Jayson Blair and the Need For Moral Responsibility

A certain journalism professor told me "90 percent of journalism is showing up."

If only Jayson Blair would've taken that to heart.

The ex-New York Times reporter and fabulist is the subject of a documentary called A Fragile Trust, which details the history of Jayson Blair's plagiarism from his start at the Times in 1999 to his resignation in 2003.

The extent to which Blair lied is as follows: he lied about interviewing people when in fact he had never met them, not even been in the same state as them; he fabricated details; he plagiarized, sometimes from three to four different articles.

Blair circumvents responsibility often, quick to shift focus to his alcohol and cocaine abuse, mental illness, the Times management, etc. There's an insincerity in his apologies, half-hearted gestures of remorse ready to point the finger back at any accuser, that's disturbing.

In the movie, a conference on, of all things, media ethics results in a man asking Blair why anyone should believe a word he says. Blair replies by pointing the accusation at the man, placing the responsibility on the reader and audience to verify rather than the speaker, the author, the reporter.

Jayson Blair evokes the "pathological" in "pathological liar."

The movie highlights Blair's race briefly, talking about affirmative action policies, and how such policies allowed Blair the opportunity at the Times. While this reflects some of the stories written around the time, it's a mistake to include such material in the film. It's another distraction.

If it's accepted that affirmative action allowed Blair to enter and tarnish the newsroom, the implication is that the policy's removal would remove the problem. Because surely, White reporters are completely clean of fabrication (Jack Kelley, Stephen Glass, Mike Barnicle, anyone?)

Such ideas are reductive and remove the need for moral responsibility. In one of Blair's conversations, he says journalism students can't seem to accept that he got into journalism for the same idealistic reasons they did, because that means they have the potential to do the same. Lying is a moral problem, one that requires vigilance and effort to prevent, because in journalism, trust is currency.

Journalists are allowed to be watchdogs because of the public. The relationship is built off of the public's recognition that journalists will ethically tell their communities' stories, and check them when they need to be. To be given that level of trust, a journalist's character must be impeccable. If it isn't, that person relinquishes the moral authority to report.