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New York Times was too good to be true (National Post vs NYT)
National Post ^ | May 14 2003 | Robert Fulford

Posted on 05/14/2003 8:56:59 AM PDT by knighthawk

Has there ever been such an embarrassing moment for the craft of reporting? Bookstores are about to start selling The Fabulist, a novel in which Stephen Glass, who disgraced the New Republic five years ago by falsifying some 27 magazine articles, depicts a young man, also named Stephen, who re-enacts Glass's mischief at a weekly much like the New Republic. Now the revival of that scandal has been overshadowed by the discovery that a 27-year-old staff reporter on The New York Times, Jayson Blair, manufactured at least three dozen fake stories, even though several of his superiors knew he was not to be trusted.

On Sunday the Times acknowledged this "low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper" with a four-page section running some 7,000 words, the work of five reporters and two researchers. Blair, a Times reporter for about four years, filled even his earliest stories with inaccuracies or inventions, causing the paper to print scores of corrections. More recently, he invented or plagiarized reports on subjects like the Washington sniper and the families of Iraq war casualties. He claimed to have witnessed news events in several regions of the United States that he didn't visit, he reported on interviews that never took place, and he quoted words that the subjects never spoke. He invented anonymous police sources to liven up investigative stories on the sniper case.

Why did he do it? Like earlier offenders, he's offered a few words of psychobabble: "This is a time in my life that I have been struggling with recurring personal issues, which have caused me great pain. I am now seeking appropriate counselling." What matters more is how he did it. The Times describes his many "acts of journalistic fraud," but nothing in its reporting on this internal crisis begins to explain how he got away with it, on what one Times columnist calls "the most rigorously edited newspaper in the world."

Because Blair is an African-American, his fraud seems likely to cast a shadow over affirmative action and the promotion of racial diversity in newsrooms, as the Times' own reporting obliquely indicates. The Times says that Blair's mistakes became so routine that a year ago Jonathan Landman, the metropolitan editor, sent a two-sentence e-mail to news administrators: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." But the opposite happened. He was promoted to national reporter. Landman now says he was against that promotion but admits he didn't protest it.

Here the Times account becomes peculiarly obscure, perhaps betraying anxiety. It quotes Landman saying that the publisher and the executive editor "had made clear the company's commitment to diversity." The Times then declares that Gerald Boyd, "who is now managing editor, the second-highest-ranking newsroom executive, said last week that the decision to advance Mr. Blair had not been based on race." It quotes Boyd: "To say now that his promotion was about diversity in my view doesn't begin to capture what was going on ... He was a young, promising reporter who had done a job that warranted promotion."

This remark appears, of course, in an article lavishly demonstrating that Blair did not at all warrant promotion. The Times seldom contradicts itself in such an obvious way, particularly in a story edited as carefully as this one must have been. What is it trying to tell us? Perhaps those words are a covert plea for understanding: "Give us a break here, in our virtuous efforts to make the staff racially diverse, we were too eager to encourage a black reporter." On the other hand, they could be saying the opposite: "No matter how this looks, we're sticking with our story that we hire only excellence and never, ever allow our diversity program to bring down our standards." Either interpretation could be inferred. Or both.

Yesterday William Safire speculated on the Times Op-Ed page that Blair was apparently "given too many second chances by editors eager for this ambitious black journalist to succeed ... the con artist gamed a system that celebrates diversity and opportunity." But even Safire, who rarely equivocates, came down firmly on both sides. A newspaper, he said, is free to give "black journalists a break if its owners and editors so choose."

For journalists, the Blair story illustrates a chilling truth: News organizations depend at every turn on the automatic honesty of people (some of them strangers, or nearly so) who gather information and bring it together in print or on the air. Unfortunately, there are times when that honesty suddenly disappears, leaving journalism vulnerable to acute embarrassment at best, a serious libel action at worst.

Unexpected dishonesty can undermine even the most careful enterprise. Jack Shafer, an editor at the online Slate magazine, says editors need to maintain a skeptical view of stories and especially of details that sound too good. Perhaps they should be particularly skeptical of writers who have been proven wrong in the past. But, as Shafer concludes, "All that said, it's almost impossible for an editor to beat a good liar every time out."

The Times stories chronicling Blair's frauds have a disjunctive quality that a literary critic would recognize in a second: The style and the content are so unsuited to each other that they convey radically different messages. If you believe the solemn, stiff, and careful style of Sunday's lengthy articles, the Times comes across as a place of probity and stability, governed with wisdom and calm authority. But the content indicates precisely the opposite. The events set in motion by Jayson Blair make the Times sound wildly out of control. It appears that the executives cannot communicate with one another, that standards for new employees are lax or non-existent, and that responsibility is spread so widely, and in such complicated layers, that no manager appears finally accountable for anything. It sounds, in fact, like a huge, unwieldy government department as it might be described in a particularly harsh New York Times feature.

