AfAm Reporter Resigns Over Journalistic Fraud
 

This is the first page from the article. To read the rest see the following: NY Times Article

Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception

A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation by Times journalists has found. The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.

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.

And he 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.

In an inquiry focused on correcting the record and explaining how such fraud could have been sustained within the ranks of The Times, the Times journalists have so far uncovered new problems in at least 36 of the 73 articles Mr. Blair wrote since he started getting national reporting assignments late last October. In the final months the audacity of the deceptions grew by the week, suggesting the work of a troubled young man veering toward professional self-destruction.

Mr. Blair, who has resigned from the paper, was a reporter at The Times for nearly four years, and he was prolific. Spot checks of the more than 600 articles he wrote before October have found other apparent fabrications, and that inquiry continues. The Times is asking readers to report any additional falsehoods in Mr. Blair's work; the e-mail address is retrace@nytimes.com.

Every newspaper, like every bank and every police department, trusts its employees to uphold central principles, and the inquiry found that Mr. Blair repeatedly violated the cardinal tenet of journalism, which is simply truth. His tools of deceit were a cellphone and a laptop computer — which allowed him to blur his true whereabouts — as well as round-the-clock access to databases of news articles from which he stole.

The Times inquiry also establishes that various editors and reporters expressed misgivings about Mr. Blair's reporting skills, maturity and behavior during his five-year journey from raw intern to reporter on national news events. Their warnings centered mostly on the errors in his articles.

His mistakes became so routine, his behavior so unprofessional, that by April 2002, Jonathan Landman, the metropolitan editor, dashed off a two-sentence e-mail message to newsroom administrators that read: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now."

After taking a leave for personal problems and being sternly warned, both orally and in writing, that his job was in peril, Mr. Blair improved his performance. By last October, the newspaper's top two editors — who said they believed that Mr. Blair had turned his life and work around — had guided him to the understaffed national desk, where he was assigned to help cover the Washington sniper case.

By the end of that month, public officials and colleagues were beginning to challenge his reporting. By November, the investigation has found, he was fabricating quotations and scenes, undetected. By March, he was lying in his articles and to his editors about being at a court hearing in Virginia, in a police chief's home in Maryland and in front of a soldier's home in West Virginia. By the end of April another newspaper was raising questions about plagiarism. And by the first of May, his career at The Times was over.

A few days later, Mr. Blair issued a statement that referred to "personal problems" and expressed contrition. But during several telephone conversations last week, he declined repeated requests to help the newspaper correct the record or comment on any aspect of his work. He did not respond to messages left on his cellphone, with his family and with his union representative on Friday afternoon.

I saw this story this morning of Good Morning America. I didn't realize he was AfAm? :eek:

Additional comments have been posted here.

Why?

a brotha?
the embarrassment?
is it always something with 'us'?
is it a big deal when others do it?
why ya'll, why?

:confused:

:mad:

A brotha? Dang!!!!:( :mad:

This kid clearly, IMO, was lacking something. The Internet has made it a very small world. One of the solutions is easy -- CREDIT YOUR SOURCES. I can't tell you how many times that I mention "in published reports" in stories, and communicate it to my editors.

ST
1986 print journalism graduate, University of Southern California.
1989 graduate, Maynard Institute Summer Program for Minority Journalists.
Three-time Nevada Press Association award winner.

I don't feel sorry for him, though!
 

Didn't he learn that, too as a journalist-in-the making?

(*sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh, aggrevated, frustrated, everthingelse-ated*) :rolleyes:

Re: I don't feel sorry for him, though!
 

I don't feel sorry for the cat, either. If he did learn those lessons, they obviously didn't take.:mad:

Very sad indeed.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/912116.asp
A Journalist’s Hard Fall
The New York Times confronts an embarrassing trail of deceit—and difficult questions about its own culture

By Seth Mnookin
NEWSWEEK


May 19 issue — On Sunday, the front page of The New York Times featured a uniquely embarrassing article: TIMES REPORTER WHO RESIGNED LEAVES A LONG TRAIL OF DECEPTION. The internal report took up four full pages of some of the most valuable real estate in American journalism to recount the sorry history of Jayson Blair, a 27-year-old African-American who resigned from his job as a Times reporter on May 1.

