ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT

With the recent Katie Couric interview on Dateline NBC last evening, I found it somewhat appropriate to dust off this old chestnut from about a year ago that I wrote concerning the disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. Haven't proof-read or submitted this to anyone so please excuse typos or errors when I transferred it from my PALM to WordPerfect.
Nick Yaekle
March 6, 2004

Discredited! One Man’s Deceit; One Newspaper’s Fall
By Nick Yaekle
May 11, 2003

"If you see it in the Sun, its so."
Words that have set the pace for millions of children from generations not so long passed and their faith and belief in the legend of Santa Claus. The Sun, once New York's premiere newspaper, is now defunct, having been pushed from the wires by New York's, and the nation's if not the world's, most respected and accurate newspaper, The New York Times. It printed an editorial sometime during the early twentieth century in response to a little girl named Virginia's query as to whether Santa Claus did indeed exist. If you're familiar with this letter and the story and legend that has since followed, you're aware that her exasperated father advised her to write a letter to the New York Sun, and if indeed The Sun were to proclaim Santa real, then Santa did exist. Newspapers, after all, wouldn't print lies or myths or anything other than factual unless explicitly stated as Op-Ed or the staple letter to the editor. Newspapers, I'm sure he explained to his inquisitive daughter, check their facts and re-check them for authenticity, accuracy and then double re-check them for detail and source.

People depend on the newspapers of the world to report our surroundings for current state and for historical purpose. While most newspapers tend to write reports with some political bias and scatterings of jaded opinion pieces, the reason and cause of newspapers remains the same--news reporting. And some papers, in keeping with local traditions, tend to have fewer things to report than those in larger metropolitan areas and might report to the interested parties that Doc Brown was once again driven home from Charlie's bar and that farmer Glenn had managed to harvest his final crop before the torrential downpours hit the area last evening, leaving the waters of the Hoolahoo River out of their banks. Filling the news is a tradition nearly as long as Benjamin Franklin's first newspaper itself.

I am not a journalist; not by trade nor by education. I have my education in English communications but as far as understanding the inner-workings and trappings of the day-to-day operations of a small newspaper, let alone arguably the world's best known, perhaps most respectable, newspaper, I may be at a layman’s loss. I can use deductive reasoning and logic and common sense to know what I know about the organizations serving news around the world. Bias, I am savvy enough to weed out.

Today, on the front page of The New York Times home page on the internet, one 14 page article linked to an editor's note and a cited 14 page link to yet another article, the editors and publishers of the esteemed news vehicle which prints "All the News That's Fit to Print" acknowledged and admitted that on May 1, 2003, Times staff reporter Jayson Blair had fabricated, lied, and plagiarized at LEAST in 36 of the 73 articles he'd written for the paper since October 2002. Blair, 27, had climbed the ranks in the regarded organization as first an intern and eventually, due to short staffing during the recent disgraceful skirmish in Iraq, been elevated to homeland staff reporter, covering areas in Texas, Ohio, West Virginia, and around his hometown in Virginia and the Washington D.C. area.

Blair was allegedly using his laptop computer to access around-the-clock news wires and photo archives accessible by password and user name to Times reporters. Additionally, according to reports released by The Times in their own paper, he was using his cellphone to call into the office under the guise he was on assignment when indeed he was sitting in the comfort of his New York apartment. The fact that he had neglected to turn in substantial receipts for travel expenses was apparently chalked up to expected dedication of one tapped with the holy grail of being able to call themselves a New York Times reporter.

Further, the article makes hearty mention of the fact that Blair is African-American. The relevance of this fact seems somewhat contrived; is its purpose to point out a view of "see what happens when he hire a black?" or to be viewed as a badge for the hiring practices of The New York Times or better yet, is this an inroad to play the proverbial Johnny Cochran-like "race card" should The Times be able to forge some RICO or otherwise inane lawsuit against the enterprising journalist.

The suit should come from shareholders of The New York Times toward the management staff and the editors who allowed the integrity of the paper to be compromised while all along aware of the reported inconsistencies and inaccuracies in many of his articles, as well as lack of “evidence,” if you will, of any business travel on Mr. Blair's part. If I were a shareholder or upper management of The Times, I would certainly be interested in answers to some questions pertaining to the accountability of my editors and hands-on management.

I commend The Times for “front paging” their own faux pas. I suppose they’ve hired a political strategist or public relations guru to aid them on their course of action; by choosing the “honesty is the best policy” route they probably lost fewer readers, if any, and perhaps gained some for their brutal candor about their mistakes, misgivings, and careless fact-checking.

