As The Story \u2013 inspired by a scandal that ended a young Black reporter\u2019s career \u2013 makes its London debut, its author explains why, two decades on, it\u2019s more relevant than ever<\/p>\n
If our ability to discern fake news from fact is a hot topic today, Tracey Scott Wilson was on to it more than two decades ago. As a child, the playwright\u2019s father trained her to watch the news every night and discuss it with her three siblings. It meant that she was well placed in the early 00s to spot how stations such as Fox News were veering away from objective reporting to become angled towards a given agenda.<\/p>\n
By this point a real-life story had been percolating in Wilson\u2019s mind for more than two decades: in 1981, Janet Cooke, a young, ambitious Black American reporter at The Washington Post, had been exposed as a liar. Cooke had just won the Pulitzer prize for her news story about an eight-year-old drug addict, which turned out to be invented. Cooke was discredited, both for her reporting and for embellishing her CV, and was forced to hand back her prize two days after receiving it.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/9a9965fc04fd6cdab2722c34c48b77706d72e0e6\/661_0_7920_6336\/master\/7920.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=9869014c1fa15031ed468114e70a3873\" "\\"\u2018There\u2019s")
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