The View From Here: Editors at the Times should have resigned
The editors at the New York Times did exactly what they should have done when they resigned this week in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair scandal.
The debate has been raging about whether they should have resigned. For most trained journalists – or those who have even the modest knowledge or equivalent of Journalism 101 – the answer should be obvious.
Although some want to create a confusing debate on whether the “work” of one guy should be able bring down the top brass otherwise responsible for leading that newspaper to excellence, much less an entire institution, the question to those who say the editors should have been given a break would be: if they’re not responsible for Blair’s mistakes, besides Blair himself, who is?
Journalism is not perfect. We all make mistakes, even if they are the bane of newsrooms everywhere. And to be fair, the editors should be credited with doing what they should have done once the scandal was confirmed as true. Running extensive coverage of the mistakes tantamount to fraud was what they should have done in the name of responsibility. And maybe that coverage was the call of the two men who just resigned.
However, the deliberate dishonesty in reporting that happened under their watch had to be known to someone there. At small newspapers with local circulation, mistakes such as not running the correct crossword puzzle or spelling someone’s name wrong are not only irritating, but make people downright mad. And we hear about it when it happens. So when a large newspaper with a global circulation like the New York Times makes a mistake, surely someone catches on.
People don’t like mistakes. And judging by my experiences in various newsrooms, they will do anything they can to see they are corrected, including letting the people in leadership positions know about them.
At the Times, it seems like the editors should have similarly noticed inaccuracies perpetuated by Blair’s twist on journalism, including making up quotes from sources and fabricating stories when he didn’t even go to the story.
When I see my own editors checking the crossword puzzle with bleary eyes after reading hundreds of inches of copy all day long, I know most people have no concept of how tedious it is to edit. I also have to assume, based on working in three other newsrooms, that someone was looking the other way when it came to Blair’s work.
And when I hear the familiar questions asking me if I’m sure about this or that or exactly what that typographical error is supposed to mean, I know the higher ups are doing their jobs.
The way it’s been reported, the editors at the Times pushed and prodded Blair’s work not for accuracy, but to give support to a minority who apparently had talent. If he was that talented, I wonder why he had to make it up. But that’s beside the point. As former reporters, the editors surely would have heard from within that somewhere, someone was questioning Blair’s work. And striving for accuracy is Journalism 101 in papers both big and small, even if an honest mistake occurs once in a while.
As former reporters with major news reporting responsibilities on their r?sum?s, they had to know that part of what made them good was their editors asking them a lot of questions. By the paper’s own admission, problems with Blair’s work went on in at least 36 different articles he “wrote.”
The editors had to know they failed miserably in Blair’s case, and perhaps when someone asks if they should have resigned, the answer should be that they didn’t have much other choice.
(Amy Satterwhite is a reporter for the Standard. She can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)