More of writer's stories faulted
MIT says just 3 of 10 were accurate
One month after the website of MIT Technology Review magazine retracted two articles by freelancer Michelle Delio, an investigation has found significant problems with several more of Delio's pieces for the site.
''Of the 10 stories which were published, only three were entirely accurate," said Technology Review's editor in chief, Jason Pontin. ''In two of the stories, I'm fairly confident that Michelle Delio either did not speak to the person she said she spoke to, or misrepresented her interview with him."
Delio, of New York, is a prolific freelance writer, and the reports of problems with her work for Technology Review have spawned investigations at other publications.
Wired News appointed Adam Penenberg, a former Forbes.com reporter and journalism professor who uncovered fabrications by New Republic reporter Stephen Glass, to investigate Delio's work. Wired News officials said they won't comment until the investigation is completed.
Another prominent technology website, InfoWorld, has also found problems with Delio's work. But editor in chief Steve Fox said the site hasn't removed Delio's four InfoWorld articles. ''We've actually put all her stuff on a specific page," he said.
InfoWorld was unable to verify seven quotes in the stories. Delio later provided proof of the accuracy of one of the quotes, but the other six remain unverified. However, Fox said that apart from the questionable quotes, the four stories are accurate. ''None of the stories were built around these quotes," he said, and so the stories remain available at the website, on a separate page that notifies readers the stories ''were revised when the veracity of certain quoted material could not be confirmed."
Questions about Delio's work arose last month, after Technology Review published two articles about the dismissal of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s chief executive, Carly Fiorina. Each piece featured an anonymous source, a Hungarian-born HP engineer with the initials ''G.S." who supposedly worked for the company from 1975 to 2003.
HP officials complained to Pontin, saying that no employee fit this description. Pontin demanded that Delio provide proof G.S. existed. When she failed to do so, he ordered the articles removed from the website and posted a retraction. MIT Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published Delio's work only on its website, not in its print editions.
Pontin also hired Susan Rasky, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, to investigate all 10 of the articles that Delio wrote for the website. ''We were able to verify to our satisfaction only three of the articles," Rasky said in a report posted online Wednesday.
Rasky was paid $5,000 and worked with a team of five graduate students. She said that Delio failed to provide a list of sources for her two stories about Fiorina and HP. In four other stories, Rasky was unable to verify the existence of a source or the accuracy of a quote; in one case, a quoted source denied having spoken to Delio. In yet another story, Rasky spoke with some of Delio's sources, who said that she had misquoted them.
The Globe's efforts to contact Delio by telephone and e-mail were unsuccessful. But in an interview with the Associated Press, Delio defended her work. ''I certainly didn't make up sources," she said. ''Leaving aside the huge issues of ethics, you're always going to get caught. Possibly I was lax in record keeping, but it doesn't mean people don't exist."
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
