Ten Years Ago A Journalist With The New York Times Committed

Although many people may like to think of America as a honest and moral nation, it is no secret that artifice has cemented itself as an indispensable skill, exploited by many to achieve their own ambitions. Artifice, characterized through the usage of cunning devices or expedients to deceive others, is often utilized by politicians and organizations to help push their own agendas. As illustrated by Chris Hedges in his social commentary, Empire of Illusion, “artifice” has emerged to become so ubiquitous and essential throughout American society, whether in business or the entertainment industry. Essential, in the essence that without it, people in any industry are more likely to be disadvantaged in achieving their personal goals. In today’s modern world, no area has seen more abuse of artifice than in the field of media and politics. Its common knowledge that newspapers skew reports to their own biases and politicians often tell half-truths to cover-up ulterior motives. Unfortunately, these politicians and media giants hold extremely influential positions in society, and their usage of artifice is extremely damaging to the integrity and accountability within the United States. As a result, the press as well as the general populace must utilize free speech to expose this behavior. Despite the complete immorality of the usage of artifice, such chicanery remains essential for success in media and politics.

Several stories have been reported in the past and it is still prevalent to this date. Last year, “The Guardian” had to remove 13 of their stories online after investigation of fabrication. Joseph Mayton, a freelance journalist who had contributed to more than 60 items for The Guardian was suspected of fabrication when it was found that he didn’t attend an event he was writing about. Investigation by The Guardian found further fabrication about the events he didn’t attend, missing sources and fabricated interviews. As a consequence, they had to remove the stories that he was associated with

It was perplexing time for The New York Times; a chapter, in their long-run, of fabrications that are now consider fabulists and egregious plagiarism. Hard News by Seth Mnookin, recounts the time a narcissistic and pedantic executive editor, named Howell Raines took took charged of the steering-wheel of one of the most reliable and prominent newspapers in the nation. It is described how Raines and other high-profiled and important figures for the paper, such as managing editor Gerald M. Boyd, dealt with the Jayson Blair’s scandal. The Jayson Blair scandal is about the terrible repercussions when plagiarism and fabulism is committed by a reporter. It not only tarnishes the reporter’s reputation but the newspaper’s transparency as a whole. I

Trust in media has been a very concerning topic for the modern area. It is quiet common for media to be construed and twisted to manipulate the viewer’s opinion. It doesn’t take much to change the headline of an article to convey completely different meanings or standpoints. One issue in particular, which seems to be one of the most common, is plagiarism. Plagiarism can be very tempting to certain individuals considering how readily available and seemingly limitless virtual text that can be accessed. One case I want to discuss is the one of Benny Johnson, a fairly well known politics editor who started making unethical decisions in 2015 while working for BuzzFeed. According to Poynter, Johnson was accused of 41 examples of plagiarism. We

Most outlets now are multi-platform, so the traditional broadcast news outlet is looking for content for its website, and may take something from another news site without crediting the original source in haste for getting that content posted. And reporters are working on a freelance basis more and more frequently, not subjected to or sometimes aware of news outlets’ ethical guidelines. Whether inadvertent or deliberate, there is no excuse for plagiarism.” (“Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics”, 1996). Apparently, Blair tried to use this as a poor excuse for his fraudulent

The second story the author discusses is starkly different from that of the Anorexia paper, and makes an example of the type of trouble plagiarism can cause in an institution and those involved in it. In this instance, a male student submits a paper discussing the assigned topic in such a way that triggers the suspicions of the professor. Murphy eventually discovers the true origin of the paper, only to find the student had gone so far as to cut out the evidence from the book. Many denials and meetings later he was “Within the week . . . suspended from the University.” (900). An academic career over, and a weakening of a professors already tenuous ability to trust in his students, were all this case resulted in. Academic dishonesty, plagiarism, wastes the time of everyone involved. It wastes the time of the student because they aren’t learning anything. It wastes the time of the professor who has to search for the original sources of the plagiarized works. And it wastes the time of the committee formed to decide the fate of the student. The author mentions several times his distaste for having to search: “Though I should not have had time to play detective, I made room among all the duties of my life to pursue this student.” (900). Murphy was disappointed in his own inability to drop the case, needing to follow it to it’s conclusion despite his busy

Who was it that sat behind the computer screen and typed what would soon be published in your favorite newspaper? When you read anything in the newspaper you do not know much about the author of the article aside from his or her name. With such little knowledge, how can you discern whether you are being presented with an article that is in compliance to reality or rather a story that has been transformed because of an author’s biased attitudes? Take for example The Fourth Branch, a student run newspaper at Tennyson High School. Writers of the newspaper do not have any special certification or degree, rather they are journalist enthusiasts who write about a wide range of news articles.

