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The New York Times on The New York Times
In response to last week’s infamous article on John McCain (see these two posts, “Does the NYT have a story?” and “Take a shot at the Times for their shot at McCain,” for earlier discussion), The New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt wrote yesterday:
The article was notable for what it did not say: It did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not make clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately — an affair or just an association with a lobbyist that could look bad. And it did not say whether Weaver, the only on-the-record source, believed there was a romance. The Times did not offer independent proof, like the text messages between Detroit’s mayor and a female aide that The Detroit Free Press disclosed recently, or the photograph of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart’s lap. …
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.
As the public editor, Hoyt serves as the readers’ advocate for the Times. Read his entire column here.
back to top39 Comments to “The New York Times on The New York Times”
I really don’t expect the mainstream media to do a decent and meaningful job of fgocusing on actual issues of concern in this race. At any rate, we are still waiting for such a focus.
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Guess they didn’t have any proof.
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Again, I sincerely doubt that the Republican attack machine will be this accountable.
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Luke, what the Republicans attack machine does is irrelevant to what a newspaper which claims to be unbiased did. Neither the Republican — nor the Democratic — attack machines are unbiased.
But if you can’t be unbiased yourself, if it makes you feel better to deflect onto the Repubs….
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Is Luke admitting that the NY Times is an arm of the Democratic Party? I’m sure that he didn’t mean to.
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No Kyle I’m not. I’m just setting the tone for what is sure to be an election cycle filled to the brim with double standards and creative interpretations of what is “presidential” here on World Mag Blog. It’s will be useful when Bill O’Reily accuses Obama of being in a gay terror sleeper cell, to remember how NJL thinks the Times should behave, and what standards we should all demand from election discourse.
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Luke, there’s a huge difference between political discourse, including punditry, and journalistic reporting. You know that, I believe. If an editorial had implied that McCain was too “close” to Ms Isely that would have been tacky and rude but still tolerable. For a news article to do so is completely wrong.
Completely apart from whether we like or dislike McCain (I do not) the NY Times was wrong. Their own public editor says so. It also would have been wrong if they had spread rumors about Obama or Clinton.
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Luke,
We mustn’t forget that this is primarily a Republican website. So anything attacking the NY Times, the media in general, liberals, and Democrats is fair game. Anything attacking the conservatives and Republicans is not.
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Anlir, you aren’t getting it. This is about the New York Times’ public editor admitting that his newspaper made a mistake.
How would you like it if a newspaper published something hurtful that somebody said about you?
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My only standard for a newspaper article, Luke, is that they put in provable facts. They should leave their biases on the editorial page. That’s what it’s there for, just like letters to the editors.
Newspapers enjoy a lot of first amendment protections, especially in the area of public persons. It’s hard to mount a libel suit if you’re a public person. You put yourself out there. But these guys at the NYT printed a name and a picture of a private woman they were suggesting had an illicit sexual affair — all without proof! And now, even when the NYT editor is saying they did wrong, you guys are still defending them. What does it take for you to open your eyes?
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Credibility may not be a finite resource, but I can’t imagine wasting any trying to defend this lame story. Even less on efforts do deflect attention from its lameness.
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Oh come on Kyle, the NY Times was raked over the coals on here for endorsing McCain on their editorial page. Now they’re being raked over the coals for printing an article that points out some negatives about him. The objections aren’t principled – they’re political.
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Anlir, your refusal to discuss the matter on its merits as journalistic irresponsibility is just as political.
What’s wrong with being political and principled?
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And for the record, I’m not defending the NY Times on this story. What I am critical of is the typical, unthinking, knee-jerk reaction from conservatives on here anytime the NY Times is mentioned. Y’all have been so programed by right-wing talk radio that you can’t even think logically and reasonably about an issue. If it doesn’t come from Fox News or Rush it’s automatically assumed to be wrong or evil.
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Anlir – We are not hitting the NYT for printing some negatives about him.
We are hitting the NYT for manufacturing negatives having no foundation in fact.
Many of us harbor suspicions of the NYT’s active bias against conservatives. This is a good indication of that there is a real foundation for those suspicions.
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That’s a pretty lazyminded caricuature there at #14, Anlir. I had to check the avatar twice to be sure it wasn’t from Rdean {:~)
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Anlir, you have been so programmed by the left-wing media that you can’t think logically and reasonably about an issue. Let’s call it even.
