Post editors may have killed Vargas story due to doubts about ‘getting the full story from its former reporter’

The Washington Post
Politico reports that legal concerns may have caused The Washington Post to back off from publishing Jose Antonio Vargas’ story about being an undocumented immigrant, considering that Vargas worked for the Post and an editor knew he was in the U.S. illegally. But the Post’s Paul Farhi suggests another reason. He reports that “given the subject — a reporter’s dishonesty about his personal life — the Post subjected Vargas’s story to an unusual degree of scrutiny.” The paper learned that Vargas hadn’t disclosed that he had replaced his expired Oregon driver’s license with one from Washington state, and Vargas admitted that he had withheld that information. “The disclosure set off internal discussion about whether the newspaper was getting the full story from its former reporter.” || Unusual distinction: Farhi notes that Vargas’ story “may be the first published by the New York Times that was developed, fact-checked and substantially edited by editors at The Washington Post.” || Earlier: New York Times got Vargas’ illegal immigrant story after Washington Post passed on it