After the Tall Timber (72 page)

The narrative piece did contain, near the end, one nearly perfect anecdote, the capstone of its accusations, in a claim that Mr. Blair had in fact been assigned to something important, “one of the biggest stories to come from the war.”

“Pulling details out of thin air,” the
Times
seemed to forget was, from the very first day, the essence precisely of the story of Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch—at every stage of the military’s coup in promoting through an obliging press a fiction, a highly implausible, unusually effective piece of propaganda, as “one of the biggest stories to come from the war.” The
Times
went straight to the heart of the matter. Huffy, in a wonderfully schoolmarmish way, “The porch overlooks no such thing” could be one of the great lines in press criticism, if not in journalism itself. Though “Correcting the Record” was the title of the narrative (7,165 words)—as it was of the next of the four Jayson Blair pieces—of May 2, 2003, the
Times
never disclosed what the porch
does
overlook.

The second piece, the “accounting” (6,591 words), divided each of several flawed articles by Blair into (capitalized) categories of flaw: DENIED REPORTS; FACTUAL ERRORS; WHEREABOUTS; PLAGIARISM; FABRICATIONS; and OTHER ISSUES. As an intellectual matter, it was clear that there was something wrong with this list. Readers who noticed that “WHEREABOUTS” did not, in any obvious way, belong in a list of transgressions had to realize that the “dateline”—the place the reporter claims to be filing his story from—had become, in this case, an obsession, a subject of limitless horror and indignation for the
Times
. The investigators may have been too scandalized to name it with precision. Readers, who have long been aware that most journalists, particularly famous journalists, do a lot of their interviews by phone, probably pay little attention to even the most exotic datelines. If Lally Weymouth of
Newsweek
is reporting on an exclusive interview with Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, it is important that she has in fact spoken directly with him in Karachi. If John F. Burns, of the
Times
, is reporting on his treatment by agents in Baghdad, it is crucial that he is in fact there and not filing on the basis of a call from a bedside phone at the Plaza in New York. But these are distinguished reporters, and their actual location, at the time of reporting, is part of the essence of their work. A “dateline” in itself is meaningless.

It is true that Jayson Blair’s having almost never traveled to the place reflected in the dateline of his pieces seemed an extreme case. Perhaps he hated travel, had become phobic about it. Perhaps, since the
Times
narrative said he had (among other “personal problems”) a cocaine habit, he wanted to stay near his dealer. Most likely, though, on the basis of the versatility and frequency of his pieces (sometimes, though the
Times
narrative does not mention this, two and even three bylined pieces in a single day), Blair was staying near home in order to write. Travel takes time. Blair, having been hired, promoted and given the status of full-time reporter under Lelyveld, and thrived under Raines, could only sustain his pace by making economies of time and energy: no travel, some appropriation of other people’s work, some embellishment of stories, some fabrication. Grounds for dismissal, certainly—once Blair had made the cardinal mistake of stealing from a publication whose power to expose the theft was greater than the
Times
’s power to conceal it. Just to illustrate, however, the level of corrections the
Times
found it worth the huge expenditure of its own space and energy to make:

This last point rests on two fairly odd assumptions: first, that a man who has “discussed” with a reporter a “fact  . . . on the condition that it not be published” can, in most cases, expect the reporter to see to it that it is not published; and second, that when a Mr. Ballenger, having been “upset” to see a fact he regarded as private published in the paper on February 3, 2003, finds it published again in the same paper on May 11, something of value has been achieved.

The third
Times
piece that Sunday, May 11, 2003, carried the headline: “Editors’ Note.” It was brief, and remarkable mainly for the nature of its apology. Among those who deserved an apology, the
Times
included “all conscientious journalists whose professional trust has been betrayed by this episode.” In its two long pieces, the narrative and the account, The
Times
had apparently been under the delusion (1) that by making corrections to already trivial stories it was conveying useful information, and (2) that it was engaged in some act of self-criticism, or even self-examination, in enumerating the errors of one small, unimportant reporter on its staff. What was beyond explanation was the need to apologize to a whole profession for an “episode” which can have caused no conceivable harm to any conscientious journalist, anywhere.

