Janet Cooke’s attempt at a comeback recalls that old line, “You should have been in pictures.” Apparently, Ms. Cooke should have been in fiction.
Instead, she wound up in 1980 as a 25-year-old reporter for The Washington Post – only to be cast out months later, a case that would live in news-journalism infamy. As an article in the June edition of Gentleman’s Quarterly said it:
“Janet Cooke caused the biggest scandal in the history of journalism when her Pulitzer Prize-winning article about an 8-year-old heroin addict turned out to be a fake. Humiliated and disgraced, the young writer disappeared from the public eye for 15 years.”
There were other interesting insights on the mentality of this African-American woman who, back then, “had never dated a black man” and “had never had a black girlfriend.” Who, as a child, would pray each night, “Please, God, let me wake up a blonde.” And who, at 41, now says, “I want my life back.”
The article’s author, Mike Sager, then a co-worker, wrote, “We became friends soon after her arrival,” and soon “had begun a love affair” of more than a year – “a painful, exhilarating psychodrama.”
Not surprisingly, he sympathizes. “The truth is, Janet wasn’t trying to win a Pulitzer. She wasn’t out for fame and glory. . . . Simply put: Janet needed a story to turn in. She wrote one.”
Yep, she should have been in fiction.
The then-executive editor of the paper, Ben Bradlee, recently called the episode “my all-time, all-time low moment” in a speech at the Organization of News Ombudsmen convention, which I attended. Mr. Bradlee had just declined to join Ms. Cooke in an appearance several days later on Nightline. “Somebody found her in a Midwestern town,” he said. “She is a clerk in a retail store making six bucks an hour.”
But his paper couldn’t decline its embarrassment back then. “And once we realized that we were just exactly doomed,” the paper ‘fessed up in an article by its ombudsman, Bill Green, who, “if for that one story alone” proved the value of exposing the newspaper to criticism. “In four days, 18,000 words, four pages in the newspaper,” Mr. Bradlee said, “there was nothing known about the Janet Cooke story that The Washington Post didn’t tell the world. Not a single fact, not a nuance.”
“Race was an issue in the Janet Cooke case in wonderfully sophisticated and interesting ways,” Mr. Bradlee told the ombudsmen. “But that was 15 years ago, and the newsrooms of that time were not noted for their sophisticated way in which they dealt with race. They do a better job of it now.”
True. But they are not where they should be. And as Ms. Cooke’s former lover unwittingly noted, editors such as Mr. Bradlee are part of the problem. In 1980, Mr. Sager wrote, Mr. Bradlee was reading unsolicited job applications:
“Before him, as he might have said, was a (expletive deleted) wet dream: 25 years old, Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar, master’s in literature, fluent in two foreign languages, television experience, one writing award in two years at the Toledo Blade, member of the National Association of Black Journalists. Bradlee took up a red grease pencil, circled `Phi Beta Kappa,’ `Vassar’ and `Black Journalists.’ … Here was the ideal candidate – an Ivy League twofer with a resume of gold.”
Janet Cooke, ideal? Newspapers need to start looking beyond stereotypes and resumes, real or fake. Start hiring more real people to whom whites and blacks and everybody else can relate. Stop looking for chocolate-covered or other versions of their mostly white male editors’ fantasies.
And Ms. Cooke? She should take a hint from those trendy and money-making black female writers such as Terry Waiting to Exhale McMillan and Alice The Color Purple Walker. Let her eat fiction.
C.B. Hanif is an editorial writer for The Palm Beach Post. Items for Listening Post may be sent to lp@pbpost.com
