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Jaysongate and priestgate
A friend suggests similarities between Jaysongate at the New York Times and the pederasty scandals in the Catholic Church: The Times first simply ignored the offenses of a journalist that touched the core of his profession. When the senior executives were forced to confront the situation, they believed Blair had been cured and then merely reassigned him, and brushed aside warnings from his superiors, all the while denying there was a problem.It does sound familiar. One might add that in both cases an issue that made it impossible to deal with the situation responsibly was the need to downplay human differences traditionally thought significant. The Times needed to have its full quota of black journalists, and the Catholic Church (in the view of many of its functionaries) needed to accommodate itself to minority sexual tastes. No problem that interferred with those goals could be recognized as a problem. We now see the results of willful blindness. My friend wondered whether the experience would teach the
Times humility in writing about the problems of other
institutions. To date, the “it was all Jayson’s sole personal fault”
coverage coming out of the Times suggests it’s not likely.
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