Jayson Blair

Jayson Thomas Blair (born March 23, 1976) is an American journalist formerly with The New York Times. He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003 in the wake of the discovery of plagiarism and fabrication in his stories.

Background

Blair was born in Columbia, Maryland, the son of a federal executive and a schoolteacher. While attending the University of Maryland, College Park, he was a student journalist. He became editor-in-chief of its student newspaper, The Diamondback, for the 1996–1997 school year. After a summer interning at The New York Times in 1998, Blair was offered an extended internship. He declined in order to complete more coursework for graduation. He returned to The New York Times in June 1999, with a year of coursework left to complete.^[1] That November, he became an "intermediate reporter."^[1]

According to a letter signed by 30 staffers in 2003,^[2] Blair made four serious errors as a reporter and editor that brought his integrity into question. The letter-signers alleged that questions about those errors were ignored by the board that owned the paper. But among the mistakes they cited was an award-winning story about a student who died of a cocaine overdose who was subsequently found to have actually died of a heart ailment.^[3][4]

Plagiarism and fabrication scandal

On April 28, 2003, Blair received a call from Times national editor Jim Roberts asking him about similarities between a story he had written two days earlier^[5] and one written by San Antonio Express-News reporter Macarena Hernandez on April 18.^[6] The senior editor of the San Antonio Express-News had contacted The New York Times about the resemblance between Blair's article in The New York Times and Hernandez's article in his paper.^[2]

The resulting inquiry led to the discovery of fabrication and plagiarism in a number of articles Blair had written.^[7] Some fabrications include Blair's claims to have traveled from New York to the city mentioned in the dateline, when he did not.

Some of the suspect articles include the following:

• In the October 30, 2002 piece "US Sniper Case Seen as a Barrier to a Confession," Blair wrote that a dispute between police authorities had ruined the interrogation of Beltway sniper suspect John Muhammad and that Muhammad was about to confess, quoting unnamed officials. This was swiftly denied by everyone involved. Blair also named certain lawyers, who were not present, as having witnessed the interrogation.^[8]
• In the February 10, 2003 piece "Peace and Answers Eluding Victims of the Sniper Attacks," Blair claimed to be in Washington, plagiarized quotations from a Washington Post story, and fabricated quotations from a person he had never interviewed. Blair ascribed a wide range of facts to a man featured in the article, almost all of which the man in question denied. Blair also published information that he had promised was off the record.^[9]
• In the March 3, 2003 piece "Making Sniper Suspect Talk Puts Detective in Spotlight," Blair claimed to be in Fairfax, Virginia. He described a videotape of Lee Malvo, the younger defendant in the case, being questioned by police and quoted officials' review of the tape. No such tape existed. Blair also claimed a detective noticed blood on a man's jeans leading to a confession, which did not occur.^[10]
• In the March 27, 2003 piece "Relatives of Missing Soldiers Dread Hearing Worse News," Blair pretended to be in West Virginia and plagiarized quotations from an Associated Press article. He claimed to have spoken to the father of Jessica Lynch, who had no recollection of meeting Blair; said "tobacco fields and cattle pastures" were visible from Lynch's parents' house when they were not; erroneously stated that Lynch's brother was in the National Guard; misspelled Lynch's mother's name; and fabricated a dream that he claimed she had had.^[11]
• On April 3, 2003 piece "Rescue in Iraq and a 'Big Stir' in West Virginia," Blair claimed to have covered the Jessica Lynch story from her home town of Palestine, West Virginia. Blair never traveled to Palestine, and his entire contribution to the story consisted of rearranged details from Associated Press stories.^[12]
• On April 7, 2003 piece "For One Pastor, the War Hits Home," Blair wrote of a church service in Cleveland and an interview with the minister. Blair never went to Cleveland; he only spoke to the minister on the phone and then copied most of the article from an earlier Washington Post article. He also plagiarized quotations from The Plain Dealer and New York Daily News. He fabricated a detail about the minister keeping a picture of his son inside his Bible and got the name of the church wrong.^[13]
• In the April 19, 2003 piece "In Military Wards, Questions and Fears from the Wounded," Blair described interviewing four injured soldiers in a naval hospital. He never went to the hospital and only spoke to one soldier on the phone, to whom he later attributed made-up quotes. Blair wrote that the soldier "will most likely limp the rest of his life and need to use a cane," which was untrue. He said another soldier had lost his right leg when it had only been amputated below the knee. He described two soldiers as being in the hospital at the same time when in fact they were admitted five days apart.^[14]

