Imagine this: former Michigan State players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson at the April 2 Michigan State-North Carolina
NCAA semifinal, sitting in the stands, in their Michigan State clothing, “rooted on their alma mater.”
That’s exactly what Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mitch Albom did — except his imagination got carried away. When Cleaves and Richardson never showed up to the game, Albom’s April 3 column stating that they did was quickly revealed as fiction.
Journalists have no right to tell the future as though it is fact. So when Albom decided to depend on interviews about what the players were planning to do at the game and write a piece about what happened at the game before it occurred, he disappointed many. Not only fans of his two decades of Detroit
Free Press work, but also fellow journalists, still reeling from large-scale accuracy foul-ups in The New York Times and USA Today, to name a few.
However, we have to note Albom’s circumstances: According to The Associated Press, the Detroit Free Press required Albom to file the column the day before the game, a Friday, even though it was due to hit print on Sunday, because the section was printed before the game. We have to wonder if this schedule made Albom feel pressure to fabricate a story that would be “current” when printed.
Albom, and the four other Press employees who were responsible for catching the errors, will continue to work at the Press after facing unspecified disciplinary action, according to the paper. Albom apologized to his readers in an April 7 column, and rightly so. Unfortunately, all it takes is one fabrication to discredit years of work and cast a shadow of doubt over others in the profession. We deeply regret yet another breech in what is, overall, an ethical profession.

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