Two items from the MSM bloopers file:

- Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Diana Griego Erwin has quit her post at the Sacramento Bee amid suspicions of making up several people in recent columns. The Bee has been conducting an internal investigation over the past 2 weeks. From the registration-only Bee site, executive editor Rick Rodriguez announced:

Diana Griego Erwin, whose column has appeared in this space three days a week, resigned Wednesday amid an internal inquiry into whether some people mentioned in several recent columns actually existed.

During our inquiry we found we could not authenticate the existence of several people even though they were identified by name, age and sometimes by the neighborhoods in which they were reported to have lived. We used extensive online database searches as well as old-fashioned shoe-leather work in our investigation over the past 2 1/2 weeks.

Griego Erwin has said throughout the inquiry that there was no fabrication of sources. When asked to provide confirmation, however, she was unable to do so to our satisfaction. She resigned citing personal reasons while still maintaining that her sources ultimately will be proved authentic.

Brian Maloney has much more and highlights this passage from Erwin’s bio:

Her winning columns that year (1990) took readers to the streets of Orange County, delving into the stories most people never hear; the places most rarely visit: a Mexican bricklayer navigating bureaucracy at the Department of Motor Vehicles. A homeless man, anonymous in life but not forgotten in death. Agang member lamenting the murder of a child.

Maloney asks: “Now we’re left to wonder, were these all fabricated tales?”

Bingo.

Reader Craig Bell provides a link to a prescient and ironic column by the Bee’s public editor on journalists caught fabricating the news.

- And Ramesh Ponnuru does a little shoe-leather work over at The Corner, catching CBS distorting Ken Starr’s views on the filibuster.

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