Times Responds to Iseman-Gate Questions

The implications of the New York Times' quasi-bombshell of a story from last night are swirling around the political world, and The Political Machine, like the brown part of a vat of journalistic fudge-ripple. I, like many, wondered on what ethical grounds The Times published the anonymous implication of a perception of a romantic relationship. I posed my questions to the New York Times' editorial staff. More on that later.

I spoke briefly with former Edwards campaign strategist Joe Trippi earlier today on an unrelated matter, and he had some interesting comments on this story.

After the jump, I'll give you Trippi's take, a little more background, and I'll tell you what, if anything, the New York Times had to say for themselves.

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First off, here's what Joe Trippi had to say:

TC: If you were running McCain's campaign, how would you handle this story?

JT: Well, it doesn't seem like much of a story. I think they're handling it just fine. This story is such a 180 from what the public knows about McCain that, unless there's a lot of evidence to back it up, they're not going to believe it. It's sort of the reverse of the question-planting thing for Hillary. That didn't hurt her too much because it kind of confirmed something that people already thought they knew about her.

Of course, if there ends up being more to this story, if some kind of proof emerges, then it's over for McCain.

Meanwhile, (if nothing else comes out), this could actually help McCain, with the Republicans saying, "See, the ultra-liberal NY Times is smearing our guy." It could rally the Republicans around McCain, without hurting him with Democrats or independents.

This assessment is certainly being borne out so far, with nearly universal puzzlement, if not condemnation, of the Times article's compliance with basic journalistic principles, and McCain issuing a complete denial.

Of course, anti-McCain posters on our message boards are already conflating this with stories about McCain's first marriage, which Jay Allbritton detailed earlier this week. In fact, in a case of a weird sort of prescience, on the eve of this story, The Political Machine ran a story called, "The Worst You Can Say About: John McCain", debunking smears against the candidate, and a Hot Seat poll entitled, "Is the media being too soft on John McCain?"

According to Cenk Uygur, the answer is yes, and the Times held the story because they're fraidy-cats.

The John McCain-Vicki Iseman story is not the first article the New York Times has held back for political reasons. They have now done this on at least three occasions:

1. The original FISA story on how the Bush administration was not getting warrants for wiretaps inside the United States.
2. The original story in 2004 that showed Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
3. The McCain-Iseman story.

We had James Risen, the writer of the first two stories on our show back in 2005 and he admitted that they held the Bin Laden story until after the 2004 election because the New York Times didn't want to "get caught up in the politics of it."

Another way of stating that is that they were afraid of being called the liberal media by Republicans. After decades of being chastised for being liberal, they have become gun-shy. In this McCain story, they also held off until they were about to outed by other news agencies as sitting on the story.

A review of the Times' own Confidential News Sources Policy doesn't provide much cover:

Confidential sources must have direct knowledge of the information they are giving us - or they must be the authorized representatives of an authority, known to us, who has such knowledge.

We do not grant anonymity to people who are engaged in speculation, unless the very act of speculating is newsworthy and can be clearly labeled for what it is.

I don't see how this situation qualifies. The sources were not speculating, they were drawing a conclusion based on facts that they, or The Times, did not share. Without a named source, or specific details corroborated by the 2 unnamed sources, how can a reader begin to judge the credibility of their conclusion?

Here are the questions that I sent to The New York Times:

I am interested to know the thought process behind publishing the anonymous material, which is basically an allegation of an allegation.

If the two sources had observed specific behaviors that led them to believe there was an affair, why not print those details?

Did these sources provide those details?

If the sources did not provide them, what is your ethical basis for printing that?

Why did the paper hold the story in December, and why publish it now?

Conservative bloggers are alleging that you released the story now to influence the election. How do you respond to that?

This just in, a statement from New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller:

On the substance, we think the story speaks for itself. On the timing, our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready.

"Ready" means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats. This story was no exception. It was a long time in the works. It reached my desk late Tuesday afternoon. After a final edit and a routine check by our lawyers, we published it.

I guess that all depends on what your definition of "Ready" is. I'm glad they took the several hours to mull over my questions carefully and then send me the same statement they gave everyone else today.

Slate's Jack Shafer offers what is, in my view, a pretty weak, and somewhat ironic, defense of the Times. Essentially, he likens the piece to a sandwich, with the meat being the story's historical view of McCain's seeming hypocrisy on ethics, stuffed inside a thin pita of poorly-sourced innuendo, but the meat makes it OK, especially in light of McCain's self-styled image as the ethics crusader.

So far, I've yet to encounter a single critique that faults the article for its portrayal of McCain's eccentric and self-serving ideas about political ethics. McCain thoroughly soiled himself in the "Keating Five" savings and loan scandal in the 1980s, which the article accurately condenses.

Although McCain has devoted much of his post-Keating career to the policing of political ethics, the article notes, he's often strayed from the path of righteousness. When accused of skirting ethical standards, he usually pleads guilty in an embarrassed, hangdog fashion, as the Times anecdote about a political fundraiser held for his 2000 presidential campaign points out.

That might hold water with any other publication but one that calls itself The Paper of Record. Plus, without the sexy-time Pita, there isn't much of a current news angle, is there? What's that called, when you throw a splashy, sensational headline on a nothing story? Amber Transcriptionism?

I am not one to revel in the Times' misfortune. Most of the media types throwing stones at the Times are doing so from within their own Ivory-reinforced Glass Towers. Journalism isn't what it used to be. The Times owes us, and itself, a better explanation. I look forward to hearing it.


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