THE HAMMER:
In her essay yesterday, Ann Coutler really nailed the NYTimes on the paper’s unbelievably ridiculous handling of the Jayson Blair affair – as well as the editor’s deficiencies that created the atmosphere for Blair’s pathology to develop in the first place. Here’s just a taste of Coulter’s accurate cross-punch to Raines and Sulzberger:
…In one of several feverish editorials supporting the University of Michigan's race-based admissions program, the Times denounced the Bush administration for imagining "that diversity can be achieved without explicitly taking race into account." Any diversity program that failed to do so, the Times lectured, was "necessarily flawed." But then it gets caught publishing Jayson Blair and the Times demurely insists that its own affirmative action program scrupulously ignored race.
The Times not only expressly took race into account, but also put Blair's race above everything – accuracy, credibility and the paper's reputation. It hired a kid barely out of college. In fact, it turns out he was not yet out of college. He had no professional journalistic experience, except at the Times. He screwed up over and over again and the paper had to print 50 corrections to articles he'd written.
Despite all this, Blair was repeatedly published on the front page, promoted and sent love notes from the editor in chief, Howell Raines. Ignoring the warnings of a few intrepid whistleblowers, top management kept assigning Blair to bigger stories in new departments without alerting the editors to Blair's history because – as Raines said – it would "stigmatize" him. (After this scandal, does the demand for black heart surgeons go up or down?) Raines jettisoned the Times' famous slogan, "All the News That's Fit to Print," preferring the slogan: "The New York Times: Now With Even More Black People!"
Coulter, Andrew Sullivan, and others have pointed to the brand of liberalism practiced by Sulzberger, Raines (and their Manhattan cronies) as a root cause for the what ails the Times.
I’m not so convinced though that it is a simple matter of political ideology – though Leftist (not merely liberal) thought certainly does play an increasing role at the paper. (I love it Coulter talks about “the Soviet-style reporting favored” at the Times.) It would be easier to write-off, and change things (with outside pressures and such) at the paper if ideology was the root of the problem.
I think the core disease is actually more associated with the ego and vanity of Sulzberger and Raines – and their desperate attempt to at least appear to still have some semblance of relevance in a world that is rapidly leaving them, their brand of journalism, and their medium behind.
It’s a bold new world in this, the advancing Information Age. Too bad the Times doesn’t seem up to the adventure.
posted by Joshua @ 4:53 PM
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