What’s most interesting, if not disturbing, is the depth in which the paper went about revealing Mr. Blair's work history and habits, as well as a few well placed allusions to his drinking scotch and smoking too many cigarettes. They also planted notions on a couple of occasions the idea that Blair was able to work hours deemed impossible by most and always full of energy and enthusiasm. Perhaps this is a not so well cloaked attempt to allude that Mr. Blair was on some sort of drug, perhaps one commonly known as an upper like amphetamines or cocaine. Or maybe it is the most convenient outlet to subtly discredit any talent or success Mr. Blair may possess.

Mr. Blair's depth of deceit and intricate details are tripped only by his own sloppiness, (another possible reference to possible drug use) was reported by the editors and staff of The New York Times. If this is true, how could Mr. Blair have gotten away with it for so long? The paper also reported that while it was commonly believed that Mr. Blair had finished his education and received his degree in journalism, contact with his college confirmed that Mr. Blair had yet to complete over a year’s worth of course work to be eligible for his bachelor’s degree. Again, I ask, if this is true, why hadn’t the human resources department found this when they should have been verifying facts pertinent to his hiring and continuing employment. It makes one wonder how often prospective employers really do check resume’ facts! (By the way, if there are any hospitals seeking a good doctor, I have my medical degree from Harvard. . .)

I guess my question is this, as succinct as I can put it. What gauge do we use to judge credibility and authenticity and to what sectors, public or private, are those standards held within accountability? To explain, how is it that we are expected to accept the “lies” the government tells us (not conspiracy ones, but ones later admitted buried within a Freedom of Information Act document) and feign patriotism while our government continues to wield its wrath the world over, in the name of homeland security and national security interests? Aside from the alleged plagiarism of Mr. Blair, was any harm really committed? Don’t Americans feel more secure when we’re told of the good from our newspapers instead of all the crime and strife and injustice? How would it feel in the morning to wake up to a newspaper where the most negative thing within the entire front page section was that there was a 20% chance of showers later on that evening?

We rely on the news media for goings-on in our surroundings. The public dependency on news wires has become so great, that the balance of power, financially and politically, as well as socially, hangs somewhere between these wires. Americans have strayed from reading and experiencing and have gone the way once outlined by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his speech to a Harvard graduating class entitled “The American Scholar.” We have dis-learned the ability to form thought and opinion without the bias and egging-on of our leaders, media, and our entertainment industry. We have become mere man-thinking, not thinking man. Sadness surely falls over the memory of Emerson as he surely hoped that within some reasonable time, his prediction of a society so clouded with the thoughts and ideas of others would tire itself and maybe, with some glimmer of hope, revert to times when independent thought and action was our only bastion of freedom and the last avenue to true inner peace.

Mr. Blair resigned from The New York Times. I simply find the fact that I even know about the man and the circumstances to which he allegedly resigned not only distasteful, but dirty and wrong. We are human, and as human, are expected to make mistakes and learn from those. We should not be sentenced, especially in public, for our private misgivings and bad choices. I believe that somehow, Mr. Blair’s civil rights have been violated and his privacy invaded when The New York Times chose today to expose not only his professional shortcomings, but also when they made mention of their take on issues in his life which are perhaps deemed by some as self-destructive.

I do not take the side of Mr. Blair. Had Mr. Blair chose to be a novelist, it is likely his name would have never been heard outside of the realm of his immediate circle of friends and limited fans. And he could have created a world in which to play and create and be God, had he chosen the fiction writing field as his choice of occupation. But when the water settles and the wheat is separated from the chaff, Mr. Blair was a minion of truth, and he led us astray with his incredulous ways, thus possibly scarring the elite profession of New York Times writers, good bad, present, past and future, for many, many years to come.

To: The New York Times
Attn: Mr. Jayson Blair
New York City, New York USA

Dear Mr. Blair,
I told my son I would write to ask you a question. You see, he’s at an age where he is beginning to question that which he cannot see. His faith in what I tell him as his father is beginning to be cracked by his friends and peer pressure. The other day he asked me if there was really an Easter Bunny. I explained to him about faith, and believing, and growing up, and all those good things. But I told him, in the tradition of patriotism and truth and the American way, that we would write a letter to The New York Times and ask them if there was an Easter Bunny. I told him if he saw it in The Times, it was so. I kindly request that you answer his question here within the pages of your esteemed and highly respected and accurate newspaper so that he and all the other children of America can maybe, if just for an extra year or so, still have faith in what it is we stand for, why we stand for it, and continue to be a child in a world that no longer lets four-year olds be children.

Humbly and with faith,
Nick Yaekle