The sentence, however, brought inescapably to mind another “episode”—for which the
Times
has never offered an apology to anyone, least of all to its genuine victim, Dr. Wen Ho Lee. A series of pieces in the
Times
, between March 6, 1999, and September 26, 2000, played a major part in sending an innocent man to prison, and keeping him there, for nine months, in solitary confinement, often in shackles—until a federal judge, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, apologized to him on behalf of the United States government and ordered his release. If the
Times
had spent a fraction of the space, energy and zeal which it devoted to its “investigation” of the errors of Jayson Blair on a genuine investigation of its own factual and ethical transgressions in covering the case of Wen Ho Lee, it would have made a valuable contribution, even marked a turning point in the history of journalism, particularly its own.

Instead, on September 26, 2000, the
Times
published an Editors’ Note, “a public accounting” (1,663 words), and, two days later, an editorial “Overview” (1,725 words), in which it appraised its own coverage of the case of Wen Ho Lee and found it good—“careful reporting that included extensive cross-checking and vetting of multiple sources,” of which the paper remained “proud.” On a single day, March 24, 1999, the paper had carried on its front page a story that Dr. Lee had once hired as a laboratory assistant a Chinese citizen “already under investigation as a spy.” The FBI was looking for this suspect, to question him. “And the research assistant has disappeared.”

A reporter who had actually traveled that day from Washington to Los Alamos saw the
Times
exclusive story and despaired. Then the reporter asked somebody at the lab whether he knew anything about the missing man. Certainly. It turned out the research assistant was a graduate student, an intern, who had returned to his regular studies at Penn State; he could easily be reached on the university’s website or by phone. Neither the
Times
reporter nor anyone else from the
Times
(or the FBI apparently) had troubled to try so direct a route. Too busy with extensive cross-checking and multiple vetting of sources.

In retrospect, and in the context of the Jayson Blair pieces, the coverage of Wen Ho Lee looks worse than ever, based on profound, unacknowledged, continued and truly damaging errors—which the
Times
to this day insists were not errors at all. The paper was not just the instrument of other powerful institutions against the individual; it had become a driving force in the prosecution and vested its reputation there. This is not the role envisioned in the First Amendment for the press. No apology, then, to the few “conscientious journalists” (the late Lars-Erik Nelson of the
New York Daily News
chief among them) who virtually dismantled the
Times
’s case against Dr. Lee—or to the many, perhaps somewhat less conscientious journalists who trusted the
Times
’s story and took it up, or to readers who were and perhaps remain misled by it. And, far from an apology, in all subsequent
Times
pieces about the matter, continued attacks on Dr. Lee.

A newspaper, surely, cannot be said to have a subconscious and yet, in raising this curious question of apology, the
Times
called attention to what is really an unlikely nexus, not just between the “episodes” of Blair and Lee—each an unprecedented “investigation” by the
Times
of what has appeared in its pages—but in issues they raise: responsibility in the exercise of power; the identity and reliability of sources; politically correct “diversity” as defined by category (racial, ethnic, gender, sexual preference) so as virtually to exclude individuality, and thereby paradoxically assure uniformity; pack journalism; vendetta journalism; coerced agreement; the enforcement of received ideas; fear, widespread and justified, of the
Times
; and the issue of genuine openness to correction and journalism in good faith.

Not inconsistent with these considerations was the fourth document of May 11, 2003, the briefest of all (31 words). It too bore the headline Editors’ Note. “Readers with information about other articles by Jayson Blair that may be false wholly or in part,” it said, “are asked to e-mail the
Times
: [email protected].” The
Times
’s appetite for hounding had reached the Internet. Having leveled virtually the entire arsenal of the paper at a man whom its own narrative had already described as “troubled,” it now invited the whole world to join it in this hunt. Blair turns out after all to have been a fairly sturdy fellow, who read the
Times
“culture” very well. For all the lectures he was apparently subjected to, for all the talk of “disciplinary” action, “short leashes,” “reprimands” (in much of the narrative, the
Times
sounds for all the world like a cross between the Curia and a particularly dull reformatory or boarding school), Blair showed that, while he had little respect for the system, he was all right with individuals. When he praised, as he often did, some other writer’s work, he had the good sense for instance, uncommon even in professional writers, to single out “something far down in the story,” as one of the
Times
’s really fine reporters said, “so you’d know he read it.” On the other hand, at least one editor gave the right warnings, at the right time: the place to address problems with Blair’s reporting was internally, and the way to resolve those problems would be to stop publishing his work.

