Charles Lane | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1961 (age 62–63) |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) Yale University (MSL) [1] |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Children | 3 |
Charles Lane (born 1961) is an American journalist and editor who is deputy opinion editor for The Washington Post and a regular guest on the Fox News Channel. He was the editor of The New Republic from 1997 to 1999. During his tenure, Lane oversaw the work of Stephen Glass, a staff reporter who fabricated portions of all or some of the 41 articles he had written for the magazine, [2] in one of the largest fabrication scandals of contemporary American journalism. After leaving the New Republic, Lane went to work for the Post, where, from 2000 to 2007, he covered the Supreme Court of the United States [3] [4] and issues related to the criminal justice system and judicial matters. He has since joined the newspaper's editorial page.
Born to a Jewish family [5] in 1961, Lane attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, where he was managing editor of the school newspaper, The Tattler. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies from Harvard University in 1983. [6] As a Knight Fellow, he earned a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School in 1997. [7] He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. [8]
Lane is a former foreign correspondent for Newsweek and served briefly as the magazine's Berlin bureau chief. For his coverage in Newsweek of the former Yugoslavia, Lane earned a Citation of Excellence from the Overseas Press Club." [9]
The New Republic's owner, Marty Peretz, appointed Lane as editor in 1997 after firing then-editor Michael Kelly. [10]
In 1998, one of the worst journalistic scandals in contemporary American history arose at The New Republic when fabricated reporting by a staff writer, Stephen Glass, was discovered. Lane fired Glass. [11] The Glass fabrications constituted "the greatest scandal in the magazine's history and marked a decade of waning influence and mounting financial losses," The New York Times would later report. [12]
When Lane learned in 1999 that Peretz was planning to replace Lane with Peter Beinart, Lane only first found out about it from the media. [13] [14] [12]
Lane became an editorial writer for The Washington Post. Later, Lane covered the Supreme Court for the Post, before then rejoining the Post's editorial board in 2007. During his second stint on the newspaper's editorial board, Lane wrote primarily about fiscal and economic policy. [8]
Lane has also taught journalism part-time at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and at Princeton University. [7]
In 2008 Lane published The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction , about the Colfax massacre of 1873 in Louisiana of blacks by white militia, including the murder of surrendered prisoners.[ citation needed ] The book received a favorable review in the New York Times. [15] He also authored the nonfiction book Freedom's Detective , which was published in 2017.
In 2009, Lane was criticized for an opinion column he wrote for the Post, "Medical Marijuana Is An Insult to Our Intelligence," in which he belittled a woman named Angel Raich, who was a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case claiming a right to medical marijuana. Lane wrote of Raich that she "might consider a consultation for hypochondria, or perhaps marijuana dependency."
The Post subsequently published a clarification to the column explaining that Raich was "about to undergo an operation to repair... a benign brain tumor." Raich had been facing a "highly risky surgery – surgery that her doctors had originally ruled out because it is too dangerous — because her brain tumor has now become life-threatening."
In 2010, Lane was criticized for comments he made about overweight or obese people. In a blog post in the Post, he attempted to discredit an Agriculture Department study that concluded that millions of Americans faced hunger or "food insecurity." [16] [17]
In 2011, Lane wrote that he hoped that Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was unable to speak as a result of having been shot in the head a few weeks earlier, would speak out against union workers in Wisconsin if she "could speak normally". [18] Lane's statement was criticized by some as exploitative and insensitive. Stephen Benen wrote in the Washington Monthly : "Keep in mind, Charles Lane isn't some Fox News personality. I've seen him publish a variety of worthwhile commentaries in recent years. But reading this, I can't imagine what he was thinking." [19] [20] [21]
The 1998 journalism scandal at The New Republic was the subject of the 2003 film Shattered Glass . Lane was portrayed by actor Peter Sarsgaard. [22] Lane himself appears on the commentary on the DVD, alongside writer and director Billy Ray. After the film was released, Lane was interviewed by Terry Gross in an episode of Fresh Air . [23] [24]
In 2003, Glass published a biographical novel entitled The Fabulist about his career of journalistic fabrication. A character named "Robert Underwood" was a significant figure in the novel and interpreted as a fictionalized version of Lane. Reviewing the book for the Post, writer and critic Chris Lehmann wrote that the Underwood character "is meant to induce in-the-know readers to think poorly of Charles Lane." Glass wrote of Lane/Underwood: "Underwood is a domineering, macho control freak. Glass's idea of meting out punishment to this fictional alter ego of his former boss is to impugn his masculinity; even as his office reeks with 'the hairy-chested smell of a man rising to the occasion.'" [25]
Lane is married to a German immigrant from the former East Berlin. They have three children. [5]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
The Washington Post, locally known as "thePost" and, informally, WaPo or WP, is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area and has a national audience. As of 2023, the Post has the third-largest print circulation in the United States, with 135,980 print subscribers. It has 2.5 million digital subscribers.
