Tag: New York Times

How stupid can the Times get?*

Very. Walter Brooks explains. And the New York Times, in what may have been a misguided attempt to give Barack Obama some cover, has managed to turn his innocent wave to the Berlin crowd into a Nazi salute. Good grief.

*Correction: I take it back. The front of the Boston Globe shows Obama waving with his right hand, but the “Angola” sign is still backwards. Clearly it was just turned around. How stupid can I get?

McCain’s factually inaccurate op-ed

The John McCain op-ed piece that was rejected by the New York Times contains at least one bit of factually inaccurate information about Barack Obama. That alone is sufficient reason to send it back for a rewrite. Instead, McCain has chosen to go public and claim that the Times refused to publish what he had written despite having run a commentary by Obama last week.

Here is the inaccuracy:

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

The truth, of course, is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has indeed endorsed Obama’s 16-month timetable for withdrawal. Republicans are now spinning like mad to make it appear that Maliki’s remarks had not been properly translated. But this Josh Marshall post makes it clear that Maliki said what he meant and meant what he said.

In fairness, it should be noted, as Time’s Joe Klein does, that McCain’s piece was rejected last Friday, and Maliki’s remarks were not reported until the next day. But Klein goes on to observe that the McCain campaign still refuses to acknowledge that Maliki said what he said. In any case, there’s no doubt McCain’s op-ed would need to be revised in order to avoid making a false statement about Obama (and Maliki).

According to the Times, the newspaper has published at least seven op-eds by McCain since 1996. I can’t imagine that it won’t be publishing another one or two before this campaign is over.

But if McCain wants his words published without any editing or vetting whatsoever, then he ought to buy an ad.

Correcting a correction

Can’t editors at the New York Times check their own archives before subjecting one of their reporters to the ignominy of a published correction? On May 14, Times sportswriter William Rhoden wrote a column about the New York Knicks that contained the following passage about former coach Isiah Thomas:

No coach in recent Knicks history was treated as harshly as Thomas. From the moment Thomas was named team president to the moment he was forced to coach the team he assembled, Thomas was the object of an intense dislike that, near the end, bordered on hatred. Some old-timers in the news media never forgot his comment about Larry Bird (if Bird were black, he would be regarded as just another player).

But you’ll no longer find the passage about Bird in the online version; it’s been expunged, as though the Times fears you’ll go blind if you read it. There’s now a correction at the bottom that says:

The Sports of The Times column on Wednesday, about the harsh environment surrounding the Knicks while Isiah Thomas was the coach, erroneously linked Thomas to a racially charged comment about Larry Bird when both men were top N.B.A. players. It was Dennis Rodman — once a teammate of Thomas’s — who famously suggested that Bird would have been regarded as an ordinary player had he been black.

Trouble is, Rhoden got it exactly right. After the Detroit Pistons lost to the Boston Celtics in the 1987 playoffs, both Rodman and Thomas, then the team’s star players, made the incisive observation that Bird was, you know, white. Here’s how the Times’ Ira Berkow described it on June 2, 1987:

In the visiting and losing team’s locker room Saturday afternoon in Boston Garden, Isiah Thomas, the Detroit guard, said he didn’t want it to sound like sour grapes, and that there was no question that his team got beat, and that they came up short, but he harbored a resentment.

In regard to Bird, he [Thomas] said, ”I think Larry is a very, very good basketball player. An exceptional talent, but I’d have to agree with Rodman. If Bird was black, he’d be just another good guy.”

Dennis Rodman, the teammate to whom Thomas had referred, had said that Bird was ”overrated,” and that the only reason he had won three straight league most valuable player awards (until this year, that is), ”is because he’s white. That’s the only reason.”

So, yes, Rodman spoke first. But Thomas agreed with him, and used language that was just as offensive, if you’re inclined to be offended. Rhoden was not using quotation marks, so there was no reason for him to capture Thomas’ quote word-for-word. But it strikes me that Rhoden’s construction comes closer to Thomas than to Rodman. Gee, he must have done his research.

The simple fact is that Rhoden got hung out to dry by editors who apparently couldn’t have been bothered to dig out what really happened 21 years ago. Heck, I remember it, which is why I started diving into the archives. Anyone who was following basketball in 1987 remembers Thomas’ crass comments — more so than Rodman’s, since Thomas was a nationally known celebrity.

Rhoden should demand a retraction.

Greenhouse effect doesn’t exist

Here’s what happens when newspaper-business cutbacks finally reach the New York Times: A legend like Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse takes early retirement. (Via Romenesko.) Who will Nina Totenberg hang out with?

