theapportioner
May 18th, 2003, 09:39 PM
Truth, Lies and Subtext
By BOB HERBERT
I've seen drunks, incompetents and out-and-out lunatics in the newsrooms I've passed through over the years. I've seen plagiarizers, fiction writers and reporters who felt it was beneath them to show up for work at all.
I remember a police captain who said of a columnist at The Daily News: "I didn't mind him makin' stuff up as long as I looked O.K. But now he's startin' to [tick] me off."
I was at NBC when some geniuses decided it was a good idea to attach incendiary devices to a few General Motors pickup trucks to show that the trucks had a propensity to burst into flames. That became a scandal that grew into a conflagration that took down the entire power structure at NBC News.
I've seen schmoozers, snoozers and high-powered losers in every venue I've been in. Most of these rogues, scoundrels and miscreants were white because most of the staffers in America's mainstream newsrooms are white. What I haven't seen in all these years was the suggestion that any of these individuals fouled up — or were put into positions where they could foul up — because they were white.
Which brings us to the Jayson Blair scandal. For those who have been watching nothing but the Food Network for the past few weeks, Mr. Blair was a Times reporter who resigned after it was learned that his work contained fabrications and plagiarized passages on a monumental scale. The truth and Jayson Blair inhabited separate universes. If there was a blizzard raging, Mr. Blair could tell you with the straightest and friendliest of faces that the weather outside was sunny and warm.
Now this would be a juicy story under any circumstances. But Mr. Blair is black, so there is the additional spice of race, to which so many Americans are terminally addicted.
Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair's reporting.
Mr. Blair was a first-class head case who was given a golden opportunity and responded by spreading seeds of betrayal every place he went. He betrayed his readers. He betrayed his profession. He betrayed the editors who hired and promoted him. But there was no racial component to that betrayal, any more than there was a racial component to the many betrayals of Mike Barnicle, a columnist who was forced to resign from The Boston Globe in 1998 after years of complaints about his work.
Although Mr. Barnicle is white, his journalistic sins have generally — and properly — been seen as the sins of an individual.
But the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story as evidence that there is something inherently wrong with The Times's effort to diversify its newsroom, and beyond that, with the very idea of a commitment to diversity or affirmative action anywhere.
And while these agitators won't admit it, the nasty subtext to their attack is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks.
Jayson Blair should have been yanked away from his computer long ago. There had been plenty of warnings. The failure to act on those warnings was a breakdown in management for which the paper is paying a heavy price. I don't want to hear that the devil — in this case a devil named diversity — was to blame.
The idea that blacks can get away with the journalistic equivalent of murder at The Times because they are black is preposterous.
There's a real shortage of black reporters, editors and columnists at The Times. But the few who are here are doing fine and serious work day in and day out and don't deserve to be stigmatized by people who can see them only through the prism of a stereotype.
The problem with American newsrooms is too little diversity, not too much. Blacks have always faced discrimination and maddening double standards in the newsroom, and they continue to do so. So do women, Latinos and many other groups that are not part of the traditional newsroom in-crowd.
So let's be real. Discrimination in the newsroom — in hiring, in the quality of assignments and in promotions — is a much more pervasive problem than Jayson Blair's aberrant behavior. A black reporter told me angrily last week, "After hundreds of years in America, we are still on probation."
I agree. And the correct response is not to grow fainthearted, or to internalize the views of those who wish you ill. The correct response is to strike back — as hard and as often as it takes.
By BOB HERBERT
I've seen drunks, incompetents and out-and-out lunatics in the newsrooms I've passed through over the years. I've seen plagiarizers, fiction writers and reporters who felt it was beneath them to show up for work at all.
I remember a police captain who said of a columnist at The Daily News: "I didn't mind him makin' stuff up as long as I looked O.K. But now he's startin' to [tick] me off."
I was at NBC when some geniuses decided it was a good idea to attach incendiary devices to a few General Motors pickup trucks to show that the trucks had a propensity to burst into flames. That became a scandal that grew into a conflagration that took down the entire power structure at NBC News.
I've seen schmoozers, snoozers and high-powered losers in every venue I've been in. Most of these rogues, scoundrels and miscreants were white because most of the staffers in America's mainstream newsrooms are white. What I haven't seen in all these years was the suggestion that any of these individuals fouled up — or were put into positions where they could foul up — because they were white.
Which brings us to the Jayson Blair scandal. For those who have been watching nothing but the Food Network for the past few weeks, Mr. Blair was a Times reporter who resigned after it was learned that his work contained fabrications and plagiarized passages on a monumental scale. The truth and Jayson Blair inhabited separate universes. If there was a blizzard raging, Mr. Blair could tell you with the straightest and friendliest of faces that the weather outside was sunny and warm.
Now this would be a juicy story under any circumstances. But Mr. Blair is black, so there is the additional spice of race, to which so many Americans are terminally addicted.
Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair's reporting.
Mr. Blair was a first-class head case who was given a golden opportunity and responded by spreading seeds of betrayal every place he went. He betrayed his readers. He betrayed his profession. He betrayed the editors who hired and promoted him. But there was no racial component to that betrayal, any more than there was a racial component to the many betrayals of Mike Barnicle, a columnist who was forced to resign from The Boston Globe in 1998 after years of complaints about his work.
Although Mr. Barnicle is white, his journalistic sins have generally — and properly — been seen as the sins of an individual.
But the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story as evidence that there is something inherently wrong with The Times's effort to diversify its newsroom, and beyond that, with the very idea of a commitment to diversity or affirmative action anywhere.
And while these agitators won't admit it, the nasty subtext to their attack is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks.
Jayson Blair should have been yanked away from his computer long ago. There had been plenty of warnings. The failure to act on those warnings was a breakdown in management for which the paper is paying a heavy price. I don't want to hear that the devil — in this case a devil named diversity — was to blame.
The idea that blacks can get away with the journalistic equivalent of murder at The Times because they are black is preposterous.
There's a real shortage of black reporters, editors and columnists at The Times. But the few who are here are doing fine and serious work day in and day out and don't deserve to be stigmatized by people who can see them only through the prism of a stereotype.
The problem with American newsrooms is too little diversity, not too much. Blacks have always faced discrimination and maddening double standards in the newsroom, and they continue to do so. So do women, Latinos and many other groups that are not part of the traditional newsroom in-crowd.
So let's be real. Discrimination in the newsroom — in hiring, in the quality of assignments and in promotions — is a much more pervasive problem than Jayson Blair's aberrant behavior. A black reporter told me angrily last week, "After hundreds of years in America, we are still on probation."
I agree. And the correct response is not to grow fainthearted, or to internalize the views of those who wish you ill. The correct response is to strike back — as hard and as often as it takes.