Jayson Blair

When we watched the video about Jayson Blair, I couldn’t believe some of what I was hearing. To me what he did was horrible. “I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism,” said Blair. This was a quote I found that he said. Just by this quotation, it looked as if this was a game to him. He did not seem to care about others, or who he might hurt in the process.

After watching Shattered Glass, I compared it to this and yes they are similar; however, they are also different in a lot of ways. A similarity that I saw was that they both did not follow journalism ethics. They lied to their editors and coworkers, and fabricated stories. Blair however sank to a new low in his made up stories. He talked about fallen and missing soldiers. There was a lot of sensitive material that he was assigned to that he should not have messed with.

In my personal opinion, Blair still seems to be lying. “Having said that, it sounds as if in many ways you are a pathological liar,” Katie Couric said during their interview. I do not believe that Blaire has told the entire truth and I think that he is using his situation to exploit himself. I fully agree that he is getting too much attention and now he is trying to sell a book. The title of his book, Burning Down my Master’s House, was an insult to many I believe too. The title suggest he is comparing himself to slavery, however I think that is far from the issue.

I do believe that Blair had many personal problems. Despite the issues in his private life, he should not have used it as an excuse to compromise his professional work. If he is or was mentally sick he could have taken a number of steps to prevent this from every happening.