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: falsification; howellraines; jaysonblair; mediafraud; medialies; nationapost; newyorktimes; nyt; plagiarism; robertfulford; thenewyorktimes
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1 posted on 05/14/2003 8:56:59 AM PDT by knighthawk
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To: MizSterious; rebdov; Nix 2; green lantern; BeOSUser; Brad's Gramma; dreadme; Turk2; Squantos; ...
National Post rules!
2 posted on 05/14/2003 8:57:46 AM PDT by knighthawk (Full of power I'm spreading my wings, facing the storm that is gathering near)
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To: Timesink
Schadenfreude ping!
3 posted on 05/14/2003 9:01:52 AM PDT by martin_fierro (A v v n c v l v s M a x i m v s)
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To: knighthawk
The events set in motion by Jayson Blair make the Times sound wildly out of control.

The events indicate that, while the NYT makes its money by selling news, its primary focus is not the news.

4 posted on 05/14/2003 9:03:28 AM PDT by r9etb
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To: r9etb
Liberalism corrupts. Absolute Liberalism corrupts absolutely.
5 posted on 05/14/2003 9:05:32 AM PDT by elhombrelibre (Kick France out of the UN NOW. Get the US out of Germany. Freedom is the ultimate force multiplier)
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To: knighthawk
"National Post rules!"

That, it does!

6 posted on 05/14/2003 9:05:48 AM PDT by dixiechick2000 (Never have so many been so wrong about so much.)
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To: dixiechick2000
NYT plight is the end result of liberalism in action.
7 posted on 05/14/2003 9:07:43 AM PDT by elhombrelibre (Liberalism corrupts. Absolute Liberalism corrupts absolutely.)
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To: martin_fierro
Terrific read.
8 posted on 05/14/2003 9:07:44 AM PDT by MEG33
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To: knighthawk
Ward Connerly was right. Ultimately affirmative action cheats legitimately talented and successful minorities because it calls into question the legitimacy of their achievements. This is profoundly corrosive and profoundly unfair. And it is precisely why the con artists and race hucksters hate Connerly so much.
9 posted on 05/14/2003 9:14:16 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill
Absolutely well said.
10 posted on 05/14/2003 9:16:45 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
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To: elhombrelibre
Absolutely!

If that makes me happy, does that mean I'm a bad person?;o)

11 posted on 05/14/2003 9:17:46 AM PDT by dixiechick2000 (Never have so many been so wrong about so much.)
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To: knighthawk
Is this code for "being be branded a racist if he requires high standards for all reporters regardless of skin color?"

I've heard of "groupthink" but this is nuts.

Here the Times account becomes peculiarly obscure, perhaps betraying anxiety. It quotes Landman saying that the publisher and the executive editor "had made clear the company's commitment to diversity."

12 posted on 05/14/2003 9:26:26 AM PDT by GOPJ
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To: Billthedrill
Wonderful comment. I wish every Freeper could read your words:

Ward Connerly was right. Ultimately affirmative action cheats legitimately talented and successful minorities because it calls into question the legitimacy of their achievements. This is profoundly corrosive and profoundly unfair. And it is precisely why the con artists and race hucksters hate Connerly so much.

13 posted on 05/14/2003 9:28:34 AM PDT by GOPJ
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To: knighthawk
Unfortunately, there are times when that honesty suddenly disappears

The writer is off track here. The continuing problems with Blair hardly merit the label "sudden".

14 posted on 05/14/2003 9:33:03 AM PDT by Zeppo
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To: MEG33
It appears that the executives cannot communicate with one another, that standards for new employees are lax or non-existent, and that responsibility is spread so widely, and in such complicated layers, that no manager appears finally accountable for anything.

Howie Raines and other editors are paying Renoesque lip service to taking "full responsibility" for this debacle. I'll believe it when I see it.

15 posted on 05/14/2003 9:40:52 AM PDT by martin_fierro (A v v n c v l v s M a x i m v s)
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To: dixiechick2000
It means you're able to see the irony!
16 posted on 05/14/2003 9:42:57 AM PDT by elhombrelibre (Liberalism corrupts. Absolute Liberalism corrupts absolutely.)
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To: martin_fierro
I lay it at the feet of Boyd and Raines..and the intimidation of employees who knew but did not feel like they had a voice.
17 posted on 05/14/2003 9:49:30 AM PDT by MEG33
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To: MEG33
Howell Raines "improvements" at the NYT are on par with:


New Coke


The 1978 Mustang

18 posted on 05/14/2003 10:19:52 AM PDT by martin_fierro (A v v n c v l v s M a x i m v s)
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To: martin_fierro; reformed_democrat; Loyalist; =Intervention=; PianoMan; GOPJ; Miss Marple; Tamsey; ...

Schadenfreude

This is the New York Times Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.


19 posted on 05/14/2003 10:55:08 AM PDT by Timesink
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To: knighthawk
But, as Shafer concludes, "All that said, it's almost impossible for an editor to beat a good liar every time out."

That explains a lot about the Times attitude towards the Clintons.

20 posted on 05/14/2003 11:01:51 AM PDT by theDentist (So. This is Virginia.... where are all the virgins?)
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