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May. 21st, 2003 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbThe New York Observer has an interview with Jayson Blair, the reporter whose made-up stories prompted a 7000-word investigative apology from the Times. Pundits, as you may know, have suggested that Blair was an undeserving beneficiary of affirmative action, and that senior editors let him get away with his shameful acts as long as he did because he's black.
Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post interprets the same remarks even more improperly, writing that Blair "boast[ed] about his repeated deception of Times editors" and that he "seemed angry that his serial fabrications weren’t being properly appreciated." Both true, in a sense, but the "boasts" and the need for "appreciation" have to be understood in the context of a reaction to the insulting "because-he's-black" treatment he's gotten in the press.
(Let me be clear that I think Blair deserves to be insulted; his ethics were nowhere to be found at the Times, and this interview doesn't raise his standing much. But he should be insulted correctly.)
As Kurtz points out, Blair's statement to CNN is rather more circumspect:
That assertion made Mr. Blair angry. Being black at The Times "hurts you as much as it helps you," he said. It infuriated him that he was being compared to Stephen Glass, the white, ex–New Republic fraud who has just published a novel, The Fabulist, about his own nonfiction fictions. Because in his tortured, roller-coaster mind, you could call him a liar, but you could not call him unworthy.Go back and read that first paragraph again. By now you can see that it didn't infuriate him to be compared to Stephen Glass. What infuriated him was to be compared and found wanting, in some bizarre competition to most flagrantly violate journalistic ethics.
"I don’t understand why I am the bumbling affirmative-action hire when Stephen Glass is this brilliant whiz kid, when from my perspective—and I know I shouldn’t be saying this—I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism," he said. "He [Glass] is so brilliant, and yet somehow I’m an affirmative-action hire. They’re all so smart, but I was sitting right under their nose fooling them."
Mr. Blair continued: "If they’re all so brilliant and I’m such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn’t catch me?"
Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post interprets the same remarks even more improperly, writing that Blair "boast[ed] about his repeated deception of Times editors" and that he "seemed angry that his serial fabrications weren’t being properly appreciated." Both true, in a sense, but the "boasts" and the need for "appreciation" have to be understood in the context of a reaction to the insulting "because-he's-black" treatment he's gotten in the press.
(Let me be clear that I think Blair deserves to be insulted; his ethics were nowhere to be found at the Times, and this interview doesn't raise his standing much. But he should be insulted correctly.)
As Kurtz points out, Blair's statement to CNN is rather more circumspect:
"I am sorry for what I've done," he told CNN by phone. "It's my hope that others will learn from my mistakes."This is why he's hired David Vigliano to help him sell his story:
Blair said he hopes to "write and share my story so that it can help others to heal."The Observer has further insight from Mr. Vigliano on the process of cashing in.
