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Jack Kelley Urged to Pursue Counseling
Jack Kelley's Christian journalist friends in Washington, D.C., are confronting the discredited star reporter formerly with USA Today in hopes of getting him to acknowledge publicly that he cannot vouch for the reliability of his reporting.

Several journalists contacted by Christianity Today say that Kelley, 43, seems to confuse what was fabricated and what was true in his reporting and they suggested to him that he seek professional counseling....

...The paper also alleged that Kelley lied in his speeches, notably to the annual meeting at the Evangelical Press Association in 2000. For years, leading evangelicals hailed Kelley as a role model to student journalists....

...At the time Kelley resigned in January, he had been the subject for months of extremely intensive inquiry from his editors. Prior to that day, Jack Kelley, a deeply devout Christian, seemed to rise above his difficulties. If a young reporter needed some hard-to-get phone numbers, Kelley was the first one to open up his Rolodex. If you needed to know how to negotiate the dark alleys and corrupt lords of the earth, Kelley was your man.

But some journalists thought his tight wire act over the cesspools of the world was too good to be true. A few questioned that he couldn't possibly know what he found out or interview who he said he had.

Yet, Kelley successfully put off his detractors, discounted their criticisms as envy and all seemed to be going his way. While doubt simmered, there never was a clear cut case of fraud that boiled the pot of criticism over into serious accusation.

Indeed, Kelley said that he believed that God was opening doors and protecting him. He further told Christian Reader (now named Today's Christian) magazine that "Many times God has spared me."...

...USA Today decided to focus on some of Kelley's most sensational stories. In one story from 2001 Kelley reported narrowly escaping being blown up outside the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem by a terrorist bomber who passed right by him. Some reporters snorted in disbelief at another tale of Kelley's "miraculous escapes" that the journalist sometimes attributes to God's intervention. Further, Kelley's claim that he had actually brushed by the terrorist seemed too good to be true....

...Indeed, over the years some friends wondered if Kelley wasn't over-dramatizing and tailoring his facts to fit the audience. Jill Rosen in the American Journalism Review reports a similar incident of an unexpected call from Kelley to a friend, reporter Matthew Fisher. Kelley told the story of running through the streets of Moscow from Chechen hit men. Kelley asked Fisher to call his editor for help in getting into the U.S. Embassy.

Later, Kelley retold that same story as an example of God's miraculous intervention. He told Today's Christian that he got a vision of a building number 925 in which he would receive safe haven. He claimed a vivid memory of the details of the apartment. But was his survival due to safe haven in the embassy or God that saved Kelley? That seemed to depend on who Kelley was talking to....