Soccer Dad

Not up to the standards of the national enquirer *UPDATED*

Let's go back and recall what Hoyt wrote a few months ago regarding the Times's coverage of the alleged improper relationship between John McCain and a lobbyist named Vicky Iseman:

The article had repercussions for both McCain and The Times. He may benefit, at least in the short run, from a conservative backlash against the "liberal" New York Times. The newspaper found itself in the uncomfortable position of being the story as much as publishing the story, in large part because, although it raised one of the most toxic subjects in politics -- sex -- it offered readers no proof that McCain and Iseman had a romance.

Note "liberal" is in scare quotes.

So when Hoyt has to defend his paper's refusal to touch a story about Sen. Edwards and his affair what did Hoyt write?

I do not think liberal bias had anything to do with it. But I think The Times -- like The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, major networks and wire services -- was far too squeamish about tackling the story. The Times did not want to regurgitate the Enquirer's reporting without verifying it, which is responsible. But The Times did not try to verify it, beyond a few perfunctory efforts, which I think was wrong. Until the ABC report, only one mainstream news organization, McClatchy newspapers, seemed to be making headway with the story.

"Did not try to verify it?" But as he already admitted, when it came to allegations against McCain, that there was no proof. So why stay away from the Edwards story? Or let me make it clearer: the Times developed its own story about a major Republican figure, John McCain, could provide no proof for the allegation and still published the story; the National Enquirer developed a story about a major Democrat figure, John Edwards, and the Times didn't even try to verify whether the story was accurate or not. (Surely once the Enquirer reported that Edwards had been seen visiting Rielle Hunter's hotel room, there was more than an allegation to go on.)

Doesn't the contrast in approaches scream bias?

The Times tries hard to distinguish between the cases. Hoyt quotes Bill Keller: Keller and Stevenson said it was wrong to equate the McCain and Edwards stories, as so many readers and bloggers have. The editors saw the McCain story as describing a powerful senator's dealings with lobbyists trying to influence government decisions, including one who anonymous sources believed was having a romantic relationship with him. "Our interest in that story was not in his private romantic life," Keller said. "It was in his relationship with lobbyists, plural, and that story took many, many weeks of intensive reporting effort."

Except that when the Times published the McCain story, it published a front page picture of Ms. Iseman in an evening dress. If the point was to show McCain's dealing with a lobbyist, I'm sure that the Times could have either left out the picture or published one of her in a business suit.

And the story was unable to show that McCain's dealing with Iseman in any way affected the way he voted on a bill. He, in fact, voted against the interests of those who hired Iseman. In the end the only scandalous part of the article, were the unsubstantiated allegations about McCain.

Hoyt writes further:

I would not have published the allegation of a McCain affair, because The Times did not convincingly establish its truth. I would not have recycled the National Enquirer story, either. But I think it was a mistake for Times editors to turn up their noses and not pursue it. "There was a tendency, fair or not, to dismiss what you read in the National Enquirer," Keller said. "I know they are sometimes right." When the Enquirer published its first "love child" report, The Times was going energetically after the McCain story. It should have pursued the other story as well.

I'm glad to know that he has standards, but nothing he wrote convinced me that the decision to protect Edwards and go after McCain was motivated by anything other than liberal media bias.

And seriously, I can agree that neither the McCain story nor the Edwards story should have been published. However, once the Times went with the McCain story, holding back on Edwards shows what most of us can discern is liberal bias.

It's not just Republicans like me, why it's even Mr. Hoyt's predecessor, the first *public* editor of the NYT, Daniel Okrent who refreshingly admitted that the paper is liberal.

But if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world.

Mr. Hoyt would be a lot more convincing if he could show the same self-awareness that Mr. Okrent did.

Jennifer Rubin neatly sums up the case against the NYT and the MSM as a whole (via memeorandum):

The Edwards mess is the most recent and visible, but hardly unique, example of the mainstream media's hear no evil/see no evil approach to newsgathering. How many other stories has the MSM missed, denied or avoided? From Rathergate to Reverend Wright to the success of the surge, the pattern is the same: MSM stalls, shuffles its collective feet, and doggedly ignores information for as long as possible until they can no longer do so with a straight face. The fact that these stories without exception work to the detriment of Democrats is apparently a grand coincidence.

And the notion that they are upholding some "journalistic standard" is rendered absurd. Edwards' story wasn't important on Thursday, but it was on Friday because he confessed? No, the level of proof changed, but the story's relevance did not. If it wasn't worthy of investigation before the ABC interview then it was unworthy of mention afterwards. Their explanation for their editorial decision-making is no more credible than . . . well than Edwards himself.

I must point out that while the story of Edwards' affair may be accurate, the proof that he fathered Hunter's child looks phony.