Oh, and you haven’t actually addressed the fact that the NYT public editor took his paper to task for their irresponsibility. I guess he’s programmed by Rush Limbaugh.
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KRM,
You accuse the NY Times of “manufacturing negatives”, yet we’ve seen no evidence to back up the charge up from you or any other Republican. All of this sound and fury on here (and elsewhere) is nothing more than a coordinated campaign by the Republican Party to raise money and support for the Republican nominee.
I’d be more inclined to take conservatives seriously if they ever went against their own right-wing newspapers and news sites for printing unfounded, and outrageous attacks on liberals and Democrats.
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The error the NYT made is respecting its readers’ and America’s intelligence. In reporting McCain’s tight relations with lobbyists, the paper thought its readers would ignore the lurid implications and focus on the hypocrisy of the Straight Talk man working for lobbyists instead of the people. Unforunately Americans focused on the lurid details and didn’t follow the money.
However, NYT couldn’t leave out the lurid implications and keep the finiacial details in without compromising the story. The real story remains — the man who runs on a ticket of honest gov’t is metaphorically in bed with lobbyists (perhaps literally but that isn’t nearly as important)
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HRW, they could easily have left out the detail about McCain’s aides saying that they thought that McCain was too “close” to Iseman. Then they would have had an important and relatively fair story.
I am shocked that they are shocked that people would be more interested in a sex scandal than a political scandal.
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KYLE A: the NYT public editor took his paper to task for their irresponsibility
What the public editor didn’t say:
!. The story smeared McCain
2. The story was factually incorrect
3. The story was driven by liberal political ideology
4. The story was timed to hurt McCain
5. Reader fury at The Times was rational
6. The Times failed to follow its rules about unnamed sources.
What the public editor did say is that The Times should have applied different rules to the assessment of the unnamed sources, because suspicions about sex are different from other topics, too emotional for readers to treat hypothetically.
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.
Newspapers of all political persuasions regularly tell readers what “unnamed sources” claim is going through the minds of unidentified public figures. The public editor didn’t tell The Times to stop that kind of reporting. He said that kind of reporting is “wrong” (though not uninformative) when the subject is sex.
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In actuality, the “sex” part of the story was a minor point – I’d say less than 20%. The vast majority of the story was a historical overview of the Keating Five scandal and McCain’s relationship to lobbyists and lobbying in general since then. It’s our Republican friends who have chosen to focus on the minor point (sex) and ignore the main point of the story (lobbying). Given McCain’s compromised position on lobbying, the Republicans will do anything to avoid focusing on that.
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HRW wrote (#19); “In reporting McCain’s tight relations with lobbyists, the paper thought its readers would ignore the lurid implications…”
Does anyone on this blog (including HRW) really believe that?
HRW’s fuller quote; “In reporting McCain’s tight relations with lobbyists, the paper thought its readers would ignore the lurid implications and focus on the hypocrisy of the Straight Talk man working for lobbyists instead of the people.”
I know of no evidence that McCain is inappropriately working for lobbyists and not for the people. That’s a baseless and spinning creation of his critics.
I’m no McCain fan either.
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Joel/Kyle — I believe the journalists got carried away with their “scoop” to forget the US fascination on celeb gossip and anything to do with sex. Perhaps its a case of liberal elitist not understanding the regular American’s fascination with sex in comparison to political corruption.
Joel read the article, ignore the sex parts and draw conclusions.
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Is the NYT story has considerably more substance than the current media fascination with questioning Michelle Obama’s patriotism. And where are the right wing calls for media integrity (lets just forget about objectivity). Like I said, right wing hypocrites would applaud if you you moved the story to FOX and changed the word “McCain” to “Clinton.” Don’t believe for even a split second that they care one iota about fair reporting.
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Luke nails it dead on. If this story had Bill Clinton’s name attached to it, it would be the lead story on Fox News and talk radioland for weeks and months on end. And they would focus on the “sex” part of it, down to the most lurid and intimate details imaginable.
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Luke and Anlir, if you are actually admitting that the media is sensationalistic, then I think we have reached a rare point of agreement. We all know that sex sells, and almost all the media outlets use that fact to their advantage. They shouldn’t, but they do. That has nothing to do with politics.
