Bill Keller: "I'm Proud to Stand by This Story." Times Public Editor: You Were Wrong To Run It.
This weekend Clark Hoyt, public editor of the New York Times, told the Times what Ben Bradlee tells Woodward and Bernstein in one memorable scene from All the President's Men. "You haven't got it," the boss says about a draft of their story. The reporters try to argue back, but Bradlee cuts them off. "Get some harder information next time."
That is what Hoyt told Bill Keller and the Times staff in his column Sunday, What That McCain Article Didn't Say. Next time you decide to suggest that a leading presidential candidate had an affair that compromises his reputation and threatens his entire campaign, get some harder information. You cannot go with a story like that and base it on what anonymous sources believed. Your angry readers are right. And you were wrong to run it.
Ombudsman columns are rarely this definitive:
If a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.
It's hard to see how editorial judgment at the Times could suffer a defeat in the court of opinion that is more clear cut. Howard Kurtz yesterday: "A rough consensus is emerging among journalists that the Times story was fatally flawed." Keller on Friday: "I'm proud to stand by this story."
The judgment I made, same as the one Clark Hoyt made, and the one that Jeff Jarvis, Greg Sargent, Kevin Drum made, along with thousands of Times readers, plus many other journalists, including peers, differs drastically from the thinking of executive editor Bill Keller, managing editor Jill Abramson, and the Times staff that worked on this story.
Into that gap I offer these ideas.
The art of thinking politically
Readers often have more political sense than is permitted to editors of the New York Times, but editors of the Times do not necessarily know this. The most telling moment in Friday's Q and A with readers was Bill Keller's sense of shock. "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."
Cheap but consequential. Readers knew it would hurt the Times, boost McCain and re-ignite the culture war. Their political sense was stronger than Keller's. Why? Well, Times editors are extremely smart people prevented by their own codes from thinking politically. Yet those same codes permit intrusions into politics, like the Vicki Iseman story, that require them to think politically or risk terrible missteps.
When I say, "think politically," I do not mean "carry out a political agenda in the news pages." Full stop. I mean exhibiting common sense by recognizing the larger political realities in which you are a participant. I was watching MSNBC Wednesday night when they interrupted "Hardball" to bring viewers a live bulletin on what had just been posted at nytimes.com. What had just been posted, said the network, was a Times report suggesting that John McCain had an affair with an attractive, blond female lobbyist whose firm had business before his committee, and here's her picture....
No, no, says Bill Keller, waving his arms at us. Cut! What was posted that night was one installment in a biographical series called "The Long Run," where we examine key moments in the lives and careers of the candidates. This story was about an apparent contradiction in McCain's character: he wills attention to his own rectitude and yet allows appearances to compromise that image. His relationship with Ms. Iseman is a case in point. The story is not about a romance, not about sex. It's about the character of a man who would be president.
An enterprise-threatening event
The public editor had to explain it to him. In presidential politics, the suggestion of an illicit romance can be an "enterprise threatening event," as they say in corporate law. If the New York Times had uncovered an affair, and McCain's denial did not hold up, that would probably be fatal for his campaign. Which is why the news broke so big.
This automatically changes what the story is "about," Hoyt argued. Readers were not wrong to focus on the insinuations of an affair. That was the enterprise-threatening event! You cannot trigger a potential crisis like that using second hand information from eight years ago that you didn't confirm. It puts you in a weak position. "The stakes are just too big," said Hoyt. Which is exactly what I mean by thinking politically.
"They can't be that clueless, can they?," writes Jarvis.
They can't be that bad at understanding news and politics, public opinion and media, surely. So are they merely trying to spin us? Are they embarrassed at what they did? Are they trying to convince themselves as well as us that this sex story -- the sort of thing these high-fallutin' journalists would usually insist is the stuff of Drudge and blogs and tabloids -- is just an illustration in their bigger point about the life and times of John McCain? Surely, they can't think we're that dumb. Surely, they're not that dumb.
Jeff says he "can't figure out what these Timesmen are thinking." My suggestion: their codes often prevent them from thinking, and their peer culture spins that refusal as necessary and principled, even when it violates the reality principle. (On a related note, see my piece on mindlessness in the campaign press: Beast Without a Brain.) Listen to Jill Abramson explain why the stuff about an affair had to be in the story...
