By Peter Castillo
Editor-in-Chief
Plagiarism and fabrication are two matters that have troubled journalism in recent times.
A story published in the April 4 issue of The Runner titled “Sexism on the bathroom signs in SRC” written by Ola Iduma was discovered as containing fabricated sources.
The names “Summer Fischer” and “Stan Gilford,” who are both referenced in the story as music majors, were pointed out to us as not actual CSUB students.
We were initially tipped off by a post on Instagram, which tagged our account, pointing out the state of these false names.
However, after conducting an internal investigation, this was found not to be an isolated incident.
Dating back to last semester, Iduma’s stories which were published featured 20 names which are not registered in the CSU Bakersfield student information system.
We were able to search for the students’ names on the Microsoft OneDrive system and discovered these students did not exist. We verified our findings with the admissions office as well.
When our adviser, Jennifer Burger, confronted Iduma about the validity of her sources, she explained her process of interviewing her sources.
Iduma said she does not take notes during the interview nor does she record what is being said. She also does not inform the interviewee she is a reporter for The Runner. She simply has casual conversations with others and tries to recreate the quotes from memory.
These are direct violations of our code as journalists and is completely unacceptable.
“My first feeling is to be embarrassed and to feel that somewhere along the line I didn’t do my job correctly,” Burger said. “I am very clear on my syllabuses in all of my classes about the importance of ethics, transparency, honesty, accuracy and credibility. So, I would expect all students to understand that and take it seriously.”
I personally met with Iduma to allow her to tell her side of the story. She credited Burger for her teaching and knowledge of journalism.
“I don’t think it was her fault. No, I think she is a really good professor” Iduma said. “I guess I was just nonchalant about the way I interviewed people. I was more focused on what the people would say or what I wrote about as opposed to the names of the people.”
Iduma, a senior communications major with an emphasis in journalism, has been removed from the staff and will no longer be allowed to produce editorial content for The Runner.
Additionally, all of her content featuring fabricated sources have been removed from our website. We are also working on correcting the PDF files of our past issues on issuu.com.
In order to prevent further instances such as this, we have implemented new polices that will act as a safeguard against reporters creating fabricated sources.
Now, we will require our reporters to obtain some sort of contact information from their respective sources. This will range from a phone number, email address or student identification number.
Our editors will also perform spot checks to verify the validity of their reporter’s sources, by getting in contact with these sources.
“Sadly, this type of thing happens in other journalism classes around the world,” Burger said. “I wish I could say it would never happen under my watch, but the truth is, I felt it was only a matter of time before one of these cases would come to light.”
This incident is an embarrassment to our organization. However, this does not define what we do or who we are at The Runner.
We as a staff are striving to not only build and maintain credibility with our readers, but to improve as student journalists as well.
We are committed to regain our readers’ trust by serving our campus with truthful and professional journalism.