I didn’t want to know all of the lurid details of Clinton’s sexual escapades. However, I think that the media were right for reporting on the litigation that was in process, and once the sexual harrassment of Clinton’s intern was substantiated, they had to report it (but didn’t need to tell us everything we heard). It’s no different from how they reported the Clarence Thomas hearings. Do you remember those?
None of this has anything to do with a paper reporting hearsay as news, however. No matter who it is, they shouldn’t spread gossip.
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HRW, you claimed that the NY Times “thought its readers would ignore the lurid implications…” It was your rather absurd sanatizing of the motives of the NY Times that I questioned.
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Luke, what specific examples do you have of the media questioning Michelle Obama’s patriotism?
Perhaps some have, but I am asking for an example of your claim. In any case, it was Mrs. Obama who said, “”For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” (Michelle Obama, Feb. 2008, told a Milwaukee crowd).
I have heard some right wing commenters deal with this quote while falling over themselves claiming to not be questioning her patriotism. But can the implications of her statement be questioned at some level? In any case, this has no relevance to what the NY Times did journalistically to McCain.
Luke, to compare what the NY Times reported here on McCain with the reporting that took place with Clinton is ridiculous. It’s apples and lampshades.
Honest liberals can simply admit that the NY Times was off base here and move on.
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to compare what the NY Times reported here on McCain with the reporting that took place with Clinton is ridiculous.
Quite correct – The NYT questions the role of lobbyists in McCain’s career, the implied romantic relationship was a small part of the article. The piece is relevant and important since McCain has made integrity a key part of his political image. Thus, the media should scrutinize his past associations in the interest of keeping him honest. This is the role of the media. Clinton’s escapades with an intern and his initial denial of this arose through the ceaseless prodding of the puritanical Starr. How he justified his line of questioning as it related to the initial terms of the inquiry — a land deal in Arkansas is beyond me. In any event, the media should have focused on the terms of the inquiry not the lurid details that emerged.
Only in the search for sexual gratification and boosting sales in a declining industry do these episodes connect.
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When one looks back at how the media, especially the right-wing media, treated Bill Clinton, this story on McCain doesn’t even rate a blip on the screen. To hear our conservative and Republican friend bleating about how unfair the article is to McCain is totally laughable. They had no such compunction when it came to Clinton. Anything went, and the more lurid and outlandish the stories were, the louder our conservative friends cheered. Their hypocrisy is off the Richter scale.
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Anybody care to peek at a hypothetical?
You, blogger, are now the editor at the major newspaper of your choice, and the same two McCaniacs who were The Times’ unidentified sources come to you, establish their connection with the story, and spill additional information. We can’t know for sure what these unnamed sources will say — for convenience let’s call them “Yahwist” and “Quelle” ( remember, without unnamed sources we couldn’t have the Bible) — but we can suppose their sensational yarns will take one of the two following forms:
A.) What made McCain’s advisors convinced of a romantic relationship was that Yahwist told the advisors he personally saw McCain and the lobbyist kissing in an an upward-bound hotel elevator at 11 p.m, and the advisors believed him. Then Quelle saw the pair at another hotel a week later having a late breakfast while McCain was supposed to be attending a committee meeting about lobby reform. McCain turned on Quelle with the sort of language that concerns Dr. Dobson.
B.) Yahwist and Quelle complain that The Times twisted their narratives. The relationship wasn’t romantic; it was down-right hostile. McCain and the lobbyist couldn’t stand each other, but no other lobbyist was versed in the complexities of the telecommunications industry. Far from trying to keep them apart, McCain’s staff had to drag them into meetings where the other was present.
As an editor, you have to decide whether you’d run one or the other or neither of the two scoops above.
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I don’t understand the liberals on this thread.
Did the NYT run a story on McCain?
Did it reflect badly on him?
Did both McCain and Isley deny any Illict relationship?
Did the “un-named sources” say that there were any improprieties, or did they just warn McCain to avoid the look of improprieties?
So, where’s the beef?
In all of this I DO enjoy watching them stick-up for Billy boy. What a slimy ex-president. Stick up for his South Carolina attack on Obama too, please! Tell us all how Republicans keep on attacking the great man. LUKE brought up Clinton first in #25.
