A New York Times story accusing Sen. John McCain of an untoward relationship with a Washington lobbyist set off a furor among readers and journalists, and it seemed to unify conservative commentators around the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
For much of Thursday, a debate raged across the Internet, cable television and talk radio about the story headlined, “For McCain, Self-Confidence of Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.” Some journalism analysts and voters said the newspaper story that explored McCain’s interaction with a Washington lobbyist exposed hypocrisy by McCain, who has cultivated an image as a maverick who disdains cozy Washington relationships.
Others attacked the report for muddying an investigation of lobbying by suggesting that McCain had an affair with the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, without providing persuasive evidence. Both the Republican Party and McCain’s campaign used the story in e-mail solicitations for contributions as conservative commentators, including some who previously chastis leaped to the candidate’s defense.
Radio personality Laura Ingraham, like other critics, noted that the newspaper had been researching the story for several months and accused the Times of delaying publication to do maximum damage.
“You wait until it’s pretty much beyond a doubt that he’s going to be the Republican nominee,” Ingraham said on her morning radio program, “and then you let it drop — drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That’s what The New York Times thinks.”
Host Rush Limbaugh described the story as standard fare for the paper he describes as coddling the left.
“You’re surprised that Page Six-type gossip is on the front page of The New York Times?” said Limbaugh, in reference to the gossip column of the tabloid New York Post. Limbaugh, who previously has criticized McCain as a fake conservative, said, “Where have you been? How in the world can anybody be surprised?”
Times Editor Bill Keller defended the story in both a statement and in interviews. “On the substance, we think the story speaks for itself. On the timing, our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready,” Keller said in a statement.
The editor said, via e-mail, that the discussion of the story neglected its broader focus on McCain’s history and how a “man who so prizes his honor can also be, according to those who know him well, careless of his reputation.”
Keller said he could only speculate about the motivation for the McCain camp’s sharp counterattack.
More than 2,300 comments poured into a nytimes.com message board, prompting the paper to announce late Thursday that editors and reporters who worked on the piece would answer questions from readers submitted to [email protected].
Political and journalistic insiders have been anticipating the story for weeks, ever since the Drudge Report online launched a missive just before Christmas saying McCain was trying to “spike” the report.
The story dealt with the concerns of McCain’s aides about frequent interactions between McCain, 71, and Iseman, 40, as he was running for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. Quoting anonymous sources, the paper said aides became “convinced the relationship had become romantic ... and intervened to protect the candidate from himself.”
Another vein of the story suggested McCain, chairman of the Commerce Committee, had taken actions that benefited Iseman’s lobbying clients.
American Journalism Review Editor Rem Rieder wrote in an online article late Wednesday that, while “not the most airtight piece ever published,” the Times story had correctly highlighted McCain’s record as a self-styled government reformer.
“To have such a high-profile relationship with a lobbyist on issues over which he has jurisdiction, replete with a trip on her client’s corporate jet, is an appalling lapse of judgment, regardless of whether the two were sleeping together,” Rieder wrote, in part.
Mike Hoyt, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, also defended the story, saying the concerns about a lobbying conflict and aides’ purported efforts to prevent an unseemly relationship were enough to justify publication.
But several other journalism watchers said the Times left too many questions unanswered and by raising the possibility of a romantic relationship, rather than focusing on improprieties related to his role as a public official, hurt its cause.
