ABSTRACT
Jayson Blair’s name is infamous among journalists. Over the course of six months in 2002 and 2003, at least half the articles he wrote for The New York Times were inaccurate, plagiarized or made up. Not by accident or out of a misguided attempt to accomplish a greater good. On purpose. For fun. In fact, he told an interviewer he laughed out loud at his most elaborate fiction: a completely fabricated backdrop of “tobacco fields and cattle pastures” for the West Virginia home of Pvt. Jessica Lynch’s family-a POW in Iraq who, ironically, became a celebrity herself as a result of deceptive government propaganda (Associated Press 2003).
