Trust?
I try to reserve my Saturday writing to fun. And I'd like to continue that tradition. But today there is something that bugs me. It's this thing with NY Times writer Jayson Blair.
Newsweek is running an exclusive on Blair's story in the May 26th issue. Get a preview by following the link.
To the credit of the Times the paper ran a lengthy piece outlining Blair's deceptions immediately after he was fired.
These revelations make me wonder. Blair was under scrutiny a year ago. His activities were questionable for some time. Instead of investigating, Blair's managers gave him a new assignment, the National desk. This change gave Blair the opportunity to cover the Washington D.C. area sniper attacks last fall.
Blair wrote over 600 articles prior to last October. His offenses included both plagiarism and fraud. His deceptions grew more and more outrageous over the past few months. The Times is calling on its readers to report known falsehoods in any of Blair's stories.
This is certainly devastating for the Times. It is also a black eye for the entire industry. It makes me wonder just how much of this goes on without being caught. Jayson's editors knew he was a problem for many months. Only after the problems could not be ignored further did they act........
9:52:05 PM 
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