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The New Yorker returned a National Magazine Award for a 2018 article about a Japanese company that hires actors who pose as family members of clients. The decision to forgo the award came after an investigation by the magazine found that the story’s top three subjects had deceived the article’s author and the fact-checking service.
The American Society of Magazine Editors, which administers the National Magazine Awards, announced the magazine’s decision on Friday, more than a month after The New Yorker added an editor’s note to the online version of the article announcing the results of his investigation.
The magazine association said it “congratulated The New Yorker on his investigation of the story and his decision to return the award.” A spokeswoman for the New Yorker confirmed the award’s return and declined to comment further.
The 9,000 word article, “A Theory of Relativity,” was written by Elif Batuman, novelist and editor of the magazine since 2010. It won the award for best feature film.
The editor’s note attached to the online version says the magazine’s survey results “contradict fundamental aspects of these people’s stories and greatly undermine the credibility of what they told us.”
Even the first lines of the article contained lies, according to the magazine’s investigation. “Two years ago Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo employee in his sixties, started hiring a wife and daughter part-time,” the story began. “His real wife had recently passed away. The magazine concluded that Mr. Nishida had not provided the magazine with his real full name and that he was married.
The editor’s note added that The New Yorker would leave the story on their website because the ‘rental parent’ phenomenon in Japan is’ well documented ‘and because it has provided’ an exploration of family ideas in Japan. Japan and more widely. “
The New Yorker said it began reviewing the article after Japanese news agencies reported in 2019 that an employee of Family Romance, the group described in the article, “falsely presented himself as a company client in a television documentary. Ms. Batuman declined to comment.
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