Jayson Blair (born March 23, 1976) is a former American reporter for The New York Times. He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003, in the wake of plagiarism and fabrication being discovered within his stories. Since 2007 he has worked as a life coach in the field of mental health.
Blair was born in Columbia, Maryland, the son of a federal executive and a school teacher. He attended the University of Maryland, College Park, and was a student journalist during his time there.
Blair became editor-in-chief of its student newspaper, The Diamondback, for the 1996–97 school year. According to a letter later signed by 30 staffers,[1] Blair made four serious errors as a reporter and editor that brought his integrity into question. The letter-signers alleged that questions about those errors were ignored by the board that owned the paper. Among the mistakes, they cited an award-winning story about a student who died of a cocaine overdose, who was subsequently found to have actually died of a heart ailment.[2][3]
After a summer interning at The New York Times in 1998, Blair was offered an extended internship. He indicated that he had to complete some coursework in order to graduate, and The New York Times agreed to defer it. He returned to The New York Times in January 1999, when "everyone assumed he had graduated. He had not; college officials say he has more than a year of course work to complete."[4] That November, he became an "intermediate reporter."[4]
[edit]Plagiarism and fabrication scandal
On April 28, 2003, Blair received a call from Times national editor Jim Roberts, asking him about similarities between a story he had written two days earlier[5] and one written by San Antonio Express-News reporter Macarena Hernandez on April 18.[6] Hernandez had a summer internship at The Times years earlier, and had worked alongside Blair. The senior editor of the San Antonio Express-News contacted The Times about close similarities between Blair's article and a story penned by their reporter Hernandez.[1]
A small sample of the suspect articles:
In the April 19, 2003 piece "In Military Wards, Questions and Fears From the Wounded", Blair described interviewing four injured soldiers in a naval hospital. He never went to the hospital and only spoke to one soldier on the phone, to whom he later attributed made-up quotes. Blair wrote that the soldier "will most likely limp the rest of his life and need to use a cane," which was untrue. He said another soldier had lost his right leg when it had only been amputated below the knee. He described two soldiers as being in the hospital at the same time, when in fact they were admitted five days apart.[7]
In the April 7, 2003 piece "For One Pastor, the War Hits Home", Blair wrote of a church service in Cleveland and an interview with the minister. Blair never went to Cleveland; he only spoke to the minister on the phone, then copied most of the article from an earlier Washington Post article. He also plagiarized quotations from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and New York Daily News. He fabricated a detail about the minister keeping a picture of his son inside his Bible, and got the name of the church wrong.[8]
In the April 3, 2003 piece "Rescue in Iraq and a ‘Big Stir' in West Virginia", Blair claimed to have covered the Jessica Lynch story from her home town of Palestine, West Virginia. Blair never traveled to Palestine, and his entire contribution to the story consisted of rearranged details from Associated Press stories.[9]
In the March 27, 2003 piece "Relatives of Missing Soldiers Dread Hearing Worse News", Blair again pretended to be in West Virginia, and plagiarized quotations from an Associated Press article. He claimed to have spoken to one relative who had no recollection of meeting Blair; said "tobacco fields and cattle pastures" were visible from Lynch's parents' house when they were not; erroneously stated that Lynch's brother was in the National Guard; misspelled Lynch's mother's name; and fabricated a dream that he claimed she had had.[10]
In the March 3, 2003 piece "Making Sniper Suspect Talk Puts Detective in Spotlight", Blair claimed to be in Fairfax, Virginia. He described a videotape of Lee Malvo, the younger defendant in the case, being questioned by police and quoted officials' review of the tape. No such tape existed. Blair also claimed a detective noticed blood on a man's jeans leading to a confession, which did not occur.[11]
In the February 10, 2003 piece "Peace and Answers Eluding Victims of the Sniper Attacks", Blair claimed to be in Washington, plagiarized quotations from a Washington Post story and fabricated quotations from a person he had not interviewed. Blair ascribed a wide range of facts to a man featured in the article, almost all of which the man in question denied. Blair also published information that he had promised was off the record.[12]
In the October 30, 2002 piece "US Sniper Case Seen as a Barrier to a Confession", Blair wrote that a dispute between police authorities had ruined the interrogation of suspect John Muhammad, and that Muhammad was about to confess, quoting unnamed officials. This was swiftly denied by everyone involved. Blair also named certain lawyers, who were not present, as having witnessed the interrogation.[13]
The Times reported on Blair's journalistic misdeeds in an unprecedented 7,239-word front-page story on May 11, 2003, headlined "Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception." The story called the affair "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.