More important, what will become of the so-called Greenhouse effect — the tendency of justices to move to the left in order to be thought well of by the dean of the Supreme Court press corps? Good grief. This could be bigger than another judicial vacancy.

Rumors, and rumors of rumors

Michael Kinsley mocks the New York Times’ attempts to, uh, recontextualize its John McCain story:

What I wrote was that some people had expressed concern that the Times article might have created the appearance of charging that McCain had had an affair. My critics have charged that I was charging the Times with charging McCain with having had an affair. Such a charge would be unfair to the New York Times, since the Times article, if you read it carefully (very carefully), does not make any charge against McCain except that people in a meeting eight years ago had suggested that other people eight years ago might reach a conclusion — about which the Times expressed no view whatsoever — that McCain was having an affair.

Compare Kinsley to this actual excerpt from an online conversation with readers that Times executive editor Bill Keller and other editors and reporters conducted last Thursday:

The point of this “Long Run” installment was that, according to people who know him well, this man who prizes his honor above all things and who appreciates the importance of appearances also has a history of being sometimes careless about the appearance of impropriety, about his reputation. The story cites several examples, and quotes friends and admirers talking of this apparent contradiction in his character. That is why some members of his staff were so alarmed by the appearance of his relationship with Ms. Iseman. And that, it seemed (and still seems) to us, was something our readers would want to know about a man who aspires to be president.

The similarities are striking, no?

Hoyt doesn’t buy it, either

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt joins with the rest of the world in criticizing Times editors for passing along the concerns of anonymous former aides that John McCain was having sex with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Hoyt specifically disagrees with executive editor Bill Keller’s contention that sex wasn’t the point of the story, writing, “I think that ignores the scarlet elephant in the room.” And he closes with this:

I asked Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if The Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair. “That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed,” she said.

But what the aides believed might not have been the real truth. And if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed.

Hoyt is absolutely right, of course. The question is why Times editors are being so obstinate. I wonder if the problem is that they know too much, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I imagine they have heard more about the sex allegations than they’ve been able to report, and thus feel more confident than they should about the story that appeared on Thursday. (I continue to think McCain’s sex life is no one’s business but his and his family’s, but that’s another matter.)

Still, we have to assume that if they had anything approaching proof, they’d let us know. And since they haven’t, the story remains an object lesson in how not to practice journalism.

McCain mishandles Times’ gift

This could have been predicted. The New York Times slimed John McCain with anonymously sourced gossip that he may have had an affair with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. McCain not only denied it, but went way too far, denying key elements of the legitimate part of the story regarding his efforts on behalf of Paxson Communications, a client of Iseman’s.

Now it turns out that McCain had said otherwise in a 2002 deposition. And Bud Paxson contradicts McCain’s sweeping denial as well.

Right out of the gate, McCain forgot every lesson about how to respond to a scandal — or, in this case, a non-scandal: Tell the truth. And if you’ve forgotten what actually happened, which is possible, hold your fire until you’ve refreshed your memory.

The Times handed McCain a gift on Thursday. It’s possible that McCain has handed it right back.

Further thoughts on the McCain story

Consider this a “thinking out loud” moment in the midst of a still-unfolding story. My take at this point is not particularly coherent, and there’s still a lot we don’t know — and maybe never will. But here’s where we — and I — stand two days after the New York Times reported that John McCain had an improper relationship with a female lobbyist during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Sex shouldn’t matter. That’s my beginning point in analyzing such a story. Both McCain and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, have denied a sexual relationship, and of course their denials are important. But why is the Times snooping around in McCain’s private affairs in the first place? If McCain and Iseman really did hop into bed with each other, that’s their business, and the media ought to leave it alone.

This may sound awfully cynical, but I think it’s fair to ask, based on what we’ve learned over the past few decades, how many high-profile politicians have not strayed from their marital vows at one time or another. I suspect it’s a very short list. And before you cite Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky as an example of media excess, remember: Clinton was exploiting a young intern in the workplace; there was a perjury angle; and the entire story was being driven by a government investigation. Hardly the same thing.

Anonymous sources aren’t the issue. It’s what they said. Yes, on-the-record sources are always better than anonymous whispers. But the Times, for all its flaws, is a great paper, and the reporters who worked on this story have a stellar reputation. I take it on faith that their two sources are well-connected and were quoted accurately and in context.

But what did they say? No one said McCain and Iseman were engaged in a sexual affair. Rather, they said the two were spending so much time together that aides were afraid they might be having an affair. Look at the second paragraph of the story:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

McCain adviser John Weaver confirmed, on the record, the gist of that paragraph except for the suspicions about sex. So again, anonymous sources aren’t the issue. It’s that they offered nothing other than their suspicions that McCain and Iseman were having an affair. How did the Times reach the point that it’s reporting unconfirmed suspicions about a presidential candidate on page one?

