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recent lead story in New York Times, "Leading Drugs for Psychosis Come Under Scrutiny," suggested that the newest schizophrenia medicines had been marketed as wonder drugs only to be as exposed as no better than older, cheaper medications. To make this case, the writer, Erica Goode, noted that "researchers at the [American Psychiatric Association] meetings presented a study of the cost effectiveness of Zyprexa (one of the newer medications) in treating patients at 17 Veterans Affairs medical centers. The study, led by Dr. Robert Rosenheck, a professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale and the director of the...

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - In response to an international campaign, The Pulitzer Prize Board has begun an "appropriate and serious review" of the award given to Walter Duranty of The New York Times, an administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes said on May 20. The board's administrator said in a telephone interview that the review began as a result of the thousands of letters and e-mails the board received in early May. A confidential review by the 18-member Pulitzer Prize Board is intended to seriously consider all relevant information regarding Mr. Duranty's award, said Sig Gissler, administrator for the Pulitzer Prizes. "There...

BYU Student Group Returns Web AwardsSaturday, May 31, 2003 - Page updated at 2:13 p.m. Brigham Young University's student news organization has given up two national awards for Web page design because the two students who crafted the page copied material from another Web site.This spring, the BYU site NewsNet won first place among colleges for Web page design in a contest sponsored by the University of Missouri chapter of the Society of Newspaper Design. The site also won a second place for best college newspaper online in a contest sponsored by the trade publication Editor & Publisher.NewsNet officials were...

There is no end to the soul-searching at The New York Times. Or the committees. The Times, already distracted by a month of scandals and newsroom unrest, was bracing for more of both as two ranking editors formed a second group to improve inhouse communications. Assistant Managing Editors Craig Whitney and Andrew Rosenthal invited staffers to join what they're calling the Communications Working Group. They said it would differ from a powerful committee headed by Assistant Managing Editor Allan Siegal by "concentrating on internal communications" and having no outside consultants. Many at The Times viewed formation of the new group...

I have been following the dilemma at The New York Times. I'm sure most people know by now that a reporter, Jayson Blair, was fired for fabricating and plagiarizing many stories. From news reports, it appears that Times editors knew about his deficiencies long before he was fired. The question is: Why wasn't he fired long before ago? Was it his race? Blair is black and, according to some people, minorities are treated by liberals such as The New York Times editors with unusual care under these circumstances. I have read that at least 12 Times editors had access to...

Op/Ed - William F. Buckley Yahoo!News WHO WROTE THIS? By William F. Buckley Jr. There is a swirl of controversy having to do with writing, with credit for writing, and with disclosure about who writes what and under what circumstances... There is a swirl of controversy having to do with writing, with credit for writing, and with disclosure about who writes what and under what circumstances... The case is difficult to make, who all gets credit. The stream of commentators discussing the Bragg story for some reason (those I read or saw or heard) neglected to make the contextual point...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's largest group of professional historians has scrapped the way it handles plagiarism allegations, doing away with secret proceedings in an effort to spotlight problems when they arise. The American Historical Association decided to end its 15-year practice of adjudication, where complaints were heard, discussed and decided behind closed doors. The focus now will be to educate historians, students and the public. The change comes after high-profile plagiarism cases involving historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and the late Stephen Ambrose, as well as former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. On Saturday, The New York Times reported...

ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... NEW YORK TIMES OR MINISTRY OF TRUTH?-- Say Bye-bye, Howell Raines! ... May 31, 2003: Yesterday's New York Times had a piece buried on its back pages which tells us that Rick Bragg, one of Howell Raines' hottest correspondents, Pulitzer Prize winner, and teacher's pet, has resigned because it was revealed last week that he submitted stories written by (or largely researched by) others, and represented them as his work alone. He was suspended with pay last week, pending an investigation; and when the Washington Post interviewed him, he told them that dang blast it everybody does...

