Comments on McCain: The NYT Ambient Journalism

The Stranger has standards? Now that's a story.

Where's the picture of McCain and Isemen in this post?

He totally did. Look at him. Aw, yeah, dog.

... this shit wouldn’t have passed Stranger newsroom standards.

Whoa! this right here is some serious breaking news. The Stranger has standards?

Now if John McCain had ever sent an email where he used its where he should have said it's, that would be Stranger newsroom material.

with you an this, but the key word is 'convinced'

At the Times editors have said, the story 'speaks for itself' (and says volumes)

Yeah, I have to agree, Josh. Much as I love the idea of nailing McCain with either a real live sex scandal, or selling out to a lobbyist, this story is all vapor. Sadly. Rumor and innuendo.

In a perfect world, a real story about McCain with meat would break, oh, about September sometime. Or the classic October surprise. That would be good. This... does little more than sully the reputation of a decent newspaper.

Did you not read:

"In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others."

So...let's concentrate on the real story.

If I showed up in Washington, could I get that kind of access to a Senator on a repeated basis? I don't care why she had it - flying him around on private jets, her clients campaign contributions, or actually sleeping with him. McCain can have Saturday night orgies for all I care - the issue is what influence did she have. Why do we, as the voters who actually put someone in office, continually have to settle for elected officials who listen far more to people who didn't elect them?

I didn't care who Clinton was sleeping with, and I don't care who McCain was sleeping with.

McCain is all about the money and the babes, dawg!

I agree that the NYT erred on the side of playing up the smuttier aspects of the story. However, the Iseman story is just one of several cozy relationships McCain seems to have enjoyed with lobbyists. I was waiting for his "Keating 5" history to resurface, a particularly sensitive scar for a man who prides himself on integrity and who admits that he doesn't know much about the economy. My hope is that the furor about Iseman won't overshadow everything else in the story, much the same way CBS News's botched reporting on George W. Bush's National Guard flight records overshadowed the very serious questions of how he got such a cushy assignment during a time of war.

@9, sorry to be so very cynical, but the voters play just one part in the whole election game. It takes money -- lots of money and that's where all of those "special interests" come in. That money isn't going to charity, it's buying access, an open mind, if you will.

I don't know how it will ever change. Not sure how it could - first amendment and all that.

The NYT tries to make the story really be about McCain's tone-deafness to the issue of "how things look," suggesting that he is so confident in his own reputation that he doesn't bother to avoid situations that suggest unethical behavior. That approach, of course, leaves open the possibility that he's not actually being unethical, but just doing things that are ripe for misinterpretation by others.

The slant seems spin-ish to me, as though the paper really wanted to cover this possible affair and quid pro quo legislative maneuvering, and thus found a way to make the article ostensibly focus on something else -- McCain's lack of savvy about appearances. But that something else isn't all that newsworthy, in my book, and they don't come up with all that many examples of it -- the big ones are this possible lobbyist affair and McCain's involvement in the S&L mess. Two incidents over the course of decades in office isn't enough to convince me that he's so idiotically unaware that appearances count that he'd be a bad president for that reason. So, where's the beef, exactly? The real beef is the affair itself, I suspect, and the appearances thing is just the NYT's ketchup.

He also fails to mention that Florida flight with said lobbyist when requested to provide a list of trips on corporate jets owned by telecom companies. But was later proved to have flown with her. That is odd, or worse.

the NYT obviously has much more material that they couldn't include, for one reason or another. apparently they've been researching this story for awhile (as have other publications) and had to run with it before getting scooped.

No, the Stranger wouldn't have run the story in print. It just would have posted it here on the Slog!

"Obviously they have other sources they couldn't run."

Because obviously there's no such thing as free press in this country.

This may or may not be true, but it's incredible smoke-and-mirrors stuff. Reminds me of the supermarket rags I pick up when bored in line," A close friend suggested blah and blah." Okay, so if these two "witnesses" gave evidence that cooberated each other, then why not mention what those items were? And maybe McCain's admittance that he "acted inappropriately" was that he was too emotionally close to this woman, or had been too heavily influenced by her-not strictly saying he had an affair.

