I feel sorry for Michael Kinney. The 29-year-old from Sedalia, Mo., was fired last week. I’m not concerned that he lost his job, because he deserved to. The reason he earns my sympathy is because his firing made the news. And he owes it all to Jayson Blair.
Kinney was a sports writer for The Sedalia Democrat, a small paper with a circulation of about 11,800. He lost his job because he plagiarized sports columns and a movie review. Few can argue that Kinney did not deserve to get sacked. But, my guess is Kinney’s firing would not have made the Associated Press if it was not for Blair– the young, hot-shot New York Times reporter who made up quotes, fabricated descriptions and plagiarized information from other news sources.
Blair’s scandal caused further skepticism of a profession where credibility already suffers. Only 21 percent of Americans say they believe all or most of what they read in their local papers, according to the Pew Research Center.
In Blair’s wake, another Times reporter resigned. Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg quit after the paper put him on leave for not giving appropriate credit to a part-time reporter who helped him research a story.
Last week, the fallout over Jayson Blair reached the top rungs of the Times ladder of power. Executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned after Times reporters and the national media criticized them for not catching Blair’s deceit.
As a student journalist who just completed a media ethics course, I have been disgusted with this whole drama. Reporters who plagiarize stories, fabricate information or otherwise break ethical codes should be fired.
My concern is the public perception of my chosen profession. If Michael Kinney sold cars or managed a restaurant, maybe his transgressions would have made just the local news, and only if they were particularly interesting. But now the media have a responsibility to report about people like Kinney, even if they would not have before. It interests people, and the media risk looking like they’re covering for a fellow reporter if they ignore it.
I worry people will begin to believe that journalists like Blair and Kinney are more common, even pervasive, than they actually are. Events become newsworthy when they are rare or unique. So we have to remember that this is a big story because it’s not the norm.
There are, in fact, many responsible and conscientious reporters in this country. I know because I met many of them this weekend, at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Washington, D.C.
There are reporters like Tony Pipitone of WKMG-TV in Orlando, who did an investigative story about the unfair sentencing of black felons arrested for gun possession. There’s Christine Willmsen, the Seattle Times reporter who hung out in a mechanic shop for a week just to get an interview with sniper suspect John Muhammed’s best friend. And there are countless others whose reporting shifted opinions, broke stereotypes, changed laws or even saved lives.
I wish it were these reporters who came to mind when people think of modern journalism, instead of the Jayson Blairs of this country.