TruthNews

U.S.: "The New York Times" Scandalized Over Deceitful Reporter

By Andrew F. Tully, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

A series of errors and deceptions by a staff reporter at "The New York Times" newspaper has led to the writer's resignation and an unusually lengthy account of his wrongdoing in the newspaper. The publication calls itself the newspaper of record. Some believe the incident may have badly damaged its credibility.

Washington, 14 May 2003 (RFE/RL) -- "The New York Times," one of the most prestigious newspapers in the United States, is trying to recover from the serious embarrassment of unwittingly publishing stories from a reporter who now admits to wholesale fabrication.

Jayson Blair resigned from the newspaper on 1 May, five days after one of his stories was challenged by the editor of a newspaper in Texas. Blair's article in the New York paper -- about a woman awaiting news of her son, who was missing in the Iraq war -- was strikingly similar to one that appeared in the Texas publication.

The newspaper assigned five reporters to look into Blair's case. On 11 May, it published a long account in which it said it had found problems in 36 of the 73 stories Blair had written since he was assigned to the national desk at the "The New York Times" last autumn.

Such a breach of trust can be disastrous for an American newspaper, according to Sean Aday, an assistant professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University in Washington.

Aday told RFE/RL that without credibility, newspapers and broadcasters have nothing to offer their readers and audiences, and will suffer financially until they can restore the public's confidence. If they cannot, they will simply go out of business, he said.

To prevent such abuses, U.S. news organizations are self-policing, Aday explained. Newspapers and news broadcasters exist in a culture of mutual trust, he said, with a mission to inform the public with articles of painstaking accuracy.

Aday said "The New York Times" can restore its readers' trust if it demonstrates that it is working hard to prevent a recurrence, and that Blair did not have too easy a time deceiving his editors.

In fact, Aday said, deceiving one's editors, especially at an American daily newspaper or at a broadcast station, is easier than one might think. Because of time constraints, he said, often there is little an editor can do to catch a deceptive reporter.

A similar argument was made by Howell Raines, the executive editor of "The New York Times," in an interview on 9 May on "The News Hour With Jim Lehrer" on PBS television. He said the editing process at a large metropolitan daily newspaper is not designed to catch a person like Blair.

Aday agreed with Raines -- but only up to a point. He noted that when Blair worked for the New York desk of "The New York Times" -- before his promotion to the newspaper's national desk -- the metropolitan editor wrote an e-mail to administrators in the newsroom that said: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the 'Times.' Right now."

Such a blunt message is hard to misinterpret, Aday said, and yet Blair's shortcomings were overlooked. By last autumn, the paper was assigning him to cover some of the most important stories of nationwide interest.

This, according to Aday, completely nullifies the American journalistic principle of self-policing. "The system itself fell apart. I think at some level Raines is whitewashing the issue a bit because top editors ignored the advice from lower editors who thought the guy was a problem. And instead of doing anything about it, [they] actually promoted him. I think this was specifically a failure with Raines, and I think a failure at the paper in general," he said.

There are virtually no laws governing the practice of independent journalism in America. For the most part, they are civil, not criminal, laws, and they are limited to forbidding news organizations from deliberately or carelessly publishing material that leads to substantial adverse effects for a person, business or institution.

The most important law governing journalism is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids any law that would limit freedom of expression. The amendment specifically cites the news media because of its importance in helping preserve other freedoms, according to Robert Levy, a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute, a private policy research center in Washington.

But Levy told RFE/RL that the framers of the U.S. Constitution did not take pains to cite journalism in order to set its free-speech rights on a higher plane than that of ordinary citizens.

Levy said the mention of the press is made simply because the media often have more influence on the voting public than an individual may have, and are more prominent in expressing their points of view.

As a result, Levy said, a newspaper or a radio news broadcaster has no more right to free speech -- and no more protection under the constitution -- than an ordinary American citizen. In fact, he said, any rights that journalists have derive from their basic human right of free expression.

He said freedom of expression "[is] a freedom that we had even before government -- that is, you can speak your mind about what you wish. So it's really confirmed by the First Amendment rather than conferred by the First Amendment."

Meanwhile, the embarrassment at "The New York Times" is far from over. The newspaper's investigation of Blair's work is continuing. Its focus is now shifting to more than 600 articles Blair wrote before his promotion to the national desk. And the newspaper is asking readers to report any problems they may know about to ensure that none of his errors -- or deceptions -- is overlooked.