Reporter committed journalistic fraud

A NEW YORK TIMES reporter “committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud,” including stealing material from other newspapers, inventing quotes and lying about his whereabouts, according to an investigation conducted by the paper.

The review found problems in at least 36 of the 73 articles written by Jayson Blair from the time he began receiving national reporting assignments in late October to his May 1 resignation.

The Times described the episode as “a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.”

Blair, 27, “used these techniques to write falsely about emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq” according to a story the Times posted on its website on Saturday before its publication in yesterday’s editions.

The 7,500-word story was accompanied by an editor’s note apologising to Times’ readers and a detailed accounting of articles in which falsification, plagiarism or other problems were discovered by a team of Times reporters and researchers.

“It’s a huge black eye,” Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jnr, chairman of The New York Times Co and publisher of the newspaper, said in the article. “It’s an abrogation of the trust between the newspaper and its readers.”

The inquiry into Blair’s work continues, especially on more than 600 articles he wrote before his sniper coverage began in October.

The Times cited several reasons for not detecting the problems with Blair, including “a failure of communication among senior editors; few complaints from the subjects of (Blair’s) articles; his savviness and his ingenious ways of covering his tracks.”

The review began after the editor at the San Antonio Express-News pointed to similarities in an April 26 piece by Blair and a story that appeared in the Texas paper a week earlier.

The story concerned a woman’s month-long wait for news on her son, a soldier missing in Iraq. The Times said at the time it was unable to determine whether Blair had done any original reporting for the piece, and Blair quit within days.

The investigation showed that while he was filing stories with datelines from around the country, Blair was often in Brooklyn, even filing expense receipts from stores and restaurants there.