The scandalized New York Times reporter who filed stories replete with false information and plagiarized material is the subject of a new Showtime movie titled “The Jayson Blair Project.”
The network calls its film a “dark comedy” which seeks to answer the question: “Why would a seemingly bright reporter at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country sabotage a wonderful career by fabricating stories?”
 Jayson Blair (N.Y. Times photo) |
“We are very excited about this project,” said Robert Greenblatt, president of entertainment for Showtime Networks.
“Most films based on the world of journalism focus on how a reporter gets his story against amazing odds or even how they put their lives in peril. This one is truly different. This film will explore what made Jayson Blair so self destructive and how his actions single-handedly destroyed his journalism career.”
There’s been no announcement about who will portray Blair, or when the movie will hit the small screen.
A probe by the New York Times uncovered many examples of fraud and plagiarism in articles Blair wrote between October 2002 and April 2003. As WorldNetDaily reported, the quest for diversity helped create the fake-news scandal, though officials at the paper deny the claim.
The new film is being written by Jon Maas, who served as writer-producer of the Showtime film ‘The Last Debate,” which dealt with the power of the media and journalistic ethics.
“The second I read about Jayson, all I could think of was what was going on with Jayson that caused him to be a serial fabricator?” Maas said. “Why would anyone who had achieved what he had at such a young age – becoming a reporter for the finest newspaper in the country – do what he did? What on earth possessed him to think he could get away with it? And why did it take so long for The Times to become aware of it?”
“The Jayson Blair Project” is based in part on articles by former Newsweek media reporter Seth Mnookin, who recently left the magazine to write a book about The New York Times for Random House.
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