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A cropped portion of Bridge's now-removed June 27 article. The student isn't shown in full for privacy protection.
No, actually the Detroit teen profiled three days ago by Bridge magazine is not going to Harvard on a full scholarship. Or to Yale, as she told her family and a reporter.
She is an accomplished senior at University Prep Science and Math high school, so a purportedly emailed Harvard admission letter didn't sound too good to be true to her parents, her charter school administrators. reporter Chastity Pratt Dawsey or editors at the respected publication from The Center for Michigan, an Ann Arbor nonprofit.
It also tugged our emotions, so we shared Bridge's link Tuesday on Facebook and Twitter, though not at our site.
Creating a phony admission letter can start with an online image of a real one.
Fact catches up to fiction Friday. Bridge unravels an elaborate, credible hoax by an an apparently unstable 18-year-old, who isn't named again in Bridge's detailed retraction.
The online magazine yanks the 1,750-word article from its site, though it, three photos and nine reader comments remain accessible via a cached version.
Deadline Detroit also refrains from identifying the teen. "Several friends, family and others expressed concern about her emotional well-being and future," Bridge says.
Its 830-word mea culpa is a frank recounting of a nightmare for journalists -- a seemingly credible source with a supporting document and corroboration by an independent authority (her school) who turns out to be a liar.
Bridge's no-byline account of the stumble, which Pratt says she wrote, makes no excuses, acknowledges "small warning bells which we failed to heed" and quotes editor David Zeman:
"It felt like a gut punch. We thought we had confirmed the foundation of the story through the student, and through her high school. . . .
"We need to be accountable to our readers when we fall short. But we also need to draw lessons from this to guide our future reporting. And we will.”
The publication takes an extra step by reaching out to the University of Wisconsin's Center for Journalism Ethics.
Its director, Kathleen Culver, "said Bridge should have better scrutinized the teen’s story," the article says.
“If at second glance, the acceptance letter looked like a forgery, maybe it should have set off alarms the first time,” she said.
Culver said Bridge’s reporting “seemed pretty decent” because it included multiple sources who confirmed the girl’s account and repeated her lie. Feel-good stories often don’t include the same level of scrutiny as hard news ones, though, because reporters “want them to be true,” she said.
It definitely seemed like a feel-good story sure to touch readers as an example of Detroit students clearing challenges.
"The hurdles [Name] faced may be common, but her outcome was extraordinary," Dawsey wrote Tuesday in her pagetop lead story. The student's "obstacles aren’t unusual in a city that struggles with generational poverty and access to transportation and quality education."
All true, although the extraordinary outcome turns out to be the opposite of what was claimed. Bridge sets the record straight:
The teen now admits she forged a letter from the university indicating she was accepted to enroll in the university for the fall semester. She misled teachers, family and friends for months, the teen admitted in an email to Bridge on Friday.
The student wrote that she spread the falsehood after being denied admission to Harvard and other prestigious schools.
Bridge, created in September 2011, apparently pursued the original story based on a tip from a University Prep public relations representative or other supporter. That conclusion stems from a phrase in its retraction that seems purposely oblique:
Bridge first learned of the teen’s accomplishment through a person with ties to the charter school.
Journalists routinely respond to that sort of legitimate pitch, and Dawsey confirmed that the teen has a distressed background and a 3.9 grade-point average. She spoke with the girl's principal and social studies teacher, as well as her mother and a neighbor.
After publication, when "dozens of readers offered to raise money" for travel expenses to Cambridge, Mass., Bridge made contact again and got a surprise:
The family said the teen planned to attend a college in Michigan in the fall and transfer to Harvard later.
That prompted further scrutiny of the teen’s Harvard acceptance letter, a copy of which the student provided to Bridge before the initial story. The review showed the seven-paragraph letter had the wrong address for the Harvard admissions office and incorrect information about the number of applicants for the 2017-2018 school year.
The ruse soon unraveled and the student sent a short note Friday to Bridge "to apologize for my misdoings." Her family hadn't accepted any donations offered by readers.
The Detroit school now also is embarrassed. Bridge quotes Mark Ornstein, chief executive of the firm that runs kit and six other Detroit charter schools:
“There was no reason for us to question it. This girl is a really good girl."
Bridge is the second shared workplace for editor Zeman and urban affairs reporter Dawsey. Both are veterans of the Detroit Free Press newsroom, where he was an investigative reporter from 1991-2011 and where she was on staff from 2001-13.
At her Facebook page Friday night, Dawsey posts candidly:
This one stung. The retraction article I posted is really about exposing our vulnerability.
Special thanks to psychologist Gail Parker. She explained to me that the student told a lie. Simple and crude as that. We all get deceived. In revealing our own vulnerability to lies, Parker said, "there is a spirit of generosity. Everybody gets deceived. We all have blind spots. What's yours?"
I'm still processing my personal feelings. Stay tuned.
