Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media is a 2004 book by journalist Seth Mnookin about the reign of Howell Raines at The New York Times. It addresses the Jayson Blair scandal. Mnookin's thesis is that The New York Times remains the newspaper at the center of America's self-knowledge, and understanding of the rest of the world, and that accordingly 2003, a year of scandals at that paper that forced the resignation of Raines as executive editor, did important damage.