The Blair Fib Project

Their drift is clear. NYT — that unwavering critic of pre-emptive military strikes and George W. Bush’s neocon agenda, that embodiment of sixties vintage social permissiveness, that champion of affirmative action and diversity in the workplace — is finally paying for its sins. And now that the organisation is introspecting about its rules of newsgathering and accountability, they reckon that its liberal agenda is also under a cloud.

For those who came late to the story, here’s a recap. In May, the NYT published a 14,000-word article about an internal inquiry into stories filed by one of its young and rising reporters, Jayson Blair. Those stories were startling — as much for their exclusiveness (for instance, about the Washington sniper) as for their attention to touching detail (for instance, about a Texas woman whose son was missing in action in Iraq). Only trouble is, he spiced up his tales by fabricating police reports or simply copying stuff from other reporters’ despatches. In fact, he was so uninhibited in his tap dance between fact and fiction that he presented expense bills from Brooklyn coffee shops when he was ostensibly on tour.

Instead of effecting closure on a regrettable episode, the disclosure sparked off a bonfire of resentment among NYT staffers. Why were his editors so slow to wisen up to the Blair Fib Project? Did they ignore warning signs because he was black, because they imbued the paper’s commitment to diversity in the newsroom with a missionary zeal? Or was it, in fact, a result of their pursuit of exclusives, at the cost of basic tenets of responsible reportage, at a time when television renders even earthshaking events passe within hours? Last week, this unease finally led to the exit of Howell Raines, NYT’s brash and provocative executive editor, and Gerald Boyd, its first black managing editor.

To get a grip on the buzz created by what anywhere else would have been shrugged off as a condemnable but commonplace transgression by a 27-year-old hack, it is perhaps important to understand that very American ritual: The celebrity scandal. Every so often Americans undergo a cathartic process, combining Oprah-variety confessionals with scholarly assessments of issues of national import. It happened during the O.J. trial and Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and it’s happening now with the NYT. As Jonathan Freedland writes in Bring Home the Revolution, his celebration of Americana: “The advantage of a political culture which can debate matters of national import through the medium of a celebrity scandal or a blockbuster movie is that everyone can take part.” Democracy at its most inclusive!

The NYT’s pre-eminence among American institutions is beyond doubt. Every morning it sets the agenda for the men and women who rule the country. In fact, Lyndon B. Johnson once sighed that he could not fight the Vietnam war without the support of The New York Times. The very placement of articles on a page serves as a guide for Americans and foreigners to determine what issues matter most. The Sulzbergers are chronicled like royalty and prize-winning journalists on the staff make up a galactic ring. Most importantly, the paper avows sustained devotion to the highest of journalistic standards.

So, at a time when affirmative action is being re-examined in universities and the Supreme Court is poised to pass verdict, the NYT controversy offers a prism to assess divergent views on managing diversity. Additionally, at a time when sources of information are becoming more diffuse, when so many certitudes appear manufactured, questions raised about dateline integrity and un-named sources acquire urgency.

To be fair, America is gracious in its welcome to outsiders to partake in its celebrity scandals. And for those of us in print journalism, it is a triple-jump into the sandpit that can be enormously instructive. It is an invitation to toss aside the loose change of current journalistic debate — on whether word limits of 350 are optimal for our accelerated, multi-tasked times, or whether content must be a function of the lowest common denominator. As the print media struggles to match the immediacy and advertiser-friendly appeal of television, it is a morality tale guiding us back to core competence and core values.

It is also a cautionary tale. Raines’s downfall is traced to his famous instruction, to “flood the zone” with reporters, to give readers all the information they could want as fast as possible. Compromises with dateline integrity and with old injunctions against anonymous pejorative quotes, with star bylines, it is held, invariably follow the flood.

In the end, however, the message — from the consternation and soul-searching the fabrication scandal has set off — is heartening. It is: Content matters.