May 13, 2003

SAD TIMES: I've read the

SAD TIMES: I've read the New York Times' account of the Jayson Blair affair over and over again, and I'm left just shaking my head at how Blair could've gotten away with such a deception for so long. He was not only kept on with the Times after he'd been caught plagiarizing, but was promoted, and put on more important assignments, and allowed to advance despite possessing such of journalistic integrity, not to mention work ethic.
One of my journalism professors in college once told us, on the last day of class, that an important part of being a reporter is resisting the urge to "make stuff up"- because there will be days when you're on deadline, your source hasn't called you back, and/or you're 40 words short and need to come up with something. Blair clearly began breaking this rule right way, saw a lack of consequences, and just kept right on going.
Now I can understand the Times not figuring out that Blair never actually finished college (in the journalism profession, I've found, no potential employer that's interviewed me has ever bothered to check the veracity of everything on my resume- though you'd expect the Times to have higher standards). But what I don't get is how Blair was able to file from his apartment in Brooklyn while pretending to be in other cities- I remember a similar bit "The Daily Show" did with Mo Rocca back during the 2000 campaign, where Rocca was riding in a cab and told the cameraman not to pull back too far, or else Sixth Avenue would be visible and Rocca's deception about being out on the trail would be exposed. In Blair's case, every one of his friends must have been in on the scam- there must have been dozens of nights when he went out to the Williamsburg bars, only to have a story in the paper the next day filed from Washington, DC, or West Virginia.

Posted by Stephen Silver at May 13, 2003 05:20 AM
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