John Hulteng in Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media said, “It may well be that if journalism loses touch with ethical values, it will then cease to be of use to society, and cease to have any real reason for being…but that, for the sake of all of us, must never be allowed to happen.” [1]In the field of journalism, ethics is one of the most important aspects of journalism, and as professionals in the field, journalists are asked to adhere to four major ethics. According to Media/Impact:An Introduction to Mass Media, these four major ethics are: Truthfulness, Fairness, Privacy, and Responsibility.[2] Journalists are asked to remain truthful at all times, to be fair to others, and to respect the privacy of the people they are interviewing. In addition, journalists also have a certain responsibility to their readers. In Burning Down My Master’s House, Bill Schmidt, the associate managing editor of The New York Times, explains, “The trust of our readers is based on the principle that what they read on our page is accurate, reported by the person who it is said to have been reported by, and conforms to our standards of journalism. That trust derives from years of balanced and objective journalism.”[3]However, there are always cases in which ethics is violated and such trust is destroyed. Two major cases that were groundbreaking in violating the journalism code of ethics were the Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair incidents.
Janet Cooke didn’t start out as an unethical reporter. The little that is known about her background is that Cooke spent the majority of her life in Toledo. According to the 1979 article “The Players It Wasn’t A Game,” Janet Cooke applied to work at The Washington Post.[4] When Cooke applied, her background was impressive. Cooke claimed to have gone to Vassar and had previously written for TheToledo Blade.[5] According to a Washington Post article “The Players It Wasn’t A Game,” Janet Cooke was hired to work for The Washington Post on Jan 3, 1980. [6] Janet Cooke was assigned to the Staff Weekly, a local section of the Washington Post where many reporters from small town-papers started out. The editor of the Staff weekly, in, is quoted as saying “Janet was much like many reporters we get from smaller papers. That is, she wrote and reported reasonably well. We tend to be detail-conscious, and she needed to know how to get more detail, but she was good and smart and better than most”. [7] From the WashingtonPost article “Jimmy’s World” was first published by the press on September 28, 1980. From the very first line, the reader had been hooked. As stated, The Washington Post article Jimmy’s World, the first line reads like a scene out of a novel: “Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth kin of his thin brown arms. “[8] In Janet Cooke’s article “Jimmy’s World,” Cooke writes how Jimmy “doesn’t normally go to school, preferring instead to hang with older boys between the ages of 11 and 16 who spend their days getting high on herb or PCP and doing a little dealing to collect spare change”.[9]
Janet Cooke’s “Jimmy’s World” was an instant success in the media world. People all across the country had heard about Jimmy. According to “The Players It Wasn’t A Game,” social workers all over the city searched in vain for Jimmy, but to no avail.[10] Editors at The Washington Post went on to nominate Cooke for a Pulitzer Prize. On April 13, 1981 Janet Cooke was announced as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Three days later, Cooke resigned from the Washington Post. Her public letter of apology, dated April 16, 1981 read as follows, “Jimmy’s World was in essence a fabrication.” I never encountered or interviewed an eight-year-old heroin addict.” Cooke’s reputation as a journalist was ruined after it had been learned that Cooke had only attended for Vassar for one year, while the rest of her undergraduate years were spent at the University of Toledo. As a writer for The Washington Post, Janet Cooke violated one of journalism’s essential codes of ethics by fabricating a fictional account of an 8-year-old heroin addict. Cooke claims that pressure from her editors is what caused her to fabricate “Jimmy’s World,” but no one will ever understand why Cooke did what she did. Janet Cooke is only important in the history of journalism because she was one of the first people to violate one of the codes of ethics she had pledged to adhere by. As a reporter, Cooke let down her readers and editors and will be remembered as a young journalist who, as “The Player’s It Wasn’t A Game” points out, “committed the perfect crime.
Jayson Blair was the second case of a reporter who had violated the journalism code of ethics. According to Burning Down My Master’s House, written by Jayson Blair, a paragraph from The New York Times reads, “A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant events in recent months.”[11]
In Burning Down My Master’s House, Blair discusses his background. Blair was born on March 2, 1976, and at 23, was one of the youngest New York Times reporters. In 1998, Blair was offered a summer internship at The New York Times, and after a six-month extended internship, Blair was offered a job as a reporter. As Burning Down My Master’s House discusses, during Blair’s four years at the New York Times, Blair made hundreds of errors in his reporting that had to be corrected. [12] In 2001, Jonathan Landman sent a letter to other editors at The New York Times, to “stop Jayson from writing for the New York Times”. This letter was ignored, and instead, Blair was promoted and assigned to work at the National Desk.[13]
However, it was on April 28, 2003 when it was discovered that Blair had plagiarized an article written by a San-Antonio Express reporter named Macarena Hernandez.[14]
In addition, it was also discovered that Blair, in the course of many of his articles, had never actually interviewed any of his sources-rather, Blair used photos he had found in archives and partial phone interviews as a basis for his articles.