Ugh, journalism.

Well, the story was held for two months because McCain lawyered up, and the story the NYT did publish has the look of being re-written by the NYT legal department (as I'm sure you've also read on TPM).

Also, McCain's non-denial denial is sort of strange, don't you think?

It seems to me the Times was going to get scooped by someone else if they didn't get out even a highly doctored version. So they put this out, hoping the rest of the details would come out later.

Stranger's "standards' or not, Josh, I think you're wrong about this story, and I hope the journalists for once take the kid gloves off regarding St. John.

Yeah...so, you HAVE standards? Whoa. Now THAT'S news.

i still find it odd that nyt endorsed mccain and then ran this story. that's a whole other facet to this...

This story is awesome... it shows that McCain isn't so high and mighty in his sermons... and lays out facts that have been rumored for years... Does anyone think that this sort of thing wasn't done against Democrats in their time of power?

Also, these stories end up having more truth than falses in them... think about the lawmakers such as Larry Craig and that other one from Vancouver... more truth than falses...

McCain has a poor moral compass... and I can't in good conscience vote for someone that has that for our president.

Great insighful, and refreshing, post Josh.

i think the whole point is that mccain likes to paint himself as this no-nonsense maverick politician who doesn't bend to the whims of special interests or lobbyists just because they throw money [or possibly a little side action] at him. it's also an opportunity for them to bring up some of his past scandals, which had been all but forgotten.

it's kind of a messy story, but i think they're just putting it out there to see what happens next.

@21, it's not at all odd that the editorial page and the front page disagree at the NYT or the Washington Post.

Thank you for this. Past their obvious "we've got him now!" glee, most other stories seemed insubstantial or missing a point. Now I understand why.

Need names Josh? The Washington Post has them. Obviously all the media was all over this story and the NYT rushed it to print.

Now as to The Stranger's standards, well we probably shouldn't get into that.

I think the real story is that the right wing attack machine has printed far flimsier evidence than this against just about every major Democratic figure over the past 16 years. I am glad the NYT was willing to let themselves get a little dirty. This is no time for hand-wringing. The libs have to be ready to go toe-to-toe with FOX's vile rumor-mongers through November.

bullshit. you would have broken that story in an instant. on slog. before you even called mccain to verify anything.

Personally, I think I would prefer the constitution to Dorf as president. The bigger question is: How big of a whore do you need to be to have to give a guy a pill before, and dress him after? What did she get paid in, Euros?

Whenever a Stranger writer or staffer starts going on about unbiased prinicipled standards or takes an above it all cynical tone, the quality of the reporting and analysis goes down.

The gender angle in this story interests me. For example, McCain had an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist. Fine. We aren't given any hard facts as to exactly what this relationship entailed. Women and men get together all of the time to do business. That the lobbyist was a woman and that a sexual relationship was thus insinuated is insulting. The focus of the story should have been the inappropriate nature of the relationship with a lobbyist, not a female lobbyist. If sex took place, whatever. The corruption or alleged corruption is another story.

Feit, it's hard to take your standards seriously when you use 'retarded' in your writing as an insult.

@10: If the Times's implied story (McCain and lobbyist having an affair) was correct, the story would be fundamentally different from Bill Clinton's affair, in that there's a strong potential for conflict of interest that affects McCain's constituents.

Mr. Feit:

Thanks for a cogent post, and for concisely placing my vague concerns about the piece into better focus.

What's strange to me is that the diffuse nature of the allegation remained after they sat on this for so many months, THAT they "worked" on it for so many months, with the completely predictable response from the wing-nuts.

The right-wingers would be screaming bias at this article at ANY time between now and November. Because of course, they expect McCain to continue getting the smoothies he continually receives from the compliant press.

Gregor Samsa

P.S. By comment 34, we've seen enough of the "The Stranger HAS STANDARDS?!?" bullshit.

Gracias Mr. Samsa