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Plagiarism Rocks NY Times; Scope of Deceit Widens
'Raines of Error' blights NY Times
NEW
YORK (CBS.MW) - Finally, Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times
and the chairman of the parent corporation, started acting like a CEO.
On Thursday, the resignations of New York Times top editors Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd provided a denouement to a drama that seemed to be part Keystone Kops and part Shakespearian tragedy.
Raines, the Times' executive editor, and Boyd, its managing editor, had been under fire for weeks. Morale in the Times newsroom, never very high during Raines' reign, had sunk so low that he could no longer command the respect of the staff.
On May 1, Jayson Blair, a 27-year-old Times reporter and a protégé of Raines, resigned. Blair fabricated many stories prompting dozens of corrections in the newspaper.
Rather than discipline Blair -- or fire him -- the Keystone Kops at the Times were blinded by Blair's boyish enthusiasm and street smarts. They even gave him such high-profile assignments as the sniper case in Virginia. Perhaps they wanted desperately for Blair, who is black, to succeed as a confirmation of the wisdom of affirmative action programs.
Ultimately, the burden fell to Arthur Sulzberger to take action. But for weeks, Sulzberger did nothing, except to say he wouldn't accept Raines' resignation.
The Times' image problem was deepened when it found that Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg, who like Blair had been one of Raines' favorite staffers, had failed to give appropriate credit to a "stringer" associate for his reporting. Bragg subsequently quit the paper.
Then, on Thursday, Sulzberger eased his burden. He effectively took off his good-old-boy publisher's hat and replaced it with a helmet befitting a hardheaded CEO (NYT: news, chart, profile).
As a publisher, Sulzberger could afford to look the other way and take care of his buddies, Raines and Boyd. But when Sulzberger eventually had to look out for the corporation, he no longer had such a luxury.
Sulzberger may have feared that he could lose control of the processes of the Times corporation, just as Raines had clearly lost control of the newsroom.
"You could say Sulzberger had to separate the credibility of the newspaper from the corporation," said Ken Marlin, a media investment banker in New York. "As a corporation, the New York Times stands for more than a newspaper."
Indeed, the Times brand -- a key word in the media industry nowadays -- encompasses newspapers, including the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, television and radio stations, a well regarded Web site and other interests.
With the FCC easing restrictions on media companies owning properties, an organization's image is more crucial on Wall Street than ever before. Would it have been more difficult for the Times to do deals with the taint of the Blair mess hanging over its head? Would Wall Street eventually lose its patience with the Times and start downgrading the company's stock?
"Sulzberger had to act to restore the public's faith in the Times as a newspaper of record," Marlin said. "It's similar to what happens at a Wall Street trading firm when someone is found to be guilty of insider trading. It's a breach of the public's trust."
Questions abound
Still, questions abound:
Why did it take so long for Raines and Boyd step down when it seemed obvious to everyone in the media world that they couldn't survive this scandal?
The resignations "probably should have happened when all of this Blair stuff came out," said Joel Kaplan, head of the newspaper department at the Newhouse School of Syracuse University.
Why did Sulzberger force out Raines and Boyd after saying he wouldn't do that?
"There were implications that the problems at the Times went beyond the Blair situation," Marlin said. In other words, Raines had lost the respect of the people in the newsroom.
And, finally, what would Adolph Ochs have made of all this?
Ochs, who was born in 1858 and died in 1935, was the first hero of the Times. He was its publisher at the start of the 20th century and his vision, of a newspaper filled with facts and news, set the course for the organization's legacy of greatness.
I thought about Ochs on Thursday as I stood dutifully outside the Times' headquarters at 229 West 43rd St., off Times Square. Not much was going on. The crowd of a few dozen journalists had thinned. Even the scandal-loving paparazzi had fled.
But I noticed something a plaque honoring Ochs. It hails him as the individual "who made the New York Times one of the world's great newspapers by setting standards of excellence and responsibility in journalism."
In an attempt to boost morale Sulzberger appointed former Executive Editor Joseph Lelyveld to succeed Raines on an interim basis.
Tragic figure?
If there is a tragic figure in all of this, it might well be Boyd.
He worked hard to win the respect of his colleagues and peers. Further, he believed in Blair and supported his ascent at the Times.
Before the scandal developed, Boyd was widely regarded as Raines's heir apparent. But now he is finished there. Hopefully he can rebuild his career elsewhere.
"People I know at the Times speak well of him," noted Cynthia Gorney, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley's journalism school.
Monumental gall
If you look hard enough, you can always find an element of humor in every disaster.
