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Jayson Blair Calls NY Times A "Snakepit"
Media Life ^ | May 21, 2003 | By Jeff Bercovici

Posted on 05/21/2003 6:41:37 PM PDT by tvn

Jayson jests: I got over on the Times

Plagiarist delights in attention over misdeeds

All across America, journalists are wringing their hands over the Jayson Blair case. The only one who’s not, it seems, is Jayson Blair himself.

Far from repenting his misdeeds, the 27-year-old ex-New York Times reporter is glorying in them, celebrating himself for fleecing the esteemed newspaper and exhorting others to admire his audacity.

In a lengthy interview published today in the New York Observer, Blair expresses no regret at having been fired from the Times, calling the paper a "snakepit," full of idiots and racists.

Anyway, he claims, he was planning on getting out of the newspaper business soon owing to unspecified health problems. (His next career, apparently, will be memoirist; Blair has a literary agent and is said to be considering book deal offers that will fetch him somewhere in the mid-six figures.)

Like a pyromaniac who admires the blaze he has kindled even as firefighters battle to put it out, Blair is obsessed with the press coverage of his fall from grace. What wounds him is the perception that he resorted to plagiarism and fabrications out of necessity rather than out of sheer perversity.

Blair, who is black, is particularly galled by the suggestion that the Times kept him on to fill some sort of racial quota rather than because he simply outsmarted his editors. "If they’re all so brilliant and I’m such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn’t catch me?" he asked in the Observer interview.

Blair believes his shenanigans are at least as impressive as those of Stephen Glass, who was busted five years ago for inventing facts for his New Republic articles. "I don’t understand why I am the bumbling affirmative-action hire when Stephen Glass is this brilliant whiz kid, when from my perspective — and I know I shouldn’t be saying this — I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism," said Blair.

While he allows that his race was a factor in getting him hired and promoted, he says that his skin color also caused problems for him. "Both racial preferences and racism played a role," he said. "And I would argue that they didn’t balance each other out. Racism had much more of an impact."

Blair also wants the world to know that he never would have been caught if he hadn’t wanted to be, suggesting that his transgressions were a form of acting out. "Was I too young? For a newspaper reporter’s job at a great newspaper, maybe not. Was I too young for a snake pit like that? Maybe."

Untroubled by conscience, Blair enjoys a laugh at the expense of his former bosses while reminiscing over his favorite prank: a completely made-up description of rescued POW Jessica Lynch’s family home. "The description was just so far off from reality," he said. "The way they described it in The Times story — someone read a portion of it for me. I just couldn’t stop laughing."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crackhead; falsification; howellraines; jaysonblair; mediafraud; medialies; newyorktimes; nyt; nytimes; plagiarism; thenewyorktimes
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The laughter continues at the Times expense.

The search continues for new NY Times slogan- The top 95 Proposed so far: 1) ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT--NOT

2) LOTS OF NEWS THAT'S NOT FIT TO PRINT

3) ALL THE NEWS WE PRINT ISN'T FIT

4) All Our Views That's News to Print

5) All the News That We See Fit to Print

6) All the News As We See It

7) All the News, Fact or Better, Fiction

8) All the News, Well At Least Almost

9) All the News That We Can Dream Up

10) All The News We Can Crib From Others

11) Some News, Some Fiction, You Figure It Out

12) All The News We Can Dream Up or Steal

13) All the News That's Fit to Print and Is Cleared by Our Lawyers 14) Lots of News We've Stolen From Other Papers

15) All the News Fit for a Plagiarist

16) All News Only a Plagiarist Can Love

17) All The News, Just Don't Check the Sources

18) All the News, Trust Us--Honest

19) Changing Fiction To Fact

20) All News, No Credibility

21) All the Lies Fit to Print.

22) Face it, We Just Like to Print!

23) Aside from the pervasive Marxist bias, multitudinous errors and mis-information, and Anti-capitalist/anti-American posturing, we ain’t that bad!"

24) "All The News That Fits Our Views."

