Thursday, February 21, 2008

NYT Becomes the New SwiftBoaters

While I disagree with a lot of the New York Times puts out, I have always thought they were a quality paper. Unfortunately, their credibility has taken a big hit with the latest hit job on presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain. Devoid of the normal journalistic standards you'd expect of a top newspaper, it largely cites anonymous sources and is incredibly skimpy on details for an investigative piece.

As the New Republic documents, editor Bill Keller appears to have shared the concerns over the piece. But in the end, he seems to have rolled over and given it the green light. What makes the piece even more suspicious is that others, including Fox's Carl Cameron found nothing in the story when he investigated it last fall. Given Fox's expected bias against McCain, one might imagine the decision not to pursue the story was indicative of the lack of weight.

McCain's lawyer, Bob Bennett points out that he provided the NYT a list of times when McCain voted in opposition to the interests of Iseman's clients, but the paper left that fact out of its piece. What a surprise!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read the article in a different light - the insinuation of a romantic relationship seemed unnecessary and could not be backed up by facts. But the article did provide a lot of information on Mccain's double standards with one set of rules for others and on set of rules for himself. A new generation of voters may not have known much about the Keating 5 scandal (costing tax payers 3.4 billion dollars), and it is barely mentioned in most of the news articles. Someone has to talk about it?

Karthik said...

@LB: What makes it a hit piece is the bias? If you are gonna bring up the Keating 5, how about dwelling on the fact that McCain has been one of the most outstanding senators in terms of ethics, that while he sides with business often being conservative, he has often voted against the interests of his lobbyist supporters, about how he is one of very few senators who doesn't include special-interest pork in spending bills, ...