May 20, 2003
Looking for the Truth?... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
Much has been written and said about the downfall of Jayson Blair, the young New York Times reporter who repeatedly deceived his editors with trumped-up or lifted information, and, of course, ultimately deceived the readers, themselves.
I've tried to get a technological handle on this, and certain elements appear to be undeniable. To quote the May 11th edition of The New York Times: "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."
It sounds so embarrassing, doesn't it? With a cellphone, a laptop and online access to information, you, too, could fake front page stories for a major bastion of global media truth.
All you need is technology, intent and a personality lacking in any internal moral compass.
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The media attention has swirled around the management policies of the NY Times, the psychological problems and behavioral habits of the reporter, the personal failings of the editors, and the question of trust.
That all got me to thinking about how it's not only technology that has changed so dramatically in the 152-year history of the New York Times, but it's the tenets of information trust, as well.
In the absence of outside information, trust becomes what we call a one-or-zero proposition, where "one" means you believe it and "zero" means you don't. In the mid-1800's, a reader had to depend heavily on what he or she read in the newspaper. They couldn't turn on the television, pick up a telephone, pluck out their digital cameras, or turn on the radio.
Information, whether confirming or challenging, simply couldn't travel. There was no web of secondary sources to verify or deny.
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Still, it's the total dynamic of what happened which fascinates me: This reporter continually moved from Editor to Editor, from one part of the paper to another. When the heat rose, he'd move to another, entrée bought with energy, charm and snippets of compelling reporting.
He managed a perception of low-level carelessness to cover larger points on his agenda. And when the organization moved to help him solve it, management couldn't see that this wasn't the point of his carelessness at all. The point was to cover and deceive.
And that wasn't all. When asked specific questions, face-to-face, he was capable of looking experienced people straight in the eye and flat out lying. Did he portray the calm of the innocent? Or possibly the indignation of the wrongfully accused? It doesn't matter - he was good at it.
And here's the point: From the high art of false apology to simply knowing when to remove yourself, such people should not be the primary focus of organization-wide management policies. To avoid a case of the tail wagging the dog, what I think the New York Times needs to do is to simply add the ability to trip up and identify people who have no intention or capacity to perform in a trustworthy manner. And the good news is this: here's a place where technology can help.
Jayson Blair claimed he visited 20 cities in 6 states over 5 months, and yet never turned in receipts for airfare, hotels or rental cars - how hard would that have been for a computer to figure out?
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
