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When Jayson Blair, former New York Times journalist, was exposed as a plagiarist and fabricator, he had the excuses ready.
First, he blamed affirmative action. Then he blamed a so-called bipolar disorder, writing this about himself on his web site: “Jayson Blair was a reporter at The New York Times until an untreated and undiagnosised illness, known as manic depression, brought his career down.”
Got that? His illness “brought down his career.”
Despite Blair’s history of fakery and excuse-making, the powers that be at a magazine about bipolar disorders has decided to publish a first-person account of his experiences, according to the Boston Herald. Says the editor about the article, “It went through a very rigorous editing process. We just have a very rigorous editing process and a great deal of fact checking.”
I’ll bet!
The Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal was before my blogging time, but I remember how dumb I thought he was for being so blatantly careless. This guy pretended to be in different cities writing and filing stories and going so far as to submit phony expense reports. He covered the D.C. sniper case extensively, but the prosecutor said “60 percent of a story written by Blair…was inaccurate,” according to Online NewsHour.
Although Blair was an error-prone reporter with bad work habits, he was promoted. The editors who failed to get rid of him because he was black quit in disgrace.
Blair was indeed an affirmative action hire, and ironically, blamed his treachery on this fact. Affirmative action is an unnecessary distraction. As long as it exists, people will question the credentials and abilities of blacks. And as long as it exists, blacks like Jayson Blair will use it to try to get themselves out of trouble.
Read a bit about the Blair affair:
- More Reporting By Times Writer Called Suspect
- The Seven Faces of Jayson Blair
- How did he bamboozle the New York Times?
- Don’t Blame It on Jayson Blair
- The Jayson Blair Affair
- Jayson Blair: A Case Study of What Went Wrong at The New York Times
- The making of Jayson Blair
- Jayson Blair says NYT still lax
- The forbidden truth about Jayson Blair
- Q&A: Jayson Blair
- Top New York Times editors quit
Wow. All that press just for being a phony. 
Addendum: More at Malkin.
Update: Skin-deep diversity angst at CBS. As you read the article, consider my previous statement: “Affirmative action is an unnecessary distraction.”
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It was just a matter of time before some sappy entity would come along to rehabilitate this guy’s career, based upon his “illness.” Is it just me, or are others equally sick and tired of the excuses being offered for bad behavior?
So he’s back – has he learned anything?
As hard-nosed as I can be at times, I do believe in forgiveness. If the Jayson Blair that has returned to us has learned humility, perseverence, the ability to do his OWN work and do it honestly and professionally – then perhaps he has something to bring to the party. If he hasn’t learned anything – then he can just disappear again!
Jayson Blair turned in the copy his editors wanted to read. He was working with a comic book mindset and scooping up all the perks along the way. The editors kept loading up his plate and he learned to skate through with very little effort.
He does not deserve a pass, by any means. However, when he kept getting his “actions affirmed” (an intentional pun) and moved on up, what was the NYT teaching him?
As for his resurrection under the pi-polar headline, he will never outlive his ruined reputation in the journalism world.
It’s interesting that the NY Times has all these excuses ready for Jayson Blair…as if this sort of thing isn’t a common practice at the NY Times.
If they claim Jayson Blair was an abberation, then how do they explain Walter Duranty, the “Pulitzer Prize Winning NY Times writer” who extolled Stalin’s “Worker’s Paradise” during the 1930s. If Duranty was in the former USSR at that time, then he’s a vile liar and an apologist for one of the world’s worst mass murderers, if he merely wrote his pablum from his Upper East Side apartment, then he did what Jayson Blair did!
Personally, I think Blair merely followed Duranty’s lead and that sort of calumny seems SOP at the NY Times and seems to have been so for quite a long time.
In a sense what he’s saying may all be true.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to have someone with a major personality disorder (bipolar, borderline, narcissistic) in your life, you know the lies and manipulation and drama are part of the territory.
And it’s prety impressive that the Times’ affirmative action programs are so strong that, just by being black, a clinically insane man could become one of the Times’ hottest rising stars.
I used to have a person with bipolar disorder in my group at work. Whatever other difficulties she may have had, her honesty and integrity were outstanding. I can just see people thinking that they never want to employ anyone with a personality disorder like that if it makes them lie like Jayson Blair. Shame on Blair for not taking responsibility for his actions. Did being bipolar prevent him from knowing right and wrong?
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