For making the front page his national newspaper the equivalent of the men's room wall, Times editor Bill Keller is justly eviscerated in tomorrow's edition by Public Editor Clark Hoyt. The pathetic excuse for reporting that masqueraded as some sort of halfling-expose of Senator John McCain's maybe-perhaps affair and insiderish dealing with a lobbyist eight years ago threw a flaming sexual cocktail into the Presidential race - and its amateurish standards did more than wound a single candidate.
. . . [I]n the absence of a smoking gun, I asked Keller why he decided to run what he had. “If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we’d have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members,” he replied. “But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career.”
I think that ignores the scarlet elephant in the room. 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.
Exactly. I do not support McCain for the Presidency. As a liberal Democrat, my vote in the fall belongs to Clinton or Obama. But I'd hate to see a relatively fair race wrecked by rumor-mongering on the front page of what was once a great newspaper. McCain doesn't deserve it. And neither do we. And any rookie reporter can read that bunch of half-boiled reporter's notes and understand immediately where The Times stood: they didn't have the story, and it wasn't even close.
UPDATE: More from Jarvis, The New Republic, TalkLeft, and a series of questions for Times editors from Jay Rosen.
