Well, this is just dead … wrong.
On Thursday, Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira recalls in the paper’s Story Lab feature a “valuable lesson” he learned back in 2004 when he thought he falsely reported that a homeless man named Jimmy Reed had died. The payoff in the story? Shapira finds out that Reed is, in fact, dead, not alive as he had feared. That leaves the reporter “elated,” in his account.
The Huffington Post lost no time in skewering Shapira, in a piece headlined, “Washington Post Reporter Says He Was Elated to Learn of Homeless Man’s Death.”
Shapira wrote that his relief stemmed in part from not having to correct a mistaken report of another human being’s death. According to him, “the other reporters in the bureau shook my hand, congratulating me on the discovery” that Reed was indisputably not among the living.
Post readers were not amused by the story. One responded in an online comment: “The kind and gentle Jimmy Reed passes away, while the vacuous and self-absorbed Ian Shapira lives on. Clearly, there is no God.” Ouch.