The early 1900s marked the rise of investigative journalism. Articles exposing corruption and greed within the government and businesses were extremely popular among the American people. In Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, “The Man with the Muck-rake,” he explains his thoughts and position on the pros and cons of muckrakers. Roosevelt demonstrates why the job of a muckraker is necessary in society, but also discusses how playing fast and loose with the facts can be an evil act that leads to damaged reputations and false misconducts. Through the use of metaphor, repetition, and enthymeme, he is able to convey to the audience exactly where he stands on the topic of investigative journalism.

Throughout life, many people make many different mistakes some worse than others. Jonah Lehrer is no exception to this, for he has made his fair share of mistakes. He has plagiarized multiple blog posts for The New Yorker and Wired Magazine. His books Imagine and How We Decide were also plagiarized with some quotes even fabricated. Everyone, however, makes mistakes, and Jonah Lehrer’s mistakes shouldn't stop him from being published in the future.

The job of a journalist has always been highly scrutinized. For years, the question of what and how a journalist should deliver information has been analyzed. However, despite the many theories, it has always been a clear consensus that journalists have an obligation to truth above all. However, there are many cases where a journalist may not know how far to go in order to deliver that truth. Of course, a journalist must always operate within legal limits, however, again some cases have blurred lines. A case that demonstrates these blurred lines between the legal and illegal, as well as the need to deliver truth, is a case between the Rolling Stone and their use of illegal music links.

In particular, sustaining the right to protect sources. These ethics are important to journalists as it creates this trust between contacts and journalists allowing for significant public interest stories to break. This can be depicted in the case mentioned before between Steve Pennells and Gina Rinehart. When Pennells won this case Justice Pritchard outlined that the disclosure of the source would constitute a breach of a fundamental ethical obligation of journalists’ to not disclose sources. This judgement was encouraging for journalists as it defended the importance of their ethical obligations, specifically the right to protect sources and the right for sources to trust journalists with information they gave them confidentially. Without this trust between journalists’ and sources many public interest stories would not arise as it means that sources with genuine public interest concerns about corruption and abuses of power will think twice before contacting a journalist. They would also not arise due to journalists’ fears of either having to reveal confidential information or face dire consequences for not disclosing these private details. This can be portrayed in 2012 as Fairfax journalists, Nick Mckenzie, Richard Baker and Philip Dorling were ordered by the NSW Supreme Court to reveal to a Chinese-Australian businesswoman their confidential sources for a series of stories on her relationship with a federal Labor MP. To expand on this story further The Age published two articles alleging Ms Liu paid Joel Fitzgibbon $150,000 as part of ''a campaign to cultivate him as an agent of political and business influence’'. The articles were supported by quotes from 135 pages of documents said to be her personal and business records, including a list of ''money paid'' for unstated purposes to 22 people, including Mr Fitzgibbons. This required that the

Jayson Blair, former New York Times reporter was found guilty of committing acts of fraud and plagiarism for more the 600 articles he wrote in 2003 after 5 years. In his journey into journalism he went from raw intern to reporter. His colleagues and other public officials made the first allegations that his articles were fabricated. The investigation found he was lying about being at the scene of major events in history (Times reported,” 2003). It shocked a lot of people because he was a lead reporter for one of the biggest news articles in US (10 Years After Jayson Blair). The investigation went further and New York Times reviewed all his articles in depth. It was stated that Jayson Blair was not in the locations he describes in his articles. However, he made it seem that way. They found out he used his laptop and cellphone to

Served to protect a citizen’s reputation, libel law lets any living person who believes their reputation was damaged by written word file a libel case to rebuild their reputation and gain money for compensation. The initial failures of the story lie in reporter’s negligence in collecting and verifying information regarding the rumor following Jane Simpson. Principal tenets of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics include seeking truth, verifying information before publishing, avoiding furtive reporting if possible, and not

In other cases, some newspapers often have various “lines of defense” in which an article is review on multiple times before it is ever published. It is true that in the heat of competition to get the story first, a lot can result from it. One thing that the Times did well was their reaction towards the Blair scandal. As it states in the SPJ code of ethics, a journalist should “admit mistakes and correct them promptly.” The Times gathered a group of journalists that went over all of Blair’s past stories during his time at the newspaper. They found dozens of stories that were falsified and it became one of the biggest journalistic scandals. However, the important factor is that the Times rushed to correct their errors: turning into a story of

Rupert Murdoch is said to believe that “in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means”. That being said, most forms of information gathering practices are sent from “the top down”, meaning the person in charge of the paper tells the rest of the employees how they can or cannot get information about a story (Bernstein, 2011). Newspapers are highly competitive, and Murdoch’s empire is one of the most well-known and most lucrative media outlets. Whether Murdoch knew nothing of the hacking (as he continues to testify) or not, the chance for the large amount of financial gains and potential losses from scooping competitors can make a person pursue unethical behaviors. These individual factors played a huge role in the creation of organizational factors for which Murdoch may or may not have been aware of.