Most of the discussion about yesterday’s New York Times report on John McCain’s supposed relationship with a lobbyist has focused not so much on McCain, but on The New York Times and why it decided to run a story with such flimsy factual support.
First, within hours after the Times report went public, The New Republic posted a story about infighting in the NYT newsroom that some say prompted them to publish the story to begin with:
Beyond its revelations, however, what’s most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain’s former staffers to justify the piece–both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves–the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain’s aides that the Senator shouldn’t be seen in public with Iseman–and departs from the Times’ usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: “In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, ‘Why is she always around?’” In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.
What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn’t. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.
The entire TNR article is worth reading because it makes clear just how shoddy the journalism was in this case.
Beyond two unnamed sources, the Times reporters had no evidence to support either the romantic relationship they teased throughout the piece in a National Enquirer style or the overall allegation that McCain had done anything improper with regard to Iseman’s clients. This isn’t really a Dan Rather situation, because there’s no evidence that they deliberately ignored exculpatory evidence, but the fact that they decided to go forward with a story based largely on inneundo and almost totally unsupported by actual facts speaks volumes.
Next, in today’s Washington Post, Howard Kurtz notes the extent to which the Times has come under fire
Media analysts are divided over the bombshell piece, which relied heavily on unnamed sources. If the Times couldn’t make the case that McCain and Iseman had an intimate relationship — and both have denied it — was it fair to raise the issue? If a crucial allegation was that McCain aides, in 1999 and 2000, told the senator they were worried that the relationship appeared inappropriate and warned Iseman to stay away from their boss, is that worthy of front-page display? If the relevance rests on McCain having written letters to federal regulators nearly a decade ago that would have benefited Iseman’s telecommunications clients, is that less newsworthy because it was reported at the time?
“This is a story that rests on the suspicions, unproven, of unnamed sources,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism. “That creates a problem for the New York Times. We’re not in an age of trust-me journalism. . . . What you have is a story that some staffers were worried about something. Their worries could well be unfounded, and we don’t know that.”
But Alex Jones, who runs Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy, called the story “absolutely appropriate. When you run for president, you should have your record scrutinized closely in every respect.” Jones, a former Times reporter, said the paper demonstrated that McCain and Iseman had “a very close relationship. . . . The only thing that seems to be in dispute is whether it was a romantic relationship, and that, frankly, is the least important part of it.”
Rostentiel is right and Jones is wrong. When you go back and read the actual article, it’s clear that the reporters didn’t even have real evidence that McCain had a significant relationship of any kind with Iseman. All they were able to show is that some anonymous staffers were concerned about the fact that she came by the office a lot. So what ?
And, finally, the editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer discusses why he decided not to run the story:
To me, the story had serious flaws. It did not convincingly make the case that McCain either had an affair with a lobbyist, or was improperly influenced by her. It used a raft of unnamed sources to assert that members of McCain’s campaign staff — not this campaign but his campaign eight years ago — were concerned about the amount of time McCain was spending with the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. They were worried about the appearance of a close bond between the two of them.
Then it went even further back, re-establishing the difficulties McCain had with his close association to savings-and-loan criminal Charles Keating. It didn’t get back to the thing that (of course) the rest of the media immediately pounced on — McCain, Iseman and the nature of their relationship — until very deep in the story. And when the story did get back there, it didn’t do so with anything approaching convincing material.
(…)
Admitting that Keller was in a better position to vet the sourcing and facts than I am as, basically, a reader, let’s assume that every source is solid and every fact attributed in the story to an anonymous source is true. You’re still dealing with a possible appearance of impropriety, eight years ago, that is certainly unproven and probably unprovable.
Where is the solid evidence of this lobbyist improperly influencing (or bedding) McCain? I didn’t see it in the half-dozen times I read the story. In paragraphs fifty-eight through sixty-one of the sixty-five-paragraph story, the Times points out two matters in which McCain took actions favorable to the lobbyist’s clients — that were also clearly consistent with his previously stated positions.That’s pretty thin beer.
And as for the assertion that the story deserves to be taken seriously because it was in the New York Times, I think this line sums it up perfectly:
[T]he “it must be so because it’s in The New York Times” argument will never hold much water after Judith Miller and Ahmed Chalabi got done perforating it.
Add Jayson Blair in there and it’s pretty spot-on.
