Using Blair for own agenda
NY Daily News
Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly said it doesn't matter to him what's in Jayson Blair's new memoir, "Burning Down My Masters' House."
Instead, when the ex-New York Timesman sits down with O'Reilly tomorrow, the Fox bulldog told the Daily News, he intends to ask him "how the culture of The Times operates."
A cordial reception from the conservative O'Reilly, whose devoted audience has turned three of his books into big best-sellers, might counter some of the sting in initial reviews and in Blair's first interviews on NBC.
Blair's book ranked No. 412 in orders on Amazon.com late yesterday - a weak response, considering NBC gave him five minutes Friday on "Today," an hour Friday night on "Dateline NBC" and a live interview yesterday on "Today."
On Feb. 28, the day after The News and The Times first reported on the book's contents, it hit No. 312 - the high point so far.
"It feels padded," Columbia journalism school dean Nicholas Lemann writes in The New Yorker, describing some chapters as "barroom anecdotes."
Slate.com media observer Jack Shafer, who recently criticized The Times at length for perceived shortcomings in its Sunday magazine story about sex slaves, sizes up Blair's "Burning" for The Times Book Review.
"Far from solving the Jayson Blair enigma, this sloppy, padded and dishonest work only adds to his growing word count of lies," Shafer writes in a review to appear Sunday. |