In the case of Thursday's sad events, Blair, of all people, provided gallows humor when he issued a statement to CNN expressing his current mood.
Perhaps Blair, who had exhibited little regard for anyone's feelings throughout the disaster he caused, had a sudden attack of guilt (yeah, right!). Maybe it dawned on the punk that he had helped ruin the Times careers of Raines and Boyd and damage the credibility of his former employer -- and his craft.
Further, Blair has caused endless misery at the Times. Decent people throughout the organization, spanning from the executives and journalists to the unseen stalwarts, such as the hard-working and cordial Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, have had to clean up Blair's mess.
In a debacle that featured innumerable, shocking examples of stupidity, arrogance and hubris, Blair set a new standard for monumental gall.
"I am sorry to hear that more people have fallen in this sequence of events that I had unleashed," Blair said. "I wish the rolling heads had stopped with mine."
We all do
Plagiarism
Rocks NY Times; Scope of Deceit Widens
At The New York Times, "All the News That's Fit to Print" apparently included plagiarized material and in some cases, fabricated reports. In an effort to deal with questions about its journalistic integrity, the so-called "newspaper of record" convened an emergency staff meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss the damage inflicted by Jayson Blair, a young reporter who resigned in disgrace for alleged plagiarism, fabrication and fraud. According to a report by The New York Times, some on the newspaper's editorial staff may have known for at least a year about Blair's questionable journalism ethics. The two-hour-long meeting in New York was called by the Times' Executive Editor Howell Raines, who some staffers accuse of mismanagement. They blame Raines for allowing Blair to continue reporting, despite Blair's record of errors and questions about his ability. In a statement released by the Times, Raines said the advice he received from fellow staffers set the tone for his response to the matter. "The first thing I'm going to tell you is that I'm here to listen to your anger, wherever it's directed - to tell you that I know that our institution has been damaged, that I accept my responsibility for that, and I intend to fix it." After the meeting, Times staffers would not answer any questions about what was said. It appears there will not be a management shakeup at the Times, despite the fact that Blair's work had been questioned for a least a year prior to his forced resignation. Editorial managers at The New York Times now appear to be distancing themselves from Blair, who spent four years reporting for the Times despite numerous internal complaints about errors in his articles, and questions about his reporting sources, even on high-profile stories such as the Beltway sniper case and the war on Iraq. Some critics suggest the liberal newspaper may have been too eager to promote Blair, who is black, for the sake of workplace "diversity." In a story called "Correcting the Record," Wednesday's New York Times called the 27-year-old Blair's reporting a "profound betrayal of trust." Blair "violated the cardinal tenet of journalism," the newspaper said. "His tools of deceit were a cell phone and a laptop computer - which allowed him to blur his true whereabouts -- as well as round-the-clock access to databases of news articles from which he stole." "We've never been particularly impressed by the accuracy of The New York Times," said Jim Naureckas, the editor of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a national media watchdog group. "Even going back to Jeff Gerth on Whitewater and Judith Miller reporting in Iraq, whose story quotes were sourced to nobody and yet becomes front page news, the Times has been pretty forgiving of those who have broken ethical guidelines," he added. The New York Times began a serious look into Blair's journalistic integrity a few weeks ago, after a San Antonio newspaper noted similarities in an April 26 story written by Blair and its own story, written one week earlier about a Texas woman waiting for word about her son, a soldier who was missing in Iraq. The Times said it could not determine whether Blair had even traveled to Texas to cover the story. Just one week later, Blair resigned from the Times. In an internal investigation released by the Times, concerns were raised in 36 of the 73 stories submitted by Blair since his promotion to the national news desk in October 2002. Blair's promotion came despite a harsh rebuke by Times metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman. According to the newspaper's own investigation, an e-mail sent to several newsroom administrators by Landman in April 2002 stated, "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." In a March 27 datelined Palestine, West Virginia, Blair supposedly talked to the family of rescued POW Jessica Lynch. Although he quoted Lynch's relatives, none of them remember talking to Blair or even seeing him in Palestine. The Times now believes some of the material used by Blair was taken from the Associated Press. Blair's reporting on the Beltway sniper is also suspect: Information in one story is now believed to be fabricated, and some quotes are similar to those used by The Washington Post . The New York Times is not the only newspaper that will be looking into Blair's past. His former employer, The Boston Globe, also announced that it will investigate all work submitted by Blair when he worked there as an intern and freelance reporter. The Globe says one story Blair wrote in April 1999 about the mayor of Washington, D.C., may have borrowed quotes published in an earlier edition of the Washington Post. Prior to working for the Globe, Blair was a student at the University of Maryland. This week, the school's dean of journalism sent a letter to alumni, faculty, and students. Thomas Kunkel said the school will investigate all reports written by Blair for the school newspaper and for the Capital News Service, a Maryland wire service that is staffed by journalism students. In addition, the U.S. Attorney's office reportedly plans to investigate whether Blair violated the law by plagiarizing stories. A spokesman for James Comey of the U.S. Attorney's office in New York City declined comment about any aspect of the investigation. While Blair has yet to speak publicly, the damage he caused the newspaper may end up working to his own financial advantage, if he agrees to write a tell-all book. "I think the book would be worth around seven figures," said Robert Gottlieb, a literary agent at Trident Media in a Fox News interview. "Editors need to be less defensive about criticism, and tougher questions of reporters need to be asked," said Naureckas. "Anonymous sources should be questioned. It points to scrutiny. It would be a mistake to believe this is just a one-time phenomenon."
