The New York Times acknowledges every day on page 2 mistakes that its reporters make and copy editors overlook. This is a virtue though making mistakes is not. The Blair scandal (see article by the author on 30 May 03, http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web21021416667hoot85704%20AM820&pn=1§ion=S6) prodded the Times to appoint a committee to suggest steps to avoid frequent future loss of face. The committee recommended the appointment of two categories of editors, a standards editor and a public editor (ombudsman). Allan Siegal, who headed the committee, took charge as the standards editor last month. The ombudsman is waiting in the wings. Everything seemed hunky-dory at the Times Square until NYT published on October 4 retraction of a report it had published two days earlier. The October 2 report said that Arnold Schwarznegger, Republican candidate running for California governorship, had said that he admired Hitler "for being such a good public speaker and what he did with it." Before Schwarznegger could deny it and before NYT retracted its report, his critics used it to imply that he had supported the Holocaust.
Another faux pas a week later also concerned a gubernatorial candidate who is of Indian origin. Adam Cohen, an editorial writer for NYT, wrote (Oct.12) an assessment of Bobby Jindal, again a Republican candidate for Louisiana’s governorship, and referred to him as the dark-skinned son of immigrants from India. The Republicans were not amused by this racial slur from a newspaper that boasts of its diversity policy, a term that repeatedly occurs in the Siegal report. The Republican press saw in it an opportunity to revel in the Times’ discomfiture.
Remember the front page fuss the Times made over the exit of its two editors George Boyd and Howell Raines who were responsible for the ignominy Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg brought by the worst kind of journalistic dishonesty and depravity? Now another Times woman has quietly left the newspaper in the second week of October after wrenching an "amicable settlement" with the Gray Lady. There was not a single word in the newspaper about the departure of Lynette Holloway, another diversity nominee at the Times Square. It came to light through the efforts of Keith J. Kelly, a reporter in the New York Post, a conservative tabloid and a rival of the liberal NYT. Keith is the same man who unearthed the inaccuracies of an article by Holloway that appeared in the Times on July 7. The story about the Blair fraud ran into 14,290 words, the one about the exit of NYT senior editors Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines began as a double column item on the front page and jumped into a whole page of the paper’s Metro section. To make amends for the Holloway article, the Times not only published an editor’s note on page 2 but also commissioned a 2,175-word corrective article by Diana Henriques on July 14.
The correction (the second longest in NYT history) admitted that the Holloway article was full of inaccuracies and errors. Her article claimed that TVT Records founder and president Steven Gottlieb had defaulted on a $ 23.5 million loan and had lost control of his company in February to Prudential. It said that Prudential was now trying to sell the company officially called Tee-Vee Toons Inc. Following is the text of the editor’s note on page 2 admitting inaccuracies: "An article on Business Day last Monday about Steven Gottlieb, founder and president, TVT Records, discussed his involvement in a number of lawsuits and assessed the financial status of the company. The article’s main premises - Mr. Gottlieb had lost control of his company and had a reputation for being litigious - were based on the misunderstanding of the subject, scope and status of the legal proceedings discussed. A review of the legal cases and the facts indicates that it was not fair to describe Mr. Gottlieb as litigious and it shows that Mr. Gottlieb remains in control of TVT Records. A corrective article (by Diana B. Henriques) appears today in the business section. Beyond the inaccuracies arising from the article’s (by Lynette Holloway) mistaken premises, there were other factual errors. Mr. Gottlieb graduated from Harvard Law School in 1984, not 1985, and his office is in Manhattan north of Houston St. not in So Ho. He started his company with $125,000, not $250,000. The theme song from "The Brady Bunch" was part of the second volume of Mr. Gottlieb’s album "Television’s Greatest Hits," not the first."
The Holloway article so badly dented the credibility of the Times that it had to reiterate its commitment to diversity and to higher standards at the same time. This episode came a few weeks before Siegal submitted his report on the Blair scandal and recommended the appointment of a standards editor and an ombudsman. Allan Siegal has been told to develop rules and educate the staff on matters of accuracy and ethics. He will supervise corrections and editor’s notes and act as an internal guardian to whom staffers could take their complaints. The suggestion to appoint an ombudsman has already received the nod from executive editor Bill Keller. Earlier, the Times named two managing editors, Jill Abramson and John Geddes to jointly replace Gerald Boyd who left in disgrace for his role in conniving at Blair’s blatant violations of journalistic ethics. The Siegal report showed that much more has happened at the Times Square than the Times had cared to admit at the time of the exit of Boyd and Raines, executive editor at that time.
There was plenty of confusion around the meaning of diversity in NYT and Blair took the utmost advantage of it. Keller admitted that it had happened "in part by a climate of isolation, intimidation, favoritism and unrelenting pressure." The Siegal report said "we should dissociate our commitment from the aberration of Jayson Blair’s career and prevent the journalistic failings of this one young African-American from legitimizing a backlash in our newsroom against minority journalists in general." The Blair episode reveals the utter anarchy in the newsroom.
Blair who joined NYT as a trainee in 1998 began making mistakes early in his career, Metro editor Jonathan Landman looked the other way because "of the racial dimension of this issue." But in 2002 February, Landman told Boyd of problems with Blair and followed it up by writing a memo saying "we have to stop Jayson from writing for the New York Times. Right now." Blair was told to go to the Sports department where too he very soon invented an interview with a Kent State University official. Despite all this, Boyd elevated him to the Washington beat, even as Howell Raines protested he was unaware of Blair’s inadequacies. This showed a breakdown of newsroom governance.
Blair won so much room for maneuver because Boyd who is also an African American took him under his wings and explained away his unconventional ways. Three outside members of the committee wrote the Blair section of the report. The report is the harshest comment ever on the Times management style and techniques. Siegal discovered that newsroom atmosphere needed greater civility and openness to dissent. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger earlier admitted that he knew that there were anxieties in the newsroom over the harsh management style of former editors Boyd and Raines. As a result the Siegal committee proposed more managerial training, penalizing rudeness and avoiding unreasonable working hours under normal news circumstances.
Not everyone is dazzled by the New York Times nameplate. Its critics include not only discriminating readers and bile-ridden Republicans but also political thinkers like Noam Chomsky. Its newsroom manipulations are as old as the Vietnam war and will continue unless there is a democratization of news values.
Contact: dasukrishnamoorty@hotmail.com