The New York Times Fired the Wrong Reporter
A Letter to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Dear StarTribune Staffers:

The usual right-wing media suspects are catering to their racist bases by blaming the Jayson Blair episode on the New York Times' diversity program.

Interestingly, they ignored far more serious journalistic breaches committed by white conservative newspaper writers who are still working in the newspaper biz, such as Mike Barnicle (fired from the Boston Globe, but now employed by the New York Daily News and MSNBC) and Jeff Jacoby (who, despite repeated violations of journalistic ethics -- including blatant plagiarism -- still is employed by the Boston Globe).

However, if we must confine our journalist-bashing to the NYT, may I suggest a better, more deserving target than young Mr. Blair?

I speak of none other than longtime New York Times employee Jeff Gerth.

Mr. Gerth was using sloppy, lazy, and deliberately misleading reporting to create the Whitewater non-scandal while Jayson Blair was still in high school.

Gerth later went on to falsely smear Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee as a spy for Red China, playing on anti-Asian racial bigotry in much the same way that Jayson Blair's most vicious attackers are playing on anti-black bigotry.

As recounted in the press coverage of the time, and repeated in books like Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars", no less than three separate investigations -- including Ken Starr's -- found out that, despite what Jeff Gerth's contacts in the Arkansas Republican Party had been telling him, the only thing the Clintons were "guilty" of in Whitewater was losing a ton of money in a bad land deal.

Similarly, Wen Ho Lee has been found to be guilty of nothing, essentially, but being "Chinese" (actually, Lee is from Taiwan, but Gerth didn't let that minor detail keep him from painting Lee as a Red Chinese Menace).

But despite all this -- despite a long career at the Times in which his two most famous stories were built around partisan, baseless witchhunts -- Jeff Gerth still has his job at the New York Times.

Howell Raines likes Gerth more than he ever liked Jayson Blair.

So, yes, you conservative racist Times-bashers, there's crummy reporting going on at the New York Times. But here's the forbidden truth you don't acknowledge: most of it is by white people, most of it was to further conservative goals (such as weakening a Democratic president), and most of it was going on long before non-white Jayson Blair got his first Times paycheck.

Sincerely,

Tamara Baker