As Mickey Kaus reports, “the NYT Scandal Has Legs!” He links to Carl Swanson’s report in New York magazine that Gerald Boyd, the #2 NYT editor whose fingerprints are all over the Blair scandal, “was himself almost certainly promoted because of his race as a crucial part of Howell Raines’ campaign to become the #1 editor by sucking up to publisher Arthur ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger.”
Clearly what has goosed this story and kept it running is an ongoing debate over what implications Jayson Blair’s flameout at the Times has for race-based “diversity” preferences. Predictably, many defenders (often themselves beneficiaries) of those preference say: no implications at all. Thus the Times’s own Bob Herbert writes that those who do believe it casts a dark shadow over “diversity” are simply people who like to attack blacks.
The race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair’s reporting….
But the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story as evidence that there is something inherently wrong with The Times’ effort to diversify its newsroom, and beyond that, with the very idea of a commitment to diversity or affirmative action anywhere.
Similarly, the columnist Leonard Pitts is shocked, shocked.
Some critics have claimed that this is what you get from “diversity,” that newspapers have been forced to lower their standards in order to hire unqualified blacks and other minorities. No, seriously, that’s what some fairly reputable observers have said.
I don’t recall hearing of anyone who said Blair was “unqualified.” What they have said is that he was originally hired through an intern program that applied different standards according to race, and that he was treated by different standards after he arrived.
The columnist Clarence Page gets this about right when he points to Howell Raines’ description of his own behavior. As Page writes,
Many outside observers immediately accused Times executives of “affirmative action run amok,” saying they had given Mr. Blair, who is black, extra breaks that one of his white counterparts would not have received.
Key Times executives denied, at first, that race was a major factor. That was not hard for me to believe. After all, the record of white fakers and plagiarizers in print and broadcasting far outweighs that of blacks or other minorities.
Still, I concluded a column on the matter with, “It is important that the Times dig a little deeper and tell us, if race is not the reason for the Blair snafu, what is?”
The next day, editor Howell Raines faced his staff to answer questions such as that one during an unprecedented meeting in a Broadway movie house.
As factors go, it turns out, Mr. Raines admits that race was a big one. Too big.
“Was [Jayson Blair] hired in the first place on a race-based preference?” he wrote. “Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter. I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities. To me, to consider the alternative is not acceptable to our organization or to me as a person because it puts us in a position of perpetuating historical inequity …
“Does that mean I personally favored Jayson? Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I as a white man from Alabama with those convictions gave him one chance too many….
If you strip away the self-congratulatory gloss (Raines may as well have said, “If I erred, it was because of my essential goodness and the fact that I wear my guilty liberal heart on my [left] sleeve”), what Raines says here is that he cut Blair slack he would not have cut for someone who had not come in through the “diversity” door.
Next, however, Page veers quickly back onto the liberal plantation.
Some critics actually have complained that the American Society of Newspaper Editors has set a goal of achieving racial and ethnic parity with the general population in our newsrooms by 2025. They should be comforted to know that a similar goal was set for 2000. When the industry failed to reach it, there was much disappointment expressed, but no hard quotas were set.
Instead, newspapers are supposed to be doing what other businesses, workplaces and universities should do: Look harder.
No applicant should be unfairly cut out because of race, but neither should any be unfairly overlooked.
Page’s “look harder” injunction is of course innocent enough. In fact it is naive, if it is not disingenuous. It sounds like a revived mummy from the late 1960s offering a description and justification for the original version of affirmative action: take affirmative steps to see that no one is left out because of race. That is a far cry from the racial preferences into which affirmative action morphed. The defenders of preferences emphatically affirm what the original defenders of affirmative action emphatically denied — that it is legitimate, and even mandatory, to make employment and admission decisions based on race.
And this brings us to the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE). Page thinks we should be relieved and reassured by … what? That ASNE doesn’t really mean what it says? Compare that with the views of columnist John Leo:
The American Society of Newspaper Editors is leaning heavily on papers to meet a goal of 38 percent minority employees by 2025. The figure is 11.5 percent today. The newspaper industry is a declining business with concerns about its ability to hold minority employees. Under those conditions, can newspapers triple the percentage of nonwhites in two decades while maintaining standards? What are the papers willing to do about the low SAT verbal skill scores posted among minorities it wishes to sign up in big numbers? And doesn
John: Thanks for the plugola. Two books worth mentioning that touch on the questions you raise. First, there’s William McGowan’s “Coloring The News,” which I’ve been pointing out on my blog for more than a year now. Second, there’s Jim Sleeper’s outstanding “Liberal Racism,” which includes a fantastic chapter on race and the newsroom with a particular focus on the New York Times.
