Jayson Blair isn't the exception.

It’s been a bad year for media credibility: The Jayson Blair fiasco — which caused The New York Times to issue a 14,000-word, four-and-a-half page correction detailing the reporter’s fictions — is this week’s embarrassment, a blow both to the Times’ prestige and to the racial-diversity-at-all-costs mindset that kept Blair employed. Blair isn’t the first, of course: The Washington Post returned a Pulitzer Prize after learning that Janet Cooke had invented characters in her prize-winning work, and just last year, Washington-based Associated Press reporter Chris Newton, another young, fast-tracked African-American journalist, was canned for inventing sources. It gets far, far worse: We learned during Operation Iraqi Freedom that CNN had spent years covering up Saddam Hussein’s crimes — including assassination plans – in effect colluding with the Iraqi regime for 12 years in exchange for privileged access to inside sources. And reporters, editors and news executives, great and small, wonder why the public doesn’t trust us much. What is the problem? Political bias? Sloppiness? Laziness? All of the above and more. Think about it this way: Every society needs a mythology. In our post-religious world, we don’t have deities and demigods: We have psychology and statistics. We have urban legends and media myths. Let me bring this down to the local level for you: Last weekend, I was having dinner with a reporter (at Margaret Kuo’s new place in Wayne, which you ought to try) and we were talking about terrorism and national security. This particular reporter – smart guy, very knowledgeable – opines that he doesn’t trust Attorney General John Ashcroft because Ashcroft is a pointy-headed Bible-thumper who is so puritanical that he had his minions cover the exposed breast of the Spirit of Justice statue. Surely you all know this story: Ashcroft, shrieking at the sight of the uncovered female form of Minnie Lou, as the statue is affectionately known, orders it draped. Maureen Dowd of the recently discredited New York Times opined that Ashcroft put Lady Justice “in a burqa.” The “burqa” line was immediately picked up by Al Gore, who did not disclose its dowdy origins. The problem with this story is that it isn’t true. Nope. Never happened. The statue is still there, still looks like it has always looked. It is true that Ashcroft doesn’t use it as the background for his press conferences any longer, opting for the standard blue curtain. I’m positive the reporter I was dining with would have checked that story before it got into print, but his standards are manifestly higher than those in vogue at The New York Times. Ashcroft is a Christian fundamentalist, and funny stories about Christian fundamentalists are “too good to check,” as the newsroom saying goes. You can read in the major press all kinds of libelous and farcical nonsense about Ashcroft – he’s covering statues, he’s deathly afraid of calico cats because he regards them as a sign of the devil, etc. All fiction, of course. Is the Times going to issue a correction and apology over this, or discipline Dowd? Of course not. Now imagine a similarly nutty story being floated about Jesse Jackson. Does it get printed and repeated in The New York Times without a thorough vetting? Of course not. The Times had to be dragged kicking and screaming into reporting the Rev. Jackson’s actual misdeeds, never mind any fictional transgressions. Why? The other media myths are illustrative. We’ve seen in the past decade the wholesale invention of several major news stories. I’ve covered some of this before, but let me remind you of my three favorites: 1. There was an infamous string of arsons targeting African-American churches in the South that never happened, but the fictitious nature of the story didn’t stop the Clinton administration from using it to whip up fury and terror among black voters just in time for the elections. You can still find this story reported as written-in-stone fact from time to time, and its political utility does not interrupt the cherubic slumber in the newsrooms of the major media corporations, which are overwhelmingly staffed with Democrat loyalists. The soto voce argument is that the church-burnings didn’t happen, but this is the kind of could have happened in the red-state South. That must have happened. Too good to check. 2. Most of you know that, as a matter of course, incidents of domestic abuse skyrocket during the Super Bowl. You know that for a fact, but it isn’t true. The assertion does dovetail nicely with the twin feminist assumptions that traditional marriage is an oppressive and violent institution and that traditional male pursuits – sports and other displays of physical prowess – are part-and-parcel of a repressive, violent, anti-woman culture. Never mind the facts, as long as the spin is in the right direction. Too good to check. 3. And coming soon to a school board meeting near you …. About once a month, I read complaints that the federal education budget has been eviscerated – “and it’s even worse than it was in the 1980s.” For the record, there were no net cuts in federal education spending — and no net cuts in federal social services spending — during the Reagan administration, and there aren’t any right now, either. In the past 30 years, we’ve doubled per-student spending (in real dollars, adjusted for inflation). Or perhaps you’ve heard about the crisis of “fewer teachers and bigger classes.” The Department of Education reports that in the past 30 years, the student-to-teacher ratio has gone from 22.3:1 to 15.1:1 today. So we’ve doubled the spending, slashed class sizes … and test scores remain static at best, while the dropout rate has climbed. Fantastic. Don’t expect to read about it in The New York Times. Too good to check. Making stuff up isn’t entirely new. The New York Times still proudly displays the Pulitzer it won for reporting, at length, that Stalin’s prison-state was a hunky-dory happyland of wonderfulness, in a series written by a fellow-traveling reporter who managed to overlook the infamous hunger-terror and history’s largest gulag. The difference today is that we don’t have a few big newspapers, a wire service, and three almost identical broadcast news shows. Fox News and Free Republic are thriving, and the Grey Lady is on the ropes.