LOS ANGELES - When O.J. Simpson was ruled not guilty of murdering his wife, the United States discovered overnight the chasm of difference in perception between blacks (who found the verdict reasonable) and whites (who found it insane). Something similar is going on with the fabrication scandals that have rocked The New York Times this month. Elite reporters and editors are reacting to the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg revelations with sorrow and anxiety, while the rest of us proles revel in the spectacle of a haughty institution being humbled and mocked. Why are journalists so glum? Because The New...

11.30amFresh embarrassment for New York TimesCiar ByrneThursday May 29, 2003The Guardian New York Times: reporter claimed it was routine practice for freelances to write large chunks of articles  A Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter has quit the paper after he was accused of drawing too heavily on the work of a freelance writer, in a further embarrassing episode for the scandal-hit newspaper.Rick Bragg, a national correspondent based in New Orleans, tendered his resignation last night to the New York Times' executive editor, Howell Raines, after the paper published an editor's statement admitting he had relied heavily on the work...

6pmLeaked emails add to NY Times' woes Ciar ByrneThursday May 29, 2003The GuardianCan the headlines get any worse for the New York Times? Once a beacon of US broadsheet journalism, the Times has already been rocked by charges of plagiarism, and now its rival the Washington Post has heaped on fresh embarrassment by reporting an unseemly squabble between two senior journalists on the paper.According to leaked emails seen by the Washington Post, the Times' Pulitzer prize-winning Baghdad bureau chief, John Burns, was in high dudgeon when another Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, Judith Miller, filed an interview with Iraqi exile leader Ahmed...

To: xxxxx@nytimes.com From: Adam Clymer (xxxx@nytimes.com) Subject: The Times Colleagues, I think it's time to take a deep breath and think about the New York Times. I share your contempt for Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg. And I share your anger at some of the failures of management that enabled them. I agree with a lot of what Times people have told outside reporters, either directly or in internal E-mails that have quickly found their way to the Internet. In particular, Peter Kilborn made the case against Bragg's excuses with telling effect. But I think by now we have hit...

AS THIS MAGAZINE goes to press, a controversy swirls about the head of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He is alleged to have "revealed," in an interview with writer Sam Tanenhaus for the Manhattan celebrity/fashion glossy Vanity Fair, that the Bush administration's asserted casus belli for war against Saddam Hussein--the dictator's weapons-of-mass-destruction program--was little more than a propaganda device, a piece of self-conscious and insincere political manipulation. Lazy reporters have been following the lead of the press release Vanity Fair publicists circulated about their "scoop." It begins as follows: Contradicting the Bush administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz tells...

Japan's Takenaka Mulls Official Protest Of NY Times-KyodoDOW JONES NEWSWIRESNEW YORK -- Financial Services Minister Heizo Takenaka said Thursday he is considering lodging an official protest against the New York Times Co. (NYT) over a report that he plans to leave government service as early as September to return to the world of academia, the Kyodo news agency reported.The report is "totally nonsense," Takenaka told the House of Councillors' Financial Affairs Committee. "I'm considering lodging an official protest (with the paper) through a lawyer," Kyodo reported.He said the report could undermine confidence in a key government policy that is enabling...

BLAIR, BRAGG, DOWD ... KRUGMAN?Posted by Donald Luskin at 2:26 AM May 30, 2003I noticed that the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities was referred to as "a liberal group" in a New York Times article today (natch, the article was about something supposedly terribly wrong with President Bush's tax cuts). Is this something new for the post-Jayson Blair era? Nothing will ever stop the Times from being a mouthpiece for liberal advocacy groups, and reporting their opinions as news -- but perhaps at least the Times will now have the decency to disclose the political orientation of the source....

