The conspiracy theory going around conservative circles goes like this: The New York Times endorsed McCain in the GOP primaries while sitting on the story about his relationship with a D.C. lobbyist. The villainous paper was just setting up the senator so they could later destroy him.
The theory redefines loopy for any number of reasons -- If they wanted to destroy McCain wouldn't they have sprung the story in December? Since when does the New York Times have such influence in the GOP primaries that their imprimatur carries such weight? Why spring the story now and not in, say, October? -- but it also demonstrates an ignorance of how newspapers work.
While few may believe this, there is at most newspapers a separation between the reporters (who write the news stories) and the editorial board (who write the unsigned editorials). When I was at The Boston Globe I cannot recall ever reading the paper's editorials (I cannot, for that matter, remember the last time that I read any paper's unsigned editorials) and being in the D.C. bureau didn't have the faintest idea of who was on the Globe's editorial board. And while I can't say as a certainty I doubt they were being briefed on what I and my colleagues were working on.
The Times' ombudsman -- or anyone else -- would do well to address this issue and put it to rest. Is the paper's editorial board routinely -- or ever -- briefed on pending stories? Unlikely. More likely the ed board made it's endorsement without knowledge that reporters were tracking down these rumors. And even in the unlikely event that they knew about the pending story, since the story was not yet baked to the point where the Times felt they could run it, they would have been out of line to base judgments upon it. But like I said, the whole line of reasoning redefines loopy.
Posted February 21, 2008 | 01:10 PM (EST)