The Knight Foundation says that it regrets paying a $20,000 honorarium to Jonah Lehrer, the disgraced journalist whose appearance at a Knight conference in Miami on Tuesday drew sharp criticism on Twitter and elsewhere.
“In retrospect, as a foundation that has long stood for quality journalism, paying a speaker’s fee was inappropriate,†the foundation said in a statement posted on its blog. “Controversial speakers should have platforms, but Knight Foundation should not have put itself into a position tantamount to rewarding people who have violated the basic tenets of journalism. We regret our mistake.â€
The foundation noted that it began discussing the appearance with Mr. Lehrer before he resigned last summer from The New Yorker after revelations that he had recycled past work in blog posts and fabricated quotations in his best-selling book “Imagine.†While the fee is not unusual for high-profile speakers, the statement continued, “it was simply not something Knight Foundation, given our values, should have paid.â€
The Knight Foundation, whose assets totaled nearly $2.2 billion in 2011, is dedicated to supporting “transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts,†according to its mission statement. The media critic Jim Romenesko noted on his blog! that the $20,000 it paid to Mr. Lehrer, who spoke at a “media learning seminar†for community foundations, was as much as it gave the Miami-Dade Public Library in 2011 “to encourage creative writing among the communities teens†and slightly less than the $25,000 it gave to the Minnesota State Fair “for a participatory public art experience called the giant sing-along.â€
