Reuters said Wednesday it had pulled two stories about the World Anti-Doping Agency, following news that the journalist who wrote them helped the organization’s head of comms obtain a press pass to The Masters.
The story was first reported by The Times of London, which said the WADA official then had a free ticket and access to non-public areas of the golf tournament.
“A journalist who no longer works for Reuters has acknowledged that they helped a representative of WADA obtain a Reuters press credential for the 2024 Masters Tournament, a violation of our journalistic standards,” a Reuters spokesperson said in a statement to Front Office Sports. “Consequently, we have withdrawn the stories ‘Athletes Undercover? Global and U.S anti-doping Agencies Clash Over Tactics’ and ‘WADA renews call for USADA to get tougher on testing.’ While we stand by the accuracy of the reporting, Reuters standards for newsgathering were not met, specifically as they pertain to avoiding the appearance of bias in our sourcing.”
The WADA staffer in question is James Fitzgerald, who still worked for the organization as of Thursday morning. “My attendance at that event in April was unconnected to my role at WADA and was a personal matter. All related costs were paid for entirely by me and I was there on my own time,” Fitzgerald told FOS. Fitzgerald also pointed out Reuters maintains its reporting is accurate.
The Reuters spokesperson said the news outlet only learned of the situation this week when The Times asked them about it, after the journalist in question had already left the publication. The outlet investigated the situation and pulled the stories Wednesday because they violated Reuters standards in regards to the appearance of bias, the spokesperson said.
The World Anti-Doping Agency and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency have been in a long-simmering feud, with USADA accusing the global body of showing favoritism to certain countries and not adequately investigating dopers. Most recently, USADA blasted WADA over its decision to not punish 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive. WADA returned fire over the U.S. organization using undercover agents who could keep competing if they would help take down other drug abusers—a story broken by Reuters. Unsurprisingly, USADA used the news as a reason to point out WADA’s flaws, releasing a statement saying the agency is “thankful” Reuters took down the articles.
“Prior to the story’s release, we detailed the biased sourcing to Reuters, as the reporting relied on a WADA spokesperson as the source without doing sufficient diligence to confirm accurate and truthful information. We also pointed them to another source who previously worked at WADA and knew accurate facts not included in the reporting. Following publication of the article, we again alerted Reuters to the major concerns with this reporting and the sourcing. We have also requested that WADA retract its false, defamatory, and biased statement that they published immediately following the publication of this now withdrawn Reuters story,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement Thursday.
Fitzgerald, unprompted, swung back at USADA in his statement. “USADA’s reaction to this is another cynical attempt by its CEO to deflect from the fact that USADA allowed athletes who had doped, to compete for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations, in direct contravention of the World Anti-Doping Code and USADA’s own rules,” the WADA representative said.
One of the withdrawn articles was written by Steve Keating.
Keating’s last article for Reuters was published Aug. 11. He wrote several articles for the outlet about the Masters from Augusta.