When Nixon left office, I just wanted him to go away and live quietly. I think all ex-Presidents should just fade away. Jimmy and Bill won’t shut up. They won’t leave us alone. I promise not to bring them up if they will just keep quiet.
Will you keep quiet about them too?
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Thomas Sowell is spot on in his latest op-ed (Feb. 26, 2008):
Below are Sowell’s words (quoted from his op-ed):
“The front page of the New York Times has increasingly become the home of editorials disguised as ‘news’ stories. Too often it has become the home of hoaxes. Going back some years, it was the Tawana Brawley hoax that she had been gang-raped by a bunch of white men. Just a couple of years ago, it was the Duke University “rape” hoax that they fell for.”
“In between there were the various hoaxes of New York Times reporter Jason Blair, who was kept on and promoted until too many people found out what he had been doing and the paper had to let him go.”
“Last month the New York Times created its own hoax with a long front page article about how war veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were killing people back in the United States because of the stress they had gone through in combat. That hoax was shot down two days later by the New York Post, which showed that the murder rate among returning war veterans was only one-fifth the murder rate among civilians in the same age brackets.”
“Undaunted, the New York Times has come up with its latest front-page sensation, the claim that some anonymous people either suspected an affair between Senator John McCain and a female lobbyist or tried to forestall an affair. But apparently no one actually claimed that they knew there was an affair…”
“People who share the New York Times’ political views are treated as ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ People with different views are condemned for “the appearance of impropriety,” even if there is no hard evidence that they did anything wrong.”
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To continue to quote Thomas Sowell (from today’s op-ed):
“Over the years, the New York Times has increasingly discredited itself… The declining credibility of the New York Times and of other tendentious media is, in one sense, a healthy thing. There has been too much public gullibility that has been cynically exploited by both the media and politicians.”
“Hysteria has become the norm for too many once-serious publications, whether it has been hysteria for the purpose of hyping circulation or to advance some political agenda.”
“Dan Rather’s fake memo about President Bush’s National Guard service might have gone unchallenged, and affected an election, back in the old days when the media consisted largely of like-minded colleagues who would not embarrass one of their own.”
“Bloggers and talk radio shot that one down. But it is doubtful if we have seen the last of the journalistic hoaxes. Not in an election year.”
The quotes above are from Thomas Sowell.
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JOEL: Honest liberals can simply admit that the NY Times was off base here and move on.
Sadly, they’re too honest for their own good, Joel!
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BOB BUCKLES: Did the “un-named sources” say that there were any improprieties, or did they just warn McCain to avoid the look of improprieties? So, where’s the beef?
Way to go Bob, shoot your mouth! The class covered this topic days ago. We’re on page 173 now:
The unnamed sources said McCain’s top advisors were “convinced” he was having a “romantic” relationship. The Times didn’t say particularly what what was so convincing. The sources said the lobbyist turned up at fund raisers, visited his offices, and accompanied him on a corporate jet. The sources said McCain “acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance.”
Now Bob, find somebody to save you from yourself. How about reinstating your subscription to the LATimes? You’ve got to pull your own weight here, dude
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Scroop, I don’t think that, in the long run, anyone can be too honest for their own good.
But in the case of some liberals, you may be right. Liberals can be too honest for their own good as liberals, since their honesty can make them lose their liberalism itself.
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Mr. Moth
“… the lobbyist turned up at fund raisers…” Lobbyists are supposed to turn up at fund raisers. It’s what they do.
“…the lobbyist… visited his offices…” What is so strange about this? Isn’t this also what lobbyists do?
“…the lobbyist… accompanied him on a corporate jet.” If I was the boss and let a Senator ride in my jet I would certainly want an employee riding along to do their job of lobbying. The Senator gets a free ride and my employee gets some face time. That is just exactly what lobbyists do.
I’m sorry that this looks so bad. If I was an elected official, I would want to always be visible when meeting with people. I wouldn’t want closed doors. I would prefer to have another person in the room at all times. That would be what my secretary or office manager would be for. Better yet, it would be nice to have my wife there also when a woman was in the office. Public places are also good.
Mr.Moth, it is cheaper to just have conversations with smart guys like you than to read the LA Times.
PS I hoe you enjoy my feeble attempts at humor. I do not mean to offend, just to lighten what seems to be argument for arguments sake.
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