A TEAM OF FIVE reporters, three editors and two researchers uncovered dozens of errors in stories the Times had printed under Blair’s byline; the corrections for the stories between October 2002 and April 2003 alone ran almost two full pages, with offenses divided into “whereabouts,” “denied reports,” “factual errors” and “plagiarism.” The second sentence of the story read, “The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.”
Since he began his career in journalism, Blair has been known for two things: being able to play the internal politics of an institution with uncanny skill and having a problem with accuracy. Those two traits combined in a horrible confluence for the Times. Blair’s remarkable fraud had come unraveled in late April. The editor of the San Antonio Express-News had officially requested that the Times investigate a story about the family of a missing soldier that carried Blair’s byline, a story that seemed almost identical to one the San Antonio paper had run. After being asked to produce receipts showing he had, in fact, traveled to Texas, Blair resigned; in a letter to the Times’s top editors, he apologized for a “lapse in journalistic integrity.”
Total Fiction

Sunday’s story honestly detailed the startling breakdown in communication among Times editors about Blair’s extensive—and well-chronicled—history of problems with accuracy and sloppiness. The paper was unflinching in its description of how the Times failed to track Blair’s expense reports and missed glaring warning signs along the way—like the time a national editor saw Blair in the newsroom hours after he had supposedly filed a story from West Virginia. Times metro editor Jonathan Landman was quoted as being particularly vocal about Blair; in April 2002 Landman, the Times story reports, sent a two-sentence e-mail message to newsroom administrators: “We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.”
But there’s plenty that the Times report, which ran under the rubric CORRECTING THE RECORD, didn’t fully explore, namely how a troubled young reporter whose short career was rife with problems was able to advance so quickly. Internally, reporters had wondered for years whether Blair was given so many chances—and whether he was hired in the first place—because he was a promising, if unpolished, black reporter on a staff that continues to be, like most newsrooms in the country, mostly white. The Times also didn’t address an uncomfortable but unavoidable topic that has been broached with some of the paper’s top editors during the past week: by favoring Blair, did the Times end up reinforcing some of the worst suspicions about the pitfalls of affirmative action? And will there be fewer opportunities for young minority reporters in the future?
“We have, generally, a horribly undiverse staff,” says one Times staffer. “And so we hold up and promote the few black staffers we have.” That’s a point other news outlets have made since Blair resigned. Executive editor Howell Raines, who declined repeated requests for an inter-view with NEWSWEEK, told NPR, when pressed about whether Blair was pushed along because of his race, “No, I do not see it as illustrating that point. I see it as illustrating a tragedy for Jayson Blair.” (Blair, whose voice mail at the Times was still active as of Saturday evening, did not respond to a message left there or on his cell phone; several sources at the Times say he is currently in a hospital setting dealing with personal problems.)
Blair’s close mentoring relationship with Times managing editor Gerald Boyd, who is also black, was not explored in depth in the paper. Blair wrote Boyd’s biographical sketch in the Times’s internal newsletter when Boyd was named managing editor. Blair was known to brag about his close personal relationships with both Boyd and Raines, and the young writer frequently took cigarette breaks with Boyd.
Questions about Raines’s management style—his penchant for giving preferential treatment to favored stars, his celebrated fondness for “flooding the zone” on big stories, severely stretching resources—weren’t addressed at all. Indeed, more than one Times staffer pointed out that the paper’s national staff would not have been in need of the services of an untested young reporter with a spotty track record had a number of veterans not been pushed out by Raines last year.
Of course, plagiarism, and even outright fraud, can occur at any news organization, and certainly the lion’s share of the blame for this scandal should fall on Blair. As commentators have noted, the normal journalistic checks and balances are put in place with the assumption that everyone—reporters, editors and readers—shares an interest in getting to the truth. “The per-son who did this is Jayson Blair,” Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in Sunday’s story. “Let’s not begin to demonize our executives.” As the Times seeks to come to grips with how this could have happened, there is bound to be a lot more soul-searching in the months ahead.

same here. Y'all let me know when the '03 nominations for most embarrasing one of "us" is held.

