Washington Post Forced To Delete Parts Of Story After Source Lied

A new Washington Post vertical recently hit a snag after it found that a source for one of its articles fabricated parts of his story.

The story appeared as part of the Post's Storyline vertical, which just debuted last month and aims to cover policy through narrative journalism.

Mickyel Bradford was one of the sources for the article, "The black HIV epidemic: A public health mystery from Atlanta’s gay community," by Jeff Guo, which sought to explore why gay black men have high rates of HIV even though they have "fewer sex partners and less unprotected sex." The Post has removed 2,000 words from the article, which now has the following editor's note:

On Tuesday, the Post's Erik Wemple had more on what happened, and described that a love interest of Bradford contacted the newspaper disputing Bradford's account. Bradford later admitted to a Post reporter that he had made up parts of his story. Visit the Post for more.