The Washington Post version kicked butt. Because the Post stayed away from sex, it put together a solid look at how McCain’s personal relationship with a lobbyist had played out in his actions as a senator.

The Times, almost embarrassed by its own reporting, sticks in an endless, familiar backgrounder on McCain’s involvement as one of the Keating Five before returning to the matter at hand. It reads like a committee effort. By contrast, the Post offers us relevant details about Iseman — who she is, whom she lobbies for, how her clients’ needs and desires were attended to by McCain.

Timing is everything. Mitt Romney’s campaign was hurt considerably by the Times’ dallying on this story between December and this week. As I noted yesterday, there have been some hints that all of this began with a dime-drop from the Romney camp. Times executive editor Bill Keller has said the story didn’t run earlier because it wasn’t ready.

Let me engage in some wanton speculation. Keller knew the story would have a huge impact on the Republican contest. Could it be that he didn’t want to deal a blow to the McCain campaign on the basis of such a thin story? If the Post’s fine but wonky effort had come out back when the Republican race was still competitive, it probably wouldn’t have caused much harm. It’s the sex that could have cost McCain the nomination. The Times promises sex, but doesn’t deliver.

The Times’ endorsement of McCain is a non-issue. I’ve heard a number of observers question how the Times could endorse McCain knowing that the Iseman story was in the works. That’s nonsensical, given that quality papers maintain a strict separation between the editorial pages and the newsgathering operation — although, as Jay Rosen notes, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. may have known about the story and could have warned off the editorial page.

Besides, the Times’ endorsement of McCain was remarkably backhanded, and was mainly an exercise in bashing former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who at that point was still in the race. Given the Times editorial page’s liberal world view, it’s safe to say that it would have endorsed the relatively moderate McCain no matter who he was or wasn’t having sex with. And that it will endorse the Democratic nominee over McCain in November.

It’s all or nothing now. It’s possible that the story will fizzle. But McCain issued a strong denial yesterday, raising the stakes much higher than he needed to. (Maybe it’s because he was telling the truth.) New York Times columnist David Brooks, a McCain cheerleader during his Weekly Standard days in 2000, has a fascinating piece on internal rifts within Camp McCain that concludes with this: “If it turns out that there is evidence of an affair and a meeting, then his presidential hopes will be over.”

Speaking of Brooks’ cheerleading, I dug up this excerpt from a story I wrote in 2000, when I spent a few days following McCain and his worshipful press throng across South Carolina:

In Brooks’s view, many of the reporters certainly have drunk the Kool-Aid, and though they ask tough questions, he notices a lack of bite and follow-up that he doesn’t see when the press questions other candidates. “Obviously he’s just the coolest guy, and people like cool guys,” Brooks says. “Reporters on his campaign enjoy being here, and they don’t enjoy being with other candidates.”

I also found some stuff I wrote about McCain’s exertions on behalf of the Paxson television network, the very issue now being dredged up again. Here’s what I wrote about my encounter with the senator in South Carolina:

On the morning of my second day with the campaign, spokesman Todd Harris told me I wasn’t going to get on the lead bus. Thus liberated from having to play nice, I hung around the elevator of the Greenville Hilton, waiting for McCain. I got between him and the bus and asked him a question I’d had on my mind for a couple of weeks: whether he was aware that 40,000 Pittsburgh residents were opposed to a television-license transfer that he had urged the Federal Communications Commission to act on and that would benefit one of his campaign contributors.

“No, what I had urged them [the FCC] was to act, not to take a specific position. And that was to order them to act after 700 days of not acting,” he replied, repeating an answer he had given many times already. I pressed him on the fact that there was considerable opposition to the transfer, but he didn’t drop a beat: “What the citizen activists wanted was an act against, some wanted an act for. I just wanted them to act, so I wasn’t in any way harming the views of those citizen-activists. I was asking them to act. Now if I had been asking them to act affirmatively, then that would have somehow been in opposition to those activists. So I don’t see how you draw the conclusion that I was in any way in opposition to them.”

I wanted to ask a follow-up. His bus was waiting. I said, “Thank you.” He said, “Thank you,” smiled, asked where I was from, and was on his way, Cindy on one side, an aide on the other.

So much for Straight Talk.

Yesterday I was convinced that this story would be Topic A for political junkies for at least a week. Today I’m not so sure. What I do know is that media analysts will be talking about the New York Times and its standards for some time to come.