Kevin Deutsch

Kevin Deutsch is an award-winning American criminal justice journalist and author. His books have explored drug trafficking, gang life, and addiction in urban and suburban America. The veracity of his second book and the sourcing of some of his news articles during a 15-year-career have been the subject of a high-profile dispute

Career

Deutsch's first book, The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York's Bloods and Crips, is an account of the year the author spent covering a Bloods-Crips gang war on Long Island. It received positive reviews from critics, including a starred review from Publisher's Weekly magazine. His second book, Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire, chronicles the story of how opiates stolen during the Baltimore riots sparked a wave of inner-city addiction and violence. Deutsch, born Kevin Shulman, writes under this mother's name. He received a Sunshine State Award for travel writing for a story he wrote about his father, attorney Howard Shulman .

Deutsch has worked on staff at Newsday, The New York Daily News, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, and The Riverdale Press. His work as a freelancer has also appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Village Voice, The Forward, Columbia Journalism Review, and The New York Post. Deutsch has been interviewed about American street gangs and drug trafficking, and has received prizes for his writing about crime and national news events, including an Associated Press award for justice beat reporting. He has also taught journalism at Queens College in New York City and Hofstra University on Long Island.

Deutsch is an active contributor to the HuffPo Blog and has said he is at work on a third nonfiction book.

Questions about sources

Following the release of Deutsch's second book, Pill City, reporters from The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore City Paper, along with the Baltimore TV writer/producer David Simon, challenged the veracity of parts of the book's narrative. On February 10, 2017, The Baltimore Sun published an article quoting government spokespersons who questioned the core of the story. The article also highlighted Deutsch's practice of changing the names of individuals and certain places he documented.

The article also included an extended video interview with Deutsch, in which he defended his work and his use of anonymous sourcing, which he said was needed to protect the safety of interviewees--many of whom were drug dealers, users, and current and former gang members. The "Author's Note" in Deutsch's book includes a section detailing his methodology. It states that "In order to disguise the identities of interviewees, most of their names have been changed. For that same reason, certain locations, physical descriptions, and other identifying details have been altered or obscured."

Within a week of the Baltimore Sun story, both Newsday and The New York Times announced separate internal reviews of Deutsch's past writing.

On February 24, 2017, The New York Times published an editors' note on the sole article Deutsch wrote for the paper, detailing its review and conclusion:

An article on Dec. 29, 2016, described the rise of deadly fentanyl overdoses on Long Island, based largely on official data and interviews with law-enforcement officials. It was written by a freelance writer, Kevin Deutsch, an author and former staff reporter for The Daily News and Newsday.

Several weeks earlier, The Baltimore Sun had published a report that raised questions about claims in a new book by the reporter about the drug trade in Baltimore. The Sun reporters had informed The Times that, in the course of researching the claims in Mr. Deutsch’s book, they had reviewed the Times article and had been unable to locate two sources quoted by name in that article. The main facts of the article were upheld, and the story was not retracted.

In response, editors and reporters at The Times conducted a detailed review of the fentanyl article. The main facts and thrust of the article, including the official data and quotes from the authorities, were confirmed. However, after extensive reporting efforts, The Times also has been unable to locate or confirm the existence of two people who were named and quoted: Jeffrey Sheridan, described as a resident of Oyster Bay, N.Y., who works as an addiction counselor and whose 34-year-old nephew died from a fentanyl overdose on Staten Island in 2015; and Andrew Giordano, described as a 26-year-old resident of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, who overdosed on a fentanyl-heroin mixture.

Mr. Deutsch maintains that the interviews and the descriptions are accurate. But he has not been able to put The Times in contact with either source, or to provide any further material to corroborate the account. At this point, editors have concluded that The Times cannot vouch for the accuracy of those sources, and that material has been removed from the online version of the article.

In response, Deutsch posted a letter to the Times on his website, stating in part:

"I was disturbed by the misleading editor's note The Times published on Feb. 25, 2017 about my Dec. 29 article, "Fentanyl Outpaces Heroin as the Deadliest Drug on Long Island." The note stated that "the main facts and thrust of the article, including the official data and quotes from the authorities, were confirmed. However, after extensive reporting efforts, The Times also has been unable to locate or confirm the existence of two people who were named and quoted." The note also claimed that I had "not been able to put The Times in contact with either source, or to provide any further material to corroborate the account." I share The Times' commitment to accuracy, but the above statements are untrue. I offered to provide Times editor William Ferguson, who'd been tasked with investigating my work, with the notebooks I'd used during the relevant interviews. He never responded to my offer.

I also provided details about how and where these interviews were conducted. Both occurred following 12-step recovery meetings attended by the interviewees. It now seems clear each interviewee gave me a name other than their legal name, but I had no reason to believe that at the time. Instead of taking into account the very real stigmas surrounding heroin addiction and overdose, The Times chose to ignore this context."

Following publication of the Times' note, on March 2, 2017, the media watchdog website iMediaEthics reported in an online story that the New York Daily News was conducting an internal review, examining all 572 stories from Deutsch's career with the company. The group later shared a statement from Newsweek, reporting that it would review the three stories Deutsch had written there as well. Neither publication has said they found any issues with Deutsch's work. The Daily News issued a statement after their review that stated, in part: "In a highly competitive media environment, [Deutsch's] stories raised no red flags about possible fabrications."

Deutsch has stood by all of his reporting, stating that he used the exact names given to him by his interviewees and quoted all sources verbatim. In numerous statements and interviews, he has aggressively defended his journalism and books as wholly accurate.

On July 12, 2017, Newsday, where Deutsch was on staff for more than four years, released the conclusions of its review of Deutsch's writing there. Newsday said that review was prompted by the Baltimore article questioning Deutsch's second book. Newsday found that in 77 of the more than 630 articles written by Deutsch, 109 individuals he quoted could not be located. The editors said the main points of the articles were confirmed and cited many reasons that people might not give a real name to a police reporter, and why they might not have returned reporters' calls as part of their review. No corrections were issued as a result of the review, nor any stories retracted. The editors also stated they had wiped Deutsch's cell phone when he left the paper. Deutsch stated he had kept contact information for many sources on that device. Newsday appended individual editor's notes to each of the 77 articles in question online, detailing which sources it could not locate after approximately four months of effort.

In response, Deutsch issued a statement stating in part: "For me, journalistic ethics are sacrosanct. They've remained so throughout my fifteen-year criminal justice journalism career—a career I'm extremely proud of. I stand behind every word I've published. None of my work has been found to be inaccurate, nor any story I’ve worked on ever retracted. Newsday’s review confirmed the accuracy of the more than 630 stories I wrote for the paper--stories Newsday is standing behind."