Fake News: Houston Chronicle reporter wrote articles quoting nonexistent interviewees

The Houston Chronicle has announced it has retracted 8 articles, and is correcting several dozen more, written by (now former) reporter Mike Ward between 2014 and 2018 after an intensive investigation by the newspaper and private detectives hired for the purpose failed to locate individuals quoted in those articles, or prove they ever existed. When asked about the discrepancy by the newspaper's management, Ward was unable to provide information supporting the existence of his sources because he "had destroyed all of his notes". He agreed to resign from the newspaper.

The quoted individuals were always characterized as "person-on-the-street" interviewees, as opposed to government or academic officials (who were found to be real in all cases). The 8 articles that were retracted were articles in which the whole story was entirely based on the quotes from these unverifiable sources; including for instance one article about how Houston residents had largely forgiven GOP state officials for poor hurricane response during Harvey and planned to vote Republican in the coming election, and one article about how Republican-leaning voters in Texas who were initially skeptical of Trump were growing to support him. The remaining articles which are being corrected but not retracted, featured quotes from these unverifiable sources but were not entirely reliant upon them as the article's premise.