The New Yorker returned the National Magazine Award for a 2018 article about a Japanese company that rents actors who pretend to be members of the client family. The decision to withdraw from the award came after an investigation by the magazine found that the three main subjects of the story had misled the author of the article and the fact-checking department.
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 attached a note from the editors to the online version of the article announcing the results of its investigation.
The magazine’s association said it “commends The New Yorker for its investigation of the story and its decision to return the award.” A New Yorker spokeswoman confirmed the return of the award and declined to comment further.
The 9,000-word article, “The Theory of Relativity,” was written by Elif Batuman, a novelist and writer for the magazine since 2010. He won the award for best screenplay.
The editors ‘note attached to the online version said that the magazine’s research findings “contradict fundamental aspects of these individuals’ stories and largely undermine the credibility of what they have told us.”
Even the first lines of the article contained falsehoods, the magazine’s investigation found. “Two years ago, Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo employee in his 60s, started renting a wife and daughter part-time,” the story began. “His real wife died recently.” The magazine found that Mr. Nishida did not give the magazine his full real name and that he was married.
The editors’ note added that The New Yorker would leave the story on its website because the phenomenon of “rented” relatives in Japan is “well documented” and because it provided “an exploration of family ideas in Japan and more broadly. “
New Yorker said it began examining the article after news organizations in Japan reported in 2019 that an employee of Family Romance, the organization described in the article, “had pretended to be a company customer in a TV documentary.” Mrs Batuman declined to comment.