The crisis at one of the world's most prestigious newspapers, the New York Times, looked set to deepen yesterday in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal after the paper conceded it was investigating the work of several other reporters.
Although the Times said none of the new allegations had warranted action so far, it is fighting to stanch the wounds to its reputation after it was revealed last week that 27-year-old Blair had concocted and plagiarised dozens of stories for an institution that prides itself on accuracy and fidelity.
A spokeswoman for the paper declined to reveal the scale or nature of the allegations 'for reasons of privacy'. Lawyers for the government have informally asked the paper's management to provide information of Blair's inaccuracies with a view to bringing fraud charges.
Despite the Times's efforts to restore its credibility - which included an extraordinary 14,000-word 'apology' for the fiasco and an acrimonious meeting between management and staff - it has succeeded only in revealing a deep disenchantment at the paper.
Rumours circulating its offices suggest that executive editor Howell Raines may be forced to resign as the focus of the anger turns from Blair to him. The former star reporter, meanwhile,is reported variously as being on a suicide watch and negotiating a highly lucrative book deal.
Staff accuse Raines of creating a star system that promoted favourites such as Blair while sidelining experienced reporters. They say the bastion of American journalism has been a deeply disenchanted place since Raines's appointment in 2001.
'It's a chronically demoralised institution,' said one Times reporter. 'Reporters are by nature misanthropic and negative but it's never been as a bad as this.' According to the Times, Blair wrote dozens of reports purporting to be from locations across America from his home in Brooklyn - 'interviewing' people he never met and lifting quotes from provincial papers.
His fraud - which encompassed articles about the Washington-area sniper last autumn and interviews with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq - was rumbled only after the San Antonio Express-News noticed similarities between one of its stories and Blair's front-page article in the Times two days later.
But commentators say Blair's manipulations do not justify the self-reproach the Times has bathed in since.
'Everybody is loving this,' said Vanity Fair media critic James Wolcott. 'The Times is like the Vatican - it never shows you its inner workings.'
The paper's fastidiousness in making tiny corrections - printing heartfelt apologies for misprinting someone's middle initial - obscures larger failures, Wolcott said.
To many critics, however, the Jayson Blair scandal is indicative of a far deeper malaise in the US press.
The Times, along with other papers, they say, has allowed itself to be spoon-fed by Bush's neo-conservative administration.
'Since 9/11 it's been very out of vogue to question authority,' said Kelly McBride of the media watchdog the Poynter Institute. 'When it does it gets railed on for being anti-American.'
'The Times has been living off the Pentagon papers, and the Post its Watergate legacy for 30 years,' said Wolcott.
'They may think those are still great medals they're wearing but it doesn't justify the way they've fallen down on the job before Bush. Nixon really did put the squeeze on the press, but this is a voluntary servitude. Both have become subservient to power.'