by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, May 12, 2003 3:16 P.M. EDT

Black and White and Red-Faced
Yesterday's New York Times featured an unusual investigative report, more than 7,000 words long, on the subject of the New York Times. Reporter Jayson Blair resigned May 1 after his editors discovered he had plagiarized material from the San Antonio Express-News. Accompanying the article is a detailed accounting of Blair's work going back to March 2000.

Blair's erstwhile colleagues found other instances of plagiarism, as well as journalism's other cardinal sin, fabrication. He also filed many stories bearing distant datelines, indicating he was reporting from the scene, when in fact he was in New York and his stories were a mélange of telephone reporting, plagiarized material and fabrications.

The big guns of blogdom, Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus, have been all over this story since it broke. Blair, 27, is black, and Sullivan, Kaus and others have raised questions about the effects of the Times' commitment to "diversity" in the newsroom.

The issue here is not Blair's race. It would be invidious to make any generalizations about black reporters based on his journalistic misdeeds, or to suggest that his wrongdoing had anything to do with his being black. Plenty of white journalists have been involved in scandal. Many a commentator has pointed out that Stephen Glass, the erstwhile New Republic fabulist now angling for his 16th minute of fame, is a person of pallor, and in 1984 The Wall Street Journal (which publishes this Web site) "disclosed that R. Foster Winans, who wrote the paper's 'Heard on the Street' column, had been fired for taking bribes from a stockbroker in return for advance information on the column's contents," notes today's Journal (link for WSJ.com subscribers). Winans was subsequently convicted of insider trading.

The Times account, however, gives reason to think that the racial attitudes of Times executives were central to their mismanagement of the Blair situation. Blair was an intern at the Times in the summer of 1998, and a full-time employee starting in June 1999. Although no allegations of outright journalistic wrongdoing surfaced until last month, throughout his tenure complaints persisted about sloppy reporting and other forms of carelessness. Despite these problems, he was promoted in November 1999 and again in January 2001. The problems continued. In April 2002 metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman "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.' "

Nonetheless, in October executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd assigned him to the team covering the Washington-area sniper story. Although both men were aware of Blair's troubled history at the Times, they decided not to tell Blair's new boss, national editor Jim Roberts. Nineteen of the stories with which the Times found problems were about the sniper case.

The Times says Howell Raines, now the executive editor, plans "to assign a task force of newsroom employees to identify lessons for the newspaper." Will the task force raise questions about the paper's pursuit of diversity? Based on the way the paper handled the issue in its massive investigation of Blair's career, one would expect not. The Times raises the diversity issue at two points in its account of Blair's career:

Mr. Blair's Times supervisors and [University of] Maryland professors emphasize that he earned an internship at The Times because of glowing recommendations and a remarkable work history, not because he is black. The Times offered him a slot in an internship program that was then being used in large part to help the paper diversify its newsroom. . . .

In January 2001, Mr. Blair was promoted to full-time reporter with the consensus of a recruiting committee of roughly half a dozen people headed by Gerald M. Boyd, then a deputy managing editor, and the approval of Mr. [Joseph] Lelyveld [then executive editor].

Mr. Landman said last week that he had been against the recommendation--that he "wasn't asked so much as told" about Mr. Blair's promotion. But he also emphasized that he did not protest the move.

The publisher and the executive editor, he said, had made clear the company's commitment to diversity--"and properly so," he said. . . .

Mr. Boyd, who is now managing editor, the second-highest-ranking newsroom executive, said last week that the decision to advance Mr. Blair had not been based on race. Indeed, plenty of young white reporters have been swiftly promoted through the ranks.

"To say now that his promotion was about diversity in my view doesn't begin to capture what was going on," said Mr. Boyd, who is himself African-American. "He was a young, promising reporter who had done a job that warranted promotion."

Now this is very curious. The New York Times is famous for its commitment to diversity, and Mickey Kaus notes that in a speech to the National Association of Black Journalists, Raines specifically cited Blair "as an example of the Times' successful recruiting efforts." Yet except for Landman, everyone quoted here is at pains to deny that diversity had anything to do with Blair's swift rise. Is it really credible that Times execs gave no thought to race as they promoted Blair, or that when he won "a slot in an internship program . . . used in large part to help the paper diversify its newsroom" it was "not because he was black"?

None of this necessarily discredits the project of making the newsroom more diverse. But it would be irresponsible not to raise the question of whether overzealousness about diversity contributed to what the Times calls "a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."

Other Low Points
Well, they did use the indefinite article. A New York Sun editorial notes that the Times has had some other low points on matters rather more consequential. The low point was probably when Walter Duranty, the paper's correspondent in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, "assured readers that there was 'no actual starvation' in the midst of Stalin's forced collectivization campaign in the Ukraine. In fact, millions died of famine."

Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932.

"Almost as egregious," the Sun adds, "was the record of the Times' man at Havana, Herbert Matthews, who, as the 1999 Times history 'The Trust' put it, became 'emotionally involved' with Fidel Castro, whose regime he claimed was 'free, honest, and democratic.' "

We're All Neocons Now
Quick, who said this: "If the United States managed to help establish democracy in Iraq, . . . I think that would be the greatest step that could be taken both for America and for the whole Middle East"? Was it:

(a) Paul Wolfowitz
(b) Richard Perle
(c) William Kristol
(d) Max Boot

The answer is (e) None of the above. It's Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, emir of Qatar. And he's not the only Arab to join the "Zionist conspiracy" to democratize the Arab world. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian dissident who also holds American citizenship, has an op-ed in the Washington Post that sounds awfully neocon-like:

The doors are opening for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The yearning for peace is unmistakable and the aspiration for development universal. The post-Saddam Hussein era offers a momentous opportunity to achieve these objectives.

But a regional road map is needed. It is time for a forceful--not arrogant--message from the United States to the people and rulers of the region--a message that America will be a reliable partner in the pursuit of democracy, peace and development. Only with such a vision, and a carefully drawn map, can the United States avoid being dragged into repeated armed intervention. And only with it can the long-suffering peoples of the region finally join the community of open democratic societies.

A Washington Post report from Damascus, meanwhile, suggests that Iraq's liberalization is having salutary effects in Syria:

During the past two weeks, the Syrian government has licensed its first three private banks, considered an essential step in modernizing the state-dominated economy, while approving two new private universities and four private radio stations. Officials are now reviewing the possibility of removing military training from the curriculum of schools and universities and eliminating a requirement that all students join youth groups affiliated with Syria's ruling Baath Party, according to sources close to the leadership.

While discussions about reforming the Baath Party have been underway for at least three years, they have taken on a much greater urgency since the collapse of Iraq's Baath Party government, said Syrians close to the leadership. . . .

After Assad took power three years ago upon the death of his autocratic father, Hafez Assad, he promised ambitious administrative and economic reforms, including the licensing of private banks. But many of these changes ran into opposition from entrenched interests in the cabinet, security forces and the Baath Party, and have yet to be carried out. The latest promise of reform could meet the same fate.

"Dr. Bashar is going to use this golden opportunity," said Riad I. Barazi, a political writer well connected to the leadership. "We are in a dilemma and we need a way out of the American pressure. He is going to use this stick against the old guard . . . to tell the old guard to go away. The dramatic changes that have taken place in Iraq have accelerated this process."

In his much-ridiculed April piece in The Washington Monthly, Josh Marshall claimed that President Bush had broken "new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception" by supposedly failing to inform Americans that he viewed the Iraq conflict as part of a broader war. Now Francis X. Clines reports that in a New Hampshire appearance, Karl Rove "disclosed very little about the president's re-election strategy. Until, that is, a student asked about the war in Iraq":

"First of all, it's the battle of Iraq, not the war," Mr. Rove carefully corrected. He went on to describe a far larger and longer war against terrorism that he sees clearly, perchance fortuitously, stretching well toward Election Day 2004.

The neocon conspiracy works in mysterious ways.

Another Lab--but Does It Even Matter?
"An American military unit found an abandoned trailer outside a missile testing site in northern Iraq [Friday] that they suspect was a mobile biological weapons laboratory," reports the New York Times "It was the second such find in recent weeks."

In the Washington Post, MIT scholar Michael Schrage offers an acute analysis of why finding weapons of mass destruction is not all that important:

Even if Iraq proves utterly free of WMD--or if it merely possesses a paltry two or three bio-weapons vans--the coalition's military action was the most rational response to Saddam's long-term policy of strategic deception. Saddam Hussein bet that he could get away with playing a "does he or doesn't he?" shell game with a skeptical superpower. He bet wrong. . . .

Hussein's Iraq may or may not have had impressive caches of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. But his regime surely behaved as if it might. Iraq's WMD threat remained credible for more than 20 years because that's precisely what Hussein wanted the world to believe. After all, he had successfully deployed chemical weapons against both Kurds and Iranians. He'd earned his credibility.

In fact, the U.N.'s resolutions dealing with weapons of mass destruction took account of this. Saddam was obliged not just to destroy such weapons but to provide a full accounting of their destruction--something he unquestionably failed to do.

