RatherGate asks Jayson Blair about...Rathergate
Rathergate: Jayson Blair Speaks Out
Filed under: General— Mark Hemingway (Heminator) @ 3:02 am
In all of the discussion of CBS and Rathergate, why not ask the one person most qualified to discuss breakdowns in the newsroom: Jason Blair?
I’d wondered something throughout this entire Rathergate affair; Rather’s chicanery was just the coup de grace in a long string of recent journalistic scandals. Yet there hadn’t been much of a post-mortem – in discussing the various flaws of the mainstream journalistic community, Rather seemed to exist in a bubble. Names like Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley and Janet Cooke rarely seemed to surface, and when they did they were only used as a touchstone never as part of in depth examination of journalistic failings – a particularly annoying phenomenon since the mainstream media seems so eager to point out the flaws of blogs.
So I got up and dropped Jayson Blair a note to see what he thinks of this mess. As I suspected, Rathergate.com was the first media outlet to contact him. That the media hasn’t contacted him I think says volumes. The fact remains his perspective is novel and newsworthy – regardless of whether you believe he should be forgiven. But, alas you’re dealing with a media that would rather sweep problems under the rug than go back and revisit those problems, especially at a crucial time when reexamining past problems like the Blair story would do some real good.
Jayson was courteous and prompt. Here’s what he had to say in its uncut entirety:
My first reaction when a friend asked about the Dan Rather memo flap was to ponder whether anyone learned anything from the mess I got myself into. Nobody knows the value of credibility better than I do. I’d give up the book royalties if I could get my credibility and career back.
It is encouraging that CBS has appointed an independent commission to look into the situation, but the real issue isn’t so much simply what went wrong on this one story – but what is broken at CBS that allowed something like this to happen. I hope that the first priority is not simply protecting the brand name, but fixing whatever is broken. I think it would do all news organizations good to look inside before scandal takes them.
Amazingly enough, you are the only media outlet that has contacted me, although I heard from my publicist that he heard that CNN was considering me for a panel, but that didn’t happen. Although, a number of news organizations have put me in their stories and editorial cartoons as an example.
It’s really sad to see what’s happening to Dan Rather and CBS, and no one knows like me what its like to lose their credibility. I would give anything to have it back. If I could turn back time, I would.
You really have to step back and look at this from the outside. No. 1, it was not news that George Bush was wild as a young man. He has pretty much said that himself. No. 2, it was not news that George Bush came from a family that had influence. What would be shocking would be if he did not use that influence. He has three-and-one-half years and two wars as President and if can’t make a judgment on that, as opposed to his personal life three decades ago, then there might as well not be elections.
I have a lot of sympathy for Dan Rather and CBS News with its storied history. Despite the comparisons, I see a lot of differences between my situation and the memo flap with Rather. Obviously, the stakes are much higher in this case. I lifted paragraphs and made up color. It is disconcerting that CBS could – best case scenario – was misled on a non-news story that theoretically would be embarrassing to the President in an election year.
In my situation, I was dealing with a serious undiagnosed mental illness – manic depressive illness – and was suffering from paranoid delusions that were divorced from realty. In my case, what I was trying to do was avoid going very far from home. In Rather’s case, I think what’s really unfortunate is that a guy with a tremendous reputation may have been abused by his source and fallen victim to bad staff work. It’s not implausible because often television anchormen do not do the reporting for the stories they front. And probably no one in the television news business has more responsibilities than Dan Rather as managing editor of CBS News and his responsibilities for “60 Minutes” Junior.
What is similar is this – something is broken in the institution.
Okay, I know many people are still bitter and I don’t want to give Jayson a forum to avoid responsibility for necessary atonement. I’m sure many will read that into some of what he has said here; but the fact is that he’s right when he says that there is almost always an institutional problem that allows such massive lapses to happen. But this is often obscured by finger-pointing. The committer of the fraud blames the institution for creating an environment that encourages deceptive behavior and the institution pretends to be victimized by the fraud.
The reality is that both are responsible. Mapes and Rather’s reporting was unethical and their response to criticism contemptible. Much attention has been focused on the specifics of their behavior and one way or another they will answer for it, be it simply a damaged reputation or even criminal charges. But CBS’ lack of oversight, their unwillingness to overrule Rather’s obdurate behavior, and hiring of overtly partisan producers like Mapes without instituting checks and balances is certainly something that needs to be examined in more detail. (Indeed I remember when the movie The Insider came out. I nearly choked when I learned that the Lowell Bergman, the 60 Minutes producer lionized by the film was a devout student of influential Marxist Herbert Marcuse and a former editor at Ramparts. It does not get anymore ideological than that – and I doubt seriously 60 Minutes has ever hired anyone with an equivalently conservative resume.) Indeed, I hope that every major news organization is shoring themselves up against the criticisms that CBS now faces and honestly assessing their shortcomings. It’s far easier to do the right thing when no one’s looking than be forced to do it under pressure.
So the lesson here is that this scandal is no different in that it is bigger than the actions of one or two journalists, even a journalist as famous as Dan Rather. It’s also an institutional problem - and this is a very threatening thing for the media establishment to confront, though it doesn’t need to be that way. While it would appear to many in the mainstream media that the blogosphere is trying to undermine their hallowed institutions by haphazardly storming the gates waving their virtual torches and pitchforks, having been both a blogger and a print journalist, I think I speak for just about everyone when I say that I wish a confrontational stance wasn’t necessary.
Like all rational people, bloggers accept that journalists will sometimes get the story wrong, and sometimes journalists will turn out to be scurrilous characters. That will never change. What can change is how journalists like those at CBS News, journalists that purport to hold themselves to rarefied professional standards, respond such accusations. Do they hold themselves accountable and seek the truth or do they “protect the brand”?
Scoff all you want, but at this point even Jayson Blair can tell CBS what the right decision is. |