Similar effects don’t need similar causes, so you can’t use Rick Bragg to refute the “promoted on his race” argument about Jayson Blair.
But you can use Bragg (and a dozen other recent white plagiarists and fabulists posing as journalists elsewhere than the NY Times) to suggest that for whatever reason the writer goes off the rails, the more important problem is lack of internal Quality Control.
And just how, we must ponder, may internal quality control be enhanced? By hiring and promoting based on merit rather than “diversity” perhaps? (shock!)
By the way, kudos to John for his delicious portrayal of what must pass for thought in the void between Raines’ ears. (Oh, how heavy the burden of virtue, though so nobly I do bear it.)
“And just how, we must ponder, may internal quality control be enhanced? By hiring and promoting based on merit rather than “diversity” perhaps? (shock!)”
No. Absolutely not. You have missed my point entirely. Unless the NY Times has “diversity” with respect to diabetics, no amount of tinkering with its diversity program would have caught Rick Bragg. His position, and those of Ruth Shalit, Stephen Glass, Mike Barnicle, et. al. at other publications, can’t be blamed on diversity programs.
Let me give you a hypo. Suppose blacks were allowed to get drivers’ licenses with scores lower than whites. Jayson Blair crashes his car. Rick Bragg crashes his car. Rick Bragg’s crash is not attributable to the program that put Blair behind the wheel.
It seems to me what we really need is better ombudsmen, or editors, or newspapers to use automated plagiarism detectors, and/or some other structural change that will catch these fables no matter what color the fabulist.
Do you also think diversity programs cause cancer?
No, I have not missed your point (to be so generous) whatsoever. You establish a convenient straw man with your illustrations of white charlatans. However, the point, unless you were speaking in left-wing euphemisms, was that a lack of internal quality control was the culprit, rather than “diversity,” i.e. racial preferences.
My response was that racial preferences are part and parcel of deficient internal quality control, and in no way mutually exclusive to the concept. As for diabetics, my point would remain the same–hiring high-blood sugar individuals, solely for that fact, over more qualified hypoglycemics would also be poor internal quality control. Surely you understand this, or maybe not.
As for screening Bragg, no quality control system is infallible (so drop the silly red-herrings)but a meritocracy gets you much closer to sound footing than “diversity” ever will.
I’ll assume your hypothetical is facetious rhetoric, though if you actually need a rejoinder, I can only say–of course Bragg’s car crash is not attributable to racial preferences. They have nothing to do with one another. If Blair was hired as a dysfunctional invalid, it would have nothing to do with Bragg and his car. Are you saying that because a white crashes their car, it justifies giving a license to blacks with substandard scores?
Finally, you ask if I think “diversity” causes Cancer. In short, no. I also don’t think white people cause rickets or black people scurvy. Hope this helps.
Well, I was trying to be generous, but now I’ll have to say I think you’re being stupid. And my guess is an overweening hatred of diversity programs (that I don’t even feel like defending) is the cause.
Journalists made up stories before diversity programs for various reasons, and they will make up stories after diversity programs are abolished (if they ever are). Indeed, a “meritocracy” (leave aside whose “merit”) with inadequate controls is an open invitation to cheat for personal advancement. Bragg is a Pulitzer prize-winner. Getting rid of diversity programs with the putative intention of stopping plagiarism and confabulation is as silly as claiming that return to “meritocracy” will also cure cancer en passant.
To put it in your words, “Are you saying that because a white crashes their car, it justifies giving a license to blacks with substandard scores?” No, I’m not. I see you as making an ahistorical and preposterous claim that if they stop giving licenses to blacks with substandard scores it will somehow stop whites from crashing. I say if we are really interested in reducing crashes, we should concentrate on better enforcement of traffic laws.
I think it boils down to what you think is more important: better journalism (driving) from everyone, or getting rid of diversity programs (which, I repeat, I’m not even defending here) with whatever specious, tendentious, logically bankrupt argument you can.
I don’t like to follow up to my own posting, but only now do I see that today’s paper reports another case of non-fiction plagiarism.
The author is white.
Perhaps it was society’s Fall from the Eden of Meritocracy with the Sin of Diversity Programs. Or perhaps it was greed, haste, and carelessness on the parts of the author and his publisher (publishers have drastically cut back on editorial review of manuscripts, to boost profits). I know which theory is more plausible to me.
“Overweening hatred?” You’re both a writer of turgid prose and a pocket phychiatrist! How vogue. Though sadly our would-be Baudelaire doesn’t provide examples of either stupidity or hatred (his own cancer/diversity link nontwithstanding), his word is probably sufficient.