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A Formidable Run Undone by Scandal and Discontent
Yesterday, they returned to the same spot in the newsroom and announced their resignations from the top editorial positions at The Times, capping a tumultuous month of scandal, institutional soul-searching and recrimination. Their decisions to step down appeared to bring to an abrupt and painful end two careers at The Times that have left a deep mark on the newspaper.
The rise of Mr. Raines from a tough-minded and gifted political reporter from Birmingham, Ala., to executive editor of The Times, and of Mr. Boyd from White House correspondent to managing editor and the highest-ranking black editor in the paper's history, offers only fragmentary clues to their sudden fall. Some who had worked with the two men said yesterday that Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd had had a vision for the newspaper — to dominate coverage of the most important events at a time of increasing news media competition — that was right in conception but went awry in execution. Their top-down management styles, combined with the rush of news in the last 21 months, wore down and alienated many on the staff. "It's hard to reconcile those two images — of a paper that wins seven Pulitzers in one year and then a paper that is eating itself a year later," said Bill Kovach, a former Washington editor of The Times who first promoted Mr. Raines from reporter to editor. "The only way I can account for it is that it has to be a classic definition of a tragic circumstance: These are talented people and people who have a lot to offer and people of great accomplishments who have stumbled over a plan of their own making." Mr. Raines came to The Times in 1978, rising from national correspondent to Washington bureau chief and editorial page editor and winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Mr. Boyd had been a White House correspondent and metropolitan news editor, overseeing the coverage of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize. He had helped conceive and edit two major series on a scale unlike anything the Times had done previously, including "How Race Is Lived in America," which won a Pulitzer in 2001. When the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd were five days into their jobs. They were transformed from editors in transition to leaders at a critical moment in the newspaper's history. The paper was able to use its proximity to the disaster and its resources to produce comprehensive, on-the-spot coverage, explanatory articles and vivid photography to help readers understand an event that had seemed incomprehensible. When news events slowed, though, the decisiveness and ability to push his staff that had served Mr. Raines well during crisis caused him trouble. Sept. 11 had left much of his transition yet to be done. But his handling of changes in the national staff and elsewhere at the paper was viewed by many editors and reporters as brusque. Respected reporters and editors began leaving. Meanwhile, conservative critics accused The Times of using its news pages to build opposition to a war in Iraq. The Times also published dozens of articles, several on the front page, on Augusta National Golf Club's refusal to admit women. Critics accused the paper of lavishing resources on a story it had all but created. That criticism intensified after word got out that two sports columns about the issue had been rejected. (The two columns were published later.) "To an outsider, it looked like they were throwing major resources at the stories they wanted to and were ignoring the routine," said Anthony Marro, the editor of Newsday. Change was exactly what Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the newspaper's publisher, had been seeking when he picked Mr. Raines as executive editor. "I chose Howell in the end because I decided we needed a new pair of eyes," Mr. Sulzberger told The New Yorker in the spring of 2002. But Mr. Raines was a figure many in the newsroom did not know well, and many changes he made upset them. |
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[This is a web reprint of Dave Kopel's "Talk Back to the Media" column from the Rocky Mountain News. Recent Talk Back to the Media columns are available at www.RockyMountainNews.com. This older column appears on the Kopel website with the permission of the Rocky Mountain News.] 'Raines of Error' blights NY TimesNews, Post only make matters worse by unquestioningly reprinting its storiesOct. 13, 2002 by David Kopel Unlike the residents of New York City, people who live in Colorado can read The New York Times in two different newspapers, since both the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post print numerous stories from the Times. And because the weekday New York Times is also available for sale all over metro Denver, some voracious newspaper readers might get three doses of the Times in a single day. This is not necessarily a good thing. The reporting of The New York Times has nose-dived over the last year. The Times still produces a lot of good journalism, of course. It sends far more reporters outside its home region than almost any other American metropolitan daily, and sometimes those reporters dig much deeper and find more than their competitors from regional papers. For example, on Oct. 3, the Times ran a biography of James Ujaama, the