In news that flew under the radar over the last week (which is not surprising given the constant newsmaker occupying the White House), Independent Journal Review officially terminated Benny Johnson.
It’s good news except for the fact that Johnson should not have been employed as a journalist.
In the ongoing distrust the public has for the press, it shouldn’t surprise people to know part of that trust comes from knowing reporters and yes, columnists, do their work accurately. They should also do their own writing and not make stuff up.
Simple, right? Unfortunately, it does not work that way in all cases. It did for people like Stephen Glass from The New Republic and Jayson Blair from The New York Times. Glass fabricated whole or in part, 27 of the 41 stories he wrote for the magazine in the 1990’s. Blair engaged in the fabrication of stories and plagiarized the work of others in series of articles in the early 2000’s.
The good news is, neither Glass nor Blair work in the field of journalism. Glass is an attorney and Blair works as a life coach after coming to terms with bipolar disorder and getting clean of drugs and alcohol. That they no longer work as journalists as a testament to industry wanting to maintain their integrity.
But in the case of Johnson, that went by the wayside.
It’s not unheard for journalists to mess up. Mike Barnicle is a perfect example. He resigned from The Boston Globe after they determine one story he wrote lifted passages from a George Carlin book and another story where details could not be confirmed. Still, in Barnicle’s case, that’s all the Globe found, spanning 24 years.
Johnson, on the other hand, committed 41 cases of plagiarism during his time at Buzzfeed. Fired in July of 2014, National Review hired him just three months later. It was an astonishing move on their part because of the depth of Johnson’s misdeeds. Shortly after that IJR hired him where he subsequently faced another charge of plagiarism. There’s nothing to suggest Johnson’s termination came as a result of journalistic malpractice on top of other reasons stemming from violating company ethics.
That said, he shouldn’t work in journalism any longer.
He’s not the only one. Fareed Zakaria enjoys a successful career at CNN despite the website Our Bad Media documenting dozens of cases of Zakaria lifting the writing of others and passing it off as his work.
Brian Williams, go caught making up stories, after getting caught making up stories, received only a suspension by NBC and after six months began hosting The 11th Hour and became MSNBC’s chief anchor.
What’s bothersome is the refusal of people who work with those engaging in that malpractice from calling out their colleagues. Instead, they act like people on a plane wearing headphones, pretending not to know what’s going on around them.
In another post, I argued the media can do their jobs better to restore lost trust.
Another way would be to make sure serial plagiarists and people who make up stories never work in the industry again.
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