The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript

Race and Journalism

Thursday, May 29, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time

What are the implications of the Jayson Blair scandal for journalists, minority journalists, and journalism education?

Journalists, journalism professors, and others have spent the past several weeks debating the implications of the Jayson Blair scandal. Mr. Blair, a young, black reporter, recently resigned from his job at The New York Times after admitting to systematic fabrication and plagiarism.

» To My Former Students: How Race Works (5/30/2003)

Neil Henry is a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Pearl's Secret: A Black Man's Search for His White Family (University of California Press). In The Chronicle Review, Mr. Henry shares a letter he sent to black former students in the wake of the Blair scandal. In the letter, he predicts that his former students will face bigotry as a result of the scandal -- even though the Blair case "has nothing to do with race or diversity efforts at all."

A transcript of the chat follows.

Liz McMillen (Moderator):
Hello and welcome to today's online colloquy with Neil Henry on the Jayson Blair scandal. Blair has kicked up a lot of debate not only about journalism and The New York Times but also about the role of race in American society. We have a lot of questions today, so let's get started.

Welcome, Neil.

Question from Paul A. Bryant, Dean of Students - Western Connecticut State Univ.:
Would this issue have received as much attention had Jayson Blair not been African-American?

This is yet another blow to journalists already experiencing concerns following the overt and erroneous reporting stemming from the 2000 elections, 9/11 coverage, sniper shootings, and a host of other high profile news stories. What impact does this new scandal have on the general public's trust in the accuracy of the news we receive?

Neil Henry:
The New York Times is so highly respected and trusted that I do believe this scandal would have been widely publicized and discussed if the journalist in question had been white. It is the most prestigious newspaper in the country, after all, and any dent to its credibility is big news indeed. However, race in America remains such a highly charged topic that it added, in this case, a certain fuel to the flames. I don't believe the public's trust in the media will be harmed in the long run, though, any more than it already is. I think the average American is savvy enough to know there are bad eggs in every endeavor, and this one was a beaut....

Question from Rebecka R. Rutledge, Miami University:
I'd like to know why this is being addressed primarily as a racial issue and not as an issue of ethics in journalism? Jayson Blair's misadventures are no more racially bound than those committed by white journalists such as Stephen Glass. And while one might argue that Blair got his job by way of affirmative action based on race, Glass undoubtedly got his through some other sort of "affirmative" connection. The New York Times is an exclusive club that no one gains admittance to without a certain card of entry. It would be more productive to examine this problem on the level of personal and professional ethics, not race.

Neil Henry:
I agree, but our history and society sensibilities won't easily allow such an examination. When black people are involved in an issue like this, race becomes an element of the discussion, almost by default. The writer is exactly right in comparing the "affirmative" connections of the two reporters, Glass and Blair. I think the writer is also right on the mark by pointing out that it would be far more productive to discuss this topic in connection with personal and professional ethics, regardless of race, but the fact is we are still a nation that sees race -- and its history -- in nearly every event in which black people are involved.

Question from Cookie , four year research institution:
Why should Jayson Blair be used as a template for black journalists? When white journalists like Ruth Shalit and Stephen Glass make similar egregious mistakes and deceptions and get a pass? When will we get past the idea that the failings of one black are indicative of a flawed race but the failings of one white are individual failings?

Neil Henry:
Excellent questions, but I have no easy answers. The peculiar pathology of racism is such that it is indeed quick to point and pick at individual flaws as indicative of larger racial failings. That's our national tradition. It always seems the undercurrent to stories about black people who fail in one way or another. Obviously no one can say when or if we will ever move beyond these corrosive sentiments in society, but at the same time it's clear that the year 2003 isn't 1903 or even 1953, when the idea of black people working at the nation's mainstream newspapers and earning national awards for their work would have sounded absolutely ludicrous.

Question from Erik Gregory--Federal Defense Contractor:
As they say with criminals, they are caught and tried for only a small minority of the crimes they actually committed. My question: Don't the revelations of Jayson Blair's "fact-free" reporting for the Times, in fact, represent but a small minority (i.e. tip of the iceberg) of the problem?--namely, that journalists do this all the time but only a few are caught?

Neil Henry:
I don't think journalists do this all the time. In my experience, Blair is an aberration from the main. The newspaper people I've worked with, including reporters, editors, writers, are skilled and ethical professionals. That said, scandals do happen, and Blair is simply the latest in a long line that predates even the yellow journalism period more than a century ago. But it's unfair to take any scandal and presume it bespeaks ill of an entire profession, whether it's accounting, law, medicine or journalism.

Question from Albert Fields, St. Louis Community College:
Jayson Blair is not the first journalist to invent stories to sell or position his publication as a premiere place of information. Have we as citizens gotten lazy by not challenging more of the stories that are presented in the media as fact when in reality the stories are fabrications that help to reinforce stereotypes and myths?

