E&P Windbag a Recovering Fabulist

Greg Mitchell (the Editor & Publisher editor who has so lambasted those "freewheeling" bloggers over the last few days for daring to meddle with the influence of duly coronated mediacrats by accurately exposing numerous acts of deliberate fraud) may have more reason to fear and loathe the blogosphere than just pining for the good old days when his ilk was able to ply its agenda unchecked.

Three years ago, Mitchell detailed his own "Jayson Blair moment":
(Hat Tip: Confederate Yankee)

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days...

You have a separate mode for that?

...I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

I never found out. Oh, I went down to the falls, all right, but when I got there, I discovered that I just could not wander up to strangers (even dorky ones wearing funny hats and knee socks) and ask them for their personal opinions, however innocuous. It was a puffball assignment, but that wasn't why I rebelled. I just could not bring myself to do it.

So I sat on a park bench and scribbled out a few fake notes and then went back to the office and wrote my fake story, no doubt quoting someone like Jane Smith from Seattle, honeymooning with her husband Oscar, saying something like, "Gosh, I never knew there was so much rock under there!"

Of course, I got away with it. There was no Jane Smith to complain about being misquoted, and no one was going to call all the Smiths in Seattle to find out if she really existed. I suppose the world was none the worse for it. As a story, it wasn't exactly on a par with a sniper shooting up the suburbs of Washington.

Good point.  So long as you really and truly promise to give us the unvarnished truth on the important stories, we cab abide wholesale fogeries on whatever stories you deem puff.

The tale sounds more like a Stephen Glass moment to me, but I suppose it was more apropos to hang the Jayson Blair tag on it, as the anecdote is presented as a prologue, wiping Mitchell's journalistic slate clean, before opining on the real disgraces which Blair had recently wrought on his noble profession.

Previously:
Windbag Reloaded
Hot Air Takes On MSM Windbag
Would I Lie To You?

Elsewhere:  Hot Air, Mary Katherine Ham