Seattle Post-Intelligencer

by David McCumber

I chose not to run the New York Times story on John McCain in Thursday's P-I, even though it was available to us on the New York Times News Service. I thought I'd take a shot at explaining why.

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.

A very good editor I happen to work for, P-I Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby, said today that the story read like a candidate profile to him, not an investigative story, and I think that's true. A candidate profile based on a lot of old anecdotes.

Obviously, the reporters, Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton, are not working for me. I have no way, other than their excellent reputations, of specifically evaluating their sourcing. That job fell to Bill Keller, the editor of The New York Times, who had held the story, citing concerns about whether the reporters had "nailed it," long enough to fatally fracture the newspaper's relationship with Thompson. She left today to go back to work for The Washington Post.

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.

That's pretty thin beer.

And the "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.

Consider what's happened next. Surprise -- the wave of follow-up publicity and punditry has focused hot and heavy on the angle of the postulated -- and denied -- romantic relationship, frequently comparing McCain to admitted philanderers like former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey and former President Clinton.

For a story that dealt with the maybe, looked-like-to-some-people, nobody-knew-for-sure dalliance in an extraordinarily elliptical fashion, it sure had a lot of impact. People read between the lines just fine, thank you.

This story seems to me not to pass the smell test. It makes the innuendo of impropriety, even corruption, without backing it up. I was taught that before you run something in the newspaper that could ruin somebody's reputation, you'd better have your facts very straight indeed.

"Nailed" would be one way to describe that.

The Washington Post ran its own story a few hours later. It was less contorted and easier to follow. Still based on some anonymous sourcing. It did bother me a little today when Len Downie, like Keller an outstanding editor, said The New York Times story "helped" them get their sources to confirm certain things and enable them to run their story. That seemed a little co-dependent in terms of sourcing.

Of course, we'll follow the story now. The story has become an inextricable part of the campaign narrative. The story, in a sense, is the story now.

But on Wednesday night, I didn't really want to participate in making it so.

 

LA Times - Top of the Ticket Blog

Boston Globe declines to publish parent paper's McCain story

by Andrew Malcolm

The Los Angeles Times' James Rainey this morning has a comprehensive examination of the unfolding controversy over an investigative article published in Thursday's New York Times regarding Sen. John McCain and his relationship with a Washington lobbyist and her clients.

The article, among other things, used anonymous sources to suggest as early as the second paragraph inappropriate behavior between the married senator and the female lobbyist. Not surprisingly, it was denounced by McCain, his ...

... campaign and other conservatives as a smear job just as the Arizona senator becomes the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee.

It also aroused considerable criticism from readers of The Ticket, which opened a special comment page on the issue, and even in private communications among fellow journalists across the country, who often rush to defend one another. "I wouldn't put my name on it," one colleague messaged.

But one interesting aspect of this combined political and professional controversy went widely unnoticed. The Boston Globe, which is wholly owned by the New York Times, chose not to publish the article produced by its parent company's reporters.

Instead, the Globe published a version of the same story written by the competing Washington Post staff. That version focused almost exclusively on the pervasive presence of lobbyists in McCain's campaign and did not mention the sexual relationship that the Times article hinted at but did not describe or document and which the senator and lobbyist have denied.

On Thursday the Globe's website, Boston.com, did provide a link to the Times story on the Times' website. But such a stark editorial decision by a major newspaper raises suspicions that even the Globe's editors, New York Times Co. employees all, had their own concerns about the content of their parent company's story.

Rainey asked the Globe's editor, Martin Baron, about that decision. His eloquent reply: "No comment."

When journalists hear such rhetorical avoidance from public figures and politicians, they usually take it as confirmation of their suspicions.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Sen. John McCain has a legitimate gripe. A New York Times story that highlighted his relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman was unfair. It implied more than it delivered.

The implication, if true, would be devastating to any politician - but especially to McCain, an Arizona Republican who has styled himself as a Mr. Clean reformer.

The fact that some of McCain's advisers were "convinced the relationship had become romantic" in 2000 is not the same as them having evidence of infidelity. It is a suspicion, otherwise known as gossip. If these anonymous sources did have persuasive evidence of such misconduct, they either failed to provide it to the newspaper - or the newspaper declined to offer it to its readers.

