Posted on 06/03/2003 12:06:37 PM PDT by tvn
When it Raines,it pours (buckets)-- Times scandal gaining more attention by the day
Does anyone remember the name Jayson Blair?
How about Howell Raines?
Both in their way have disgraced The New York Times, but at this point at least one seems to have been forgotten. That's Jayson Blair, the plagiarist, who's now out peddling a book idea.
The other, Raines, seems to grow in national importance by the day, but not in the importance the Times is used to or particularly relishes.
The Blair plagiarism scandal may not yet have made Raines into a household name in, say, the manner of Monica Lewinsky. But it has made Raines and The Times Topic A in a lot of forums it would prefer not to be in, such as the right-leaning cable talk shows, where Times-bashing is quickly assuming role once served by Clinton-bashing.
No wonder. The harder Raines works to bring the Times newsroom back under control, the more it appears to move beyond his control.
In the episode's latest development, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the Times' publisher, is headed down to Washington today in what looks like a mission to avert a potential mutiny. Even before the Times dispatched Blair to the capital to cover last fall's sniper spree, the D.C. bureau was said to be unhappy over the way Raines had undercut its traditional independence from New York.
Back at headquarters, another revolt is afoot. A number of Times staffers who have been called in for questioning by the so-called Siegal committee have reportedly defied the summons.
The 23-person committee, headed by assistant managing editor Al Siegal, is charged with investigating the chain of events in the Blair fiasco and making recommendations for reform. It is expected to issue a full report on its findings sometime next month.
The holdouts apparently agree with Nancy Sharkey, the training and development editor who quit the panel last week, reportedly because she felt its mission had taken on the air of a witch hunt.
In another possible sign of dissent, a second committee, headed by assistant managing editors Craig Whitney and Andrew Rosenthal, has taken it upon itself to gin up suggestions for improving in-house communications.
Meanwhile, the Times continues to take a licking in the press. Some of the harshest criticism came from New York magazine media columnist Michael Wolff, who attacked Raines' decision to suspend national correspondent Rick Bragg after learning that Bragg had relied heavily on the reporting of an unpaid, uncredited freelancer for one of his feature stories.
"Not only was what [Bragg] did not wrong, it's ridiculous he got reprimanded for it. It's a bureaucratic response," Wolff told the Hartford Courant. "There is a kind of literalism here that is the refuge of the non-brilliant."
Raines was also widely criticized for failing to speak out earlier after Bragg defended his practices by saying they were common at the Times. The silence from the top of the masthead left Times reporters no choice but to defend their honor by blasting Bragg publicly, prompting his quick resignation.
The New York Post weighed in on events this weekend by getting a professional oddsmaker to estimate the probabilities of various Times personnel resigning or being fired. His odds on Raines getting pushed out were 1:5.
Some papers have chosen to express their revised view of the Times with actions rather than words. The Lufkin (Texas) Daily News dropped New York Times editorialist Maureen Dowd's column from its editorial page on Friday in response to a column in which she misrepresented the meaning of a remark made by President Bush.
"The New York Times' considerable credibility problem is now our problem, as well," wrote editor Marc Masferrer in explaining the decision.
Earlier, Denver's Rocky Mountain News took a newly skeptical stance toward Times reporting, enacting a rule that reports from the Times based on quotes from anonymous sources must be cleared with top editors before being reprinted.
Also last week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch responded in print to readers who had demanded that the paper stop using The New York Times' news service, accusing it of liberal bias. The paper said it will continue to feature Times reporting based on the Times’ record of credibility.
The Top 10:
1) All the News That We See Fit to Print
2) Some News, Some Fiction, You Figure It Out
3) All The News We Can Make Up or Steal
4) We Can Fool All of the People Some of the Time- That’s Enough for Us
5) What’s The Big Deal, It’s Not Like We Committed A Crime
6) You Want To Be Sure, Check With the Christian Science Monitor or Washington Post
7) "If They're So Smart, Why Didn't The Catch Me?" Jayson Blair, May 2003
8) Even the Stuff We Make Up Is Better Than Any Other Paper
9) Pretending To Send More Reporters To Cover More Stories Than Any Other Newspaper in the World
10) Countering the Country’s Conservative Course
The full list of 140 entries 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 Make 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) Some News, Some Fiction, You Figure It Out
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 Pinch Is Out To Lunch
90) Pinch- 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) Any More Screwups Like Blair And We Promise We'll Carry Cartoons
96) Pulp Fiction
97) We are lying (this time we are telling the truth)
98) Facts...Schmacts
99) A lot of words we figure we can print"
100) LIAR, LIAR, PRINT'S ON FIRE.
