Many reporters think half of the people they talk to are lying — and the other half are leaving things out.
In fact, in Interviewing 101, reporters are taught to look for the nervous tic, the change in inflection, the quick shift to another subject. That’s when sources are hiding something. That’s when reporters pounce and pry and probe.
That may sound cynical to you, but it’s reality. It’s good investigative journalism.
And that’s what troubles me about the New York Times and its handling of lying, cheating, stealing Jayson Blair, the reporter who resigned from the paper earlier this month after dragging the “old, gray lady” through the thick, dark mud. The Times should have known.
Blair, 27 and a Times reporter for five years, “fabricated comments,” “concocted scenes,” “lifted material from other newspapers” and used unpublished photos to create the impression that he had been somewhere when he had not, the Times said in a lengthy report last Sunday.
In short, he wrote fiction. In the process, this one journalist did everything possible to damage every other journalist’s credibility.
But don’t you think the Times would have known better? Its publisher called it “a huge black eye.” Another top executive, while admitting “a terrible mistake,” defended the paper’s response to complaints that Blair fabricated stories.
Howell Raines, the Times’ top editor, is quoted in his own paper as saying, “I’m confident we went through the proper journalistic steps.”
Say again? For an organization that prides itself on not just pointing fingers, but also jabbing those fingers repeatedly until its targets are bloody and busted, this rings false. The editors must have had blinders on to miss Blair’s wholesale fabrications.
From October to late April, Blair wrote stories from 20 cities in six states, yet “he did not submit a single receipt for a hotel room, rental car or airplane ticket,” the Times revealed. Instead, he was sitting in New York City, working on a book proposal.
These and many other signs apparently didn’t register with the Times’ top editors, some of the industry’s most skillful investigative minds.
Considered the nation’s paper of record, the Times prides itself on accuracy. Now it’s become the media laughingstock, the subject of late-night comedy.
Now you have newspapers all over the world hurriedly printing lengthy corrections from Blair stories distributed by the New York Times wire service.
For the record, only three stories with Jayson Blair bylines have appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal. One from Dec. 22 that appeared on Page A8 said that 17-year-old John Lee Malvo was the triggerman in the Washington-area sniper attacks. It has been widely discredited.
The other two stories were minor and appear to be accurate.
Unfortunately, there is no way to find out whether faulty information from other Blair stories was incorporated into other articles that lacked Blair’s byline.
Perhaps what disturbs me most is the reaction from people who were quoted in the stories, even though they werenever interviewed. When asked why they didn’t complain, many just shrugged and said things like, “The media makes things up. That’s what they all do.”
That perception, that lack of trust, that assumption that reporters make things up, is difficult to deny with a Jayson Blair infecting this business. When people stop believing the messenger, the message has no value.
Citing the massive size of their newsroom — 375 reporters — Times editors have blamed poor communication and the need for trust between reporters and editors for their failure to spot Blair’s fraud. They promise changes.
This egregious compromise of journalistic integrity has resulted in newspapers across the country, including the Beacon Journal, examining their own newsroom cultures.
But I have to believe that if a Beacon Journal reporter repeatedly quoted people without ever talking to them, that someone would pick up the phone, call the public editor, and say, “Hey Mike, what goes here? I never said any of those things.”
That’s one of the things that distinguishes Ohio from New York. The distance between reader and newspaper is much, much shorter, especially here in Akron, where readers are urged to comment.
With the New York Times, would you know whom to call if you suddenly saw yourself mysteriously quoted there? Neither would I. There is no bridge between the reader and paper.
In Akron, your comments are welcome. Invited. Encouraged.
Communication brings trust, something that must be carefully nurtured, strengthened when possible, protected at all costs.
For when trust is gone, little is left. Just ask the New York Times.