Neil Henry:
I don't think fabrication or plagiarism are nearly the biggest ethical problems in the business. Such problems are representative more of personal, individual ethical failure than wider professional failure. I think, however, that citizens should take a more active role in questioning and challenging the information they receive, not least because of such matters as conflict of interest and ethical problems stemming from the increasing consolidation of media entities. Fewer and fewer gargantuan media corporations are owning the news we get. That's far more dangerous, in my mind, to the public's right to know than the personal failures of individual journalists like Jayson Blair.

Question from Jim Sleeper, Yale University:
This is not exactly a question, but, as some of you know, in 1997 I devoted a chapter of Liberal Racism to warning, explicitly and extensively, that a strange symbiosis between Arthur Sulzberger, Jr's impish, vaguely countercultural moralism and Howell Raines' penitential racialism was setting the stage for just the kind of journalistic debacle that has occurred. The chapter even opens with an anecdote about Times managing editor Gerald Boyd as told to me by Gay Talese. Not surprisingly, almost every reviewer of the book contrived not to notice that chapter. Still, it seems to me that anyone who really wants to discuss what has been going on at the Times should take Liberal Racism down off the shelf and read pages 67-95.

To my mind, the more furious of the denials from some quarters in recent days that Times' "diversity" policies have had much to do with what happened are just that: the fury of people who are in denial. The denials are also, however, a backhanded admission that the air is clearing--especially, I hope, for blacks, since they've been laboring for so long under the soft bigotry of low expectations.

People like me, Bill McGowan (whose Coloring the News I reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 17, 2002) and others who've tried to crack open the walls of denial have paid more than a little for it, and sometimes that has made me a tad testy. All I can do is ask people to read chapter 4 of Liberal Racism and my Hartford Courant column of May 13. I would be happy to send the LA Times review of the McGowan book to anyone who wants it.

Neil Henry:
The writer lives in a different world from the one I know. For one thing, as Blair himself has pointed out, Gerald Boyd, the paper's top black editor, reportedly was opposed in many ways to the young man's newsroom promotions. Blair said Boyd didn't trust him, didn't like him, and didn't think he was skilled enough as a reporter to merit the Times' trust in him. For another, the idea of a world class newspaper like the Times practicing the "soft bigotry of low expectations" of black journalists is as ridiculous as it is offensive. Tell that to Lynette Clemetson, whose stellar reporting and writing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during the Iraq War brought the conflict home to readers in gripping, insightful, and vivid fashion. Tell that to Bob Herbert, whose op-ed columns are a model of professionalism and public service. Tell that to young black reporters like Sherri Day, Greg Winter, and Damon Hack, among others, who are likewise producing excellence each day in the national, business, and sports pages of the Times. I could go on with many other names. The notion of "low expectations" certainly doesn't apply to the real black achievers at the Times.

Liz McMillen (Moderator):
We're about halfway through today's chat -- please keep your questions coming.

Question from Patt, small independent K-12 school:
In your email to your former students you wrote, "Few seem yet willing to point out that the Blair experience, while painful and infuriating, is no more than an anomaly. It has nothing to do with race or diversity efforts at all." After reading the articles about Blair, I agreed with you, until I read the following in a May 24 article in The Washington Post:

"In the proposal, [Blair's proposal for a book contract] which was read to The Washington Post by a source not connected to Blair, the 27-year-old admits that he "really screwed up," "distorted the truth" and "embarrassed The New York Times and myself." But the dominant motif is one of anger -- hurling unsubstantiated charges of racism at the paper and promising to reveal the Times's "darkest secrets," which he says, without offering evidence, involve drug parties and one editor's affair with an intern. Blair casts his story as one of "a young black man" told he would never succeed "by everyone from his white second-grade teacher to his editor at the Times, who rose from the fields and got a place in the master's house and then burned it down the only way he knew how."

Blair himself has brought racism into the discussion. How should we react to that? How should your former students react to that and deal with that in their positions at major newspapers?

Neil Henry:
Jayson Blair certainly does seem willing to do all he can to extend his 15 minutes of fame and to turn the scandal into treasure. He seems a gifted con man and tireless self-promoter, and those two traits -- far more than any other -- are what I believe the public should consider foremost when they consider whatever story he has to tell. The fact is that shame will always sell well as an entertainment commodity in our society, and Blair seems willing to use race, as a vehicle, as far as he can take it. I think it's a disgrace. But the real sadness, to me, is the publicity he is generating for himself, which obscures the truly wonderful stories of the many gifted and skilled young minority journalists working hard and making history at newspapers across America.

Question from Dr. Tom Frankman, William Woods University:
Mr. Blair was, among other things, impudent during his tenure at The Times. Are editors provided sufficient training in personnel management, either by their employers or at their universities?