T H E   G A L L U P   O R G A N I Z A T I O N SOURCE: http://www.gallup.com CONTACT INFORMATION: Customer Service301 South 68th Street PlaceLincoln, NE 68510 1-888-274-5447       POLL ANALYSES May 30, 2003 Public Remains Skeptical of News Media Majority of Americans believe news organizations often get facts wrong by Mark Gillespie GALLUP NEWS SERVICE PRINCETON, NJ -- Jayson Blair's reporting will be discussed for years to come in the nation's journalism schools -- as an example of how not to be a reporter. Blair resigned under pressure...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- As scandal at the New York Times raged to the forefront of the American consciousness two weeks ago, a group of activists affiliated with the Free Republic network and the Accuracy In Media watchdog group took matters into their own hands. In a rally held outside the New York Times bureau in Washington, DC on May 15th, activists called for the firing of Times executive editor Howell Raines as a "first step toward establishing the credibility of the newspaper." In an interview with Talon News Kristinn Taylor, co-leader of the Washington, DC Chapter of the Free...

<p>May 30, 2003 -- New York Times editors have made yet another appeal to appease its angry and scandal-weary staffers - this time about the use of freelancers.</p> <p>A memo yesterday from Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd said the paper is going to sort out its policy on the use of freelancers, but didn't say exactly what that would entail.</p>

"I'm tired of cowering and rubbing my forehead"5/29/2003 11:02:18 AMFrom LISA SUHAY:I can understand the upset felt by New York Times staff writers who feel their image has been tarnished by Rick Bragg's use of an intern's material and the resulting presumption that staffers do not do their own work. I can understand it only if they are able to cast this stone in the firm knowledge that they themselves have never once used the work of another who did not receive credit. It is interesting that the people I know who actually do the invisible reporting (stringing/legs work) have a completely different...

US paper gripped by new crisis of ethicsAnother New York Times reporter forced to resign amidSuzanne Goldenberg in WashingtonFriday May 30, 2003The GuardianThe spectacle of a publishing institution in crisis moved to a second act yesterday after the bitter departure of a star writer from the New York Times. Rick Bragg, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his evocative features from the southern US, resigned on Wednesday night, days after the newspaper suspended him (with pay) and admitted that an unpaid assistant had done virtually all of the reporting for a story on oyster fishers in Florida for which Bragg...

SHOCK WAVES May 28, 2003 The controversy over former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair's plagiarized and fabricated stories has caused upheaval within the paper and has reverberated in newsrooms across the country. [Editor's Note: This discussion aired before Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent Rick Bragg officially resigned from The New York Times Wednesday night over a dispute concerning his crediting methods.] The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts   Online NewsHour:Media WatchMay 12, 2003: In the wake of the New York Times' trouble with plagiarism, Terence Smith reports on how newspapers can...

Liberal attitudes unite Jayson Blair, NYT Eric CzarnikSouth End Columnist    What is black and white and "read" all over?    The punch line to this old riddle is, of course, a newspaper. But for the New York Times, the last few weeks have made it's staff and editors "read" with shame.    Formerly one of the world's most respected newspapers, the Times has been under siege since it was discovered that a certain young, black reporter named Jayson Blair repeatedly lied, fabricated descriptions and made errors in his stories.    Blair, who was assigned top stories like the Beltway...

5/30/03 Maureen Dowd not wanted hereBy MARC R. MASFERRER The New York Times' considerable credibility problem is now our problem, as well. But unlike the Times, which has been engaged in a torturous exercise of naval gazing and self-flagellation, with its accustomed arrogance, since it was revealed that one of its younger reporters had committed all sorts of journalistic sins, we are doing something about it, and fast. Until she explains to our satisfaction her own ethical transgression -- an apparently deliberate distortion of a comment by President Bush &#8212; you will not find the work of Times columnist Maureen...

MAY 27--Yes, we've also had enough of this Jayson Blair punk. But TSG thought it was our duty to note what appears--to date, at least--to be the disgraced journalist's first piece of plagiarism. His victim? Jayson Blair. Seems that when he was a student at the University of Maryland in 1999, Blair tried his hand at poetry, posting three works on his student web site (which remains, at this writing, on one of the school's web servers). In the awful "ka-lei-do-scope in brown eyes," which you'll find below, Blair writes about some gal with "burnt sienna eyes," brown orbs that...

