Political Reporter Fired After Admitting He Made Up Quotes

The Sacramento Bee has fired one of its top political reporters after finding out that he invented sources and made up quotes while covering the presidential campaign.

In an apology to readers published Wednesday, Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez said the paper fired Dennis Love, 46, on Tuesday--four days after an editor discovered that the veteran reporter had plagiarized material from a magazine.

The article in question was not published, but a further investigation found that in past work Love had made up experts, invented quotes and apparently taken without attribution material from USA Today, the Boston Globe and the Dallas Morning News.

In one story on Al Gore’s record on gun control, for example, Love attributed a quote on the issue to a nonexistent expert based in Washington.

“When confronted with the facts . . . Love acknowledged the transgressions and apologized,” Rodriguez wrote.

“To us at the Bee, those ethical lapses are an unacceptable breach of the necessary trust that editors place in reporters and that our readers place in us,” he wrote.

Love joined the Bee 20 months ago and has worked at the Orange County Register, the Arizona Republic and the Los Angeles Daily News. He told the San Francisco Chronicle that the paper was justified in firing him. “The bottom line is, I did the wrong thing and the Bee did the right thing. I’m very sorry it happened,” he told the Chronicle.