If the editors had summarily decided to edit out the issue of romance, because of possible qualms over "sexual innuendo" or some of the others issues cited in the reader questions, our story would not have been a complete and accurate reflection of what our sources told our reporters.
Now in the pages of the New York Times, readers can be told about "prosecutorial discretion," and they are expected to be grown-up enough to handle this wrinkle in how the world works. But when it's time for a lesson in Editor's Discretion suddenly all sophistication disappears, and we are supposed to believe that the Times had no choice: if sources said "romance" the story has to say romance.
But the readers who can handle "not every crime deserves to be prosecuted," are the same readers who understand that the New York Times did not have to say a word about the romance to publish the essentials of the story. Politically, they are miles ahead of where Abramson's explainer stands: wiser than their newspaper. This seems to me a kind of credibility gap. How are you going to explain politics to me, if you don't understand the politics of what you published last Thursday? (Times watchers of a certain age: perhaps you remember "a little wild streak" and ""I can't account for every weird mind that reads The New York Times.")
The character trap
Another factor involves the investigation of "character," a key word in Keller's explanations. I don't think journalists are particularly good judges of character in politicians. (Do you?) But making an "issue" of it forces them to be exactly that: good judges. How can you report on a politician's character without knowing what good character is within the sphere of practical politics? Yet journalists are naturally squeamish about making those judgments. It violates their code, threatens their political innocence, disturbs the illusion I once called the view from nowhere.
In order to prevent these code violations from seeming too flagrant, political reporters can rely on conventional morality. Obedience to that becomes "character." (Can't go wrong with the ten commandments, right?) Or they can try to judge a politician on grounds he himself has set out. Either way innocence in the press is restored to character coverage. The Times story relied on both methods. It had "thou shall not commit adultery" and "McCain holds himself up as...."
Information that violates self-asserted standards is seized on as revelatory in the character department, but part of the newsroom's enthusiasm for such discoveries is the insta-innocence factor: Hey, these aren't our standards, they're the candidate's own. Who can fairly criticize us for holding him to that? No one! Hah!
This may have given them a bit of false confidence.
The swamp of appearances
If reporting on "character" is an intellectual trap, so too with reports about "appearances." In the Q and A, Keller pointed out how McCain understood that "questions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics." Somewhere along the line in an "appearances are reality" story, journalists will conclude that it doesn't matter if it happened, the appearance that it happened is enough to mean something or other. That might be one way you run with Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened... when you don't even know if the top advisers were right. The anxiety of the aides shows the power of appearances. Letting an appearance problem fester shows character flaws. It's both a swamp, and the appearance of one! And according to Chris Nolan of Spot-On, totally unnecessary.
Then there's the fact that the Times doesn't listen all that well. I base this on some experiences with (some) Times people, and their record in public controversies like this one. An amusing example came during Friday's Emergency Q and A with readers (see my Cliff Notes version of what the Times said there) when it took up a question identical to one I posed at Huff Post. Why did the Times endorse McCain when it knew this was coming?
Times people typically listen to your question with ears that have heard (they think) the same question a hundred times. It's sometimes hard to get them to concentrate on what you are actually saying because they are always jumping ahead to what they think your real agenda is-- and to illusions about the Times they can overturn for you. Here, they simply heard the question as the same 'ol one about the newsroom taking its cues from the editorial page. So they answered that, using political editor Richard Stevenson. ("...totally separate operations that do not consult or coordinate.")
When it came to the reader's actual question--why didn't the editorial page take better cues from the newsroom?--Stevenson said he had no idea, and wasn't the right person to be answering this at all. Which is funny. Here's the question from Debbie Collazo, Tucson, Ariz.
Why did The New York Times strongly endorse Senator McCain to be the Republican Party nominee in January, if at the same time the paper was well aware of and continuing to investigate what it considered to be front-page, damaging, "un-presidential" charges?
Times to Debbie: Why are you asking us!