<p>When I heard about Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who was fired for fabricating details of stories, including pretending to be places he'd never been, my first thought was: "This'll happen again."</p> <p>In fact, I bet it's happening right now. Another wager: I bet it won't be caught. Media organizations are just not set up to deal with information fraud.</p>

<p>May 29, 2003 -- The turmoil at the New York Times took another victim yesterday when Pulitzer-winning reporter Rick Bragg quit under fire.</p> <p>"Staying on only would have caused more division," Bragg told The Post.</p> <p>"I had hoped I could stay on a bit longer, but there is too much tension and I am tired," said Bragg, who is based in New Orleans and is a friend of the Times' executive editor, Howell Raines.</p>

chatterboxChatterbox Exonerates New York Times!Does Howell Raines' Times weight polls to favor Democrats? Nope.By Timothy NoahPosted Wednesday, May 28, 2003, at 7:17 PM PT In his forthcoming book, Off With Their Heads, Dick Morris levels the sensational accusation that the New York Times has been rigging its national polls in order to favor Democrats. The attack is well-timed, coming as it does when the Times is already reeling from the Jayson Blair affair and the suspension and subsequent resignation of star prose jock Rick Bragg. Like many others, Morris is convinced that Howell Raines is ruining the New York Times,...

press boxRick Bragg's Lousy AlibiThe suspended New York Times reporter insists - wrongly - that everybody does it.By Jack ShaferPosted Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 4:27 PM PT On Friday, New York Times reporter Rick Bragg insisted to the Columbia Journalism Review he'd done nothing wrong in claiming 1) the byline for a story that an unpaid free-lancer had reported for him and 2) the dateline "Apalachicola, Fla.," after visiting the town only briefly. (See "Rick Bragg's 'Dateline Toe-Touch.' ") "I wouldn't have done anything different," Bragg tells CJR.Bragg reiterates that position to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz again today...

NEW YORK - Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg resigned from The New York Times on Wednesday after the newspaper suspended him over a story that carried his byline but was reported largely by a freelancer. The resignation comes as the Times tries to rebound from a scandal in which the newspaper found fraud, plagiarism and inaccuracies in 36 of 73 recent articles written by reporter Jayson Blair. Bragg, who had blamed his suspension on what he called a "torturous atmosphere" at the newspaper since Blair's May 1 resignation, said he offered his resignation Wednesday evening. Executive Editor Howell Raines said...

By rolling over Iraq, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hoped to deep-six the sixties. The president was down with that. He never grooved on the vibe of the Age of Aquarius anyway.Conservatives were eager to purge the decades' demons, from tie-dye to moral relativism, from Hanoi Jane to wilting patriotism, from McGovern to blaming America first, from Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds to the Clintonesque whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ethos.In their preferred calendar, more Gingrichian than Gregorian, American culture fast-forwards from Elvis's blue suede shoes to John Travolta's white polyester suit.Whatever else has gone awry in the Mideast so far, the administration may have succeeded in exorcising...

Kitty GenoveseWhat you think you know about the Kitty Genovese case might not be true. According to the March 27, 1964 New York Times: For more than half an hour thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab [Kitty Genovese] in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. ... Not one person telephoned the police during the assault... . The story became a cultural landmark, making infamous the phrase, "We didn't want to get involved." However, the undisputed evidence from the killer's trial and other sources shows that the Times story is mostly wrong.

NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE May 28 — For days, the national correspondents of The New York Times have been burning up, furious that suspended correspondent Rick Bragg has defended himself by publicly describing a work environment in which senior writers send out interns and stringers to do the majority of on-the-ground reporting. Now, that fury is bubbling over into an open rage. On Wednesday, the Times’s Peter Kilborn sent out a blistering e-mail to more than a dozen colleagues and the two top editors on the national desk. “Bragg’s comments in defense of his reportorial routines are outrageous,” Kilborn wrote. “I...

Leading New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has been swept up in the Timesgate scandal that began earlier this month when the paper fired reporter Jayson Blair for fabricating stories. Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis admitted Tuesday that a recent column by Dowd criticizing President Bush is being "looked into" after questions were raised about whether the celebrated columnist had deliberately misreported a Bush quote. "If Dowd intentionally misrepresented the President's words, she is guilty of a journalistic offense much worse than [reporter Rick] Bragg's intern problem, or even Blair's fantasies," wrote New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets, to whom...

