Former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair said he “couldn’t stop laughing” when the newspaper corrected his fraudulent description of an American POW’s home in West Virginia, according to excerpts of an interview with the New York Observer.
“That’s my favorite, just because the description was so far off from the reality. And the way they described it in The Times story — someone read a portion of it to me — I couldn’t stop laughing,” Blair said in an interview scheduled for publication Wednesday. The newspaper made excerpts available to The Associated Press on Tuesday.
In one of his few interviews since resigning from the Times on May 1, Blair told the Observer that he “fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism” with his reporting.
According to excerpts from the Observer, Blair said his deceptions stemmed from personal problems.
“I was either going to kill myself or I was going to kill the journalist persona,” he said. “So Jayson Blair the human being could live, Jayson Blair the journalist had to die.”
The problem with the “Blair Affair” is that other than losing his job, Jayson Blair had faced no serious consequences for his deception. Well, other than interviews, book and movie deals. A suggestion for the Times: sue the guy. Make it hurt. It’s not enough to say “you’ll never work in this town again.”