Allegations that senior campaign advisers were so concerned about the McCain-Iseman relationship that they "took steps to intervene" - a top aide said he met with her in Washington - were wrapped into a 3,000-word, textured piece about McCain's quasi-cozy interactions with various special interests. Much of it centered on his solicitations of donations from companies that lobbied his Senate Commerce Committee. Iseman represented telecommunications companies that had a huge stake in the committee's decisions.

But Times editors had to know that the suggestion McCain was having an intimate affair with a woman who was lobbying him was far and away the most serious and sensational allegation in the story. The posting of the story on the Times Web site instantly caused a crawl-line explosion on cable news Wednesday night. Both McCain and the Republican Party seized their moment of indignation to blast out fundraising pitches. "We'll never match the reach of a front-page New York Times article, but with your immediate help today, we'll be able to respond and defend our nominee from the liberal attack machine," the McCain campaign said in its e-mail solicitation to donors.

Regrettably, the Times left itself and our profession open to such allegations of bias by publishing soft-focus evidence of what would be an outrageous breach of public trust.

Real Clear Politics

Pinch Sulzberger's Legacy

by Thomas Lifson

The decline and fall of the New York Times accelerates, with Thursday's anonymously-sourced hit piece on John McCain. I will leave to others like Rick Moran and Ed Morrissey the debunking of the story itself. What concerns me is the manner in which the CEO of the organization has jettisoned standards that once would have ruled out publication of such material.

"A fish rots from the head" goes an old Chinese saying. If it is true, as reported, that the story was controversial within the Times, and only ran because the paper feared that The New Republic would publicize the office politics at the Times over publication of the story, the Sulzberger's responsibility is all the greater. His inability to set clear guidelines, hire capable editors, and maintain newsroom harmony and discipline was about to be exposed to the public. To protect his hind quarters, he went with a disastrously bad story.

The proper response to TNR would be a statement that the Times does not rush into print with anonymously sourced accusations against the presumptive nominee of either party. And do it with a straight face.

Such an approach might have begun to undo the damage of Jayson Blair, a man promoted and retained despite obvious signs of trouble. Such an approach would be consistent with the Times' previous practice of seriously downplaying similar and much worse stories about Bill Clinton's sexual behavior. Such an approach might have begun to undo some of the damage to the institution of the Times inflicted by Pinch Sulzberger's management.

The corporation he heads is in the fight of its life, with the News Corporation-owned Wall Street Journal preparing to challenge it as a national general interest newspaper, while disgruntled shareholders search for a way to reform management, despite a dual class shareholder system which enables the Sulzberger family to elect a majority of shareholders despite owning only around 10% of the company's equity.

In the face of these challenges, The Times descends a full notch or two, resorting to partisan gossip that is inadequately sourced. This is not a way to enhance the value of the brand, nor to ensure the survival of the firm.

The New York Times’ story about John McCain’s alleged involvement with a female lobbyist brings to mind its infamous coverage of the alleged rape by members of the Duke lacrosse team. As Stuart Taylor recounted in his book on that sorry affair, Until Proven Innocent, the Times reporter who initially covered the story, Joe Drape, quickly learned facts that strongly tended to exonerate the accused players. The Times, however, refused to print his material and soon replaced him with Duff Wilson who took a pro-prosecution slant, thereby enabling the Times to peddle its preferred narrative of white privilege and racial oppression.

In McCain’s case, the Times received “exculpatory” material from his campaign which documented instances in which McCain did not take positions congenial to the female lobbyist in question. The Times refused to use or acknowledge that material, selecting only instances that enabled it to pursue its preferred narrative that McCain was unduly influenced by that lobbyist.

In the lacrosse story, the Times flitted back and forth between the rape narrative, which it could not support, and a narrative it thought was a slam dunk – the Duke lacrosse team as a bastion of white male privilege and sexism. In the words of Times sportswriter Tom Jolly: “From the beginning, we've felt this story had two main elements: one was the allegation of rape; the other was the general behavior of a high-level sports team at a prestigious university." But the Times’ fallback narrative had little more merit than the rape allegations. The lacrosse players, on the whole, were good students. Moreover, early on they were endorsed by the female students that probably knew them best, Duke’s female lacrosse players. But by flogging both “elements” of the story, the Times was able to make the whole seem greater than the sum of its parts.

In McCain’s case, the Times is even shiftier. It insinuates a sexual relationship, falls back to an influence-peddling claim, and in case none of that sticks, argues that McCain isn’t as pure as he makes himself out to be. But, again, the latter claims are based on a one-sided presentation of the facts.

