Patterico's Pontifications

2/21/2008

What Was the New York Times Thinking?

Filed under: 2008 Election,General — Patterico @ 8:01 pm



In a delicious irony, TNR runs a piece on that New York Times McCain story. The incomparable Allahpundit invites us to “savor the irony of TNR scolding another publication for not being diligent enough in its fact-checking.” Indeed. But the TNR piece is interesting.

In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story’s editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods.

So what changed? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Jan Crawford Greenburg — an actual Big Media reporter! — asks:

The key here is that McCain did not advocate for anybody. So, after considering the facts of the case at the center of this entire episode–facts that were reported eight years ago–the real question becomes: How is this a story worthy of front-page treatment in the New York Times, after you’ve put aside the salacious, anonymous and unproven allegations that led the story?

Well?

Bueller?

P.S. Tom Maguire has a post that throws into comic relief Kevin Drum’s claim that waving off inconvenient old scandals as “old news” is a “a tactic that has almost a 100% success record with the mainstream media.” Turns out, a good portion of the New York Times‘s McCain “scandal” had already been reported by the New York Times . . . in 2000.

22 Responses to “What Was the New York Times Thinking?”

  1. Totally agree. To me, the Times endorsing McCain with all the elements of this story in hand is the real incongruity.

    steve (7782f4) — 2/21/2008 @ 8:23 pm

  2. Why is it not the least bit surprising that steve took that position?

    JD (a03f4c) — 2/21/2008 @ 8:57 pm

  3. But he’s right. It’s very odd.

    Patterico (4bda0b) — 2/21/2008 @ 9:12 pm

  4. This reminds me of when the police announce they are investigating a public person, especially someone in a public trust position like a schoolteacher or a priest, regarding an allegation of sexual wrongdoing. The public announcement is made in part because the police hope that previously unknown witnesses will come forward to corroborate the victim’s story and/or that other victims will report similar allegations.

    Is it possible the Times is on a fishing expedition?

    DRJ (3eda28) — 2/21/2008 @ 10:57 pm

  5. Hey, I don’t mind if the NYT goes looking for old garbage to peddle.

    We never did get to the bottom of HRC’s role in the Vince Foster papers moving around (while under police seal), nor the Travelgate mess, did we?

    Except, I am guessing that will be seen as “old news” and not worth pursuing. Funny how that works.

    Eric Blair (d57d58) — 2/21/2008 @ 11:28 pm

  6. Saying NYTimes or LA Times for that matter and associate such with thinking?

    OXYMORON!

    It’s obvious the entire world did not have sex last night!

    TC (1cf350) — 2/22/2008 @ 1:57 am

  7. Rush Limbaugh was right: the NY Times built up McCain (by endorsing him) so they could try to destroy him (and the Republican Party).
    The idea that they were worried about being scooped by, of all outlets, The New Republic is laughably pathetic.

    JEC (d671ab) — 2/22/2008 @ 5:35 am

  8. The NEW YORK SLIMES ALL THE SEWAGE THATS FIT TO PRINT

    krazy kagu (9b4d22) — 2/22/2008 @ 7:46 am

  9. That’s just it, the NYTimes has not been able to “think” for decades, thus this is no surprise. The big, big surprise is that other MSM are not getting on their knees in obeisance.

    Sue (27676d) — 2/22/2008 @ 8:43 am

  10. As a rule I do not watch AM television. I have it on as background while everyone in the house does stuff. This AM I was off my meds or something and had to sit down for a few minutes so I did what any red blooded man does: I surfed the cable channels for porno. Not finding the good stuff I started traveling between FOX and Friends (Still not as good as when ED Hill was on it), Joe Scarboro on MSNBC, and the former FOX fox, Kiran Chetry on CNN. MSNBC was doing full a court press favoring NYT and basically saying that McCain was fucking a stranger and stealing money from lobbyists; Kiran was stumbling around grinning and seeming to feature mostly NYT stuff while still running a McCain piece; FOX was basically slamming the NYT piece for being paper thin etc.

    I watched FOX because I already agreed with them. Now as I read news from all over it seems that McCain is the recipient of tons of cash and something it looked like he might never get, conservative support. The New Republic added not much to my knowledge of the New York Times, and I don’t usually listen to Rush.

    It’s harder to get a handle on the truth with all this freedom of speech than it was when we only got the info “we needed.” Freedom is a bitch.

    Howard Veit (cc8b85) — 2/22/2008 @ 9:50 am

  11. Editor of the NYT responds today expressing his shock at public reaction to the hit piece, and is confounded by the publics’ inability to see the bigger picture.

    “Personally, I was surprised by the volume of the reaction (including more than 2,400 reader comments posted on our Web site). 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.

    And, frankly, I was a little surprised by how few readers saw what was, to us, the larger point of the story. Perhaps here, at the outset of this conversation, is a good point to state as clearly as possible our purpose in publishing.”

