In 2003 the New York Times faced a major scandal involving one of its reporters, Jayson Blair. Blair was caught with his pants down, so to speak. He plagiarized the work of other reporters, quoted people he had never contacted, and claimed to be in places he never visited.
The Times called the Blair mess "a low point in the 152-year history of the paper." It is indeed very bad if a reporter behaves more like a novelist, but it always seemed to me that the Times protested a little too much in the Blair case. While the Times is said to be the newspaper of record, it has had many low moments in its history.
The Times told Martin Luther King to shut up and mind his own business when he dared to speak out against the war in Vietnam. Dr. Wen Ho Lee went to jail because of the Times’ hyperventilation, only to be cleared of any wrongdoing. Tons of newsprint went into reporting the Whitewater non-scandal.
