Young reporter for The New York Times, Jayson Blair, fibbed, forged and deceived the newspaper and readers with innumerable stories for several years before getting caught and forced to quit his job. His sources were fake, content plagiarized from the published works of others, and he lied about visiting places and events he actually never did. The consequences after the issue was thoroughly probed and publicized by the newspaper company “brought down not only the reporter but also The Times’s executive editor and managing editor. For a while, it even made The Times a laughingstock in late-night comedy routines” (Sullivan para1).According to the Society of Professional Journalists, enlightening the masses represents the basis of democracy and a precursor to justice. The observance of ethicality in journalism aims at ensuring just, complete, and precise free information interchange. Moral journalists will always observe integrity in their work. After all, their biggest and most important duty is public service. In this process, “journalists should avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived and disclose unavoidable conflicts” (Society of Professional Journalists 1).
Jayson Blair, then-27 years of age, deceived his peers, superiors and readers by publishing stories supposedly having occurred and witnessed by him in Texas, Maryland, and elsewhere, though he was actually miles away, in the city of New York. Blair made up incidents and comments, taking the help of wire services and other newspapers. He used pictures to choose and compose details and make it appear as though he was on the field to witness an event happening or to meet with an individual. These methods were employed by him to fake information on “emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq” (Barry, Barstow, Glater, Liptak & Steinberg para2).
Akin to law enforcement and financial organizations, all news companies expect...
The investigation into the Jayson Blair case revealed repeated violations of the core journalism doctrine, which is merely to state the truth under all circumstances. Blair blurred his actual location using his laptop and mobile phone as instruments of deception, in addition to 24-hour access to news databases (para3).
Blair’s article ‘A NATION AT WAR: RECUPERATION; Former P.O.W. Returns Home For Treatment at Army Hospital’ states that “as members of Private Lynch's family waited in the Melrose House, an Army hotel in the Walter Reed complex, for her arrival, friends in West Virginia held a fund-raiser this afternoon for her father, Gregory Sr., a self-employed truck driver who has not worked since his daughter was reported missing” (Blair para11). However, that complex doesn’t house any such hotel.
Despite Blair’s short span of employment with the company and the fact that he was only one in 375 Times reporters, the negative consequences of his actions on peers and the company continued for months.
While all his writing wasn’t untrue, the major part of the truth published in his articles was plagiarized. A headline article, 1,831 words long and supposedly drawn from lengthy conversations conducted with half a dozen injured army men, was dependent on the deceptive techniques exploited in several other articles of his, published in the past many months. Akin to his other pieces, he seems to have constructed the above account by partially utilizing facts published on other news companies’ databases. Take, for instance, his description of a Hospitalman named Alaniz, who ''not only lost his right leg, but also had a finger torn off, broke his left leg and took shrapnel in his groin and arms'' (Barry, Barstow, Glater, Liptak & Steinberg para12). The above portrayal is identical to a Washington Post account.
The journalist breached several of the company’s long –established and…