    Read the NYT’s purported ‘purpose’ of the story and see what you think.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/business/media/21askthenewsroom.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

    Dana (b4a26c) — 2/22/2008 @ 10:24 am

  12. Dana, that was entertaining. For instance, there was this exchange between NY Times’ Editor Bill Keller and reader Brian Mullaney:

    “Q. I must say that the McCain article left me embarrassed for your paper. So little substance, but trumpeted prominently as though you somehow had the goods on him or were raising burning questions. It makes it look like your reporters or editors had an ax to grind. I hope they didn’t. Question: Do you read the coverage of your coverage? Did you see the piece at slate.com ridiculing your paper for this? Doesn’t it smart?

    — Brian Mullaney”

    And here are excerpts from Keller’s response:

    “We knew from our experience last year, when word leaked out we were pursuing this story, that Senator McCain’s operatives would set out to change the subject by making the story about The New York Times rather than about their candidate. That’s a time-honored tactic for dealing with potentially damaging news stories.“

    Not only is a time-honored tactic for politicians, it also works for newspaper editors judging by the last paragraph of Keller’s response:

    “Yes, Mr. Mullaney, I read the commentary you refer to on slate.com. I hope you’ll take a look at another piece on slate.com, by Jack Shafer, which defends us.“

    DRJ (3eda28) — 2/22/2008 @ 11:25 am

  13. DRJ,

    Its a shame so many readers (2,400, including me) had to take our time to point out the obvious! It was a familiar feeling…just change the NYT to LAT…!

    Dana (b4a26c) — 2/22/2008 @ 11:28 am

  14. Here’s Jill Abramson on the use of anonymous sources in the McCain article:

    “The sources corroborated one another without orchestration, an issue, among others, that our team meticulously investigated. During the long process of our reporting on the story, we attempted, time and time again, to persuade our sources to go on the record and let us use their names. Again, there are named sources in the story but some sources continued to insist on maintaining the cloak of anonymity. As we neared publication, both the editors and the reporting team once again tested the veracity of these sources to make sure every fact in the story was accurate. We were all fully satisfied.”

    Doesn’t this sound like The New Republic explanation during the Beauchamp affair?

    DRJ (3eda28) — 2/22/2008 @ 11:30 am

  15. Dana,

    It must really chap Keller that his newsroom spent all this time on an article and, instead of being treated like Watergate-style heroes, all they get is criticism from readers who just don’t get it.

    DRJ (3eda28) — 2/22/2008 @ 11:36 am

  16. Also from Dana’s link, Richard W. Stevenson’s explanation for why the Times would endorse McCain at the same time it was working on this story rings especially hollow. He essentially argues the New York Times has a Chinese wall between the editorial and news divisions, while nevertheless admitting that everyone knew the story was there:

    “But it meant that there were a lot of people speculating for months about what kind of story we were pursuing and whether and when we were going to publish it. This didn’t influence the timing or the substance of the story at all, but I do think it created a situation in which opinions and battle lines about the story began to develop long before the actual story was published.”

    The “battle lines” of competing camps strongly suggests this was about opposing political agendas.

    DRJ (3eda28) — 2/22/2008 @ 11:46 am

  17. I just want to know how they can justify not going with the Edwards story from a few months ago – a story the National Enquirer had better circumstantial evidence then the Times has for the McCain piece – after going with this.

    They differing treatments is pretty amazing, and not just at the Times. Consider Clinton’s ‘love’ troubles: broken by Drudge. SBVT: only made it to the MSM when Kerry responded. Edwards: google ‘Edwards affair’ and note the lack of MSM links. I guess there’s no time for the MSM to consider malfeance of Democrats when CBS has a producer working on the 30 year old Bush AWOL story for FIVE YEARS. An inch of newsprint on Democratic malfeance? We’ve got JOBS to do, Knuckle Dragger. Like spend FIVE YEARS on a story that depended on memories of people in their fifties and sixties about fairly trivial happenings 30 years previously. And a newly discovered Word Document dated from before Word was invented.

    Sweetie (2fd7f7) — 2/22/2008 @ 11:46 am

  18. I want to know when they’ll start writing about Obama and his ties to Tony Rezko who is currently being prosecuted by the federal government here in Illinois and is in custody because he is considered a flight risk. Or is that story just too unsubstantiated for the New York Times or pursue, unlike this retread of a nonstory.

    Rochelle Funderburg (ae9c58) — 2/22/2008 @ 12:20 pm

  19. My question to the NYTs was why a possible unfounded, unproven, denied by both supposed participants ‘affair’ invovling a potential presidential candidate was considered front page material, when an actual affair, confessed to by one of the participants and involving an actual sitting president never made it out of the B section…

    Dana (b4a26c) — 2/22/2008 @ 12:42 pm

  20. …referring to Clinton and Juanita B.

    Dana (b4a26c) — 2/22/2008 @ 12:46 pm

  21. The NY Times’ public editor weighs in.

    DRJ (3eda28) — 2/23/2008 @ 2:57 pm

  22. Here’s Ann Althouse’s take (guest-blogging at Instapundit):

    “It’s a ludicrous argument. It would mean that editors could purvey all sorts of trash as long as it is embedded it in a larger story. And when we get outraged, they could look down their noses and insult us about our poor reading comprehension.”

    I agree.

    DRJ (8b9d41) — 2/23/2008 @ 5:01 pm


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