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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: By all traditional standards of journalism, THE NEW YORK TIMES is widely considered the best newspaper in the world. But last weekend, it acknowledged that one of its fast-rising young reporters, Jayson Blair, had faked or plagiarized parts of at least 36 stories. Blair has resigned, the TIMES editors have apologized, and the TIMES publisher has said, "It's a huge black eye." It's also, perhaps, a question about the ethics of all American journalism.
Alex Jones is director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. He joins us from Boston.
Alex, you used to work at the TIMES, where you won a Pulitzer prize. You've written a book about the TIMES. How could this have happened?
ALEX JONES (Director, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy): Bob, it's not unlike having someone in the position of trust in a business who embezzles. I think that there's no question that the position of being a reporter on a major newspaper is a position of great trust because reporters not only do their reporting and writing, they also do their own fact-checking. There really is no independent way to do that and meet deadlines. So a newspaper has to, you know, depend on the integrity and honesty of the people that it works -- that represent it, and whose bylines appear. So when you have that position of trust, historically it's been a worthy thing to do. But, in the case of Jayson Blair, he was not deserving of that trust.
ABERNETHY: If the accuracy of the TIMES is questioned, what does that say about the accuracy of all American newspapers and all news organizations?
Mr. JONES: I think what this says is that it's too easy to cheat now. I think that, you know, the use of unnamed sources, the ease with which you can mask where you are or where you are not with a cell phone, an e-mail -- things like that I think have created a climate in which cheating is too easy. And I think that's a problem that every news organization faces. One of the things that was really shocking was how people could read fabricated stories that Jayson Blair wrote about them -- in THE NEW YORK TIMES -- and kind of shrug them off. Now, these are not mistakes. These were fabricated stories. And they would read them and shrug them off and not even bother to get in touch with the TIMES because they were saying, in effect, "This is just the way it is." That's a terrible comment on the way the media does its job as far as the American public is concerned.
Alex Jones is director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. He joins us from Boston.
Alex, you used to work at the TIMES, where you won a Pulitzer prize. You've written a book about the TIMES. How could this have happened?
ALEX JONES (Director, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy): Bob, it's not unlike having someone in the position of trust in a business who embezzles. I think that there's no question that the position of being a reporter on a major newspaper is a position of great trust because reporters not only do their reporting and writing, they also do their own fact-checking. There really is no independent way to do that and meet deadlines. So a newspaper has to, you know, depend on the integrity and honesty of the people that it works -- that represent it, and whose bylines appear. So when you have that position of trust, historically it's been a worthy thing to do. But, in the case of Jayson Blair, he was not deserving of that trust.
ABERNETHY: If the accuracy of the TIMES is questioned, what does that say about the accuracy of all American newspapers and all news organizations?
Mr. JONES: I think what this says is that it's too easy to cheat now. I think that, you know, the use of unnamed sources, the ease with which you can mask where you are or where you are not with a cell phone, an e-mail -- things like that I think have created a climate in which cheating is too easy. And I think that's a problem that every news organization faces. One of the things that was really shocking was how people could read fabricated stories that Jayson Blair wrote about them -- in THE NEW YORK TIMES -- and kind of shrug them off. Now, these are not mistakes. These were fabricated stories. And they would read them and shrug them off and not even bother to get in touch with the TIMES because they were saying, in effect, "This is just the way it is." That's a terrible comment on the way the media does its job as far as the American public is concerned.
And Jayson Blair was identified this way -- not because he was black, but because of the other things that he had. It was the fact that Jayson Blair, like many others before him, white and black and everything else, have found champions within the paper who have helped mentor them and bring them along, and in this case it was an inappropriate kind of nurturing.
