Antony Loewenstein writes the Engineering Consent column on the workings of the media.
“Nowadays I think of Jayson Blair as an accident that ended my newspaper career in the same unpredictable way that a heart attack or a plane crash might have.”
Howell Raines, former Executive Editor of The New York Times, The Atlantic, May 2004
Throughout his autobiography, Burning Down My Masters’ House: My Life at The New York Times, former journalist, Jayson Blair, is in confessional mode. Rarely a page passes without an admission of unethical behaviour during his years at the paper that claims to print “all the news that’s fit.” Remarkably, however, Blair emerges from the 298-page book as a generally sympathetic character, a man all too aware of his mental breakdowns and drug and alcohol addiction. There are exceptions, however.
Blair was not beyond taking advantage of his position at America’s most respected newspaper: “Public relations people substituted theatre tickets, free meals and drinks, and, sometimes, even sex for mentions”, he writes. “Journalists at The Times were considered to have a weak spot for sex, just like the nerds so many of them once were in high school. There were many stories.” Blair then recounts a time he slept with a blonde PR girl in exchange for positive spin in the paper.
Conservative journalist, Andrew Sullivan, writing in March this year, says Blair is a character without remorse for his “crimes” against the Times (namely plagiarising, lying and creating characters on 35 stories). “You might imagine”, writes Sullivan, “that a young man like Blair might feel the slightest twinge of gratitude for an institution that gave him an extraordinary opportunity at a young age, that gave him front-page treatment, forgave a catalogue of errors, granted him easy access to employee support (including drug treatment), and pioneered the idea of giving minority reporters [Blair is black] the best changes imaginable.” Alas, Blair is no such person.
In his only Australian interview, Blair told Webdiary that despite the massive controversy of his story and the forced resignation of two senior Times executives (Executive Editor and 1992 Pulitzer Winner, Howell Raines and Managing Editor, Gerald Boyd), he wonders how much has really changed at the paper. “There has been little done to address journalistic fraud and bias in news reports. It’s really hard to say because in a campaign year people are always going to take unfair swings at the paper. It is something that is going to be judged in the long-term – not so much by whether there is another scandal, but by whether people begin trusting newspapers again.”
Howell Raines was one of the victims of the Blair scandal, leaving after 25 years of service to The Times. Breaking his silence in The Atlantic magazine this month, in a long, passionate and angry essay, Raines argues that the newspaper has been in denial for years of the need to modernise and appeal to a wider audience, rather than just the traditionalists. He paints a picture of a dysfunctional internal system of favouritism and lazy journalism and “the enveloping attitude on the newsroom-floor has become ‘we can do it slower, because by and by, someone on this great staff will do it better.'” Most damningly, however, he cites the mantra of the majority at the Times: “it’s not news until we say it’s news.” This “manana journalism” has left the paper open for reporters who stand out. Jayson Blair was one such reporter.
When the Times printed an unprecedented 14,000 mea culpa on May 11, 2003, Blair had truly brought the paper to its knees. “A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation byTimes journalists has found”, began the apology. “The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.”
In his book, Blair acknowledges his mistakes, but questions the gravity of his transgressions when compared against others in the papers’ past. He cites Walter Duranty, a Times reporter who “denied the existence of a government-induced famine that starved millions of Ukrainian peasants” between 1932 and 1933. Stalin’s purge killed roughly seven million people during a period when children were left to die while their parents were taken away and killed for the crime of simply owning property. Many historians claim that the (Pulitzer-prize winning) Times coverage contributed to the West’s lack of intervention. Astoundingly, Blair says that a few months after he left the Times, the Pulitzer Board investigated Duranty’s work, concluding it “falls seriously short” but refused to recall the prize.
A more recent example is Judith Miller, star reporter on the Times and principle writer on Iraq’s supposed WMD before the Iraq war. It has emerged that her sources were primarily the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and Ahmed Chalabi, the discredited Iraqi exile and once the doyen of the Washington, neo-conservative set. (The Herald‘s Alan Ramsey provides background on Chalabi atThe ‘top’ Iraqi who has no credibility. To this day, Miller has been supported for her WMD coverage by senior editorial staff at the Times.
Blair now sees the Miller style of journalism as a key failing in the current culture at the Times, of supporting, rather than questioning, establishment power and agendas. “The paper lost several key editors in 2001 and 2002 who were strong critical thinkers who would have questioned many of the claims made in Miller’s stories. Among them was Stephen Engelberg, Judith’s long-time editor, who went to become the managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland. There is some question about whether she would have been allowed to run wild if he was still there.”
“On a more global front”, continues Blair, “[Miller] fits within the argument about elitism. The Timeseditors and reporters operate within certain circles and the members of those circles supported the idea of ousting Saddam Hussein. The bottom line was that the paper did not look for a second opinion, and therefore mislead its readers and the international community.”
