[Mithras]

You may recall the hubbub over the Jayson Blair scandal -- the reporter who fabricated stories at the New York Times.

Well, a (white) reporter at USA Today has resigned, and his articles are under increasing scrutiny, because of suspicions that he exaggerated or fabricated at least elements.

One of the most searing and controversial aspects of the Jayson Blair scandal were the allegations that his abuses were ignored because he is black. (Salon piece) Some on the right jumped all over this line of thought (e.g. National Review)

Well, here's a selection from the NYTimes piece about the USA Today reporter, Jack Kelley:

In an interview last week, Johanna Neumann, then the foreign editor of USA Today and now at The Los Angeles Times, said she signed off on the arrangement in part because of her trust in Mr. Kelley. That trust, she said, was rooted to some extent in his openness with his colleagues about being an evangelical Christian.

"He was this very earnest, moralistic Christian reporter,'' she said. "It made people trust him in ways they didn't trust other reporters. If he was reporting he had the diary of a Serbian girl, and no one else had it, you tended to say: 'He just has a way with people. People just respond to him.' ''

Will everyone jump on the liberal media for trusting the guy just because he was an evangelical Christian?