Jayson Blair

CHICAGO - President Bush is such an admirer of Winston Churchill that he keeps a bust of him in the Oval Office. You don't have to agree with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who likens Mr. Bush to Churchill, to see that the president has taken one of the British statesman's maxims to heart. "In wartime," Sir Winston confided, "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." What is dawning on many people now is that in making the case for war, the administration and its allies did not make a fetish of strict honesty and candor.

In an attempt to put an embarrassing episode behind it, The New York Times announced yesterday the retirement of Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose involvement in the leak of a CIA officer's name led to the indictment of a high-ranking member of the Bush White House. The announcement, newspaper officials said, came after weeks of negotiations spurred by the realization that Miller's reporting techniques had been less than scrupulous. Nevertheless, the paper's publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., and its editor, Bill Keller, praised her in statements issued yesterday.

The New York Times yesterday acknowledged that serious flaws marred its reporting before the invasion of Iraq last year, saying the newspaper "fell for misinformation" from a now-discredited circle of Iraqi exiles seeking the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. A note to readers, written by Executive Editor Bill Keller and Managing Editor Jill Abramson, stated that The Times reported that Hussein had intensified his efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction without adequately signaling the deep reservations of some experts.

Apparently, Jayson Blair is angry, not contrite. The former New York Times reporter has acknowledged plagiarizing, fabricating and inflating accounts in dozens of articles for the paper before resigning May 1. But Blair says in a new interview that he was repeatedly wronged by petty and often racist mid-level Times editors who attempted to prevent his rise. In the interview, published yesterday in The New York Observer, the 27-year-old Blair ascribes part of his problems to his abuse of alcohol and cocaine.

The top three executives at the New York Times apologized in turn yesterday to the newspaper's staff for lapses that allowed a former junior reporter to fabricate and plagiarize dozens of stories despite warnings by supervisors. "We are deeply sorry," Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said during a private meeting with hundreds of Times journalists held at a movie theater near the paper's Manhattan headquarters. Sulzberger sat on stage flanked by Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, all in director's chairs, according to several reporters who attended.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - What are the lessons for newsroom editors in the management meltdown at The New York Times that ended last week with the resignations of the two top editors? Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned, with the approval, if not at the request, of their publisher, following a month of tumult created by the forced resignation of a junior reporter who turned out to be a fraud artist. An investigation published by the Times revealed the reporter, Jayson Blair, faked stories, lied to his editors and was generally distrusted by line editors for more than two years.

AS ANOTHER year comes to a close tonight, it's time once again to honor those who've elevated gall, audacity and excessive cheekiness to a cultural imperative. Yes, the 2003 Chutzpah Awards are upon us. There just might be a year when these awards aren't given out, but 2003 wasn't one of them. So without further ado, it's on to the kudos. Ninth runner-up: Rapper Jay-Z, whose latest album features a cut with the lyric "I got 99 problems but a b-- ain't one." Call some women that word, Jay-Z, and you'll have several problems, a lot more than 99. Jay-Z has said the album this foolishness appears on will be his last.

WASHINGTON -- It was the week after the storm and Biloxi, Miss., was a wilderness. James Bates, a photographer for the Sun Herald newspaper, had agreed to show me around but first he had to provision the car with emergency supplies. I don't remember what all he crammed into his backseat. I do remember what sat on top: a stack of newspapers. Biloxi was cut off from the world, so the paper was a lifeline. Mr. Bates told me people were amazingly grateful when you gave them one. Small wonder.

"What is truth?" asked Pontius Pilate at one of the more consequential moments in human history. It is a question that persists in our own time, which might reasonably be called "the age of the lie." If every major institution is a crystallization of the dominant values of a society, what are we to think about the latest news from the world of sports? Floyd Landis' recent win in the Tour de France has been overturned by a drug test. Justin Gatlin, reigning Olympic champion in the 100 meters, faces a possible lifetime ban from the sport after testing positive for testosterone.

HOLLYWOOD - Peter Chernin is the one of the consummate diplomats of the entertainment industry. But there's one issue that makes even Chernin's blood boil - the media's reporting on movie budgets. Discussing the film business at a media panel in April, the News Corp. president told his audience that it was hard "to read a single bit of truth" about movie budgets in the press. Barbara Brogliatti, Warner Bros.' longtime chief corporate communications officer, is still seething over her pitched battles with reporters trying to pin down a budget number for Troy, the studio's summer historical epic.