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A TEAM OF FIVE
reporters, three editors and two researchers uncovered dozens of errors in
stories the Times had printed under Blair’s byline; the corrections for
the stories between October 2002 and April 2003 alone ran almost two full
pages, with offenses divided into “whereabouts,” “denied reports,”
“factual errors” and “plagiarism.” The second sentence of the story read,
“The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal
of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the
newspaper.”
Since he began his career in
journalism, Blair has been known for two things: being able to play the
internal politics of an institution with uncanny skill and having a
problem with accuracy. Those two traits combined in a horrible confluence
for the Times. Blair’s remarkable fraud had come unraveled in late April.
The editor of the San Antonio Express-News had officially requested that
the Times investigate a story about the family of a missing soldier that
carried Blair’s byline, a story that seemed almost identical to one the
San Antonio paper had run. After being asked to produce receipts showing
he had, in fact, traveled to Texas, Blair resigned; in a letter to the
Times’s top editors, he apologized for a “lapse in journalistic
integrity.”.gif)
 Total Fiction
Sunday’s story
honestly detailed the startling breakdown in communication among Times
editors about Blair’s extensive—and well-chronicled—history of problems
with accuracy and sloppiness. The paper was unflinching in its description
of how the Times failed to track Blair’s expense reports and missed
glaring warning signs along the way—like the time a national editor saw
Blair in the newsroom hours after he had supposedly filed a story from
West Virginia. Times metro editor Jonathan Landman was quoted as being
particularly vocal about Blair; in April 2002 Landman, the Times story
reports, sent a two-sentence e-mail message to newsroom administrators:
“We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.”
But there’s plenty that the Times report, which ran
under the rubric CORRECTING THE RECORD, didn’t fully explore, namely how a
troubled young reporter whose short career was rife with problems was able
to advance so quickly. Internally, reporters had wondered for years
whether Blair was given so many chances—and whether he was hired in the
first place—because he was a promising, if unpolished, black reporter on a
staff that continues to be, like most newsrooms in the country, mostly
white. The Times also didn’t address an uncomfortable but unavoidable
topic that has been broached with some of the paper’s top editors during
the past week: by favoring Blair, did the Times end up reinforcing some of
the worst suspicions about the pitfalls of affirmative action? And will
there be fewer opportunities for young minority reporters in the
future? |
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