Blogs For McCain

The Editorial Board of the Concord Monitor calls out the Times:

The New York Times…printed a story that forced Sen. John McCain to deny an extramarital affair with a Washington lobbyist. The paper provided no evidence of such a relationship and never should have published it.

The 3,000-word article, which carried the bylines of four Times reporters, relies almost entirely on unnamed sources within McCain’s first presidential campaign - people who may or may not have agendas of their own. The paper quotes unnamed staffers who, for reasons undisclosed, became convinced that the two were romantically involved.

McCain and Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman deny anything more than friendship existed, and the allegations have been denied by others on McCain’s staff at the time.

Iseman worked primarily for clients in the telecommunications industry. McCain, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, was in a position to influence matters favorably for Iseman’s clients. The Times produced little evidence that he did so. He both supported and opposed positions taken by the industry. He says he only interceded to urge a sluggish bureaucracy to come to a decision.

If McCain spent an unusual amount of time with Iseman, it was likely to raise suspicions of improper favoritism toward her and her clients - which is fair game for reporters. Publishing unsourced innueno alleging a romantic relationship was not.

The struggle The Times must have had in deciding to go to print comes through in the odd structure of the story. The allegation takes up virtually the entirety of the portion of the article that ran on the front page. That’s followed by a rehash of old events in McCain’s political life that raise questions about his ethics and judgment.

Finally, near the end of the story, John Weaver, a former campaign strategist and current informal McCain adviser, is quoted saying only that Iseman’s frequent public appearances with McCain, and possible boasting of her influence with the senator, were a political liability. Weaver, at least in print, made no claim that the relationship between the two had become sexually-charged.

The Times hurt its own reputation, not McCain’s, by publishing a piece that was clearly not fit to print.