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Liars
Many of us don't trust what we see, hear, and read in the media, but usually it's not because we think the media is deliberately lying to us. Now that the NY Times has dismissed a reporter who has been doing exactly that since at least last October (possibly for the last four years), we now have more reason than ever to doubt the media—especially the mainstream media, since you don't get any more mainstream than the NY Times. Jayson Blair's list of lies is incredibly long; as the Times admits, he tried just about every form of prevarication known to man:
The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not.
(See also: This Editor's note.)
Meanwhile, if you watched "60 Minutes" last Sunday, know that Blair's trail of deception is nothing new. The show took a look at Stephen Glass, a writer for The New Republic, says he lied for the thrill of being able to give people the stories they wanted to hear. But whereas much of Blair's lying seemed to be plagiarism, Glass mostly just made stuff up out of thin air:
That was five years ago. Glass has since earned a JD from Georgetown but is having trouble gaining admittance to the NY State Bar because of ethical concerns. Go figure. (But note how he turned to law for legitimacy after being utterly discredited on both a professional and personal level. Does law often attract shady characters simply because they're looking for its imprimatur of legitimacy? Damn, am I a shady character!?)
The fact that journalists are lying comes as no surprise to most writing teachers, who have seen an enormous explosion of plagiarism since the Web replaced the library as the source for research. At the major midwestern university where I've spent the last four years, Triple L has tracked down 13 cases of plagiarism among her students in the last year alone. They do exactly what Blair did—steal whole paragraphs and sentences from multiple sources, patch them together, revise a little, and hope no one notices. And the killer is that when you confront students with concrete evidence that they blatantly cheated and lied, they think you're going to believe them when they tell you they didn't realize what they were doing. At many universities, plagiarism is officially cause for expulsion, or at the very least automatic failure for the course in which the student plagiarized. And while it's possible some universities enforce their strict policies forbidding plagiarism, here at my school the customer—meaning the student—is always right; students generally get warnings and slaps on the wrist (failure on the paper in question, for example, or more often, just dropping its grade by a letter). What's more, the university (as far as I've been able tell) keeps no records of these offenses, so serial plagiarizers get a clean slate every semester to try their games again. This is at a major American university. Is it any wonder we've got young college graduates lying in the media?
(And don't get me started on the example set by politicians who "spin" everything to accomplish their goals. Not to mention Triple L's experience grading for an ethics in engineering class, in which she learned that the vast majority of college students seem utterly unable to recognize an ethical dilemma when it slaps them on the face. The there's the infantilization of American college students which leads them to think they'll never be held responsible for.... Like I said, don't get me started.)
Posted May 13, 2003 09:20 AM | life generally