The New York Times reported on Blair's journalistic misdeeds in an unprecedented 7,239-word front-page story on May 11, 2003, headlined "Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception." The story called the affair "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."^[1] On the NPR radio show Talk of the Nation, Blair explained that his fabrications started with what he thought was a relatively innocent infraction: using a quote from a press conference which he had missed. He described a gradual process whereby his ethical violations became worse and contended that his main motivation was a fear of not living up to the expectations that he and others had for his career.

Aftermath

The investigation saw heated debate over affirmative action hiring. Jonathan Landman, Blair's editor, told the Siegal committee he felt being black played a large part in Blair's initial promotion to full-time staffer. "I think race was the decisive factor in his promotion," he said. "I thought then and I think now that it was the wrong decision."^[15]

Five days later, New York Times African-American op-ed columnist Bob Herbert asserted in his column that race had nothing to do with the Blair case: "Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair's reporting." Herbert said, "[F]olks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story as evidence that there is something inherently wrong with The New York Times's effort to diversify its newsroom, and beyond that, with the very idea of a commitment to diversity or affirmative action anywhere. And while these agitators won't admit it, the nasty subtext to their attack is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks."^[16]

After resigning from The New York Times, Blair returned to college and said he planned to go into politics.^[17] The year after he left the Times, he authored a memoir, Burning Down My Master's House, that New Millennium Books published. Although its initial print run was 250,000 copies, only 1,400 were sold in its first nine days.^[18]

In popular culture

• Choke Point, the play written by Colm Byrne and produced in Los Angeles by Che'rae Adams in 2007 is based on Blair's downfall in the run-up to war.^[19]
• A play about Blair, CQ/CX, written by Gabe McKinley, was produced by the Atlantic Theater Company in 2012.^[20] McKinley knew Blair personally, having worked at the Times during the period Blair was there.^[21]
• The television series Law & Order used the Blair story as the inspiration for Episode 14.02: "Bounty".^[22]
• In the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the Blair story was used as inspiration for an episode about a young journalist in the third season episode "Pravda" (3.5).^[23]
• Season 5 of the HBO series The Wire dealt with the subject of journalist fabrication, as well as the decline of print journalism, and specifically mentions Jayson Blair in the last episode. The Wire creator David Simon had been a Baltimore Sun journalist and worked on The Diamondback, the student newspaper at the University of Maryland, College Park, where Blair was editor.
• A 2003 series of Pearls Before Swine comic strips portray Rat writing fraudulent New York Times stories on former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.^[24]
• A scene in Gilmore Girls episode "The Reigning Lorelai" (4.16) shows Rory's editor, Doyle, becoming frustrated with the way Yale Daily News staffers act in the newsroom calling it "the breeding ground for the next Jayson Blair."
• A documentary film featuring Jayson Blair was made by director/producer Samantha Grant. A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at The New York Times premiered at the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival on June 14, 2013.^[25]

See also

• Janet Cooke
• Stephen Glass
• Johann Hari
• Journalism scandals
• Jack Kelley
• Howell Raines

Bibliography

• Blair, Jayson (2004). Burning Down My Masters' House: My Life at the New York Times. New Millennium Press. ISBN 1-932407-26-X. 

References

Further reading

• "N.Y. Times Uncovers Dozens of Faked Stories by Reporter." Washington Post. May 11, 2003.
• Kugler, Sara. "New York Times executives Howell Raines, Gerald Boyd resign." Associated Press. June 5, 2003.
• "Making a Turnaround," bp Magazine (bphope.com). Spring 2005. Retrieved 2010-12-06.
• "Jayson Blair searches for new life, reflects on legacy." Fairfax County Times. June 9, 2005.
• Blair: Why NYT should keep employee in-house. Romenesko Media News (Poynter Institute). June 15, 2005.

External links

• Global coverage of articles on the story at Journalism.org
• Q&A: Jayson Blair via mediabistro