Posted on 05/22/2003 5:07:56 AM PDT by Valin
NEW YORK - A committee of 20 New York Times staffers and two outside news executives will review the newspaper's newsroom policies following a scandal the Times has called "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."
The Times on Wednesday named retiring Associated Press President and CEO Louis D. Boccardi and Joann Byrd, outgoing Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial page editor, to the committee. The committee, headed by the Times' Assistant Managing Editor Allan M. Siegal, "will conduct a comprehensive review" of the Times' newsroom policies "in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair episode," according to a memo to the newspaper's staff.
Blair, a reporter, resigned from the Times on May 1 after the newspaper found fraud, plagiarism and inaccuracies in 36 of 73 articles written between October and April that it examined. "The committee's charge is to determine when, where, how and why our newsroom's culture, organizational processes and actions led to a failure of our journalism," the memo said. A third non-Times member may be added, the memo said, and the outside members will "serve as our sounding board and reality check: We want to be told forcefully if we are going too easy on ourselves."
Tentative topics include hiring practices, recruiting and career tracking; the editorial process, including detecting and preventing errors; ethical concerns, such as the use of unidentified sources; and whether the Times should hire an ombudsman. The committee will make recommendations to Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd.
How about just taking the gas pipe.
BIAS?
Your journalism failed when it became an advocate for "Liberal"/Democrat politics and "social justice" instead of an advocate and reporter of TRUTH.
"We want to be told forcefully if we are going too easy on ourselves."
Just how "easy" you're going on yourselves is completely beside the point. Unless you people commit yourselves to TRUTH, you will fall right back into the same old trap of political and social advocacy, and your "newspaper" will be nothing more than a propaganda organ.
If you people were as "brilliant" as Jayson Blair flattered you to be, you would awaken to the reality that, for all your high-faluting credentials, your scorn of TRUTH in favor of "Liberal"/Democrat social and political propaganda has made fools of you and made a joke of your newspaper for history and all the world to see.
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger,
Executive Editor Howell Raines
Managing Editor Gerald Boyd.
I don't need a panel to tell me who's responsible, those three ran the paper, they decided to put "deversity" above journalistic integrity and ultimately as with any organization, the responsibility comes from the top. All this panel is going to do is find some underling to take the fall.
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