I never thought that losing would be the first art I’d master. I would have preferred for it to be writing, which has been a passion of mine for years. I seemed to be walking down the right path to becoming a writer. I was working as a news clerk at the Times, writing a novel after hours and becoming friends with a man I believed to be a gifted reporter when everything began to fall apart.
When Jayson was caught, it came as a big shock and betrayal to the world as well as to me. The media machine immediately started turning and I got stuck in its gears. Some newspapers wrote that because I often worked in the photography department of the Times and was a friend of Jayson’s, I might have conspired to help him obtain photographs that he then used to fabricate stories. Although that never happened–and the Times never investigated me–I nonetheless was put in danger of losing my credibility. Then, because my parents are social acquaintances of the Times’s executive editor, my family was brought into the mess. Soon reporters were camped out at my parents’ house, questioning them as well as their neighbors and waiting hopefully for me to come by so they could shout out questions, as if I were a celebrity.
I’ve always been sensitive about my privacy. At first, I didn’t want to comment on the nature of my relationship with Jayson, or his sad downfall–I naively believed that I was an irrelevant and private part of the story. My initial decision to remain silent came at a cost. All sorts of questions were being asked about my behavior, and no one was answering them. I was being mischaracterized as well. The first time I saw my name printed in the paper in connection with this scandal, I was surprised to find myself labeled as a Polish emigre, considering the fact I had moved to America at the age of 4 and have lived in New York ever since. I attended high school and college in America, and consider myself to be quite American. Maybe I’m too sensitive. Most emigres are.
After that it only got worse. I naively agreed to let a photographer friend take a picture of Jayson and me together; it was only days later, when I saw a picture of me standing behind Jayson with what seemed to be a threatening stare, that I fully realized I was only injecting myself further into the story. Then I sat with Jayson while he was interviewed and said many hurtful and hateful things; when the piece showed up in the press, it seemed as if I had tacitly agreed with him, and we were even described as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. When I put it all together, I realized that my presence in the articles made me look not only like a loyal friend, but also like a co-conspirator.
The Jayson Blair I stand behind is the gifted, kindhearted person I met nine months ago. I do not, however, stand behind the offensive statements he’s been making, nor do I stand behind the actions he took to get to his present situation.
Being born in Poland during communist times, where the media constantly replaced reality with fiction, I’m very aware of the importance of honesty and of the destructive power of printed lies. I believe that lies should be exposed, but I never suspected that during the process of exposing lies, so many inaccuracies can arise.
Though this experience has helped me learn to master the art of losing, it has also made me aware that on the grand scale of things that have been lost due to it, my losses have not been that severe. I also recognize one last irony–that my peripheral involvement in this story has made people interested in my writing in a way they wouldn’t have been had I just been another aspiring novelist with a job at a big-city newspaper. I still hope that I will not be judged solely based on my friendship with Jayson, just as I hope that the credibility of the legendary New York Times will not be judged based on his mistakes.