The address on the web inviting further complaints about Blair ran in the
Times
for several days. After a while, there was some pretense that the invitation extended to complaints about any and all
Times
reporters, but this was clearly untrue. One of the finest, most beloved and respected editors at the
Times
, in the years of its greatest reliability, distinction, and aspiration toward objectivity and fairness, told me that he had never, in any publication, been quoted accurately. Since then I have met no one with experience of being quoted who has not made the same observation. A complaint of misquotation or any other error to a web address at the
Times
called
retrace
, everyone agrees, would be as futile as, say, a letter to the Book Review pointing out a complete and deliberate misrepresentation of a nonfiction book.

Retrace
did, however, produce one, innocent casualty. Blair had clearly incurred, at the
Times
, a lot of envy. So, apparently, had a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Rick Bragg. A “reader” now apparently questioned whether Mr. Bragg had really done the reporting for a bylined piece about oystermen in Apalachicola, Florida. From the subsequent public expressions of outrage by
Times
reporters it was not hard to guess who the “reader” was, or were. Mr. Bragg had, in fact, made extensive use of the notes of a stringer, a young man named J. Wes Yoder, who greatly admired Mr. Bragg’s work, and who had asked to work for him, in order to learn from him. Terrible. What a scandal. One would hardly know from the ensuing outcry that the practice is so widespread it is an assumed and honored part of the journalistic tradition. Stringers, legmen, a form of apprenticeship since before the days of the green eyeshade. In the Jayson Blair turmoil at the
Times
, however, Mr. Bragg was suspended for two weeks.

Then Mr. Bragg did the unpardonable: he spoke the truth, in public. He said not only that stringers were not uncommon but also that he had always considered it a point of honor actually to go to the place mentioned in the by-now-sacred dateline, in time to claim it honorably for his piece. Well. The hounding began. Such a barrage of furious, self-righteous email posted by
Times
reporters. We might have been in the realm of dateline—or perhaps whereabouts—fraud again. Everyone knew, or rather everyone who paid any attention to the matter knew, that racing somewhere for a single day just to claim the authority of a dateline is a common practice even among the most admired journalists writing about the most serious, contentious subjects. Astonishment and dismay, however, expressed on many blogs. Much later, word from the
Times
’s current executive editor Bill Keller that if such an “outrage” had even been suspected, Mr. Bragg would have been out “in a heartbeat.”

By then, Mr. Bragg had quit. He will be working with Jessica Lynch, to help write the story, presumably—since the Lynch family has always been (in contrast with all those who claim to speak for them) honest—the true story of Jessica Lynch. NBC has decided meanwhile to produce a special television program in time for the November sweeps. Jessica Lynch has withdrawn her cooperation. No matter. NBC has decided the story was always anyway an “action/adventure” story, already largely in the public domain. “Frankly,” NBC’s Entertainment president Jeff Zucker said, Private Lynch had only “a minor role.” The military will help with the program. And the real hero will be one Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief—the Iraqi lawyer who, in early versions of the story, witnessed Private Lynch being “slapped,” and therefore walked six miles, back and forth, several times, to inform the American military and draw a map of the hospital where she was. You may have wondered what happened to that Iraqi lawyer. Apart from this work for NBC (which will shoot the film from “his perspective”), and a large contract for a book, he has a job with a lobbying firm in Washington. In any case, the hounding of Mr. Bragg, who holds a Pulitzer Prize, was not without risk for the pack. The Pulitzer might lose some of its magic properties for them as well.