suspected terrorist who was arrested in Denver. The Times story by Timothy Egan revealed a number of facts about Ujaama that haven't been reported by the News or the Post. While all three papers have pointed out Ujaama's record of community service, only the Times has pointed out Ujaama's criminal record, including convictions of felony check fraud, misdemeanor domestic violence and misdemeanor theft. As the Department of Justice has explained, Islamic terrorists in the United States often support their activities through crimes involving fraud or theft. So Ujaama's criminal record would surely be of interest to Denver readers trying to evaluate the credibility of Ujaama's claims that he is a nonviolent victim of political persecution, rather than a terrorist. Yet not everything the Times does is as good as Egan's article. Since the appointment of Howell Raines as executive editor in September 2001, the Times has frequently run news articles that amount to little more than anti-President Bush editorials. Consider the recent New York Times/CBS News poll. A mid-sized version of the Times article on the poll was reprinted in the Post, while a longer version appeared in the News (Oct. 7). The Times article argued at length that voters are quite dissatisfied with President Bush because they feel he is paying too much attention to Iraq. Yet both the printed and the on-line version of the Times article, as well as the reprints in the Denver papers, offered virtually no hard numbers in support of the claim. Indeed, the lengthy article entirely about a poll contained hardly any precise results from the poll. The Times' Web site offers a few questions and results of the poll, but the CBS News Web site contains the full poll, comprising dozens of questions and percentage responses. It turns out that the actual poll results were quite different from the summary in the Times/News/Post articles. In Question 29, respondents were asked about how the president is dividing his time between foreign and domestic issues. Fifty-two percent thought he was "about right"; 2 percent thought he should spend more time on foreign policy, and 41 percent thought there was too much time spent on foreign policy. So, with 41 percent believing that the president is neglecting domestic issues, and 54 percent believing he is not, the lead paragraph of the Times story falsely announced that "A majority of Americans" believe that President Bush is "spending too much time talking about Iraq and neglecting problems at home." Question 18 asked: "Which of these should be a higher priority for the nation right now - the economy and jobs or terrorism and national security?" Fifty percent opted for national security, against 35 percent for the economy. Asked what is the single most important problem for the government (Question 3), 30 percent chose "Terrorism/War/Security" and another 7 percent chose "Iraq." This 37 percent with a foreign policy focus compared with 26 percent who chose "Economy/Jobs/Stock Market" plus 17 percent more who chose other domestic issues. In a poll with a 4 percent margin of error, the percentages of people focused on foreign versus domestic issues was roughly similar. But since "Iraq" had been listed as an item separate from "Terrorism/War/Security," the Times asserted that voters were more concerned with the economy and other domestic issues than with "Iraq." It would have been just as accurate for the Times to write that "voters are more concerned about terrorism than with business ethics and corporate scandals" - since 30 percent thought terrorism the top problem versus only 2 percent for business scandals. "Majority approve of Bush foreign policy and Iraq timing" would have been an accurate headline. Bush scored a 63 percent overall approval rating, and 57 percent approval for foreign policy. Queried about Bush's timing on Iraq, 52 percent believed that Bush was moving at about the right speed, 10 percent found him too slow, and 35 percent thought him too quick. None of these results were mentioned. Instead, early in the article, the Times announced that the approval rate for Bush's handling of the economy had fallen to 41 percent, "the lowest of his presidency." A majority rejected the idea that war with Iraq would hurt the economy: 37 percent thought war would make the economy worse, 31 percent thought there would be no difference and 23 percent thought war would improve the economy. The Times spun this result as "many people" worried that war "would disrupt an already unsettled economy." It would have been just as accurate to claim that "many people" believe that war "would help settle a jittery economy." Historically, the Times has justifiably enjoyed more credibility than almost every other American paper. Today, however, the Times is suffering through a "Raines of Error," and the average news article from the Times is less likely to tell the whole truth than the average article from the staffs of the News or the Post.
Nothing written here is to be construed as
necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an
attempt to influence any election or legislative action.
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Copyright© 2003, David B. Kopel
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ourteen
months ago, Howell Raines and Gerald M. Boyd appeared to be at the peak of
their careers, standing exuberantly before the staff of The
