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EFTA00176507 | EFTA00176572 It is easiest to spot compromised work in professions that have existed for some time and whose principal values are widely shared. In such domains there should be consensual processes of training, recognized mentors, and established procedures in place for censuring or ostracizing those whose work violates norms of the domain, with disbarment or loss of license as the ultimate sanction. Of the three professions I will treat in this essay, law is closest to the prototype, journalism is furthest (many journalists lack formal training), and accounting is somewhere in between. Since our project began (and no doubt long before), the pages of the newspapers have been filled with examples of compromised work; indeed, in preparing this essay I have sometimes been tempted to clip half the stories in the daily newspaper. Here I focus on three cases from recent years that caught both my attention and that of the broaderpublic. The first case involves Jayson Blair, an ambitious reporter for The New York Times who was fired after it was discovered he had plagiarized and fabricated stories. The second case centers on Hill and Barlow, a venerable Boston law firm that closed abruptly when its profitable real estate department announced it was leaving the firm. The third case centers on the flagship accounting firm Arthur Andersenthat went bankrupt after the Enron scandal of 2001. In my initial study of compromised work, (2) I chose these cases because they apparently represented three levels of analysis: Jayson Blair as an instance of compromised work by a single, flawed individual; Hill and Barlow as an instance of compromised work within a singleinstitution; and the Arthur Andersen-Enron debacle as an instance of compromised work throughout a profession. My study revealed, however, surprising continuities across these three apparently distinct levels of analysis. In each case, I found I was studying individuals as well as institutions, and, indeed, an entire industry. Also to my surprise, I discovered that institutions held in high regard might be especially vulnerable to the insidious virus of compromised work; I hadexpected that such institutions harbored righting mechanisms that for some reason had failed to detect the of fending party. Finally, I expected that at least some instances of compromised work would be isolated and of relatively short duration. A far more complex and, to mymind, more troubling picture emerged--a picture that, moreover, reflects ominous trends in American society. In 1999, Jayson Blair, a young African American with a flair for writing, became a regular reporter for The New York Times. Even beforehis stint at the Times, Blair had been regarded by peers and supervisors with a combination of admiration and suspicion. There was no question that Blair wrote well, had a nose for important stories, was a gifted schrnoozer, and had impressed the governing powers at the college and community newspapers where he had worked. At the same time, observers wondered whether he in fact had exercised the due diligence that is expected of a reporter, and indeed, supervisors had detected ahighly unusual number of errors in his stories. While he had occasionally been admonished for carelessness, there had been few consequences. In fact, at the Times, Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd gave increasingly important assignments to Blair. When Blair was discovered to have plagiarized a story from the SanAntonio Express-News, he was immediately forced to resign. Then on May 11, 2003, in an unprecedented bout of self-examination, The New York Times devoted over four full pages to documentation of numerous cases of invention, plagiarism, and fraudulent expense and travel reports. Nor did the brouhaha over the Blair affair die down. Six weeks later, editors Raines and Boyd were forced to resign their posts, and the new editorial regime at the Times explicitly dissociated itself from the policies and practices of its predecessors. At first blush, Jayson Blair seemed to be an isolated case--a reporter who refused to play by the rules and who may well have been emotionally disturbed. And in fact, there is ample evidence that Blair was a troubled young man who should have been carefully scrutinized foryears. He was so unpopular at his college newspaper that he was relieved of his editorial position. When he was an intern at The Boston Globe in 1996-1997 and a freelancer there in 1998-1999, the sloppinessof his coverage was discussed. Shortly after he began to work full-time at the Times, Metropolitan Editor Jonathan Landman sent around a note that said, "We have got to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." Blair soon accumulated a record number of corrections and complaints about his coverage. His behavior aroused dislike and suspicion among many of his contemporaries. But despite ample warning signs, Raines and Boyd took him under their wings; he was praised andoffered ever-more important assignments. And, to the shame of the Times, the decisive discovery of plagiarism was made not by its own staff but by a reporter for a regional paper. EFTA00176572
April 23, 2026 at 2:36 PM