25) All The News That’s Fit to Print, Except For the Stuff We Make Up

26) All the News And Then the Part We Make Up

27) Some Facts, the Rest Fiction

28) Reporting Fiction Stranger than Fact

29) Reporting Facts And Stranger Fiction

30) When It's Raines, It Bores

31) All the News Cribbed to Fit

32) Just the Facts and Some Fiction Thrown In

33) Readers of the World Forgive Us

34) We Can Fool All of the People Some of the Time- That’s Enough for Us

35) The Blair Filch Project

36) Nothing But the Truth (Except for the Part We Make Up)

37) Leading Nominee for Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

38) A Lie Told Often Enough Becomes Fact in the Times

39) Truth is Truth, Except in the New York Times

40) Transforming Lies into Truth

41) Weaving A Tangled Web to Deceive

42) When the Going Gets Tough, The Times Makes It Up

43) Give Us A Dollar, And We’ll Give You The World-- As We See It

44) The New York Times- We Try Harder, Then We Make It Up.

45) The New York Times, The Ultimate Lying Machine

46) When the News Absolutely, Positively Has to be Reported, We Make It Up.

47) We Answer to the Highest Authority- Ourselves

48) New York Times- Do They or Don’t They?

49) Hey, We All Make Mistakes

50) We Admit--When You’re Wrong, You’re Wrong

51) We Really Messed Up

52) We’re Really, Really Sorry—Honest

53) We Rarely Make Mistakes, But When We Do, They Tend To Be Lulus

54) What’s The Big Deal- We Usually Get It Right

55) Remember, The Washington Post Makes Mistakes Too

56) If You Don’t Believe Us- You Can Check The Facts on Google

57) We’ll Get It Right Yet

58) The Internet’s Replacing the Printed Press Anyway

59) What’s The Big Deal, It’s Not Like We Committed A Crime

60) What's the Big Deal- News Stories Are Like Subways—There’s A New One Arriving Every Few Minutes

61) We’ve Replaced the 5 W’s (Who, What, When, Where, Why) With the 5P’s (Pontificate, Proselytize, Persuade, Prevaricate, Persecute) and the 5 D’s ( Defraud, Distort, Deceive, Denounce, Dissemble)

62) When In Doubt, We Make It Up

63) Newspaper of Broken Record

64) All the News—And Then the Raines Came

65) Ethics—Who Needs “Em

66) We Have Nothing To Fear But -- Truth Itself

67) When the News Breaks, We “Fix” It

68) New York, New York, It’s A Wonderful Town—Just Don’t Rely on the Times

69) The New York Times would like to retract the following statement:

"All The News That's Fit To Print"

We have determined that this has been a daily lie for some time now, and we are diligently investigating how we can pin it all on Jason Blair. We appreciate your forbearance in this matter.

70) All the News That's Fit to Print, More or Less

71) "We decide, we report"

72) Maybe It’s True, Maybe it isn’t

73) Gray Lady down—and on her way out

74) We Always Knew What Was Fit To Print—Now We’re Really Not Sure

75) Neither Raines, Nor Sleet, Nor Dead Of Night Will Keep Us From Delivering Our Version of News

76) Raines’ Flops Keep Befalling On Our Headlines

77) Howell Raines’ Disdain Befalls Mainly Those in the Main

78) New York, New York- If We Can Make It Up There, We Can Make It Up Any Where

79) You Want To Be Sure, Check With the Christian Science Monitor

80) We Have To Find Some Way To Keep Our Circulation Up

81) All the news that fits....half is lies, the other half we made up.

82) All the new that's fit to print....(>>> anagram >>>).... That's it, then all profits went

83) All the news that's printed to fit our agenda

84) New York Times - The Novel . 85) All the News That’s Fit to Print- We triple guarantee it. There are no communists at the Times

86) We distort, you decide!

87) “Stuff We Heard From A Guy Who Says His Friend Heard About It"

88) Remember, Jayson Blair Got His Job Through the New York Times

89) The New York Times: Where Punch Is Out To Lunch

90) Punch- First Against the War, First Against the Peace, First in not axing lax newsmen

91) New York Times: Where Truth Takes A Holiday

92) New York Times: Where Affimative Action Begins and Proper Editing Ends

93) "If They're So Smart, Why Didn't The Catch Me?" Jayson Blair, May 2003

94) We Check It Twice, But Often Fail To Find Who's Naughty or Nice

95) More Screwups Like Blair And We Promise We'll Carry Cartoons

1 posted on 05/21/2003 6:41:37 PM PDT by tvn
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To: tvn
Jayson still be lying. No one gets out of rehab in six days without being AMA (against medical advice.)
2 posted on 05/21/2003 6:45:26 PM PDT by annyokie (provacative yet educational reading alert)
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To: tvn
Anyone think Blair is acquiring a more and more surreal personna? Soon he will say that this was all just a parody that he had planned from the very beginning.
Its also like cheating 80 year olds out of their pension money and then laughing about what fools they are. It speaks volumes about the perpetrator.
3 posted on 05/21/2003 6:49:11 PM PDT by JusPasenThru (We're through being cool (you can say that again, Dad))
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To: JusPasenThru
Narcissism.
4 posted on 05/21/2003 6:53:02 PM PDT by MEG33
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To: tvn
"... calling the paper a "snakepit," full of idiots ...

