Will the newspapers that ran columns downplaying or denying race
as an element of the New York Times scandal now publish
corrections? No, liberal newspapers don’t confess ideological
deception. Their corrections pages are reserved for more weighty
announcements, such as disclosing that they erred in the spelling
of a subject’s middle name.
Race has little or nothing to do with the Blair case, declared
numerous writers long before they examined the facts. Isn’t that
dishonest journalism? The liberals blasting Blair practice a more
subtle variant of his dishonesty. He reported on events unseen;
they pronounce on evidence unseen.
These promoters of affirmative action in the newsroom don’t want
readers to look too closely at the facts in the Blair case — and
certainly don’t want readers interpreting the facts on their own,
without the benefit of journalistic supervision. “Don’t Blame
Diversity,” the Washington Post’s Terry Neal instructs. “The New
York Times Scandal: About Values, More Than Race,” reads the
pontifical decree from the Wall Street Journal’s Albert
Hunt.
The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday on the New
York Times powwow about the Blair scandal. But it couldn’t
find room in its story to report editor Howell Raines’s admission
that diversity goals contributed to his indulgence of the
hoaxer.
“Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts
[Blair] appeared to be a promising young minority reporter,” Raines
is quoted as saying at the meeting. “I believe in aggressively
providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities.” He said
that “you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama,
with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not
stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my
heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”
Pretty important quote from the meeting. Too bad the Los
Angeles Times missed the story.
After Raines’s admission, will the crowd saying “This has
nothing to do with race” now permit readers to draw the conclusion
that it does? Perhaps not. To acknowledge reality here, they fear,
may derail the train of progress and we can’t have that. As Terry
Neal says, “why can’t Blair just be one severely troubled guy who
did outrageous things?”
Why is it so important to leave it at that? So nobody will think
too deeply about the corrosive effects of affirmative action.
Howard Kurtz reports that New York Times Managing Editor
Gerald Boyd told staffers that “this is not about a failure of
minority journalists,” and, “Let’s not make this about race or
youth or anything that divides the most talented newsroom in the
country and indeed the world.” Got that? No examination of the
evidence that might lead to division is welcome. Don’t draw any
conclusions from the facts that might arrest the liberal
agenda.
Desperate to divert attention from a diversity project gone
bust, liberals are talking about all the white fakers of the recent
journalistic past. “To those who say the scandal over the fraud
committed by New York Times reporter Jayson Blair is a
byproduct of affirmative action, there are numerous rejoinders,
including Stephen Glass, Ruth Shalit and Foster Winans,” writes Al
Hunt. Did he skip Logic 101? How could the facts in the Blair case
possibly depend upon these other cases? Terry Neal wants to know,
“Why is it that when white reporters commit similar acts of
outrageous fraud, no one in the establishment media launches
breathy social commentaries about the continued existence of white
privilege and entitlement in the newsroom?”
If, say, Stephen Glass had hung out with editors who talked
about the aggressive recruitment of spoiled white kids and
nominated one of them as journalist of the year for the National
Association of White Journalists, does Neal think race wouldn’t
have come up in stories about Glass’s fraud?
Blair engaged in blatant and damaging dishonesty. But the less
obvious forms of journalistic dishonesty are damaging too. The
diversity cheerleaders he exploited also falsify reality, yet they
never lose their jobs and never issue corrections.