On May 2, 2003, Jayson Blair resigned from The New York Times. After his resignation, the Spiegel committee discovered that thirty-six of seventy-three of Blair’s articles that he had written for the national desk contained errors or fabrications. [15] In addition, Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media, points out that Blair also wrote stories where he claimed to be in other states, when he was in fact, in New York.[16] In many instances Blair also selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been at the scene of the article, when Blair hadn’t even left the city of New York.[17]
Jayson Blair’s actions as a reporter impacted more then just his own life. As Blair points out in his book Burning Down My Master’s House Blair’s errors forced Howell and Boyd, two editors at TheNew York Times, to resign from office.[18]
As a talented African-American journalist, Blair did what many had only dared to dream-to write for The New York Times. In his book Burning Down My Master’s House, Blair partially blames the pressure of The New York Times and his own problems from alcohol and drugs that led to his actions at The New York Times. [19]Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke wrote for national newspapers, and as reporters, found themselves under enormous pressure. Although Blair in Burning Down My Master’s House may blame his race and problems with drugs and Janet Cooke may blame her ambition, it is imperative to realize that Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair are no different then any other journalist.[20] Although Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair impacted history in a negative manner, both of them forced the world to re-examine the code of ethics journalists adhere by and the standards readers expect and demand. At the very least, Cooke and Blair’s fabrications forced the media to up their game and demand from their reporters a sense of responsibility for their own stories.
Notes
1. Biagi, Shirley. Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media (Bellfonte, California: Thompson Wadsworth Press, 2007), 314.
2. Biagi, Media/Impact, 314.
3. Blair, Jayson. Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life At The New York Times (Beverly Hills, California: New Millennium Press, 2004), 3.
This quote had taken place between Jayson Blair and Bill Schmidt. Bill Schmidt was the associate managing editor of The New York Times in charge of news administration. According to Schmidt, “The trust of our readers is based on the principle that what they read on our page is accurate, reported by the person who it is said to have been reported by, and conforms to our standards of journalism. That trust derives from years of balanced and objective journalism” was in reference to Jayson Blair and was part of an ongoing conversation between Jayson Blair and Bill Schmidt in order to find out what had happened during Jayson Blair’s reporting. Although this quote is important when referencing Blair, it is also relevant to journalism as a whole.
4. Bill Green, "It Wasn't A Game" Washington Post, 19 April 1981, sec. A, p. 12.
5. Green, "It Wasn't A Game," Washington Post, sec. 1A, p. 12.
According to "It Wasn't A Game," Janet Cooke attended for Vassar for only her freshman year of college. Janet Cooke graduated from The University of Toledo.
6. Green, "It Wasn't A Game," Washington Post, sec. 1A, p. 12.
According to “It Wasn’t A Game,” Janet Cooke was hired by The Washington Post with little checks done on her references or background. An important quote from “It Wasn’t A Game” reads as follows: “So impressed had the staff been with her and her writing that the usual check of references was done in a cursory manner. Wilkinson, assistant managing editor, vaguely remembers talking with someone at the Blade. Others can’t remember any checks.
7. Green, "It Wasn't A Game," Washington Post, sec. 1A, p. 12.
According to “It Wasn’t A Game” editors found Cooke impressive. It is important to realize though that in 1981, as “It Wasn’t A Game” points out, “She was a striking, smartly dressed, articulate black woman, precisely the kind of applicant editors welcome, given the pressures to hire minorities and women.
8. Janet Cooke, "Jimmy's World" Washington Post, 28 Sept. 1980, sec. A, p. 1.
9. Cooke, "Jimmy's World," Washington Post, sec. 1A, p. 1.10. Green, "It Wasn't A Game," Washington Post, sec. 1A, p. 12. According to "It Wasn't A Game," ' "Jimmy's World" ran on Sunday, September 28th. By Monday Washington Police Chief Burtell Jefferson had launched a mammoth citywide search for Jimmy. Assistant Chief Maurice Turner said the police had been prepared to offer up to $10,000.'
11. Blair, Jayson. Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life At The New York Times (Beverly Hills, California: New Millennium Press, 2004), 53.
12. Blair, Jayson. Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life At The New York Times (Beverly Hills, California: New Millennium Press, 2004), 204, 211,283-297.
13. Blair, Jayson. Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life At The New York Times (Beverly Hills, California: New Millennium Press, 2004), 204-207. During the time Jayson Blair was promoted to write at the National Desk, Jayson Blair admitted that his personal difficulties, such as his alcohol and drug problems, had begun to slip into his work routine, and although Blair admitted this to Pat Drew, an employee who ran the assistant program at The New York Times, Blair was still allowed to work at The New York Times.
14. Green, “It Wasn’t A Game,” Washington Post, sec. 1A, p. 12.
15. Blair, Jayson. Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life At The New York Times (Beverly Hills, California: New Millennium Press, 2004), 294-295. According to “Burning Down My Master’s House,” Blair admits “I lifted deliberately from the Associated Press story and another one published in the San Antonio News.
16. Biagi, Media/Impact, 314.
17. Biagi, Media/Impact, 314.
18. Blair, Jayson. Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life At The New York Times (Beverly Hills: New Millennium Press, California,), 2004 72-73.
19. Blair, Jayson. Burning Down My Master’s House: My Life At The New York Times (Beverly Hills:California,), 2004 69. According to “Burning Down My Master’s House,” Jayson Blair was diagnosed with manic depression or bipolar disorder shortly after the scandal hit the news.
20. Blair, Burning Down My Master’s House, 204-207.