Blair formerly attended Maryland (however, didn't graduate) and this story has been hot in the campus paper. In the Diamondback his former department chair said, "I'm f---ing pissed off." :(

Plagerism z NOT WHAT"S UP, my people!
 

This is really embarrasing. He's probably been doing this for quite a while. Who will trust him? Who will hire him? I'm so sorry for him. Thanks to the internet, alot of people cheat on their papers in college too. The extent of the cheating became evident to me when I was thrown into group projects.

WHAT YOU DO IN THE DARK ALWAYS COMES TO LIGHT.

TTT/This guy is an azzclown
 

As a legitimate journalist, this stuff is so embarrassing. From the Washington Post:
washingtonpost.com

Unrepentant Blair Taunts 'Idiot' Editors
Ex-Reporter Says He Laughed When He Read The Times's Mea Culpa

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 21, 2003; Page C01



Jayson Blair is lashing out at the New York Times, saying that "racism had much more of an impact" on his career at the paper than affirmative action did and boasting about his repeated deception of Times editors.

In an extraordinary interview with the New York Observer being published today, the former reporter laughed about the Times's investigation of him and seemed angry that his serial fabrications weren't being properly appreciated.

"I don't understand why I am the bumbling affirmative action hire when Stephen Glass is this brilliant whiz kid, when from my perspective -- and I know I shouldn't be saying this -- I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism," he said. Glass, who was fired by the New Republic for inventing stories five years ago, "is so brilliant and yet somehow I'm [an] affirmative action hire. They're all so smart, but I was sitting right under their nose fooling them. If they're all so brilliant and I'm such an affirmative action hire, how come they didn't catch me?"

Times editors have denied that they treated the error-prone Blair leniently because he is African American -- although Executive Editor Howell Raines has said he might have done so subconsciously. But Blair told reporter Sridhar Pappu:

"Anyone who tells you that my race didn't play a role in my career at the New York Times is lying to you. Both racial preferences and racism played a role. And I would argue that they didn't balance each other out."

While ridiculing what he called "idiot" editors at the Times, he also said it was "kind of unfair" to blame Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd for his misconduct. He said Boyd, the paper's highest-ranking black editor, tried to block his promotion to the national staff.

The only point at which Blair, 27, appeared to blame himself was when he said he might have been too young for "a snake pit" like the Times.

But he kept returning to the question of race, telling the Manhattan weekly: "I was under a lot of pressure. I was black at the New York Times, which is something that hurts you as much as it helps you. I certainly have health problems which probably led to me having to kill Jayson Blair, the journalist. . . . So Jayson Blair the human being could live, Jayson Blair the journalist had to die."

Blair did not criticize metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman, who tried to help the reporter but told his bosses in an e-mail 13 months ago that they had to stop Blair from continuing to write for the Times. But he said Landman, whom he called an honorable man, refuses to believe that some of his subordinates are "racist." Blair added that "there are senior managers at the New York Times who want African American reporters to succeed, and there are hundreds of white junior managers who resent that and don't."

Blair has been at the center of a fierce, racially charged debate over how badly the Times handled the lies and plagiarism that led to his May 1 resignation. In a 7,000-word mea culpa, the paper said Blair had fabricated 36 stories -- including one that featured the father of rescued POW Jessica Lynch choking up, complete with an erroneous description of his West Virginia home because Blair had lied about being there.

When the Times investigation was published, Blair said, he "just couldn't stop laughing" because his description of the West Virginia home had been so far off from reality.

Blair dismissed the notion that senior editors had protected him, rattling off the names of Raines, Boyd and others who he said never helped him, including a female editor whom he described as caring only about pretty Jewish girls.

Observer Editor Peter Kaplan said Blair appeared "deeply angry" at the Times. "He seems to have obscured his own moral lapses in what he did, in deference to the racial injuries he feels he suffered."

