By Vincent Safuto staff writer
May 27, 2003
It's never fun to see someone destroy his or her life, and the New York Times-Jayson Blair affair has done even more: It's damaged the reputation of not only a newspaper, but a whole industry.
Blair is the young man who built a career in journalism on fakery and fraud, and used a system, designed to help talented minorities move into major positions in the news business, to avoid being held to account for his misdeeds.
He claimed that personal problems caused him to commit these acts, but he has a record of such acts dating back to 1999, and other newspapers that employed him are now taking a second look at stories he wrote for them.
Journalism is a field that punishes such behavior harshly and rightly so. The system, though, is highly susceptible to manipulation and the results have been devastating. In the time before a writer is caught, he or she can cause irreparable damage to a publication and its reputation.
The rest of us in the news business pay even more for the actions of the cheaters, and see our own reputations and credibility sullied.
Stephen Glass falsified stories for several magazines. As a reader, I remember reading those stories and enjoying them, finding them interesting and off-beat. I feel "taken" to learn that they were for the most part fakes.
Glass recently wrote a book, a work of fiction like many of his articles, and pulled down a nice six-figure advance from some publisher. Personally, if the book was on fire, I wouldn't spit on it.
As for Glass, well, Tony Soprano once said about a fellow mobster he despised, "If he was drowning, I'd throw him a cinderblock."
Just as Glass recently did "60 Minutes" to tout his book and mouth psychobabble about why he did what he did and how sorry he is, Blair will turn up on some show to whine about how tough and competitive it was in the news business, and maybe throw in how everyone despised him because he was African-American.
The New York Times is at fault, too, for not acting on one editor's recommendation that Blair stop writing for the paper immediately, and then making Blair the lead reporter on the sniper case, allowing him to spread falsehoods about the investigation and deceive millions of readers.
Truth to tell, I envied Blair. Young, connected to the top levels of the Times, his job was the dream of many of us who labor in the trenches at small papers and maybe have decided that that's where we'd rather stay.
He ruined his career, though, and has made everyone else's job a lot harder. For that, his punishment is harsh, and it must be maintained. Like Janet Cooke, Blair should never darken the door of a news media outlet again, if only to protect the credibility of the news business, or what little is left.
He'll say he's sorry, but sometimes it's too late to say you're sorry, and this is one of those times.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).
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