Jayson Blair isn't the exception. From the fable of John Ashcroft and the Statue of Justice to mythological church burnings in the South, you've been lied to, intentionally and systematically.

It's been a bad year for media credibility: The Jayson Blair fiasco - which caused The New York Times to issue a 14,000-word, four-and-a-half page correction detailing the reporter's fictions - is this week's embarrassment, a blow both to the Times' prestige and to the racial-diversity-at-all-costs mindset that kept Blair employed.

Blair isn't the first, of course: The Washington Post returned a Pulitzer Prize after learning that Janet Cooke had invented characters in her prize-winning work, and just last year, Washington-based Associated Press reporter Chris Newton, another young, fast-tracked African-American journalist, was canned for inventing sources.

It gets far, far worse: We learned during Operation Iraqi Freedom that CNN had spent years covering up Saddam Hussein's crimes - including assassination plans - in effect colluding with the Iraqi regime for 12 years in exchange for privileged access to inside sources.

And reporters, editors and news executives, great and small, wonder why the public doesn't trust us much.

What is the problem? Political bias? Sloppiness? Laziness? All of the above and more. Think about it this way: Every society needs a mythology. In our post-religious world, we don't have deities and demigods: We have psychology and statistics. We have urban legends and media myths.

Let me bring this down to the local level for you: Last weekend, I was having dinner with a reporter (at Margaret Kuo's new place in Wayne, which you ought to try) and we were talking about terrorism and national security. This particular reporter - smart guy, very knowledgeable - opines that he doesn't trust Attorney General John Ashcroft because Ashcroft is a pointy-headed Bible-thumper who is so puritanical that he had his minions cover the exposed breast of the Spirit of Justice statue.

Surely you all know this story: Ashcroft, shrieking at the sight of the uncovered female form of Minnie Lou, as the statue is affectionately known, orders it draped. Maureen Dowd of the recently discredited New York Times opined that Ashcroft put Lady Justice "in a burqa." The "burqa" line was immediately picked up by Al Gore, who did not disclose its dowdy origins.

The problem with this story is that it isn't true. Nope. Never happened. The statue is still there, still looks like it has always looked. It is true that Ashcroft doesn't use it as the background for his press conferences any longer, opting for the standard blue curtain. I'm positive the reporter I was dining with would have checked that story before it got into print, but his standards are manifestly higher than those in vogue at The New York Times.

Ashcroft is a Christian fundamentalist, and funny stories about Christian fundamentalists are "too good to check," as the newsroom saying goes. You can read in the major press all kinds of libelous and farcical nonsense about Ashcroft - he's covering statues, he's deathly afraid of calico cats because he regards them as a sign of the devil, etc. All fiction, of course. Is the Times going to issue a correction and apology over this, or discipline Dowd? Of course not.

Now imagine a similarly nutty story being floated about Jesse Jackson. Does it get printed and repeated in The New York Times without a thorough vetting? Of course not. The Times had to be dragged kicking and screaming into reporting the Rev. Jackson's actual misdeeds, never mind any fictional transgressions. Why? The other media myths are illustrative.

We've seen in the past decade the wholesale invention of several major news stories. I've covered some of this before, but let me remind you of my three favorites:

1. There was an infamous string of arsons targeting African-American churches in the South that never happened, but the fictitious nature of the story didn't stop the Clinton administration from using it to whip up fury and terror among black voters just in time for the elections.

You can still find this story reported as written-in-stone fact from time to time, and its political utility does not interrupt the cherubic slumber in the newsrooms of the major media corporations, which are overwhelmingly staffed with Democrat loyalists. The soto voce argument is that the church-burnings didn't happen, but this is the kind of could have happened in the red-state South. That must have happened. Too good to check.

2. Most of you know that, as a matter of course, incidents of domestic abuse skyrocket during the Super Bowl. You know that for a fact, but it isn't true.

The assertion does dovetail nicely with the twin feminist assumptions that traditional marriage is an oppressive and violent institution and that traditional male pursuits - sports and other displays of physical prowess - are part-and-parcel of a repressive, violent, anti-woman culture. Never mind the facts, as long as the spin is in the right direction. Too good to check.

3. And coming soon to a school board meeting near you .... About once a month, I read complaints that the federal education budget has been eviscerated - "and it's even worse than it was in the 1980s." For the record, there were no net cuts in federal education spending - and no net cuts in federal social services spending - during the Reagan administration, and there aren't any right now, either. In the past 30 years, we've doubled per-student spending (in real dollars, adjusted for inflation).

Or perhaps you've heard about the crisis of "fewer teachers and bigger classes." The Department of Education reports that in the past 30 years, the student-to-teacher ratio has gone from 22.3:1 to 15.1:1 today. So we've doubled the spending, slashed class sizes ... and test scores remain static at best, while the dropout rate has climbed. Fantastic. Don't expect to read about it in The New York Times. Too good to check.

Making stuff up isn't entirely new. The New York Times still proudly displays the Pulitzer it won for reporting, at length, that Stalin's prison-state was a hunky-dory happyland of wonderfulness, in a series written by a fellow-traveling reporter who managed to overlook the infamous hunger-terror and history's largest gulag. The difference today is that we don't have a few big newspapers, a wire service, and three almost identical broadcast news shows. Fox News and Free Republic are thriving, and the Grey Lady is on the ropes.

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