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said yesterday that the paper would have no comment. But in a memo yesterday, Raines and Boyd said they planned to demonstrate "our absolute determination to change the way this newsroom works," including the hiring of 20 more people to ease workloads at the paper. They also said, in response to complaints about a top-down management style, they would "push authority on news coverage and staff assignments down to the department heads" and "work with them in a consultative way on matters of news judgment and deployment of resources."

Describing himself in the Observer interview as having struggled with alcohol and cocaine since he was a teenager, Blair said he botched the coverage of a 2001 benefit concert, which required two corrections, because he was drunk on assignment.

Blair maintained that his web of lies started in earnest in January and that he had fudged the facts perhaps five times before that. However, The Washington Post has reported that he badly distorted an interview done for him in 2000 by a Times freelancer, Lisa Suhay, and threatened to get the paper to drop her if she didn't stop pressing for a correction.

The Post has also reported that in 1999, while working as an intern at the Boston Globe, Blair faked an interview with D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams. Blair told the Observer that his former Globe colleagues were "a bunch of thin-skinned, sheltered, cocooned babies."

Blair was more restrained in a separate statement to CNN on Monday, saying he is "sorry" and wants to write his story -- he has hired an agent to entertain book and movie offers -- so that "others will learn from my mistakes." But, he said, "there are many assumptions being made, that because I'm black, Gerald Boyd was my mentor, and because my closest friend, Zuza Glowacka, is Polish, I was trying to gain favor with Howell Raines. People will be surprised when the whole story comes out.' " Glowacka, a Times clerk who has resigned, is a friend of Raines's wife, Krystyna Anna Stachowiak.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Boondocks breaks it down
 

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com.../bo030520l.gif

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com.../bo030521l.gif

CTFU CTFU CTFU
 

I'm not going to be at NABJ
 

But I would love to see Jayson Blair's butt kicked.

JAYSON YOU SUUUUUUUUCK
 

from EURWEB.com

BURNING DOWN MY MASTER’S HOUSE:
That’s the name of Jayson’ Blair’s proposed book.


Jayson Blair
(May. 26, 2003) *Ex-New York Times Reporter Jayson Blair has got some serious problems.
First the man fabricates his news articles and gets caught, now he’s blaming his acts on “the frustrations of black men.”

According to the Washington Post, Blair and his literary agent, David Vigliano, are pitching Blair’s proposed book “Burning Down My Master’s House” to various publishers. The proposal allegedly promises to reveal the Times’ darkest secrets including charges of racism and drug use. Blair also implies that he purposely fabricated his stories in order to get back at the Times.

“Each one I got away with felt like a f— you to an institution that I had long ago lost any love for,” the Post reports. :eek:

Blair also compares himself to alleged DC sniper John Malvo saying the shootings show “how the frustrations of black men in this world can explode, crescendo into a huge rage that can manifest itself in some odd and sometimes unclear ways.”

Negro please. Why didn’t you just quit.



http://www.eurweb.com//images/052620...r(smaller).jpg

TTT/More Jayson Blair
 

This ran in the Orange County Register. :rolleyes: But the author makes an interesting point -- basically called Blair an assimilationist and said the situation would never improve unless journalists of color are allowed to be themselves and not suck up.

By JULIO MORAN
Executive Director, California Chicano News Media Association, USC Annenberg School of Journalism


In his June 1 column ["Media troubles go deeper than Blair scandal," Commentary], Steven Greenhut is correct in saying that affirmative action is partially to blame for the Jayson Blair scandal. He also is correct that diversity in journalism focuses too much on skin color and surnames rather than on diversity of views.

But he is wrong in casting a wide net over affirmative action by saying it hurts journalism and those that it is supposed to benefit. Hiring in journalism is not yet at a level playing field for people of color, and affirmative action actually makes journalism better because in trying to make newsrooms look like the communities they are supposed to serve, the daily coverage is more accurate and pertinent.

Where affirmative action has failed in the news media is where white editors choose to hire journalists of color who act like them and who think like them, rather than those who have different views. Instead of being encouraged to share their views or challenge the way things have always been done, journalists of color who express themselves are often labeled as trouble-makers and eventually either get fired or leave the industry in frustration.

