Tyee Published Article with Fabricated Details

The Tyee’s cover story for Wednesday, December 1, presented as a first person account of life as a street racer in Vancouver, including the witnessing of a friend’s fatal accident, was largely fabricated by the writer Vincent Man, The Tyee has discovered.

The facts came to light after two days of fact checking additional to the editing process before the piece was published.

The story purported to be a real account of a racing accident witnessed on a July morning on Boundary Road in Vancouver that ended with the crash and death of a David Hsu, who was at the wheel of a green Audi. In fact, Man never witnessed such an accident. He drew some facts from his general knowledge of an accident that occurred in the same place on 11:46 p.m. on June 1, 1999. But the car was a red Audi and the person at the wheel, who was killed, was named Kuo Wei Tu. The Tyee learned these details from the Vancouver police department, after I authorized reporter Scott Deveau to follow up to confirm Man’s story.

Throughout the process Man claimed that his account was factual, until, yesterday evening, confronted with the discrepancies, Man admitted his fabrications.

Man’s draft came recommended to The Tyee by an experienced writer and teacher. Before publishing it, Tyee editors asked Man to provide additional details, including the last name of the driver who Man named “David”. Man offered the last name Hsu and other details without hesitation. But after further investigation, they turned out to be fake.

Our mistake was to post the story without a more thorough fact-checking process beforehand. This is not business as usual here at The Tyee. And we will strive not to make that mistake again. The story has been pulled and we apologize to Tyee readers for our carelessness.

David Beers is founding editor of The Tyee.