Thursday, February 21, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN

The Times Reporters Are Convinced They 'Had The Goods.' What Goods?

That New Republic story on the New York Times piece is up.

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.

This detail is telling:

In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story's editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods.

Presumably, to the reporters, this is the goods. Two vague comments from unidentified former aides who are said to be disillusioned with McCain; that's enough to run the story in the face of denials from both parties involved.

The TNR article comes to the conclusion that it can't figure out what changed between now and December in the paper's reporting.

Of course, each of these sources had reason to keep the story from breaking. But what actually pushed it into publication? The reporters working on the investigation declined to comment. In an email to me on February 19, Keller wrote: "This sounds like a pointless exercise to me—speculating about reporting that may or may not result in an article. But if that's what Special Correspondents of The New Republic do, speculate away. When we have something to say, we'll say it in the paper."

02/21 12:44 PMShare