Petrelis Files

NYT'S JAYSON BLAIR PLAGIARIZED A WALL STREET JOURNAL AIDS STORY


Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.
Publisher
The New York Times
New York, New York

Dear Mr. Sulzberger:

I would like to bring to your attention another AIDS-related story that appeared in the New York Times and was written by former reporter Jayson Blair, who may have plagiarized and summarized, without attribution, an article from the Wall Street Journal, written by staff reporters Amanda Bennett and Anita Sharpe that appeared in that paper on May 1, 1996, headlined AIDS Fight is Skewed by Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks, for his story. [1]

Much of what Blair wrote in the following passage from his August 5, 2001, article headlined Healthy Skepticism and the Marketing of AIDS, is really nothing more than a summarization of what ran in the Wall Street Journal five years earlier. [2]

Here is the pertinent excerpt from Blair's story:

"In 1987, for example, the federal government decided to blitz the American people with a frightening message: anyone could get AIDS.

'''If I can get AIDS, anyone can,' said the son of a Baptist minister in one of the government's public service announcements.

"The award-winning campaign, called America Responds to AIDS, helped catapult the disease into the public consciousness and convince public and private funders to underwrite the fight against it. But while the message of the campaign was technically correct, it was also somewhat misleading.

"Yes, everyone faces some measure of risk. But 14 years ago, AIDS in the United States was overwhelmingly a disease of gay men and intravenous drug users, and their children. Yet references to drug use and sexual orientation in the America Responds to AIDS ads were removed under pressure from conservatives in Congress. The minister's son, for example, was gay, but that information was kept out of the script.

"To be sure, prevention experts say that targeting the widest possible audience is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to a disease like AIDS, particularly when one of the goals is to build not only awareness, but broad support for research and prevention measures.

"But the decision to make descriptions of the new illness as unobjectionable as possible entailed real costs. For years, prevention advocates contend, the ad campaign -- because of what had been left out -- made it impossible for them to get federal health officials to set aside money specifically to educate drug users and gays. Much of the government's $600 million AIDS-prevention budget was used instead to combat the disease among college students, heterosexual women and others who faced a relatively low risk of contracting the disease."

If you read what appeared in the Wall Street Journal about the government's AIDS campaign back then, you'll likely agree that Blair did a good job of condensing what that paper reported.

Also, as you can see in the excerpts below from both articles, Blair essentially plagiarized two sentences from the Wall Street Journal story.

1.
"But while the message of the campaign was technically correct, it was also somewhat misleading."
NY Times
August 5, 2001

"While the message was technically true, it was also highly misleading."
Wall Street Journal
May 1, 1996

2.
"Much of the government's $600 million AIDS-prevention budget was used instead to combat the disease among college students, heterosexual women and others who faced a relatively low risk of contracting the disease."
New York Times
August 5, 2001

"Much of the Centers for Disease Control's $584 million AIDS-prevention budget goes instead to programs to combat the disease among heterosexual women, college students and others who face a relatively low risk of becoming infected."
Wall Street Journal
May 1, 1996

By the way, you should be aware that the Wall Street Journal received a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for its AIDS coverage the previous year, including the story from which Blair, in my opinion, plagiarized and summarized. [3]

The Times should read the Wall Street Journal article from 1996 and decide if Blair in 2001 did indeed lift and rework some of what was printed there. If he did, then of course, the Times should make the necessary corrections.

Sincerely,
Michael Petrelis
San Francisco, CA
Ph: 415-621-6267

Sources:

1. http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1997/national-reporting/works/2.html
2. http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=9C03E3DA133CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63
3. http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1997/national-reporting/works/