101) Call Us With A Tip, We’ll Make Up the Rest
102) All the news that's fixed to print.
103) All The News That Fits, We Print.
104) Covering the World From 44th Street and Broadway
105) Rewriting News From Across The Globe
106) Even the Stuff We Make Up Is Better Than Any Other Paper
107) We Never Let the Truth Stand Between the Times And a Good Story
108) Hey, At Least We Got The Truman-Dewey Election Right
109) We Know What Our Readers Want—So We Just Make It Up
110) We’re the World’s Largest Newspaper- We Can’t Make Everything Up
111) Research Shows Our Readers Usually Rate Our Made Up Articles Higher that The Real Stories Any Way
112) That's Newsertainment!
113) Pinch's Fiction
114) Darkest Ink In the Business
115) You Sayin' We're Liars?
116) We Prefer To Think Of It As "Reality Journalism"
117) More Than Equal Opportunity Employer
118) Ignore The Phony Reporting - Check out Those Hooters In Our Macy's Underwear Ads!
119) Thriftiest Traveling Reporters Anywhere
120) Printed On Real Paper Made From Actual Trees- Only Our News Is Recycled
121) Now 50% More Absorbent
122) Soy-Based Inks - Won't Spoil Flavor Of Your Fish!
123) So What If We Lie A Lot - We're From New York
124) Fact-checking? Why bother!
125) Ample Free Parking In Employee Garage
126) Pretending To Send More Reporters To Cover More Stories Than Any Other Newspaper in the World
127) Countering the Country’s Conservative Course
128) We Know What’s Right—Trust Us!
129) When Better Stories Are Reported, the Times Will Make Them Up
130) Us Lie? Never!
131) NY Times : Merging Facts and Opinion
132) Where Reporters Interpret the News
133) Once The Newspaper of Record
134) Please Believe Us
135) Reporting What We Think You Should Know
136) The New York Times Knows Best
137) Home of the Anonymous Source
138) In New York, Everyone Reads the Times—They Just Can’t Trust It
139) Where Today’s Scoops Become Tomorrow’s Retractions
140) We Get It Right, Or At Least Close
Also--- Motto on Jayson Blair's Desk- The Lies Start Here
Motto on Rick Bragg’s Desk: I Never Met A Stringer I Didn’t Like
Motto on Howell Raines' Desk: (1) Don't Bother Me With The Truth, I Have A Paper To Run! (2) That’s Close Enough
Motto on Pinch Sulzberger's Desk: (1) The Buck Passes By Here (2) I Got My Job By Inheriting The New York Times
They have only themselves to blame. They made the Blair story front page Sunday. They could have buried it on page 15 Wednesday and said "sorry, won't happen again" - end of story. Whatever political or emotional reasons compelled them to sensationalize the story, the reasons are their own doing.
"The New York Times' considerable credibility problem is now our problem, as well," wrote editor Marc Masferrer in explaining the decision.
Earlier, Denver's Rocky Mountain News took a newly skeptical stance toward Times reporting, enacting a rule that reports from the Times based on quotes from anonymous sources must be cleared with top editors before being reprinted.
Also last week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch responded in print to readers who had demanded that the paper stop using The New York Times' news service, accusing it of liberal bias. The paper said it will continue to feature Times reporting based on the Times’ record of credibility.
And so readers, that about wraps the good news of the Times in a State of Collapse for today.
Sounds like the Times is using McCarthyistic-like tactics internally, eh?
The Great Black Hope: The Jayson Blair Case and the New York Times
That oughta reverberate in editorial offices.
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