Accountability and the cathedral of news
Like I said, they don't always listen well. But as Tim Schmoyer notes, the Times since 2004 has been getting steadily better at accountability moments and two-way dialogue. The most poignant part in the Q and A with readers was this question:
Hasn't The Times's defense of itself been too aloof and passive? Anyone who turns on the TV or radio, or logs on to the Internet is viewing a completely lopsided argument. Almost every commentator or guest denounces, curses, or at least questions the NYT, while there is nearly no push-back or defense from The Times. How can you allow yourself to be punching bags, but still convince the public that your controversial stories have merit?
Keller said it was a fair question, and he didn't know what the solution was. "We want to stick up for our journalism, but we resist becoming the story, and we especially resist seeing a long, painstaking work of reporting reduced to a war of sound bites."
I can well understand that.
Final note: I don't know Bill Keller, and don't claim to understand him. Watching him from a distance, and reading his explanations of things, I get the sense that he has accepted the need for transparency, intellectually. But he is pulled, as many at the Times are pulled, toward an opposite idea: the cathedral of news. The wish is for authority so strong it doesn't have to explain itself, or take questions from doubters. Those who are curioius have to watch the paper for what the paper decides to do next. This notion is not dead at the Times. It's the opposite of transparency. It's an idea about editorial mystique.
Let's not forget Keller's declaration on Thursday: "We think the story speaks for itself." The next day the Times was publishing 6,000 words that spoke further for the story that was to speak for itself.
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After their shameful and unverified story about John Mc Cain and their over the top bias support of Hillary Clinton we have discontinued ort subscription to the NY Times after 30 YEARS. It is my understanding that the NY Times has lost 12% of its circulation since January 2008.
They have lost the confidence of a lot of people because they inject their politics into the news articles. Opinion belongs on the editorial and op ed page... They deserve the loss in circulation......
The Times was wrong to endorse so early- they should have waited..
The NYTimes has run a story that needs to be told. McCain is a dangerous candidate, but the MSM has, until now, been reluctant to scrutinize his record owing to his media amiability and access. The candidate is right-wing, changes his positions faster than Mitt, is old-school in the ethics department, and will readily describe the Iraq war as it isn't. For McCain, war seems to be the first and best foreign policy option. The lobbyists as bed-fellows part of the story underscores the man's hypocrisy. Apparently, the romantic angle was overplayed in some minds, but the investigation already pointed out worrisome flaws and should be considered to be in its initial stages for all its components. After all, the blue dress did not show up at the beginning, but at the end of the investigation of another national figure. The biggest issue for the NYTimes, at this point, is not to be intimidated into dropping the investigation of this candidate, but rather, to pursue it will added vigor.
Given what appears to be monumentally bad judgment on the part of Bill Keller and his continued stubborn defense of his decision to go with this story, I'm wondering how he -- or the NYT management -- can possibly justify his continuing as Executive Editor for the Times.
If someone's head doesn't roll for this screwup, the NYT isn't going to be credible to anyone on any story critical of the GOP or the right wing in the foreseeable future.
Which is more important, the integrity of the NYT or the hubris on an individual?
John McCain in BED with a lobbyist.
John McCain in bed with a LOBBYIST.
See? It's all a matter of inflection.
Call me a contrarian..but
GOOD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!!!
When most of the other papers in the U.S. won't run ANY controversial story without an
army of lawyersharks vetting it first, it's
GREAT to see an editor run a story he KNEW
would put him and his paper in a brickbat
whirlwind....I hope they prove every point in the original article.
People have the collective memory rentention
of a squirrel that ate a pound of coffee.
McCain was one of the PRINCIPAL players in
the Keating 5 scandal..what destroyed Alan
Cranston (1000 times the man McCain EVER was!)
seems to have teflon'd right off him.
I simply cannot wait to see what ELSE in
"Bad Ash's" grampa's skeleton closet.
NOW LOOK!, everyone knows the McCain story is true, in all respects. Why, when he's cheated on his wife before--and taken money and favors from lobbyists, is it SUCH a surprise.
Only the minutiae are interesting--like, HOW OLD WAS L'l CINDY when he first started cheating with her on his older wife? Like is 32 a "thing" with him? (Has to do with consistency.) (Of which McCain has very little in other venues.)
Since so many people knew, for so long, whey do we have to play hissy fit when the Times writes it, however stupidly?
