Houston Chronicle Reporter Resigns Amid Reporting Questions

HOUSTON, TX -- A Houston Chronicle reporter accused of faking news sources in his man-on-the-street stories has resigned, newspaper officials said this week. .

Mike Ward, who’d been assigned to the newspaper’s Austin bureau since 2014, submitted his resignation to Executive Editor Nancy Barnes after being confronted with the allegations. The veteran newsman previously wrote for the Austin American-Statesman,

In a statement released Monday on the Chron.com website, Barnes said another Chronicle reporter had alerted her regarding accuracy concerns in Ward’s reporting, and questions whether or not the sources quoted by Ward were actually real.

Barnes subsequently said researches had difficulty tracking down sources in several of Ward’s most recent news reports. Despite the difficulty of finding those sources, Barnes said Ward insisted his work was truthful. But as questions about the veracity of his sources persisted, Ward offered to resign.

There have been a number of instances over the years of news reporters being accused of fabricating in stories or plagiarizing from other sources. One of the most infamous of these cases centered on former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who resigned in April 2003 after he was found to have plagiarized several of his news stories.

Barnes has offered to publish a full accounting of the Chronicle’s findings on Ward’s work once the internal investigation is completed.

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