Newsfakers

As I hope some of you know, editors have lost their position at USA Today as a result of the phony news stories cobbled together by one Jack Kelley. That's as it should be. What I find odd is the fact that the Kelley debacle has aroused much less controversy than did the Jayson Blair business. Why?

The Blair affront served the right's propaganda mills perfectly. There's no way to say it but to say it bluntly: The writer was black. While rightists always affect outrage if accused of racism, one cannot help but notice the double-standard. A black guy who fakes news stories arouses far more outrage than a white guy guilty of the same crime. This, despite the fact that Kelley's fictions addressed more "serious" subjects, such as the war in Afghanistan.

Blair also worked for the New York Times, the newspaper rightists love to hate (and love to pretend is as left-wing as Emma Goldman). USA Today, by contrast, is conservative -- not Murdoch-style conservative, to be sure, but conservative nonetheless. Kelley's stories, as I recall, tended to buttress the neocon outlook.

So his sins, while unforgiven, will be forgotten a lot more rapidly than Blair's.