It is a point reiterated by Raines and sounds a warning to newspaper proprietors and editors everywhere – great institutions need multiple voices and backgrounds to prosper. “I watched, with increasing alarm, chain ownership [of newspapers and media outlets] wring higher profits out of local newspapers by cutting the newsroom budgets on which sound journalism depends.” Furthermore, the importance of fully resourced publications was even more important, according to Raines, “as tabloid television, Britain’s declining newspaper values, and the unsourced ranting of Internet bloggers polluted the journalistic mainstream of the United States.” Perhaps Raines doesn’t like the accountability and speed at which media players, from bloggers, outsiders and commentators, can comment and critique the performance of the Times. The rise of the internet, email and search engines has left newspapers no longer able to get away with the inaccuracies and biases of yesteryear.
The release of Burning Down My Master’s House drew the predictable responses from the mainstream media outlets, says Blair. “It has been criticised by reviewers who are journalists and received a lot of support from people who are interesting in the media, mental health issues, race and other topics discussed in the book. I receive a lot of notes from students, journalists and those who are struggling with mental health issues or have family members who struggle with mental health issues. I also, on the other side of the coin, receive emails from people who like to throw around the word ‘nigger’. One area of support that I did not expect was the positive reception the book has received among American conservatives who can relate to the idea of bias being a big problem in the American media.”
One of the themes of Blair’s book is his claim that the Times is an elitist paper, blissfully unaware of, and unwilling to, report issues from a variety of perspectives. He now says that the paper is vital around the world in “pushing American foreign policy and supporting the establishment.” Moreover, people at the Times, though generally liberals, according to Blair, are “out of touch with conservatives, minorities and any other group that is considered outside the East Coast liberal mainstream.” For this reason, the paper is under increasing pressure to diversify its pool of reporters.
With incalculable demands to perform in a highly competitive newsroom, Times staff are frequently encouraged to cut corners to break stories. Blair tells the story of “toe touching”, where journalists hurriedly booked flights into places where freelancers had already produced news reports, and then rewrote the stories to create the impression that the bylined journalist had done the original reporting. It is these kind of inside tales that makes the Blair book an invaluable insight into Timesculture.
When asked about the day-to-day lifestyle as a Times journalist, Blair is brutally honest: “Reporters are very much motivated by beating their competitors and proving their own intelligence ahead of anyone else. That’s the problem you see in the Times weapons of mass destruction coverage. You had a group of reporters who wanted to prove that the weapons existed because everyone else said that they did not. They let their own biases, and close relationships with their sources, cloud their judgement.”
In the fall-out of the Blair scandal, the newspaper instituted an ombudsman, the public editor .
Executive Editor, Bill Keller, said in late October, 2003 that, “we wanted someone with the reporting skills to figure out how decisions get made at the paper, the judgment to reach conclusions about whether and where we go astray, and the writing skills to explain all of this to our readers.” Daniel Okrent commenced the position on December 1 last year.
Blair is not optimistic that the Times have learned the important lessons from his scandal. “The problem with my class and those of other journalistic war criminals is that the American journalistic community would like to paint us as far-out aberrations in an attempt to insulate themselves from damage. This has the affect of causing many to put on blinders about the root causes, the pressures and so on, that cause things like this to happen. It’s an industry that’s still in denial.”
Studies suggest public trust in the media is at an all time low. Since the Blair controversy, a number of high-profile journalists in America have been fired for plagiarism and inaccuracies, including Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winning Times journalist, who had placed his byline on pieces largely written by a freelancer. In late April this year, the top editor of USA Today, Karen Jurgensen, resigned after it was discovered she had allowed or ignored a senior correspondent to fabricate major parts of at least eight stories in the past 10 years. Mainstream news journalism is in trouble, and Australia is not immune.
Blair offers a solution to this current malaise. “I believe that the answers to solving the problems involve re-examining fairness, balance, objectivity and internal controls just as police departments had to do after brutality and corruption scandals in the 1970s, and as the executive branch of the American government had to do after Watergate and in other similar situations.”
The Sydney Morning Herald is planning to release more stringent editorial policies in the near future in reaction to the Blair scandal. These changes intend to clarify the use of unnamed sources and unattributed quotes. It is only through pro-active actions such as these that mainstream newspapers have any hope of regaining the ever-decreasing faith of the general public. Journalists are supposed to be suspicious of those in power and question their motives and background. The frequency of these fundamentals is becoming ever more hidden in spin.
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FURTHER READING
� Extracts of Howell Raines writings in The Atlantic, May 2004 on his times at The New York Times: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/05/raines-excerpts.htm.
� Sydney Morning Herald review of Burning Down My Master’s House:http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/30/1083224570561.html.
� Andrew Sullivan, journalist and blogger, writing on the Jayson Blair scandal:http://andrewsullivan.com/main-article.php?artnum=20040314.
� Hugh Pearson, of The Washington Post, on the ethics of Jayson Blair:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37384-2004Mar6.html.
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