I am busy developing an instructional unit around the New York Times' problems with the promising, young, black reporter, Jayson Blair, who turned out to perpetrating media ethics blunders at every turn -- lack of attribution, plagiarism, filing stories with false datelines -- but I think that William Safire's editorial about this issue makes some important points. It will be the most effective way to teach about media ethics and what a journalist must (and mustn't) do. In the meantime, I present this comment from William Safire.

Safire says "As for news coverage being influenced by editorial policy, I evoke the name of my predecessor: that's a Krock. On occasion, a leftist slant on a story slips through the backfield, but with conservatives boring from within and fulminating from without, the news side soon straightens itself out. What is "fit to print" is the truth as straight as we can tell it, which is why Times people are so furious at this galling breach. Now about the supposed cost of diversity: A newspaper is free to come down on the side of giving black journalists a break if its owners and editors so choose. What's more, this media world would also benefit from more Hispanics and Asians coming up faster. To the 375 Times reporters who make up the greatest assemblage of talent and enterprise in the field of gathering and writing the news, I submit this hard line: Self-examination is healthy but self-absorption is not; self-correction is a winner but self-flagellation is a sure loser. Let us slap a metaphoric cold steak over our huge black eye and learn from this dismaying example ? so that other journalists in the nation and around the world can continue to learn from ours. " Read Safire's complete editorial.