I suppose that Editor-in-Chief Raines made it clear to the gaggle of reporters covering the "Jason story" to steer clear of the "affirmative action goes bad" part of the story.
Congressman Billybob
Perhaps but when even NPR mentions it, the cat's out of the bag...http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2003/0509.asp
Times Watch for 05/09/03
Raines: Diversity “More Important” Than Better Journalism
Looks like Mickey Kaus and Howard Kurtz were right about affirmative action being involved in the storm over plagiarizing Times reporter Jayson Blair.
Melissa Block, a host of the National Public Radio program “All Things Considered,” interviewed Times executive editor Howell Raines on the Blair fiasco--and challenged Raines with a rather incriminating blast from Raines’ past:
“Mr. Raines, you spoke to a convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in 2001, and you specifically mentioned Jayson Blair as an example of the Times spotting and hiring the best and brightest reporters on their way up. You said, 'This campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.' And I wonder now, looking back, if you see this as something of a cautionary tale, that maybe Jayson Blair was given less scrutiny or more of a pass on the corrections to his stories that you had to print because the paper had an interest in cultivating a young, black reporter.”
Raines’ defensive reply: “No, I do not see it as illustrating that point. I see it as illustrating a tragedy for Jayson Blair, that here was a person who under the conditions in which other journalists perform adequately decided to fabricate information and mislead colleagues. And it is--you know, I don't want to demonize Jayson, but this is a tragedy of failure on his part.”
It sounds like a failure of nerve on the part of Raines. And as for his proud admission to the NABJ that increasing racial diversity was more important to him than increasing the quality of his paper’s journalism—that’s just pathetic.