Unfortunately, journalism - especially newspapers - is still run by older white men who have little exposure to the changing demographics in this country, and, in particular, in this state. Diversity programs are still the only way most journalists of color get hired, especially if they act and think differently. While people of color make up 31 percent of the overall population, they are only 12.5 percent of newsroom employees, according to a 2003 survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Mr. Greenhut writes that affirmative action puts "ideological impulses above honest reporting." How honest is reporting when a newspaper ignores 30 percent to 50 percent of its population? How honest is it when a newspaper staff doesn't have a reporter who can speak a language other than English or understand cultures different than the American culture when its circulation area is nearly half foreign-born?

If Mr. Greenhut is going to blame affirmative action for the favoritism that Blair received at The New York Times, then he must also challenge the longtime practice of favoritism for young white reporters who cozy up to their superiors.

Journalists of color simply want a fair chance to compete. Most don't have a parent or relative who are friends with the editor or publisher. Many did not attend Ivy League or other private schools. But most do know their cultures and can tell compelling, honest stories about people in this country who happen to have different skin colors or speak a different language. And these talented, hard-working journalists, who abhor the things Blair did, also can write about white people and the American culture.

Blair is someone who never should have been hired at The New York Times regardless of his skin color. But he was allowed to advance his career because he said and did the things that made him more like, rather than different, than his white boss. Until journalists of color are allowed to be themselves in America's newsrooms, then, Mr. Greenhut, you are correct that our industry will lose even more credibility and readership.

Disgraced Journalist Blair Signs L.A. Book Deal
Wed Sep 10, 7:22 PM ET

By Gina Keating

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Disgraced former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, whose plagiarism and inventing of sources brought down the newspaper's two top editors, signed a book deal worth about $500,000, a publisher said on Wednesday.



Blair, a black reporter who resigned from the Times in May, got a "mid six-figure" advance for the memoir, tentatively titled "Burning Down My Master's House: My Life at the New York Times," New Millennium Books President Michael Viner said.


Blair has cited racism, junk food and mental illness as the reasons that he fabricated scores of stories and sources during his four years at the nation's most influential newspaper.


After his departure, the Times published a 14,000-word account of his fabrications and installed its first standards editor. The scandal prompted the resignations of Managing Editor Gerald Boyd and Executive Editor Howell Raines, who said he championed Blair to promote diversity in the newsroom despite warnings about his work.


Viner described the half-completed work as "part memoir and part inside the New York Times" but declined to give more details about it. The book is set to be published March 9.


"It's a very good book ... I am in love with it," Viner, who heads New Millennium Entertainment with his wife Deborah Raffin, told Reuters. The couple formerly ran the now-defunct Dove Entertainment, which published books by figures involved in the O.J. Simpson (news) murder trial.


Because of Blair's reputation for fabrication, Viner said he planned to ensure the book would stand up to scrutiny.


"Jayson wants to make sure, as I do, that the book is above reproach and to that extent we have agreed on very top people in terms of fact checkers and editors," he said.


Attorney Michael Friedman, who frequently represents celebrities in tabloid defamation lawsuits, said Millennium has an enhanced duty to ensure that Blair's facts are facts.


"If you are on notice that the author lacks veracity then ... that requires the publisher to enhance its scrutiny and diligence in the matter," Friedman of Jenkens & Gilchrist in New York said. "You can't just say ... the author is a reliable source when the facts indicate to the contrary."

Buster
 

Racism. Junk food. Mental illness.

Let me start acting crazy so I can get a book deal.

Jayson Blair = you suck steaming hot low-budget a**

:mad: :rolleyes: :mad: :rolleyes:

The name of his book should be:

AN ASSHOLE'S STORY: F*CKIN IT UP FOR EVERYONE!

His book will be on the best sellers list. I wonder will he tell his readers the real reason he deceived or LIED to the public OR will the book be about how to get a job without using ethics?

There is an article with Jayson Blair telling his story in the latest Jane magazine. If he's hanging out w/ Jane Pratt that's really not going to help his journalistic rep, LOL.

I read that article, it came out about a week ago.. He is such a loser...:rolleyes:

Yes, he is.