<p>If the initial responses from news executives are any indication, one byproduct of the stunning Jayson Blair scandal may be a tightening of the editing process at newspapers around the country. ''Editors need to sort of prosecute stories'' and be more aggressive, said The Des Moines Register's editor, Paul Anger. ''They need to find holes. We've sort of reminded ourselves of this.''</p>

To: Jayson Blair, c/o David Vigliano Literary Agency, New York From: Myndee Brady-Stahr, Director of Development, Trans-National Pictures, Culver City, Calif. Dear Jayson: Hi. It was a delight to speak with you on the phone yesterday. Everybody here at Trans-National is really excited that you decided to sell us your life story. And I couldn’t agree with you more: Despite the offer of $27 million, a jet, an Oscar and a date with Gwyneth, you made the right choice: At the end of the day, Harvey Weinstein would have probably sold you out for some positive reviews in The Times....

An outrageous new falsehood is circulating about President Bush. Last week, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd misrepresented a Bush statement to imply that he said the Al Qaeda terrorist network is "not a problem anymore," and the distorted quotation has since been repeated by MSNBC "Buchanan and Press" co-host Bill Press, CNN's Miles O'Brien and others, including numerous foreign press outlets. At a time when the New York Times is under fire for its conduct in the Jayson Blair scandal, Dowd's creation of an exploding media myth is cause for serious concern.

SHUT YOUR LIQUIDITY TRAP! Think about how good things have been lately, and how hard a catastrophist like Paul Krugman has to work to make them seem bad. Remember, this is a guy who's trying to push a new book called The Great Unraveling. I'm thinking remainder bins... The US-led invasion of Iraq was a brilliant victory (Krugman: "it did the terrorists a favor"). President Bush signs into law today an historic pro-growth tax bill, enacted thanks to support from cross-over Democrats (Krugman: "the administration ...actually wants a fiscal crisis"). And the crisis in corporate malfeasance seems to have been...

Meet the youth brigade of The New York Times. As Al Siegal and his investigative committee continue to hash out exactly how the 152-year-old institution allowed 27-year-old reporter Jayson Blair to invent datelines and events and imaginary vistas, 13 of the newspaper’s bright young things have been hammering away at a memo to Mr. Siegal and other members of the committee calling for changes in how the paper treats its young. Among the early drafts of the memo being circulated, the group calls upon Times management to end favoritism in the newsroom, develop transparent procedures for filling open positions, and...

Sympathy for the NY Times A newspaper that seldom plagiarizes, yet is often plagiarized Has the venerable New York Times gotten more than its fair share of bad press over the Jayson Blair fiasco? By Michael Kinsley SLATE.COM May 21 — Although rarely reluctant to join in a schadenfreude festival, I nevertheless feel sorry for The New York Times. Duped by one of its own reporters, hemorrhaging rumors and leaks like the institutions it is used to covering, its extravagant public self-flagellation merely inviting flagellation by everyone else, the paper is at a low ebb. Much of the criticism and...

In the town where I live, you can turn in a criminal by calling (800) 898-TIPS. The New York Times now offers a similar service to its readers. They can finger crooked stories by sending an E-mail to The Times at retrace@nytimes.com. Jayson Blair is the proximate cause of this humiliating hotline. But some of the TIPS coming into The Times aren't about Blair. Nobody knows exactly who's under investigation. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg was suspended last week for letting an uncredited intern do his reporting. He's quitting. And at least one other internal review is taking place. It...

