It now appears that The Times is finally ‘fessing up to the most outrageous abuses by one of its reporters and is conducting an investigation into the full scope of Jayson Blair’s misleading of its readers. From what is already known, for a period of four years, Blair fabricated news stories. But what is intriguing is that some higher-ups at The Times apparently were aware of Blair’s wrongdoing, but for reasons not yet clear – he was not discharged. Some are suggesting that notions of “affirmative action” (Blair is African-American), were in play in Blair’s being hired and not let go.
It has long seemed to us that there is a culture at The Times that tolerates lies, inaccuracies and the coloration or discoloration of news, in order to further its own agendas. And we suspect that social engineering considerations of racial “diversity” did indeed result in an institutional reluctance to come down hard on an employee who was regularly deceiving its readers.
While The Times is at it, we suggest that an investigation of its coverage of the Middle East is also in order. We believe there ought to be an inquiry into the many palpable untruths that have been published about Israel’s confrontation with the Palestinian Arabs.
A good place to start would be the partisan reportage of Deborah Sontag. For many months, this relatively inexperienced young woman’s articles appeared on the front page and other prominent places in The Times. Her reporting was undisguisedly pro-Palestinian to the point that her columns triggered boycotts of the newspaper. Unlike Blair, however, she was quietly reassigned. Perhaps things went too far for The Times even though Ms. Sontag reported what The Times brass wanted to hear.
The Blair Affair vindicates at long last what we and others have been saying for years: The Times logo, “All The News That Fit To Print,” should really be replaced by “We
Print All The News That Fits.”
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