McCain is past his prime. There are very few Republicans that have the desire to fight for a losing cause. Republicans can only win if the voting is sabotaged by electronic manipulating or monstrous voter disqualifications. It worked twice before but I think this is not as easy this time. With Carl Rove still a free man and the Justice Dept. still under the control of Bush and Cheney anything is possible. The media is the biggest bunch of phoneys. They want a Republican tax give back administration. They are the spokesmen for bad politicians that have not been outed and they help bury many stories such as the Dept of Justice false charges against the ex-Governor of Alabama. A vote for McCain is a vote no change.
I suspect that the NYT ran this story knowing it was somewhat lacking in substance (and that it would be roundly condemned) with hopes it would cause Bill Kristol to resign as an op-ed contributor. That is, the Times realized its mistake in hiring the twit in the first place and decided it would save face by nudging Billy Boy into resigning in protest. It didn't work because they overestimated Kristol's integrity. (He has none.)
The NY Times is only considered credible with the extreme left and this story has even real liberals upset at their attempt to smear.
This shows how distorted the view is from both extremes. The extreme right (like you) sees the Times as extreme left. The extreme left sees the Times as in the pocket of corporate interests. Only the sensible in-betweens recognize the Times as flawed, as in this case and in their uncritical acceptance and flacking of the pre-Iraq War intelligence, but still generally about as reliable a source as exists.
In fact, for a little perspective, let's consider the provenance of this right-wing meme of a "liberal media." The following is from a piece that reviews the impact of media coverage of the mid-20th century civil rights movement:
"When the FBI came to Dawson, Georgia, in 1958 to investigate allegations of police brutality and civil rights violations, the local county sheriff, Z. T. "Zeke" Matthews, blamed the situation on television news broadcasts originating in the North that stirred up local African Americans to protest. Television and the "communists," he suggested, were the point of origin for all disorder and difficulty in the county. "There isn't a nigger in Georgia who wouldn't take over if he could," Matthews stated plainly. "I've noticed things have gotten worse since television," Matthews pointed out,
"When the FBI came to Dawson, Georgia, in 1958 to investigate allegations of police brutality and civil rights violations, the local county sheriff, Z. T. "Zeke" Matthews, blamed the situation on television news broadcasts originating in the North that stirred up local African Americans to protest. Television and the "communists," he suggested, were the point of origin for all disorder and difficulty in the county. "There isn't a nigger in Georgia who wouldn't take over if he could," Matthews stated plainly. "I've noticed things have gotten worse since television," Matthews pointed out,
'They all got television sets up there and hear the news over NBC and CBS, telling what the Supreme Court has done and what the Federal Courts say and all about civil rights, and they begin thinking.'"
Well it's no wonder them good ol' boys had a bone to pick with that damn New York City media. The Commie Broadcasting System (CBS) and the rest, they got them n-----s THINKING! Can you imagine? And who can really blame you right wingers with long memories for still holding a grudge, right?
http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2004/thomas/4e.htm
The NY Times trashed Rudy while knowing Rudy cleaned uo their city. The NY Times exhonerated Rudy later on some page deep inside the paper. They trashed Hillary and now trashed McCain. I am sure they will offer some worthless tidbit on Obama to disguise their support of him
The Times trashed Rudy because he deserves trashing (and because he himself is a piece of trash). The only problem is that they waited WAY too long to do it -- they endorsed him for re-election in 1997, and he was just as much a "narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power" (to quote their editorial from 1/25/08) then as he is now.
And please explain how endorsing HRC (for the New York primary) constitutes trashing her.
The reason I do not agree with critics of the NY Times is that they focus on the concept of journalism whereas I focus on the simple fact that McCain could become President of USA, a position which is given much power in our form of government.
If McCain had a fling with a stewardess the Times would have reported nothing and everybody knows it. The Times story ws published because it involved a Senator running for President and a lobbyist. Thank you New York Times.
There should be more reporting on what lobbyists do, not less. Does anybody remember any reporting on Abramoff before it turned out that an innocent man had been murdered in So Fla by hit men egged on by a corrupt Congressman crony of Abramoff at Abramoff's request? The congressman is now in jail but that won't bring back the dead.