He's an embarassment and (in the minds of whites) he's discrediting the "struggle," word by word.

So this is what I have to do if I want a 6 or 7 figure book deal... ain't that a bia bia?

Well, at least I have my integrity and my creativity.

TV Film Planned on Disgraced Journalist Blair
Wed Oct 15, 9:14 PM ET Add Entertainment - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Disgraced former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who built and ultimately destroyed his career by fabricating stories, is the subject of his own stranger-than-fiction tale in a TV movie coming to the Showtime network.



The premium cable channel said on Wednesday the film, a dark comedy tentatively titled "The Jayson Blair Project," will be based in part on articles by former Newsweek reporter Seth Mnookin, who recently left the magazine to write a book about the New York Times for Random House.


The project is being eyed for a premiere sometime in 2004, with Jon Maas on board to write the script. His previous credits include a recent made-for-TV movie about John F. Kennedy Jr. and the Showtime production "The Last Debate," which starred James Garner (news).


No casting decisions have been made, said network spokesman Bryan Byrd.


The Blair project would depart from the typical journalism-themed films, in which "a reporter gets his story against amazing odds," Showtime Entertainment President Robert Greenblatt said in a statement.


"This film will explore what made Jayson Blair so self-destructive and how his actions single-handedly destroyed his journalism career," Greenblatt said.


Byrd said producers "reached out" to Blair to seek his voluntary participation in the movie but have not heard back from his representatives. In any event, he said, Showtime was not looking to option Blair's rights.


"What's been optioned is the Newsweek article," Byrd said.


Word of the Showtime project comes a month after Blair signed a book deal reportedly worth about $500,000 with New Millennium Books for a memoir about his experiences, titled "Burning Down My Master's House: My Life at the New York Times."


Blair, who is black, has cited racism, junk food((WTH?!?!?!?)) and mental illness as the reasons for having invented scores of stories and sources during his four years at the nation's most influential newspaper.


He quit the paper in May after his fabrications came to light, touching off a scandal that resulted in the resignation of the Times' two top news executives -- managing editor Gerald Boyd and executive editor Howell Raines. The Times also published a 14,000-word account of Blair's fabrications and installed its first standards editor.

Why?
 

CLOWN!
:mad: :mad: :rolleyes:

NBC's Couric to interview Blair

NBC News' Katie Couric will talk to disgraced former New York Times
reporter Jayson Blair in his first extended television interview since
leaving the newspaper last year. Blair will appear on "Dateline" on March
5 and live on "Today" on March 8, NBC said. The "Dateline" story will
also include interviews with industry experts about how the scandal has
affected journalism. (Staff report)

There is a reason to be angry at Jayson Blair
 

JMO.

I am a LEGITIMATE JOURNALIST with 15 years of experience. I've been in this field off and on since 1987. And people like Jayson Blair make it harder for journalists of color, who already work under a microscope in many places.

So that's why I get angry at Jayson Blair and the system that allows azzclowns like him to get in at the New York Times, fabricate stories, and now profit off his simple bulldung.

Hey just don't have a stroke or something,there will always be the Jayson Blairs of the worlds. Those whites who give you guys a hard time will aways be around as well even if Blair had never been born...........so all I can say is yeah Blair was wrong but make that money boy...... if Mark Furhman can turn his crap around and make money then more power to Blair.:rolleyes:

I just read the post that Crimsom made in which Jayson Blair gave his rationale on why he did it...........and yall have to agree the guy is creative.:D












You guys have a nice day and Steeltrap try not to let Blair upset you too much b/c the world is full of fools....he's just one in their vast army.

Blair's 'House' Flops on Book Sales Chart
AP - Thu Mar 18, 4:19 PM ET
Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, two young journalists notorious for fabricating stories, have something else in common: Both have written highly publicized books that few people are buying.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...air_book_sales

That's not what I was referring to.

I'm referring to his doing such a thing and using racism (among other things) as an excuse. Throwing in racism makes it such that people do not take actual racism and discrimination seriously, because fools are using accusations to excuse their outlandish behavior.