Feb

21

Just another rag

February 21, 2008 |

Gorowing up in New York, we had four major newspapers: The Daily News, Newsday, The Post, and the Times.  Newsday has become a Long Island-centered paper, so New York is really a three paper town now.  The Post and the News are both tabloids that are definitely geared to a broader (read: less educated) audience, while the Times is more of an international paper aimed at both the upper crust of New York and the nation at large.  If you really wanted to get the news of the world, you read the New York Times.  If you wanted good sports information and the latest on all the celebrity gossip, you read the News or the Post.

The New York Times has officially become a tabloid rag little better than either the Post or Daily News.

I wasn’t really going to comment on the Times story on McCain’s alleged affair with a Washington lobbyist.  It’s obvious the Times doesn’t have much evidence to go on, and most of the story is conjecture.  But after reading, of all things, the New Republic’s account of the background on the story, I am even more enraged by the Times story.  Simply put, the Times knew it had nothing, and yet they decided to publish this story anyway.

Beyond its revelations, however, what’s most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain’s former staffers to justify the piece–both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves–the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain’s aides that the Senator shouldn’t be seen in public with Iseman–and departs from the Times’ usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: “In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, ‘Why is she always around?’” In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.

What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn’t. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

I have mixed feelings about whether a politician’s affairs should be newsworthy, but that’s beside the point in this case.  The New York Times ran a story hinting at affair based on nothing more than the uneasiness felt by a couple of McCain staffers.  This is supposed to indicate high journalistic standards?  Bloggers are regularly ridiculed because we are responsible to no one and lack safeguard of editors.  Well, what did those editorial safeguards do for the Times?

That McCain is reaping the ill effects of courting the MSM’s favor seems a childish way of approaching this (non) story.  Yes, McCain has enjoyed favorable media treatment up to now because of his “maverick” idenity, and we all knew that as soon as he became the GOP the MSM would not hesitate to run any story it could to knock their former favorite down.  But I don’t think we could have expected the media to be quite this brazen in an attempt to make McCain look bad. 

What a disgrace.  Is there anybody left in America that takes this rag remotely seriously anymore?


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Media Districts Entertainment Blog » Just another rag on February 21, 2008 1:39 pm

    [...] The Cranky Conservative placed an observative post today on Just another ragHere’s a quick excerpt [...]

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