The Times screwed up big time. Yes, the story SHOULD be McCain's collusion with influence-peddling lobbyests. But by overreaching for the sex angle without adequate proof, the Times handed Rush Limbaugh and his friends a cudgel to use against the big, bad, "biased left-wing media," effectively sucking all the oxygen out of the underlying story about corrupt government. It's the same blunder Mary Mapes made with the forged memo that allowed Little Green Footballs to distract all the media attention away from Bush's National Guard record.
The Times got the story right. I'm certain McCain was screwing her too. What is most telling is the way the MSM reacted to the news. They attacked the messenger. We need to clean house on the MSM in this country.
There's another obvious possibility about what's really going on.
Remember Bush failed to complete his military service, refused to undergo the required medical screening to fly, and was rumored to have been hidden on some base by his daddy's intervention so they could claim he'd completed his service.
Some contend that information about this scandal was deliberately fed to Dan Rather so he would report, the Rove Machine would attack for reporting on flimsy evidence, and then nobody in the media would dare touch that story again.
Deja Vu all over again? Did McCain have an affair? Or was it just a flirtation, but nonetheless contrary to this self-proclaimed image of honesty and openness? Was he doing favors for his girlfriend's clients? Will anyone in the media dig into this story? Or are they all afraid they'll be attacked as smear merchants if they do?
Although I feel the TIMES should have firm evidence of an affair before reporting that, yet I'm not so sure they don't, I do believe McCain to be a hypocrite. There have been, for years, witnesses to his womanizing and was given a pass in the Navy for "Conduct unbecoming an Officer" because "Daddy" was an Admiral. Nevertheless, when Cindy McCain commented, "John wouldn't have had an affair because he wouldn't hurt his family"...I wonder how she felt about hurting McCain's first family while they were whoring around in an adultrous affair. I say, if it looks like a skunk & smells like a skunk, it's a skunk.
I doubt the right wing conspiratorially fed these flawed stories, but otherwise your analogy to Rather/Mapes/CBS is correct. With their sloppy journalism, CBS and the Times both handed the right wing blogs and talk radio the propaganda tools necessary to continue discrediting the mainstream media as "liberal" and distract from the important underlying stories (Bush's Guard history and McCain's influence peddling).
Exactly. We need to drain the swamp called the MSM.
I would believe anything concerning that self serving Rather. I had the experience of watching him being conned by another self serving SOB into appearing on 60 Minutes to interfer with a long term series of federal investigations that had already been presented to a grand jury and were in the process of being prepared for trials. The only thing holding up prosecutions at the time of Rather's "revelations" was the fact that a current investigation was in the final stage of investigation and the USA did not want to alert the company to the fact that other companies had been investigated for the same crime. That ongoing investigation was terminated because of Rather's interference. The government proceeded against the scores of companies and individuals against whom the grand jury had already returned true bills when Rather was telling the nation on 60 Minutes that nothing was being done by the government to act on the situation he was "revealing" on 60 Minutes.
I found in many years of intimate involvement with situations being reported in newspapers, magazines or television that there was seldom anything accurately, or in some cases even truthfully,being told. I recall many years ago reading about an invesetigation in Look Magazine while getting a haircut in a barber shop in Chicago. I handed the magazine to another agent who was with me and mentioned that the crime story in it sounded familiar. The agent told me it should since I had been the one who investigated the case.
It was the Washington Post which got the story right. The Times got it wrong. The WPost focussed on McCain's lobbying. Not the affair. That was the story.
This was such a huge screw-up to run this story, only yet further damaging what remains of the NYT credibility.
Between this fiasco and the fact that they run a column by the fascist Kristol, it's enough to make a person paranoid to the point of thinking they're actually an agent of political sabotage for the Republican party.
Can the Times staff get any more clueless?
Idiots like McCain don't want a woman to have the right to choose what they do with their bodies. However, he and the rest of the war-mongers will take that child which issues from a woman's body to fight and die in the illegal war in Iraq for the next 100 years. McCain stated we will be there that long. Who is he really working for? The war profiteers? Be worried folks, very worried if McCain and his repugnicant cohorts also alter the results of this presidential election. Would people stand for the Supremes appointing once again the next president? Who will be the Katherine Harris to stop a vote recount should it come to that?
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Posted February 25, 2008 | 10:46 PM (EST)