Voice of America, May 25, 2003

A media watchdog journal reports a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times has been suspended for two weeks.

The Columbia Journalism Review reported that journalist Rick Bragg was suspended for failing to give credit to a stringer who had helped him on a front-page story. The Times issued an editor's note in its Friday edition saying Mr. Bragg should have added the stringer's byline to the story.

Mr. Bragg won the Pulitzer Prize, America's most prestigious journalism award, for feature writing in 1996. The story in question was on oystermen in Apalachicola, Florida. It ran in the Times on June 15, 2002.

The Times explained that Mr. Bragg visited Apalachicola briefly and wrote the article, but the interviewing and on-the-scene reporting were done by freelance journalist J. Wes Yoder. The newspaper said the article should have carried Mr. Yoder's byline along with that of Mr. Bragg.

The Times looked into the story after a reader questioned whether Mr. Bragg had reported the story from Apalachicola, as the dateline indicated.

The news comes only two weeks after The New York Times reported it had discovered another of its reporters, Jayson Blair, had committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud. The paper said Mr. Blair had invented quotes, copied reports from other newspapers and lied to editors. Mr. Blair resigned from the paper on May 1.

The Washington Post reports Saturday that Mr. Blair is now seeking a book deal to tell his story about his experiences at The New York Times.