I’ll try once more (in admited futility) to penetrate the gauze you have tightly wrapped around your eyes and ears. Read s-l-o-w-l-y. You say that journalists cheated before “diversity” and they will cheat after: Correct. You say a meritocracy (why the quotes, you don’t like the very concept?)with inadequate controls will invite cheating: correct.
My point (again) is that racial preferences negatively impact those very controls which you so dearly cherish. No, eliminating racial preferences will not eliminate cheating, not even close. Who said it would? However, imposing a meritocracy (without regard to race, religion or blood sugar) will REDUCE the statistical incident of cheating, poor writing, idolence, entitlement, and most other negative workplace traits–though clearly they will all still exist. This seems as apparent as the notion that holding drivers to a level high standard of competence will REDUCE the number of poor drivers on the road, and as a corollary, the number of automobile crashes–though still, they will occur. This is the entire function of internal quality control, to reduce risk. If there is any way to articulate this more clearly, it falls beyond my capacity.
But you don’t stop with mere sophistry. You are compelled to implicitly level the obligatory “racist” charge (Jesse Jackson has never used that one!). Your inference of the license analagy is pure contrived idiocy. I was simply seeking clarification of your original comment–do you even read your own responses, much less mine?
Finally, I doubt at the core we have truly divergent beliefs on reporting or driving–we’d like higher quality of both. You just seem to believe that standards in either are meaningless. I believe they are not.
I also don’t like to follow-up on my own posts, but do want to thank you (Andrew) for a spirited debate. Though your positions are replete with “specious, tendentious, logically bankrupt arguments” I have enjoyed parrying them nonetheless. I hope to see more of you around here.
I’ll take one more try: it seems to me that you were much more interested in getting rid of the diversity program than in getting rid of bad journalism. Even though I myself am somewhat skeptical of the NY Times program, don’t believe it’s a major contributor to the epidemic of bad journalism. It just happens that one bad journalist the NY Times hired came through it. Rick Bragg didn’t. Judith Miller, the Iraq reporter whose work on WMD has been outrageous, didn’t [AFAIK].
I actually think we agree on this. You nevertheless seem to feel we can hang at least some bad journalism on the diversity program, giving you [another!] reason to get rid of it. My view is that whatever the evils of the diversity program, the problem of bad journalism, which seems to be widespread, should be combatted by more strictly-tailored means that will also catch the apparently large number of white fraudsters.
I was unusually heated because I think that this is a case where in search of certain ends you have adopted means that are unfair to the diversity program. Is there any evidence that people hired through the diversity program are much more likely to commit journalistic crimes? I don’t know of any, and absent same, the white journalist who would have been hired instead of Jayson Blair would have been just about as likely to be a bad apple, although possibly from completely different motives.
I think it would be better to oppose the diversity program on many other, more honest, grounds. I will add, however, that the NY Times has certain needs for diversity that can be expressed in race-neutral terms: for example, there must be a tremendous demand right now for Arabic-speaking journalists, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.
Andrew: Thanks for your comments. I’ll make a few final points in response to your post, and then mercifully drop the issue.
1) You seem extraordinarily concerned with discerning my personal motivations (a theme which has run through your every post on the topic). I’ll tell you only that they are manifold, though honestly, why would you care? My points, and their logical basis, are here in writing, and require no speculation. If it helps though, I am quite interested in getting rid of BOTH “diversity” programs and bad journalism. Though I believe the former has a far more corrosive effect on our republic than does the latter.
2)Yes, I do believe we can hang at least some bad journalism on “diversity.” I’ll cite one example: Jayson Blair. By the explicit admission of both he and his boss, “diversity” played a role in his unwarranted ascension. Is there a single white reporter on the NYT national desk who does not possess a college diploma? (I don’t know the answer, but I know what I would bet on). And if you think Mr. Bair is an anomoly, then I believe (only speculation) that you will be proved wildly optimistic. Lowering or removing standards in ANY field of endeavor will necessarily result in lower performance. Otherwise, why do standards exist in the first place?
3) This is only my personal feeling, though I don’t think I have “adopted means that are unfair to the diversity program.” The “diversity” program is itself unfair–patently so. Try this exercise: Three young people are applying to the U. of Mich. A son of Vietnamese immigrants, a white daughter of appalachian coal miners, and Michael Jordan’s son. Who gets the 20 bonus points for admissions?
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on
Sneaky
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if the New York Times has denounced Rush Limbaugh for saying on