<p>May 28, 2003 -- INSIDERS say that the New York Times is preparing to make a correction on a portion of the massive correction it ran on May 11, regarding the fabrications, factual errors and plagiarism that appeared in disgraced reporter Jayson Blair's stories over several years.</p>

<p>In the days after Jayson Blair resigned in shame from the New York Times, everyone tried to reach him. Television, radio, newspapers, magazines, old friends, colleagues. He spoke to almost no one.</p> <p>But he did call one person -- an agent named David Vigliano about a book and movie deal. Those deals are now in motion. And that's all you need to know about Jayson Blair.</p>

Media Matters May 23, 2003 Did The Times' Diversity Program Fail Jayson Blair? By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin Ombudsman National Public Radio One of the issues around Jayson Blair's disgrace at The New York Times has to do with the awful entanglements around race relations in the workplace. Questions about race and affirmative action are priorities in most newsrooms including NPR. But many news organizations still struggle with finding the right balance among questions of race, opportunity and ability. One of NPR's most distinguished commentators, Marvin Kalb grasped the sharp end of the debate on Morning Edition on May 15th (Commentary:...

The author with her now-notorious boyfriend My Turn: I’m Only Guilty of Being a Good Friend The Jayson I know is a kind and gifted man—but our relationship cost me my job and my credibility By Zuza GlowackaNEWSWEEK June 2 issue —  I understand what Elizabeth Bishop meant when, in her poem “One Art,” she wrote, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” In the weeks since I’ve had to resign from my job because a close friend of mine, Jayson Blair, was caught plagiarizing and fabricating, I’ve lost my privacy, my credibility and many of my longtime...

I know you're sick of him, but can you stand one more analysis of Jayson Blair? For those of you who have spent the last three weeks in a sensory deprivation tank: Blair is black, 27 years old, and was a reporter for the New York Times until it was discovered that he had lied and plagiarized his way through dozens of articles. Now he is the most reviled man in American journalism. Some critics have claimed that this is what you get from "diversity," that newspapers have been forced to lower their standards in order to hire unqualified blacks...

washingtonpost.com Suspended N.Y. Times Reporter Says He'll QuitRick Bragg Decries 'Poisonous Atmosphere' By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday, May 27, 2003; Page C01 Month after month, year after year, Rick Bragg said, his mission was to "go get the dateline," even when that meant leaning heavily on the reporting of others. "My job was to ride the airplane and sleep in the hotel," the New York Times correspondent said yesterday from his New Orleans home. "I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and...

How the Jayson Blair scandal touched off a struggle for the soul of the Gray Lady. ‘It ain’t bragging if you really done it!” crowed New York Times executive editor Howell Raines in April 2002. The newspaper had just won an unprecedented seven Pulitzer prizes for its coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath—Raines had assumed the office just a week before the planes hit the towers—and he was standing in front of his office in the third-floor newsroom, addressing the staff. Not far away, beside the exposed-metal staircase near the heart of the newsroom, was the cubicle of a hale...

Stopping the next Jayson BlairBruce Bartlett (archive) May 27, 2003 | Print | Send The Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times has engendered more commentary than any similar press scandal I can recall.  Although in substance, the scandals involving Janet Cooke at the Washington Post, Stephen Glass and Ruth Shalit at the New Republic, and Mike Barnacle at the Boston Globe are similar, the Blair scandal seems to have much greater resonance. In part, this is due to the gross politicization of the New York Times under its executive editor and publisher, Howell Raines and Arthur Sulzberger III, respectively.  Editorial...

Disgraced Reporter Benefits from Double StandardMay 27, 2003By Ray Richmond LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - I've now done about 60 editions of this column over the past 13-1/2 months or so. Let's speculate about what may have happened to me were it discovered at any point that I had fabricated quotes and lifted passages from other sources, claiming them as my own.   Should I be celebrated as someone who really pulled a fast one on The Hollywood Reporter? Should book and movie deals be in the offing? Of course not. I would be pitied, at best, and more appropriately...

By now, three weeks into its epic wrestling match with the demons unleashed by Jayson Blair, one can almost feel sorry for the New York Times. But, when you think about how their chief editorial-side executives screwed up from beginning to end, any sympathetic feelings flee. Publisher Prince Sulzberger, Executive Editor Howl Raines, and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, had looked the other way when Jayson came aboard flying the banner of diversity but without a college transcript. They promoted him and gave him choice assignments despite an accumulation of shoddy work, unexplained absences, and they continued to do so even...