In the lacrosse story, the Times steadfastly refused to identify the source of the accusations against the players (i.e., the alleged victim). It also failed to disclose the fact that the accuser had a criminal record, even as it trumpeted the fact that one of the accused had been charged with assault for punching someone. In McCain’s case, the Times also relies on anonymous sources.

There is, however, one important difference between the two stories. In the Duke case, a prosecutor was pursuing a criminal investigation. Prosecutors don’t normally pursue matters that are patently devoid of merit. Thus, the Times’ journalistic sin did not consist of covering the story, which was facially legitimate, but rather of allowing its biases to govern the nature of the coverage.

In McCain’s case, the Times originated the story without an evidentiary basis sufficient to persuade even its fellow liberal organs that there is anything there. Thus, this is not an instance of a liberal news outlet seeing an existing story through the prism of its bias. It is an instance of a liberal news outlet going out of its way to assault a candidate it would prefer not to see become president.   Posted by Paul

In "Repeat offender" Paul Mirengoff puts the hit piece by the New York Times on John McCain this week in the context of the Times's Duke non-rape coverage. I think Paul's judgment is that the Times's McCain hit piece is even worse than the Times's disgraceful coverage of the Duke non-rape case. I'm agnostic on which is worse, but Paul raises several relevant considerations and makes a powerful case.

The Times's McCain hit piece can also be fit into the context of its 2004 campaign coverage. In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, my friend Steve Hayes does so in "New York Times vs. John McCain." Steve recalls the Times's absurd performance in the last week of the 2004 campaign:

Beginning on October 25, 2004, with just over a week left until Election Day, the Times ran 16 articles and opinion pieces about looting at the al Qaqaa munitions facility in Iraq. Some of the stories were implicitly critical of the Bush administration, others were directly so. The Times dismissed suggestions that the attention on the issue was politically motivated. But, as National Review's Byron York asked four months later: "Why was the Al Qaqaa story so important in the eight days leading up to the election that it merited two stories per day, and so unimportant after the election that it has not merited any stories at all?"

Those memories could not have been far from the mind of Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, when he rather surprisingly offered a comment on the current Times controversy: "I think a lot of people here in this building with experience in a couple campaigns have grown accustomed to the fact that during the course of the campaign, seemingly on maybe a monthly basis leading up to the convention, maybe weekly basis after that, the New York Times does try to drop a bombshell on the Republican nominee...Sometimes they make incredible leaps to try to drop those bombshells."

Steve concludes: "Indeed."    Posted by Scott

 

Contentions

by Abe Greenwald

The New York Times is learning about unintended consequences. Having run a shoddy piece about John McCain’s supposedly questionable judgment, the paper now finds itself having to defend its own integrity.

In response to overwhelming reader disapproval, Times executive editor Bill Keller wrote:

I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot.

The boomerang effect of this non-scandal and the way it has redistributed sympathies recalls another recent phenomenon that unfolded this primary season: the Clintons’ failed exploitation of identity Democrats. Hillary decided that winning the Democratic nomination was a crude matter of mathematics. Getting all of the white vote and most of the Hispanic vote would do the trick, and playing on those groups’ prejudices would secure their support. She and Bill intentionally isolated the white vote, pandering to a section of the electorate they thought would somehow fear Obama’s nomination. Not only did she begin to lose support amongst blacks (which presumably, she thought she could survive), but whites and Hispanics saw the effort for what it was and were repelled. In two months time, the Clintons gave Obama heaping chunks of every demographic group.

Could it be that the McCain flap marks the beginning of the New York Times’ trip Hillaryward? Times sales are already ailing, and if the paper continues to dig in on this discredited position it won’t help matters.

As for the Democratic candidates, they should note there’s another boomerang on its return: the Iraq war. The more Obama and Hillary attempt to garner partisan credibility by distancing themselves from the war that’s being won, the worse that boomerang will sting one of them in November when McCain gets his due for always supporting the effort. The law of unintended consequences is taking no prisoners this election season.

 

Captain's Quarters

How The Times Helped McCain

The New York Times may have done the impossible for the John McCain campaign and for Republicans in general. As predicted yesterday when their strange and threadbare allegations hit print, the attack united conservatives behind McCain. It also may have been an act of seppuku for the Times, as its claim objectivity and credibility have been discredited. The Los Angeles Times surveys the damage:

Conservative commentators, including some who previously chastised McCain for not hewing closely to their principles, leaped to the candidate's defense.