Neil Henry:
That's a great question. Made me smile. Hmm. I remember a few shouting matches with editors over prose, drunken after hours talks long into the night with editors, poker games with editors, weekend barbecue and football games with editors -- a whole shipload of human experiences with editors that underscore the impassioned and frenetic nature of the craft. Things may be a little different now with the increasingly corporate nature of newspapering, but I never knew a single editor in my 15 years at the Wash Post who had the time or inclination to be trained how to handle a reporter. Most know how, because they have been reporters themselves and understand the pressures, joys, and challenges of the job. I also know that such management training, today, is not an item in any course in my school or most others. Newsroom editors generally follow simple common sense when it comes to handling reporters. And any editor who allows a reporter to be impudent is a fool.

Question from Trace Regan:
Will the Blair scandal hurt efforts to diversify newsrooms around the country?

Neil Henry:
I don't think the Blair scandal itself will hurt these efforts. I think newspapers are smart and sensible enough to see this as a story of personal disgrace and unethical behavior, and not a problem related to race. (And least one would hope so.) The problem is that such diversity efforts have stalled over the past 6 or 7 years, due largely to cutbacks on hiring at many newspapers. I believe America's newsrooms are about 10 percent minority now, up from 3 percent about 25 years ago, and far more than 1968, when the Kerner Commission issued its report on the press' failings.

I think most newsrooms remain committed to diversity, to their credit, but much of this is in relative terms. Some papers are more committed than others. There's still a long way to go as far as such programs, but it's not as nearly bad certainly as 1965 when the Los Angeles Times, for example, found itself having to cover the Watts riot, and didn't have a single black reporter on staff to help out. (Editors had to rush downstairs to the press room to enlist a black printer to help out. This fellow was sent to Watts to phone in reports from the scene, and became the first black reporter in the paper's history.)

Question from Kristin Gilger, Arizona State University:
This incident has convinced me that I need to start checking sources in the stories that my in-depth reporting students turn in each semester. I plan to start checking to determine that the interview took place and that the information is accurate. Do any other journalism educators do this? Do they find it a good use of their time?

Neil Henry:
I think you may have a good idea there. This isn't because I assume students are inclined to mischief, but because the technological age is making us much too lazy and far less curious. Students are growing up thinking of the web, for instance, as a place for instant answers (reliable or not) to any question they may want to ask. Fewer and fewer students even know how to use the library. Such trends are particularly problematic in journalism education because the best work, the best stories, the finest public service is more often than not predicated on gumshoe, outdoor reporting, and native curiosity that compells reporters to explore society and the world. So I think it might be a good idea to occasionally check student sourcing, especially if you tell them you intend to do so; but I think it might be even more valuable to force them to think outside of technological tools and envelopes they have become too accustomed to and reliant upon.

Question from Liz McMillen:
Neil, I'm curious to know what you think about the role of age and maturity here -- is it wise for publications like the Times or The New Republic to hire young and relatively inexperienced reporters to work on important national stories? Are the pressures of the newsroom especially hard on younger people -- or do "fabulists" come at any age?

Neil Henry:
The pressures indeed are intense for everyone, no matter the age. On hindsight, it was clearly a mistake for the Times to entrust national stories like the sniper case or the Iraq military families to a young and inexperienced reporter like Blair, for he lied and plagiarized his way from one story to the next. Why he wasn't caught earlier, I don't know, but it does seem he was a crash waiting to happen, judging by his reported problems with substance abuse.

However, it's ironic that the story that eventually did him in -- the one he plagiarized from Texas -- was reported and written by a young reporter, 26 year-old Macarena Hernandez. The lesson here, I think, is that some people truly flourish amid such intellectual challenges and corporate pressures. It's also true that our profession values youth greatly because of the energy and fresh intellectual curiosity younger people bring to stories. I don't think such pressures are especially hard on younger people, though they are certainly more impressionable; it's just that the young can crack easier and sooner, which is why mentoring and oversight is especially important. In any case, I would never suggest that the Times or the Post or any national paper cease hiring the young. I believe they need young people like plants need light.

Question from Jasper Day, Virginia:
I am much more interested in why the Rick Bragg departure from the Times is getting such a muted response as compared to Jayson Blair. I think Bragg's actions -- not going to the field to do reporting, taking the work of others as his own -- are just as egregious. Is the fact that Bragg is white the issue, or is it just that Blair broke first?

Neil Henry:
The Bragg story is really strange and disturbing. I think it's true that it isn't receiving as much publicity because the Blair story broke first, and the Blair scandal seems much more wildly newsworthy, at least on its surface -- race, youth, newsroom pressure etc. But it's also true that in all likelihood the Bragg fall from favor might never have occurred had it not been for the post-Blair soul-searching the Times embarked on, prompting the Bragg complaints in the first place. In short, I don't think race accounts for the differences in coverage.

But at the same time, Bragg's misdeeds seem pretty darn serious and deserve just as much scrutiny and analysis as Blair's at the Times, if not more so, since it points to a possibly systemic corruption of values and credibility, not just personal failure.

Liz McMillen (Moderator):
Thanks to Neil Henry for being with us for today's Colloquy Live. And thanks to all of you for your great questions.

Neil Henry:
Thank you all for your questions.