A Senior Bush Administration Official Imitates Us

"We haven't found Saddam Hussein or his sons either. Does that mean they never existed?"--Best of the Web Today, April 14

" 'We haven't found Saddam Hussein yet,' says a senior Bush administration official. 'Does that mean he didn't exist?' "--Newsweek, May 19 issue

Throwing Out the Baath Water
"The United States declared Saddam Hussein's Baath Party dead Sunday, with the war's commander telling Iraqis that the instrument of their deposed dictator's power was dissolved and promising to purge its influence from the country it dominated for 35 years," the Associated Press reports from Baghdad. An announcer read Gen. Tommy Franks's statement over the coalition's Information Radio, which broadcasts throughout the liberated land.

Paradise by the Fishbowl Light
An Najah, a Palestinian Arab university in the West Bank city of Nablus, is displaying "a model of the paradise Islamic militants say awaits those killed in fighting with Israel, including suicide bombers," the Associated Press reports. The display features "plastic trees, goldfish swimming in a generator-powered fountain, posters of the dead on the wall." It's all there but the kitchen sink--and one other thing:

Missing from the display of heaven were the 72 virgins. Organizers said they weren't sure how to depict them. "We don't know what (heavenly) virgins look like," said one of the organizers, a Hamas member and engineering student who only gave his first name, Ahmed.

If you were going to die for these virgins, wouldn't you want to know what they look like?

Losing a Son
Marguerite Kelly writes the "Family Almanac" advice column for the Washington Post. On Friday she abandoned her usual Q&A format to write about her own family--specifically her son, Michael Kelly, the brilliant writer and editor, who died last month in Iraq. It's a real tear-jerker:

Death was quick, but grief, I find, keeps going on and on and on and it affects me in strange ways.

I feel no denial. No anger. No bargaining. No depression. And this makes me wonder if I'll ever get to peace and acceptance. These five classic stages of grief, cited so authoritatively by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, aren't working for me.

Instead my grief is amorphous, deceitful, unpredictable. Sometimes it hides behind distractions; sometimes it covers my spirits like the pall on Mike's coffin, and sometimes it knocks me flat, particularly when I think of Mike's beloved wife, Max, and their little boys, Tom, 7, and Jack, 3, who must live their lives without him.

Say What?
"Doctors 'Secretly Removed Brains for Research' "--headline, (London) Independent, May 11

What Would M.D.s Do Without Michael J. Fox?
"Michael J. Fox Urges M.D.'s to Find Cures"--headline, Associated Press, May 12

Who Knew?
"Inactivity Blamed for Teens' Weight Gains"--headline, Associated Press, May 12

What Would We Do Without Authors?
"Education Is Needed, Author Says"--headline, Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal, May 12

This Just In
"There Is Hope"--headline, (Munster, Ind.) Times, May 12

Lost in Space
Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that a mental hospital in Portland, Ore., was hiring a "Klingon interpreter" to speak to mental patients who refuse to speak in any tongue other than that of the "Star Trek" aliens. But Kuro5hin.org, a technology-news site, finds that this is a case of bureaucratic, not clinical, insanity. The Oregonian reports that "in reality, no patient has yet tried to communicate in Klingon." The advertisement for a Klingon interpreter was a preventive measure, in case a "Klingon" patient shows up. The AP omitted this fact, leading to the impression that Oregon had been invaded by self-styled Klingons.

It's a Byrd! It's a Plane! It's an Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing!
Craig Bozman of Rockville, Md., in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, lists some of the government facilities in West Virginia that are named for the state's (and the nation's) senior senator:

The Robert C. Byrd Highway; the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam; the Robert C. Byrd Institute; the Robert C. Byrd Life Long Learning Center; the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program; the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope; the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing; the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse; the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center; the Robert C. Byrd Academic and Technology Center; the Robert C. Byrd United Technical Center; the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building; the Robert C. Byrd Drive; the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex; the Robert C. Byrd Library; the Robert C. Byrd Learning Resource Center; and the Robert C. Byrd Rural Health Center.

Last week Byrd accused President Bush of "flamboyant showmanship" after the president gave a speech on the USS Robert C.--whoops, make that the USS Abraham Lincoln.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Robert LeChevalier, Edward Schulze, Ellen Forshaw, Natalie Cohen, Barak Moore, Howie Mirkin, C.E. Dobkin, Pearl Ladenheim, Dave Anderson, Jeffrey Weinstein, Bruce Oakley, Raghu Desikan, Michael Segal, Joel Goldberg, Anita Parillo, Arn Nelson, Robert Owen, Bob Krumm, Russell DePalma, David Darby, Steve Prestegard, Justin Taylor, Dave Weaver, Eli Meisels, George Lenz, Carl Sherer, Damian Bennett, Drew Cooper, Yitzchak Dorfman, Scott Ott, Pat Mizell, William Specht, Linda Cooke, Buddy Smith, Brian Pleshek, Steve Early, Steven Getman, John Archer, Lyle Yarnell, Daniel Mark, Brian Azman, Isaac Younger, Henry Stern, William Schultz, David Gerstman and Barry Annis. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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