IT’S EVEN WORSE

I’ve just read through the seemingly endless litany of errors, fraud, plagiarism and lies from Jayson Blair. It strikes me that his offenses may be even worse than Stephen Glass’s. The most striking thing to me was how obvious the plagiarism was, and how many times Blair’s datelines were completely fabricated. Did no one use a quick Nexis search to check for plagiarism? Did any of the plagiarized complain? And how do you lose track of where your reporter actually is – not just once, but many, many times? This is surely far worse than anyone has hitherto realized: a web of deception that takes the Times almost 7,000 words to parse and correct. And the reckoning still may not be complete. I’d say it’s the biggest blow to the credibility of newspaper journalism since the Janet Cooke affair. But will anyone apart from Blair be held responsible?