Journalism scandals are high-profile incidents or acts, whether intentional or accidental, that run contrary to the generally accepted ethics and standards of journalism, or otherwise violate the 'ideal' mission of journalism: to report news events and issues accurately and fairly.
Jayson Thomas Blair is an American former journalist who worked for The New York Times. He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003 in the wake of the discovery of fabrication and plagiarism in his stories.
The New Republic is an American publisher focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts, with ten magazines a year and a daily online platform. The New York Times described the magazine as partially founded in Teddy Roosevelt's living room and known for its "intellectual rigor and left-leaning political views."
Stephen Randall Glass is an American former journalist. He worked for The New Republic from 1995 to 1998 until it was revealed many of his published articles were fabrications. An internal investigation by The New Republic determined the majority of stories he wrote either contained false information or were fictitious.
Martin H. Peretz is an American former magazine publisher and Harvard University assistant professor. In 1974, he purchased The New Republic, and he later assumed editorial control of the magazine. In 1996, Peretz founded the financial news website TheStreet.com with CNBC host and hedge fund manager Jim Cramer.
Shattered Glass is a 2003 biographical drama film about journalist Stephen Glass and his scandal at The New Republic. Written and directed by Billy Ray in his feature directorial debut, the film is based on a 1998 Vanity Fair article of the same name by H. G. Bissinger and chronicles Glass' fall from grace when his stories were discovered to be fabricated. It stars Hayden Christensen as Glass, alongside Peter Sarsgaard, Chloë Sevigny, and Steve Zahn.
Janet Leslie Cooke is an American former journalist. She received a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for an article written for The Washington Post. The story was later discovered to have been fabricated and Cooke returned the prize, the only person to date to do so, after admitting she had fabricated stories. The prize was awarded instead to Teresa Carpenter, a nominee who had lost to Cooke.
Wonkette is an American online magazine of topical and political gossip, established in 2004 by Gawker Media and founding editor Ana Marie Cox. The editor since 2012 is Rebecca Schoenkopf, formerly of OC Weekly. Wonkette covers U.S. politics in a satirical manner.
Ana Marie Cox is a liberal American author, blogger, political columnist, and critic. The founding editor of the political blog Wonkette, she was also the Senior Political Correspondent for MTV News, and conducted the "Talk" interviews featured in The New York Times Magazine from 2015 to 2017.
Barry Sussman was an American editor, author, and public opinion analyst who dealt primarily with public policy issues. He was city news editor at The Washington Post at the time of the Watergate break-in and supervised much of the reporting on the Watergate scandal.
Michael Thomas Kelly was an American journalist for The New York Times, a columnist for The Washington Post and The New Yorker, and a magazine editor for The New Republic, National Journal, and The Atlantic. He came to prominence through his reporting on the 1990–1991 Gulf War, and was well known for his political profiles and commentary. He suffered professional embarrassment for his role as senior editor in the Stephen Glass scandal at The New Republic. Kelly was killed in 2003 while covering the invasion of Iraq; he was the first United States journalist to die during the war.
Ruth Shalit Barrett is an American freelance writer and journalist whose work has appeared in The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ELLE, New York Magazine and The Atlantic.
All the President's Men is a 1976 American biographical political thriller film about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, with a screenplay by William Goldman, it is based on the 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists investigating the scandal for The Washington Post.
Alex Pareene is an American journalist, writer, and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of the online news magazine Gawker. Pareene later served as a senior editor at Deadspin and editor-in-chief of Splinter News, before becoming a staff writer at The New Republic. As of 2022, he published a newsletter on Substack called "The AP Newsletter".
Harry Pregerson was a United States circuit judge appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
Nikolas Schiller is an American blogger and drug policy reform activist who lives in Washington, DC. He is primarily known for developing Geospatial Art, which is the name he gave to his collection of abstract fantasy maps created from kaleidoscopic aerial photographs, and co-founding DCMJ, where he helped write Initiative 71, which legalized the cultivation and possession of small amounts of cannabis in the nation's capital.
The Community Rights Counsel was an American non-profit, public interest law firm formed in 1997 by the late Doug Kendall. Its general aim was to assist communities in protecting their health and welfare. The organization's legal work focused on the intersection of environmental and constitutional law, filing frequent amicus briefs in cases defending governmental action against claims of "regulatory takings."
Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005), was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that, under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Congress may criminalize the production and use of homegrown cannabis even if state law allows its use for medicinal purposes.
Juli Weiner is an American writer known for her work on the HBO show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
