Blair’s Role Said to Taint Times’ Sniper Coverage
Jayson Blair charmed his way past his mistakes at the New York Times, but his questionable reporting in the Washington-area sniper case earlier this year now makes suspect the Times’ entire coverage of the episode, according to a lengthy report on Blair’s past in the Washington City Paper.
“The Times may have to retract whole swaths of Blair’s sniper package, which includes 52 stories spanning last October through April. Week by week, the Times’ coverage helped to misshape public opinion on the sniper case — a rampage of carelessness that certainly taints the U.S. media, if not the sniper jury pool,” said the piece, written by editor Eric Wemple.
As the City Paper noted, “last Friday, the Times admitted that Blair’s April 26 story about a Texas woman whose son was missing in action in Iraq ‘incorporated passages from one published earlier by The San Antonio Express-News. The Times has been unable to determine what original reporting Mr. Blair did to produce it.’
“Blair, 27, had resigned the previous day.”
On the question of how Blair could have lasted so long at the Times given a number of corrections to his stories, the City Paper writes:
“Blair practiced immersion journalism at Times HQ on West 43rd Street. He came in early and left late. In between, he gossiped. A tireless reader of his own paper, Blair always had an on-point remark about a colleague’s work, along with plenty of material to skip to other topics. “He spent way too much energy doing journalism inside the building,” says a staffer.
“Colleagues, in fact, may have overlooked Blair’s poor reporting because he did such good work on internal affairs.”
Meanwhile, William McGowan, whose book “Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism” won last year’s Thumbs Down award from the National Association of Black Journalists, jumped on the Blair case to publicize the new paperback edition of his book, the subtitle now changed to “How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism.”
“Mr. Blair’s resignation has exposed one of the biggest forms of hypocrisy in today’s media — the double standard which protects shoddy reporters in the name of diversity, all the while labeling as ‘racist’ anyone who points to the obvious and insists that such double standards exist,” McGowan said in the news release.
But the very next day after McGowan cited the case of black journalist Blair, the New York Times and Washington Post both carried stories of how white journalist Stephen Glass was profiting from his own plagiarism.
“Stephen Glass, who was fired by The New Republic five years ago for fabricating details in 27 articles, has written a book telling his side of the story in fictional form,” wrote the Times.
“Simon & Schuster is publishing it in time to capitalize on publicity for a film drama about Mr. Glass, ‘Shattered Glass,’ scheduled for release by Lions Gate Entertainment this fall. The company has described it as a harsh portrait made without his cooperation.
“Simon & Schuster has arranged for Mr. Glass, now a law school graduate, to appear on ’60 Minutes’ on Sunday, talking about his magazine career to promote the book.”
Wrote Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post:
“Stephen Glass, who had never uttered a public word about his repeated fabrications at the New Republic five years ago, is cashing in on his notoriety. ‘I lied to the people who were my co-workers and cared about me,’he told ’60 Minutes.’ ‘I lied to my family. I lied to my editors. I lied to all of the readers, and I lied to the people I was writing about.’
No word on whether McGowan plans a news release on this.
In related developments:
— Robert Rivard, editor of the Express-News, noted that Macarena Hernandez and Blair were young and gifted reporters when their lives first crossed in the storied newsroom of the New York Times. It was the summer of 1998, and it was Hernandez’ story that had the identical passages that showed up in Blair’s work.
“As the pressure mounted on Blair, he telephoned Hernandez to discuss her story. Stunned and saddened by his duplicity, she broke off the conversation. Days later, he was forced to leave the Times,” Rivard writes.
— Times Editor Howell Raines told the New York Observer that, “the last thing we want to do is demonize Jayson Blair. He wrote a public letter apologizing for a journalistic lapse in integrity. He apologized for it. I can accept that. But my concern is for our readers and our integrity.”
— Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten argues that “the scandal involving New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, the appalling meltdown at the Salt Lake City Tribune and the Los Angeles Times’ recent dismissal of a photographer who filed an altered photo from Iraq . . . stand as a lesson in how the speed and implacability of the Fourth Estate’s self-correcting mechanisms are unmatched by any other institution in American life.
“In part, that’s because the savage and ever-intensifying competition that pushes a handful of journalists into cutting ethical corners also forces their employers to deal decisively with them before their competitors do.”
