Summary Of Jimmy's World By Janet Cooke

Attention! Calling all journalists! Are you aware of the rules of ethics? Do you follow them? Make sure you do! If not, you may end up like Janet Cooke. Janet Cooke is a former journalist from Toledo, Ohio. Her career unfortunately came to an end after she failed to follow the rules of ethics.
On September 28, 1980 the story Jimmy's World, was published in The Washington Post. This story written by Janet Cooke was about a little boy from Southeast Washington being a third-generation heroin addict. This story imperiled many readers. In fact, the story was so notorious that it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing on April 13, 1981. Almost everyone who read the Jimmy's World article felt much sympathy for Jimmy and offered to help him out. Cooke failed to provide information on Jimmy. This is when the story became very suspicious. Many people questioned her and Cooke would try to avoid any confrontations. A police search for the boy, put together by city officials, was unsuccessful and led to claim that Jimmy's World was a fraud. The Pulitzer Prize was forced to be returned immediately. Finally, Cooke admitted to have made up the story. Cooke wrote a note on April 15, 1981 admitting to creating a fraud story, and mentioned her resignation from journalism. The note
It was believed that because Cooke was a black journalist that fabricated a story, no black journalist could ever be trusted again. For example, an African-American reporter named Michael McQueen who personally knew Cooke felt "angry and used" after Cooke became known as journalism's best-known liar. According to the Orlando Sentinel, McQueen said, "It is hard to get past how Janet adroitly manipulated racial-gender tensions… She used the fact that there are people willing to believe black people are capable of any kind of barbarism. There is the irony that those who suffered most . . . from her acts were