Radio personality Laura Ingraham, like other critics, noted that the newspaper had been researching the story for several months and accused the Times of delaying publication to do maximum damage.

"You wait until it's pretty much beyond a doubt that he's going to be the Republican nominee," Ingraham said on her morning radio program, "and then you let it drop -- drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That's what the New York Times thinks."

The most popular host in talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, described the story as standard fare for the paper he accuses of coddling the left.

"You're surprised that Page Six-type gossip is on the front page of the New York Times?" said Limbaugh in reference to the gossip column of the tabloid New York Post. Limbaugh, who previously has ripped McCain as a fake conservative, said: "Where have you been? How in the world can anybody be surprised?"

Bear in mind that both radio hosts had pressed hard before Super Tuesday to keep McCain from winning the nomination. They have no particular love for the Arizona Senator, and had kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism over his record. If the New York Times had actually produced a substantiated scandal involving McCain, they may have been the first to proclaim I told you so! from the tops of their transmitting stations.

Instead, the Times ran a piece of gossipy nonsense that doesn't even have the courage to allege what it only implies. Two self-described "disillusioned" former staffers who won't go on the record alleged -- what? -- that McCain had an affair? No. That McCain did favors for a romantic paramour? No. The Times reported that these two staffers somehow got past Mark Salter and John Weaver to stage a confrontation with McCain over their concerns that McCain might have possibly started to get close to thinking about a romance with Vicki Iseman.

For this, the Times offers no corroboration. They report on a confrontation between John Weaver and Vicki Iseman, but neglect to report that Weaver explained to them that he had heard Iseman brag about her connections to McCain and the Commerce Committee, not about any alleged affair. That didn't make it into the Times' report. Neither did the fact that McCain often voted against the interests of Iseman's clients, and that votes in favor of them matched McCain's often stated policy positions held long before Iseman became a lobbyist.

Bill Keller's crew threw in a rehash of two old scandals to pad out the piece, one legitimate but over 20 years old, and the other discredited when the Times first brought it up in 2000. McCain has acknowledged his role in the Keating 5 scandal repeatedly in the time since, so it's not as if this broke any new ground. And in the second scandal, even Clinton administration figure Lanny Davis claims it baseless, as Hot Air noted yesterday.

So what do we have? We have salacious but completely unsubstantiated gossip, combined with a rehash of at least one old Times smear, placed on the front page of what used to be the premiere newspaper in America. And what exactly does that do for the Times' credibility for the rest of this electoral cycle? They can't run anything on McCain now without it being seen in the context of what the Times itself calls a "war" between the Times and McCain. Keller and company declared war on McCain yesterday, and it fired a bazooka of effluvium as its opening salvo. They've marginalized themselves for the next nine months.

 

A Tale Of Two Caucuses

Two House caucuses, two members under indictment -- and both give two very different responses. John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, publicly demanded Rick Renzi's resignation from the House after his indictment on 35 charges of fraud, extortion, and other sundry corruption:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is urging indicted Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) to resign.

“I have made it clear that I will hold our members to the highest standards of ethical conduct,” Boehner said in a statement Friday. “The charges contained in this indictment are completely unacceptable for a member of Congress, and I strongly urge Rep. Renzi to seriously consider whether he can continue to effectively represent his constituents under these circumstances. I expect to meet with Rep. Renzi at the earliest possible opportunity to discuss this situation and the best option for his constituents, our Conference, and the American people.”

This came a day after the indictments were published by the grand jury. Across the aisle, however, William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson remains in the House Democratic Caucus despite having been indicted on 16 counts of corruption-related felonies in June 2007. His trial just got delayed while he appeals the overruling of his attempt to hide his corruption behind the speech and debate clause of the Constitution.

Has Pelosi demanded that he resign his seat since his indictment? Has any Democrat in the House demanded that Jefferson step down after this indictment? No; the only action Pelosi took was to strip Jefferson of his seat on the Small Business Committee. Earlier, she had tried to put him on the Homeland Security Committee, only backing down when Republicans threatened to block it and debate all committee assignments on the House floor.

Now, which party acts more responsibly to clean up its own house, as well as the House?