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PPC Strategies, Inc. The nexus of policy, politics and communications. [Home] TNFKATNOR: The Newspaper Formerly Known as the Newspaper of Record
By Michael Paranzino, May 11, 2003 Hold the applause for the New York Times for apparently coming clean about Jayson Blair in its Sunday edition. It turns out that even after almost 7,000 words (by Andrew Sullivan’s count), the Times STILL can’t bring itself to admit it falsely smeared the Bush Administration in a phony sniper case story last October. The Times admits countless fictions it published as news, and recounts numerous lies that Jayson Blair put over on his editors, but they still defend parts of a vicious, and plainly fictional, smear that they advanced about Bush & Co. In fact, they still maintain that the article was “plainly accurate in its central point”! It makes you wonder: if Howell Raines’ Times were not so anti-Bush, might they have caught Blair’s lies sooner? A key theme of Blair’s front page, above the fold October 30 sniper story in the Times is conveyed by the title: “U.S. SNIPER CASE SEEN AS A BARRIER TO A CONFESSION.” The text did not mince words either. It began: State and federal investigators said today that John Muhammad had been talking to them for more than an hour on the day of his arrest in the sniper shootings, explaining the roots of his anger, when the United States attorney for Maryland told them to deliver him to Baltimore to face federal weapons charges and forcing them to end their interrogation. The investigators said an F.B.I. agent and a Maryland detective had begun to develop a rapport with Mr. Muhammad. The other suspect, Lee Malvo, 17, being questioned by a Montgomery County detective, was not answering any questions, the investigators said. “It did not look like the juvenile was going to talk,” a local law enforcement official said. “But it looked like Muhammad was ready to share everything, and these guys were going to get a confession.” … Two Maryland state officials and two federal officials said that in a conference call with police officials and prosecutors Mr. DiBiagio had said he was “on orders from the Justice Department and the White House” to take the suspects into custody. They said one federal investigator had checked with the criminal division of the Justice Department, which said there was no such order. The story is preposterous and false, as I first recounted in a May 5 piece in National Review Online. [This was one of the first pieces in the nation to argue that the Blair scandal was really about fiction, not plagiarism.] (Interestingly, in a thorough and devastating review of Blair published by Washington City Paper on May 7, the writers admit they backed Blair’s version at the time, even though it was contested by DiBiagio, the Washington Post, and others. Yet they now warn against choosing sides at all: “Siding with either version of events is ill-advised—a misjudgment to which the City Paper pleads guilty.” Burned once by a now-confirmed liar, these writers now refuse to choose sides between that liar and the folks who said all along that he was lying.) But the New York Times, too, is desperate to defend at least parts of this fantasy as truth. From the Sunday Times report: Just six days after his arrival in Maryland [my emphasis], Mr. Blair landed a front-page exclusive with startling details about the arrest of John Muhammad, one of the two sniper suspects. The article, attributed entirely to the accounts of five unidentified law enforcement sources, reported that the United States attorney for Maryland, under pressure from the White House, had forced investigators to end their interrogation of Mr. Muhammad perhaps just as he was ready to confess. It was an important article, and plainly accurate in its central point [my emphasis]: that local and federal authorities were feuding over custody of the sniper suspects. But in retrospect, interviews show, the article contained a serious flaw, as well as a factual error. Two senior law enforcement officials who otherwise bitterly disagree on much of what happened that day are in agreement on this much: Mr. Muhammad was not, as Mr. Blair reported, "explaining the roots of his anger" when the interrogation was interrupted. Rather, they said, the discussion touched on minor matters, like arranging for a shower and meal. The article drew immediate fire. Both the United States attorney, Thomas M. DiBiagio, and a senior Federal Bureau of Investigation official issued statements denying certain details [my emphasis; the DiBiagio statement was focused primarily on the lie about the White House and called the allegations in the Times piece “false”—it was far broader than a nit over “certain details”]. Similar concerns were raised with senior editors by several veteran reporters in The Times's Washington bureau who cover law enforcement. Mr. Roberts and Mr. Fox said in interviews last week that the statements would have raised far more serious concerns in their minds had they been aware of Mr. Blair's history of inaccuracy. Both editors also said they had never asked Mr. Blair to identify his sources in the article. "I can't imagine accepting unnamed sources from him as the basis of a story had we known what was going on," Mr. Fox said. "If somebody had said, `Watch out for this guy,' I would have questioned everything that he did. I can't even imagine being comfortable with going with the story at all, if I had known that the metro editors flat out didn't trust him." Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd, who knew more of Mr. Blair's history, also did not ask him to identify his sources. The two editors said that given what they knew then, there was no need. There was no inkling, Mr. Raines said, that the newspaper was dealing with "a pathological pattern of misrepresentation, fabricating and deceiving." Mr. Raines said he saw no reason at that point to alert Mr. Roberts to Mr. Blair's earlier troubles. Rather, in keeping with his practice of complimenting what he considered exemplary work, Mr. Raines sent Mr. Blair a note of praise for his "great shoe-leather reporting." [my emphasis] Mr. Blair was further rewarded when he was given responsibility for leading the coverage of the sniper prosecution. The assignment advanced him toward potentially joining the national staff. The Times report then discusses another Blair piece of fiction about the sniper case from December 22, and concludes: “In the end, Mr. Raines said last week, the paper handled the criticisms of both articles appropriately. ‘I’m confident we went through the proper journalistic steps,’ he said.” The Sunday Times also includes a lengthy summary of all the errors and lies it has uncovered in individual Blair stories. Here is how they handle the key October 30 piece: U.S. Sniper Case Seen As a Barrier to a Confession OCT. 30, 2002 FACTUAL ERRORS In this article, Mr. Blair wrote about the way a dispute between local and federal prosecutors affected the interrogation of John Muhammad, a suspect in the sniper case. Mr. Blair wrote that two assistant United States attorneys from Maryland, James M. Trusty and A. David Copperthite, participated in discussions about whether the suspects should be charged by local or federal authorities. Neither official participated in the discussions, according to Thomas M. DiBiagio, the United States attorney for Maryland, whose account was confirmed by other law enforcement officials who participated in the meeting. The article also suggested — inaccurately, Mr. DiBiagio said — that Mr. Trusty and Mr. Copperthite were among the officials who had gathered to watch the interrogation of Mr. Muhammad. OTHER ISSUES In the first sentence of the article, Mr. Blair wrote that Mr. Muhammad had been talking to investigators for more than an hour, "explaining the roots of his anger," when a federal prosecutor interrupted the interrogation and told investigators to deliver Mr. Muhammad to Baltimore. In the third paragraph of the article, he also quoted an anonymous law enforcement official as saying that "it looked like Muhammed was ready to share everything." The article drew a conclusion unwarranted by the reporting. According to local and federal law enforcement officials who monitored the interrogation, the conversations were aimed at building a rapport with Mr. Muhammad and he was not on the verge of a confession. The officials said that the interrogation had not yet broached any of the shootings, and that Mr. Muhammad was not discussing the "roots of his anger." Editors who worked on the article said that the story should have also acknowledged more promptly information from other Times reporters that contradicted Mr. Blair's account of the interrogation. There is not a single mention about the explosive—and fictional—charge that U.S. Attorney DiBiagio claimed he was acting on orders from the White House and Justice Department. Of course, the Times does admit an incredible amount of damning information in its Sunday report (which makes its stubborn defense of parts of their October 30 smear all the more interesting). Some highlights: “A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation by Times journalists has found. The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper. “The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not. “And he used these techniques to write falsely about emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq.” And this, a full nine months before the October 30 smear: “Mr. Landman sent Mr. Blair a sharply worded evaluation in January 2002, noting that his correction rate was ‘extraordinarily high by the standards of the paper.’ Mr. Landman then forwarded copies of that evaluation to Mr. Boyd and William E. Schmidt, associate managing editor for news administration, along with a note that read, ‘There’s big trouble I want you both to be aware of.’” And this: “His mistakes became so routine, his behavior so unprofessional, that by April 2002, Jonathan Landman, the metropolitan editor, dashed off a two-sentence e-mail message to newsroom administrators that read: ‘We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.’”
Back on May 5, when the major media was still treating this as a case of sloppiness and plagiarism, I stepped out and called it what it was: “Blair is the new Stephen Glass, the disgraced former New Republic writer who fabricated all of six and parts of 21 other articles. Everything Jayson Blair has ever written must be scrutinized and presumed false unless otherwise verifiable. This will be a tremendously painful process for the Paper of Record, but it is essential that every story be vigorously reviewed. … “It thus appears highly likely that U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and President George W. Bush are all owed apologies by the Times. The scurrilous and apparently fictional allegation they fronted made headlines coast to coast. We'll see if the retraction gets similar coverage. … “Infamous to readers on the right for its corrections page, the Blair scandal seems to mark the apex of Times factual laxity. Will this finally bring humility to the Paper of Record?” Apparently, Howell Raines’ New York Times is not quite ready to face its failure, especially if that would mean admitting that its lust for slamming the Bush Administration may have played a role in its reckless blindness to Jayson Blair’s plainly evident penchant for fiction. DiBiagio, Ashcroft and Bush may have a long wait for that apology. And the next time you see an unnamed source quoted in the New York Times, BEWARE.
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