Hard News: The Scandals at the New York Times and their by Seth Mnookin

By Seth Mnookin

On could eleven, 2003, the recent York occasions dedicated 4 pages of its Sunday paper to the deceptions of Jayson Blair, a mediocre former occasions reporter who had made up tales, faked datelines, and plagiarized on a big scale. The fallout from the Blair scandal rocked the days to its center and printed fault traces in a fractious newsroom that was once already on the subject of open rebel. Staffers have been furious–about the belief that administration had given Blair extra leeway simply because he used to be black, in regards to the designated therapy of favourite correspondents, and such a lot of all concerning the shoddy reporting that used to be infecting the main respected newspaper on the earth. inside a month, Howell Raines, the imperious government editor who had taken workplace under per week ahead of the terrorist assaults of September eleven, 2001–and helped lead the paper to a checklist six Pulitzer Prizes for its insurance of the attacks–had been pressured out of his job.Having received unparalleled entry to the journalists who carried out the Times’s inner research, best newsroom executives, and dozens of occasions editors, former Newsweek senior author Seth Mnookin shall we us learn all approximately it–the tale at the back of the most important journalistic rip-off of our period and the profound implications of the scandal for the quickly altering international of yankee journalism. It’s a real story that reads like Greek drama, with the main respected of yankee associations trying to conquer the crippling results of a leader’s blinding narcissism and a low-level reporter’s sociopathic deceptions. tough information will form how we comprehend and decide the media for future years.

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Additional info for Hard News: The Scandals at the New York Times and their Meaning for American Media

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The Times blanketed the story so completely that a special rubric-"Counting the Vote"-was adopted to guide readers through its coverage. Throughout November and into December, the paper's combination of breaking news and investigative reportage led the pack. On November 17, for instance, Raymond Bonner and Josh Barbanel broke a story about the disproportionately high number of ballots cast by Mrican American voters in Duval County that had been invalidated. Several weeks later, on December 8, a frontpage story by David Barstow and Somini Sengupta broke news about the controversial history of a judge in Leon County whose ruling crippled AI Gore's chances.

M. Raines arrived at the Times around ten o'clock, just as the south tower was collapsing. The Pentagon had also been hit. All local bridges and tunnels were shut down, as were all of the country's flight operations. By the time Raines and the paper's top editors made their way to the paper, dozens of reporters had swarmed toward the World Trade Center. A handful of the paper's metro staffers were already downtownSeptember 11 was the scheduled primary day for November's mayoral election. Some of them would remain at ground zero for weeks.

Let's just say we had heard of Richard Clarke," Engelberg says dryly, referring to the Bush and Clinton antiterrorism adviser who, in the spring of 2004, ignited a firestorm when he criticized President Bush for dropping the ball on warnings about al-Qaeda. " "I was just staggered," says Engelberg. "The sheer ego of it. It wasn't about doing great journalism. It wasn't about the thousands dead at ground zero. It wasn't about getting the story right. " Still, the newsroom needed a leader, and it's entirely possible that the Times's staff might have embraced one in Raines if he'd been willing to show them he valued having them on his team.

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