NAHJ’s Lopez Picked as Unity Executive Director
Anna Lopez, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists since 1998, has been named executive director of Unity: Journalists of Color, Unity President Ernest Sotomayor told Journal-isms.
Lopez had been with NAHJ since 1995, serving previously as professional development director.
She starts with Unity on July 1, succeeding Benfred Clement Smith, who resigned in January after working full-time in the job for two years.
“She’s very skilled at what she does,” said Sotomayor. “She brings a lot of strength and stability to NAHJ, and we look forward to her doing the same thing for Unity. She’s well-respected, well-liked and a great asset for all journalists of color” as Unity prepares for its 2004 convention in Washington, D.C., he said.
Michaela Angela Davis Becomes “Honey” Editor
Michaela Angela Davis, fashion director of the urban women’s magazine Honey, was promoted to editor last week after Amy Du Bois Barnett joined Time Inc.’s Teen People as managing editor, MediaWeek reports.
“The fashion and beauty elements will get bigger,” Davis told MediaWeek. “And in general, it’s time for us to grow up a bit — to be more sophisticated in how the magazine reads and looks.” Honey’s paid circulation grew 23.1 percent, to 352,327, in the second half of last year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, MediaWeek reported. Honey is published by Vanguarde Media, which produces Savoy and other publications.
Ronnie Ramos Named Editor in Shreveport
Ronnie Ramos, former managing editor of The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., who is concluding an academic-year Nieman Fellowship has been named editor of The Times in Shreveport, La. He replaces Judy Christie. He assumes his new role May 27, Gannett reports.
In an ambitious attempt to improve the image of Muslims, two businessmen are preparing to launch North America’s first English-language Islamic television channel next year, reports WorldNetDaily.com.
“The founders of ‘Bridges TV,’ aiming for a summer 2004 launch, find some of the rationale for their venture in America’s attitude toward Muslims since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” the Web site reports.
“Bridges TV sees a successful niche-market model in channels such as Telemundo and the Black Entertainment Television network. Its research shows about one-quarter of American Muslims are of South Asian origin, while the rest include African Americans and Arabs.
” ‘Our channel is in English and about life in America,’ said [chief investor Omar S.] Amanat. ‘We want a Muslim child who grows up in America to be able to watch our channel and identify with the characters, or to be engaged by the dialogue of issues pertinent to him or her.’ “
Hispanic Broadcasting Buying 5th Chicago Station
Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., Dallas-based parent company of four Spanish-language radio stations in the Chicago market, is about to acquire a fifth one, reports Robert Feder in the Chicago Sun-Times. “In a three-way transaction involving two other broadcast groups, HBC has agreed to pay $32 million for southwest suburban WJTW-FM (93.5). The company already owns WOJO-FM (105.1), WIND-AM (560), WVIV-FM (103.1) and WVIV-AM (1200).”
Al Roker Turns in His Daughter Over Pot
“Three students, including his own daughter, have been suspended from Katonah’s posh Harvey School in a pot-smoking incident uncovered by ‘Today’ weatherman Al Roker,” reports the New York Post, speaking of a private school in Westchester County, N.Y..
“One student was suspended for the remainder of the school year, a source said, while [daughter] Courtney and the other girl will be back in class after a week.”
At Howard U., Prestwood Gets the “Scoop”
At a dinner in Washington, D.C., of 13 black journalists Monday night, Time magazine columnist Jack E. White leaned over to Journal-isms and said “I have a column item for you.” He announced that the group had created a Richard “Scoop” Prince Award to be presented to a journalism student at Howard University who exemplified several qualities, including holding a number of jobs simultaneously.
White, a writer-in-residence at Howard; Jessica Lee, who recently left USA Today; Betty Anne Williams, director of the Black College Wire; and Yanick Rice Lamb, who teaches at Howard, represented the dinner group today as Howard student Troy Donte Prestwood received the cash award, one of a series of “awards of excellence.” Prestwood, who helped restart the Howard University Association of Black Journalists, revamped the campus radio station WHBC and is editorial editor of the independent campus newspaper The District Chronicles, is a senior who plans to attend the University of Maryland School of Journalism in the fall. White read from Prestwood’s farewell commentary in The District Chronicles as department chair Philip Dixon, District Chronicles adviser Lawrence Kaggwa, faculty members, students and parents looked on.