I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism," said Blair.

So which is it?

5 posted on 05/21/2003 7:01:47 PM PDT by jlogajan
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To: tvn
Far from repenting his misdeeds, the 27-year-old ex-New York Times reporter is glorying in them, celebrating himself for fleecing the esteemed newspaper and exhorting others to admire his audacity. In a lengthy interview published today in the New York Observer, Blair expresses no regret at having been fired from the Times, calling the paper a "snakepit," full of idiots and racists.

I'm sure glad this guy learned his lesson. /sarcasm off

Did anyone really excpect anything different, behavior wise?

I'm sure he'll soon be a host on yet another mush head show on some network.

Hey, if "lips" Monica can do it - so can this liberal turd for brains.

LVM

6 posted on 05/21/2003 7:08:25 PM PDT by LasVegasMac
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To: JusPasenThru
Jayson has a new job writing for Rainbow/Push ie "The Dumb and the Useless" extort the lazy and the pompous!
7 posted on 05/21/2003 7:11:54 PM PDT by STD
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To: MEG33
Deviant
8 posted on 05/21/2003 7:28:48 PM PDT by Ben Chad
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To: tvn

Blair expresses no regret at having been fired from the Times, calling the paper a "snakepit," full of idiots and racists.

LOL, he does have a point there.

9 posted on 05/21/2003 7:30:17 PM PDT by ancient_geezer
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To: LasVegasMac
Mr. Blair, Howard Stern on line 3 and Jerry Springer on line 2! Will you take their calls?

Oh, yes! Chris Matthews called. Mike Barnacle won't be able to stand in for him tomorrow night. Are you available?

10 posted on 05/21/2003 7:38:00 PM PDT by Bonaparte
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To: tvn
Jayson Blair Calls NY Times A "Snakepit"

Well can't say he's lying on that one can you?
11 posted on 05/21/2003 7:55:40 PM PDT by God luvs America
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To: annyokie
Not true.
12 posted on 05/21/2003 8:11:04 PM PDT by ItisaReligionofPeace ((the original))
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To: tvn
"a 'snakepit,' full of idiots and racists"
Jayson could apply that to the entire American "mainstream newsmedia"?
"If they’re all so brilliant and I’m such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn’t catch me?"
He's got a point.
"Blair enjoys a laugh at the expense of his former bosses...'I just couldn’t stop laughing.'"
Clio--the Muse of History--just can't stop laughing either. She put him up to it.

Clio found this presumption: "The Newspaper of Record" to be particularly offensive!

13 posted on 05/21/2003 8:40:37 PM PDT by Savage Beast (Vote Democrat! Vote for national--and personal--suicide! It's like being a suicide bomber!)
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To: tvn
The inevitable result when one abandons character for political correctness. An object lesson which the New York Times is as unlikely to lear from this affair as was the Democrat party from le affair Clinton.
14 posted on 05/21/2003 9:07:55 PM PDT by nathanbedford
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To: tvn
You forgot a couple

Pulp Fiction

We are lying (this time we are telling the truth)

15 posted on 05/21/2003 9:20:59 PM PDT by DrDavid
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To: tvn
Blair seems to be going about the business of peein_ all over the Old Grey Whor_.
16 posted on 05/21/2003 10:41:46 PM PDT by Ken H
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To: tvn
Snakepit, meet snake.
17 posted on 05/21/2003 10:42:58 PM PDT by Timesink
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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.


18 posted on 05/21/2003 10:43:50 PM PDT by Timesink
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To: annyokie
Jayson still be lying. No one gets out of rehab in six days without being AMA (against medical advice.)

They do if they were only in there as a cover in the first place.

19 posted on 05/21/2003 10:44:39 PM PDT by Timesink
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To: tvn
Jayson Blair is a worthless piece of crap and I am sad he didn't kill himself.

He needs to be removed from the gene pool.

20 posted on 05/21/2003 10:49:49 PM PDT by Fledermaus (Fed up in Tennessee)
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