Commentary: Blair case won't affect my career

Doctors can’t legally practice without a medical license. You can graduate from law school five times, but you still aren’t an attorney until you pass the Bar. And in many states, you can’t be a schoolteacher without being certified or completing a certain number of academic credits.

But practically anyone who has access to a medium that allows them to express their ideas or the ideas of others, can call himself or herself a journalist. However, not every journalist is a good one.

Yet, most of us train to be journalists. We learn more than just how to write well or express our ideas clearly. We learn how to choose stories that are newsworthy and present our news as precisely as possible.

We learn how to abide by our news organization’s philosophies and to treat all interview subjects equitably. And perhaps, most importantly, we learn that journalism is truth.

Sometimes, however, the need to meet a deadline or the desire to win a Pulitzer, can cause people to practice lazy journalism, and all that they’ve learned goes out the window.

Former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair illustrates my point. Blair resigned in May after admitting to flat out lying in an article about a woman whose son died in Iraq. He never spoke to the soldier’s parents. Instead, he fabricated facts and lifted work from another reporter. It wasn’t the first time that he decided to make stuff up. He’d been doing it for several years, and it eventually caught up with him.

As you might know, Blair is an African American, and some wonder how his actions will affect the futures of young Black journalists such as myself. In my opinion, our future remains bright. Our skin color won’t make us successful; our journalistic talent will. And so will our personal ethics and commitment to honesty and accuracy.

What Blair did had nothing to do with him being Black, but for those who believe it does, let me note that Oprah Winfrey is Black. Chuck Stone and Ed Bradley are Black, too. And let’s not forget BET News anchors Jackie Reid and Ed Gordon. George Curry, NABJ’s 2003 Journalist of the Year is another African American journalist whose work is respected, too.

One crooked journalist won’t ruin everything the aforementioned persons and those unnamed have done to advance the presence of minorities in the newsroom. Most newsrooms want diversity; they want people from all backgrounds to help make their news coverage balanced, fair and accurate. I don’t believe news organizations are going to break their commitment to diversity because of Blair’s actions.

The public may have lost a slight bit of trust in journalists as a whole, but in the wake of the Blair controversy, more news organizations are trying to regain or strengthen the public’s trust.

After Blair’s resignation, NABJ released a statement saying: “As the news industry continues to reflect on the tragic situation regarding The New York Times and its rogue reporter Jayson Blair, The National Association of Black Journalists condemns the behavior and reiterates its focus on the fundamental tenets of journalism and diversity-- honesty, accuracy, fairness and inclusion.”

Blair’s actions are a poor reflection on him, not me, not my fellow young Black journalists, or any other journalists. I did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong. And we can’t allow Blair or the corrupt actions of any others who claim to be journalists damage the credibility of the good and honest ones.