Clouding the real story

I was about to jot down some comments on the recent hullabaloo surrounding a controversial New York Times story on John McCain's ties to lobbyists, but just now I read a column by the Times public editor, a person (some newspapers use the title "ombudsman") who represents the reader by looking into what is behind editorial decisions, newspaper policy, etc.

The current Times public editor is Clark Hoyt, and his column today makes the same two points that I was going to make. First:

A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And 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.

Two unnamed sources in the story -- both former aides to the senator who admitted they were "disillusioned" with him -- said that they thought there might be a romantic relationship between McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman. In order to print that accusation against a presidential candidate, as Hoyt writes, a newspaper should have unassailable evidence.

Hoyt's second point:

The pity of it is that, without the sex, The Times was on to a good story. McCain, who was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 for exercising “poor judgment” by intervening with federal regulators on behalf of a corrupt savings and loan executive, recast himself as a crusader against special interests and the corrupting influence of money in politics. Yet he has continued to maintain complex relationships with lobbyists like Iseman, at whose request he wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to urge a speed-up on a decision affecting one of her clients.

McCain, running on his integrity, was party to a savings and loan collapse that caused the federal government (our tax dollars) more than $3 billion to bail out, and, more recently, his injecting himself into a matter involving one of Iseman's clients before the FCC aroused the ire of at least two of the agency's commissioners, who've said they feel that the senator acted improperly on the matter.

These are both old stories, but the fact that McCain's current campaign -- one that is built around the man's integrity and his advocacy of clean government -- is managed by lobbyists would have been the logical lead for this article.

Now, of course, the story for several news cycles has been the Times rather than McCain. In fact, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has been given a bump in fundraising from this episode, as the Times -- a rather moderate newspaper from my perspective -- is reviled among conservatives as an organ of the liberal elite.

The paper had an important story, but the thrust of it was watered down by some muddy thinking. We all should, and do, expect more from the country's paper of record.