The examination of the ethical explosion set off by former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair reminds me of the story about the blind men examining an elephant.
Like the blind examiners, those of us commenting on Blair’s pattern of errors, plagiarism and fabrication know only the parts, not the whole, of what’s before us. We search for answers to why it happened. We seek clues by grappling with the parts we think we understand. We pick up pieces of the puzzle that we believe will make the picture clearer. But what we see and surmise depends on how we approach it. Imagine six journalistic counterparts to the six blind men in the original story:
The first grabs a limb. He finds youth. It must be inexperience.
The second touches the mouth. He finds a hunger to succeed. It must be unbridled ambition.
A third probes the structure. She finds editors’ warnings ignored. It must be a communication problem.
A fourth feels moving hands. She finds editors passing a reporter from one section to another. It must be a leadership issue.
A fifth one pushes on a side that gives way. He finds deception. It must be immorality.
A sixth one examines the skin. He finds a black journalist. It must be diversity.
A reading of the links provided on Jim Romenesko’s column alone will reveal these, and many other assessments, about Blair and The New York Times. The one I want to address in this column is the sixth one: diversity.
In a number of stories, journalists, in one form or another, raise the following question: did the Times’ desire to diversify its staff lead to a lowering of standards that resulted in the debacle that followed? Some go beyond questioning. They assume the answer is embedded in the question. But is the question based on what we know? Or is it, like the blind people above, based on what we imagine? Do we have the right answers? Better yet, have we asked the right questions?
At Poynter we ask two questions at the outset of an ethics inquiry; What do I know? What do I need to know?
What do we know about Blair, and about the unethical behavior uncovered by the Times? What do we need to know about how diversity is addressed at the Times? What do we know about whether or not the Times turned a blind eye to how significant the errors were?
What do we know about the number of corrections attributed to other reporters at the Times and how the Times handled those errors?
What do we know about how corrections are handled at news organizations in general? What do we need to know about qualifications required of journalists of color, or white women, who are hired at the Times compared to white, male reporters?
Do the questions we ask presuppose an answer?
I raise these questions not because I believe diversity was a factor in Blair’s problems with the Times. I don’t know what, if any, role diversity may have played. (The Times said diversity and race didn’t play a role in what occurred with Blair.)
Here is some of what we know. Blair gave the impression he graduated from college when he didn’t. He joined the Times through a program designed to diversify a news staff that wanted to break out of its mold of primarily hiring journalists with extensive experience, or mostly, white Ivy-League graduates. He had highly-placed champions within the organization. He had detractors. On numerous occasions he lied: about where he was, about what he reported, and about what he wrote. He is black. He has personal problems.
What we don’t know yet is why Blair did what he did. We don’t know Blair’s explanation. We don’t know why editors at the Times dealt with Blair the way they did. There is much more we need to know.
I am not as concerned about attempts to understand what happened as I am about the leaps we make to describe the whole based only on the parts we know. In such leaps lies the danger of distortion. If one of blind individuals in the original story touched the trunk of the elephant and took it for a snake, he might sever its head. But the result would have been an unneeded amputation rather that an act that saved him from danger. I see diversity raised by some in the answers they give and the judgments they pronounce. I’ve heard assertions, assumptions, and assessments.
What I haven’t seen so far are facts, information or knowledge that backs them up when it comes to diversity.
What I haven’t heard is any direct link that shows diversity requires news organizations to lower its journalistic standards and risk its credibility. I worry about our speculation. I worry we might find ourselves described as the blind men were at the end of the John Godfrey Saxe’s poem about the legend.
“And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!”