The fallout
The investigation saw heated debate over affirmative action hiring. Landman told the Siegal committee he felt being black played a large part in Blair's initial promotion to full-time staffer. "I think race was the decisive factor in his promotion," he said. "I thought then and I think now that it was the wrong decision."[14] On May 14, 2003, while he was still Times executive editor, Howell Raines (who is white) acknowledged at a massive meeting of Times news staffers, managers, and its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., that Blair had gotten the breaks he had enjoyed because of his race. Five days later, Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert asserted in his column that race had nothing to do with the Blair case: "Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair's reporting."[15]
After resigning from The Times, Blair returned to college and said he planned to go into human resources.[16] He is now a life coach in northern Virginia.[17]
La niña prodigio de la literatura alemana admite un plagio
La prodigiosa empustera o la alemana papel de china
La joven escritora alemana Helene Hegemann /ABC
RAMIRO VILLAPADIERNA | BERLÍN Actualizado Martes , 09-02-10 a las 18 : 20
Helene Hegemann, niña prodigio de la literatura alemana con tan sólo 17 años, ha admitido haber copiado del bloguero Airen «una página en total, sin haberla modificado demasiado… ni haber nombrado su origen».
La autora del repentino éxito de ventas «Axolotl Roadkill», una vívida historia de adolescentes urbanitas en el ambiente creativo de Berlín, reconoce haber actuado «de modo irreflexivo y egoísta» después de recibir una avalancha de críticas por presuntos pasajes robados de otros textos.
El blogero Deef Pirmasens había reprochado el aprovechamiento de partes de la novela de Airen «Strobo - Technoprosa aus dem Berghain» (Strobo. Prosa tecno desde el bosque) y Hegemann empieza su pliego de descargos, distribuído ayer a la prensa, por destacar a Airen como «un escritor formidable».
Su libro, recién aparecido, ha sido celebrado con admiración por la crítica alemana, con «Axolotl Roadkill» van a tener que medirse este año todas las óperas primas», escribe el Tagesspiegel y el Frankfurter Allgemeine concede que «hace mucho que no hemos visto un primer libro como éste». Para el crítico de Süddeutsche Zeitung «el libro es fenomenal, la autora es un fenómeno».
Hegemann pide perdón «por no haber mencionado desde el principio a todas las personas cuyos pensamientos y textos la han ayudado»
Fuentes de inspiración
A modo de defensa, la autora argumenta su inspiración a partir de un sinnúmero de vivencias, amigos y lecturas. «He descrito la novela como una mentira y es lo que es», dice ahora Hegemann, huérfana de madre e hija de un dramaturgo del teatro Volksbühne de Berlín. «Nos acercanos a la verdad sólo a través de la mentira, todo lo que hacemos es una suma de lo que vivimos, leemos y recibimos».
La adolescente admite no «haber sido consciente del alcance jurídico» de sus inspiraciones y la gerente de su editorial (Ullstein) negocia en estos momentos un permiso postrero de la editora de «Strobo» para mantener los pasajes de «Axolotl». Hegemann pide perdón «por no haber mencionado desde el principio a todas las personas cuyos pensamientos y textos la han ayudado».
Bajo el pseudónimo de «Airen» el bloguero autor de «Strobo» narra desde hace tiempo sus vivencias en el mundo tecno de Berlín, capital donde las haya del género, infiltrado de experiencias con alucinógenos y sexo.
Michel Houellebecq, acusado de plagio
Publicado por Verónica Gudiña
El tiempo y las investigaciones correspondientes permitirán determinar si, tal como se afirma desde la revista digital Slate, el escritor francés Michel Houellebecq ha copiado párrafos completos de Wikipedia en su más reciente material, la novela “La carte et le territoire”. Por el momento, informa “El País”, desde la editorial Flammarion han aclarado que no se trata de un plagio sino del uso de noticias y textos con fines literarios, pero la polémica promete continuar, al menos, durante algunos días más.
Mientras la información trasciende a nivel internacional y surgen debates sobre cómo iniciar una demanda judicial al respecto ya que, al tratarse de una presunta copia de contenidos publicados por más de un internauta, la causa debería ser impulsada por los autores del texto supuestamente reproducido sin permiso, la obra, que saldrá a la venta el próximo 8 de septiembre, no deja de ganar promoción.
Para minimizar el asunto, desde Flammarion admitieron que algunos párrafos pueden llegar a coincidir “palabra por palabra”, pero sostuvieron que sólo son “pequeñas citas que no son susceptibles de constituir plagio”. De todas formas, la firma indicó que la fuente que podría haber sido perjudicada por una presunta reproducción literal sin citar la procedencia del texto tampoco identifica al autor de dicho contenido.
Los directivos de Wikipedia, por su parte, reconocieron que es difícil iniciar acciones legales contra quienes copian párrafos sin citar a la enciclopedia porque se trata de textos desarrollados de forma colectiva, aunque también recordaron que el material se publica bajo la licencia Creative Commons y sólo puede utilizarse con fines comerciales si se la menciona como fuente.
De acuerdo a los datos publicados por Slate, cita “La Vanguardia”, en la novela más reciente de Houellebecq se pueden hallar descripciones sobre la ciudad de Beauvais y de una mosca doméstica idénticas a las que contiene Wikipedia, así como también un fragmento que forma parte del repaso biográfico del político francés Frédéric Nihous.
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