Uh, isn't Jayson Blair following in the grand tradition established by Walter Duranty?
I believe the NYT has never returned Duranty's Pulitzer Prize. It may well be that they have never admitted that his career was one of systematic mendacity.
I read the entire article, and the above is the one sentence that really stuck with me. Read it again...
``There has never been a systematic effort to lie and cheat as a reporter at The New York Times comparable to what Jayson Blair seems to have done.''
That's telling, IMO.
Don't forget the NYT's Matthew Jeffries.
It's nothing new at the NYT . . . every day is propaganda.
For those who were born too late to get this well-placed reference, Walter Duranty was a since-discredited comsymp apologist for Stalin who won a Pulitzer in 1932 for bogus coverage and whitewash of Communist-caused starvation in Ukraine. More at http://www.nationalreview.com/stuttaford/stuttaford.asp about how the NYT hadn't yet disowned him and at last reading was still taking credit for that Pulitzer.
It would make an interesting Freeper screen name...