "Jimmy's World",<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Cooke profiled the supposed life of an eight-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy, said to be a pseudonym.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She wrote of the "needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin, brown arms", and claimed to have witnessed episodes of heroin injection, describing them in graphic detail.<ref name = Green/>

The article sparked immediate and extraordinary public outcry from Washington and beyond, with widespread concern for Jimmy and demands for him to be located.<ref name = Green/> Mayor Marion Barry and other city officials organized a police search for the boy, which was unsuccessful and resulted in speculation that the story was fraudulent. Barry, under considerable public demand for a resolution, said variously that Jimmy had been entered into treatment or had died.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Barry then admitted that the city still had no information on Jimmy's whereabouts, and suggested that the story was partially fictionalized, finding it unlikely that Jimmy's mother or dealer would "allow a reporter to see them shoot up", as Cooke claimed she saw.<ref name="Green" />

Although some within the Post doubted the story's veracity, the paper defended it and assistant managing editor Bob Woodward submitted the story for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, which Cooke was awarded on April 13, 1981.<ref name=pulitzer/> An Associated Press (AP) article about the Pulitzer winners featured biographical profiles, including Cooke's fabricated educational background. When the article was seen by editors at The Toledo Blade, they noticed the discrepancies and alerted the AP, which in turn contacted the Post.<ref name = Green/> A further review of Cooke's self-reported biography revealed additional fabrications that she had added since being hired by the Post. Her initial résumé claimed that she was fluent in French and Spanish, but she later added Portuguese and Italian; executive editor Ben Bradlee later tested her language abilities, and found that she spoke no Portuguese or Italian and only rudimentary French.<ref name = Green/> In addition, she also added a claim that she attended the University of Paris and won seven awards for her journalism in Ohio, as opposed to the one she had listed previously.<ref name = Green/>

On April 14, Cooke was confronted about these discrepancies by Post editors and admitted to fabricating her background.<ref name = Green/> Editors then reviewed her notes and recorded interviews for the story, and found no evidence that she had ever interviewed a child who was using heroin.<ref name = Green/> While Cooke initially stood by her reporting, she began equivocating over the following hours, before finally admitting that "Jimmy" was fabricated.<ref name = Green/> On the morning of April 15, Cooke issued a statement in which she publicly confessed this and announced her resignation from the Post. The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing was instead given to Teresa Carpenter, for her article in The Village Voice about the murder of Dorothy Stratten.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Of "Jimmy's World", Woodward said: Template:Blockquote

Gabriel García Márquez said about Cooke, "It was unfair that she won the Pulitzer prize, but also unfair that she didn't win the Nobel Prize in Literature."<ref name=pulitzer/> Cooke appeared on The Phil Donahue Show in January 1982 and said that the high-pressure environment of the Post had corrupted her judgment. She said that her sources had hinted to her about the existence of a boy such as Jimmy but, unable to find him, she eventually created a story about him to satisfy her editors.

Later life

Cooke later married a lawyer who subsequently became a diplomat.<ref name = Dutka/> The couple relocated to Paris in 1985, living there for the next decade.<ref name = Dutka/><ref name = Sager/><ref name = Kurtz/> However, their marriage eventually ended, and Cooke said that the divorce left her impoverished. She returned to the United States, supporting herself with low-wage service jobs and financial help from her mother.<ref name = Dutka/><ref name = Kurtz/>

In 1996, she gave an interview about the "Jimmy's World" episode to GQ reporter Mike Sager, a former Washington Post colleague whom she had dated briefly during her time there.<ref>Sager, Mike. Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll and Murder. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004. Template:ISBN</ref> Cooke and Sager sold the movie rights to the story to Tri-Star Pictures for $1.6 million, but the project never advanced past the script stage.<ref name = Dutka/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2016, Sager wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review that Cooke "is living within the borders of the continental United States, within a family setting, and pursuing a career that does not primarily involve writing".<ref name = Sager/>

See also

• Jayson Blair, American journalist who fabricated stories while working for The New York Times
• Sabrina Erdely, American reporter known for her discredited Rolling Stone article
  • "A Rape on Campus", her discredited article
• Stephen Glass, American journalist of The New Republic, who published fabricated articles
• Journalistic scandal
• Jack Kelley (journalist), USA Today reporter and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, who employed fabrication in his international coverage
• Claas Relotius, German journalist known for fabricating multiple stories written for Der Spiegel
• Fake news

Further reading

• Template:Cite journal
• McGrath, E. 1981. "A Fraud in the Pulitzers". TIME (Canadian edition), April 27, 1981. Vol. 117, No. 17.
• Szasz, Thomas "The Protocols of the Learned Experts on Heroin", Libertarian Review, July 1981