A West Virginia newspaper reporter yesterday accused Reuters, the British news service, of putting her byline on a story about the homecoming of Pfc. Jessica Lynch that she didn't write.

The reporter became an object of scorn by talk-radio hosts when the Reuters dispatch appeared, and she wrote a column yesterday for her newspaper explaining that the story was not hers. The controversy is particularly acute in the West Virginia hills, where Pfc. Lynch, from the tiny town of Palestine, is a very special heroine.

Deanna Wrenn of the Charleston Daily Mail filed her story last week, at the request of Reuters, about plans for the homecoming of Pfc. Lynch, whose capture and rescue made her the most famous American soldier in the Iraq war, but when it appeared on the Reuters wire, she hardly recognized it.[...]