Free Republic

A few years ago, Michael Finkel's journalism career was as dead as yesterday's newspaper because he had lied in an article for the New York Times Magazine. Today, the 36-year-old Bozeman, Mont., resident has banked a half- million dollar advance on his first book, sold its film rights to Brad Pitt's production company and has a year-old marriage with a baby on the way. What made the difference? The fact that a young, clean-cut father in Oregon murdered his wife and three young children, dumped their bodies in the water and then went on the lam to Mexico, using as...

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004 11:15 a.m. EDT NY Times Flashback: Paper Reported Saddam Transferred High Explosives The New York Times claimed this week that hundreds of tons of high explosives had been removed from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot while the facility was under U.S. control. But Times reporters knew way back in Feb. 2003 that the removal process was instigated - not by looters or insurgents after the U.S. liberation - but instead by the government of Saddam Hussein. On Feb. 15, 2003, the Times reported on an address to the United Nations Security Council by Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's...

(snip)...His work was never great and it got worse over his career. As he was promoted, his error rate soared, according to an epic-length mea culpa published by The New York Times last Sunday. Blair wasn't just filing bad copy, he was misbehaving at company expense, particularly at the watering hole around the corner. "His mistakes became so routine, his behavior so unprofessional," admits the newspaper of record, "that by April 2002, Jonathan Landman, the metropolitan editor, dashed off a two-sentence e-mail message to newsroom administrators that read: 'We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.'"...