May 11, 2003

N.Y. Times Uncovers Dozens Of Faked Stories by Reporter

The New York Times, in an extraordinary admission of journalistic fraud in at least 36 articles, called the repeated deceptions of reporter Jayson Blair "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."

Describing Blair as "a troubled young man veering toward professional self-destruction," the paper today recounted how the reporter faked stories from Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio and Texas without ever leaving New York, using a cell phone and laptop computer to disguise his whereabouts and deceive his bosses.

It is a portrait of a wide-ranging management failure as well, as the Times's top editors failed to heed one red flag after another while promoting Blair to national reporter. In April 2002, metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman sent newsroom administrators a two-sentence e-mail message that read: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now."

Instead, Blair was handed such sensitive assignments as the Washington sniper case and interviewing the parents of soldiers wounded or killed in Iraq -- assignments in which, as The Washington Post reported last week, he repeatedly invented or plagiarized the comments of those involved.
[...]
Landman opposed Blair's elevation to staff reporter in 2001, but a committee that included Gerald Boyd, now the managing editor, recommended the move, and Joseph Lelyveld, then the executive editor, approved it. Landman said top management had made clear that furthering the career of a reporter like Blair, who is African American, was part of the newspaper's commitment to diversity.

So, the guy got a total pass when he got caught lying and was even promoted because he was black.
[You know, I know of an African-American Dimocrat Liberal blogger who gets the same kind of pass in the blogosphere; his blog is a bash-fest on President Bush and Conservatives, with only loud, but inarticulate, in-your-face contrarianism and no reason, logic or persuasive argument to win people over to his perverse way of thinking, yet he's considered "thoughtful" and "fresh" by many.
All because he makes his blackness a prominent feature on the front page--a rarity in cyberspace. And so many "care" about "tolerance" and "diversity" in the blogosphere, as well as at the Times.
But I digress. Sort of.]
Back to the NYSlimes: How long is it going to take Howell Raines and his band of merry trolls to figure out that another big reason they gave this Blair guy and his made-up stories the nod was because they're letting their Liberal ideological agenda drive their "news?"
5 will get you 10 that Blair's stories made it to print, because his "tone" suited theirs?
Trying to apologize for Blair's fraud doesn't begin to atone for the harm they'd already done just in the last 2 years, pushing stories that were anti-Bush, anti-America, anti-capitalism and anti-republicanism...they counted the U.S.A. out in our War on Aghanistan, tried feebly again with the War on Saddam with disinformation for months before it started, have run every anti-Bush, anti-GOP story they could drum up, while keeping Bush-haters and Conservatism-bashers like Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd front and center on their editorial pages.
The failings of the NYSlimes didn't begin and don't end with this reporter Blair--the Times is a Liberal propaganda machine, not a newspaper.
The sooner the Times staff makes it peace with that truth, the better off we all will be.
Then, with that being a given, no-one will have to apologize for any of their content being "fraudulent," because it will be avowedly and knowingly presented as the agitprop it's been for quite awhile now.*

*This includes their new policy implemented last year of publishing gay "wedding" announcements. As Sen. Santorum's misquoted statement on gay sex revealed, many of us in America aren't "ready" for gay marriage to be as accepted as normal marriage and probably never will be.
Like Sen. Santorum, I love the sinners, but hate the sin. If this offends my gay friends, I'm sorry but that's the way it is.
For the NYTimes to implement this policy, however, implies that gay "marriage" is a fait accompli in America, both morally and legally, which is not the case at all.
Even Leftist Dim Sen. Hillary "Living History" Clinton is anti-gay marriage and she represents the state of the NYTimes!
Nope. The Times has tried to pass off Ideology as Reporting one too many times.
Blair was made a scapegoat because he pushed the envelope too far; apparently the subjects of his stories started complaining.
But hide and watch: Howell Raines and his Liberal band will pretend that the "problem" is solved when it is their own objectivity that is the real problem.
How do you think Blair was able to get away with it for as long as he did?
His skin color couldn't and doesn't explain it all.
Here's the link to the Times own version of the story:
Witnesses and Documents Unveil Deceptions in a Reporter's Work

Warning: It's 10 pages long...and they're still looking!