The McCain-NYT affair

Was John McCain, the clean-government crusader, sleeping with an attractive blond lobbyist, 30 years younger than he, even while he ran for president as a reformer?

The newspaper world and blogosphere are still abuzz about yesterday's front-page New York Times story on McCain, particularly its implication that he had an affair in 2000 with a telecommunications lobbyist whose clients sought help from McCain's Senate committee. I saw the story yesterday but didn't read it until I noticed that my friend and old boss David McCumber blogged about his decision not to run the piece in the Seattle P-I. He wrote:

To me, the story had serious flaws. It did not convincingly make the case that McCain either had an affair with a lobbyist, or was improperly influenced by her. It used a raft of unnamed sources to assert that members of McCain's campaign staff -- not this campaign but his campaign eight years ago -- were concerned about the amount of time McCain was spending with the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.

After reading his post and the story I'm not sure I agree with McCumber, but he certainly looks prescient. His reasoning -- remember this was Wednesday night when the story moved on the NYT wire but before the public had seen it -- perfectly matched the massive negative (and, at the Times, unexpected) reaction from many journalists and from readers across the political spectrum. Responses on McCumber's blog post overwhelmingly support his call. I'm guessing he feels very good about his decision. (Locally, the Seattle Times ran the piece on its front page, without explanation.)

My response to the story was different than David's. While I agree that the paper didn't "convincingly make the case" of an extramarital affair, I don't think that was its purpose. I read the story as one in a continuing, enlightening series of backgrounders on the candidates, all focusing on some event or conflict in their past that shaped their characters or candidacy. This one carried that "Long Run" series bug.

In this case, as I read the story, the point was the dichotomy between McCain's defining (and by all accounts) sincere crusade against special interests and his occasional blindness to his own ethical lapses, real or perceived. The lobbyist relationship was seen as a piece of this puzzle, though not a big "gotcha," as was a nicely summarized and relevant rehash of the whole Keating Five fiasco that nearly killed McCain's political career.

To my mind that's good solid political reporting, the kind I would aspire to. Interestingly, I was just listening to a Terry Gross interview the other day with Jacob Weisberg, the Slate editor and author of "The Bush Tragedy," whose key point was that journalists need to do a better job of exploring candidates' character, not just their positions, in a presidential race. You can hear that interview here.

A bigger concern for me, one that McCumber also cited, was the use of anonymous sources in the Times article. As reporters and editors who have worked with me know, I'm generally opposed to anonymous sourcing, especially in political reporting. It's too easy a crutch, both for the sources and the reporters, and I think it is slowly eroding our readers' trust in newspapers. But I also think, as Times Executive Editor Bill Keller noted, that there are times when anonymous sourcing is warranted. Handled correctly and reported exhaustively, these are often the stories that give readers important information they could not possible get otherwise.

My guidelines, honed over the years and reinforced by my four excellent editors at the LA Times, are these. To justify granting anonymity:

• The story must be of great significance
• It must not be reportable in any way other than using the unnamed sources
• The information must be confirmed by multiple independent sources or documents
  
• The sources must have a good reason to remain unnamed, such as real, demonstrable fear of financial loss or of physical danger
• The sources must be identified to the story's editors
  
• The sources' reasons for requesting anonymity must be stated plainly in the story, and the sources should be identified as fully as possible
  

These are difficult standards to meet. It's a close call, I think, whether this McCain story meets that importance threshold, but from what I've read of the paper's reporting efforts, the sourcing was solid and justifiably cloaked.

For its own purposes, and considering again that this story was one in the continuing "Long Run" series, I think the Times was right to run the story. That doesn't mean that the P-I or every other paper receiving the NYT wire should reach the same conclusion. Without the context of the ongoing series, the McCain story feels a bit more like a gotcha fallen short, and so I can appreciate McCumber's decision not to use it.

One of the best things to come out of this dust-up, I think, is the glmpse it offers behind the newsroom curtain and the increasing willingness it demonstrates of editors to engage with their readers. In addition to McCumber's smart blog post and the resulting reader comments, Keller and other top editors and reporters at the New York Times have been answering readers' questions about the story today, part of the paper's regular and enlightening online "Talk to the Newsroom" feature. It's very interesting. You can read that here.

Finally, there has been a lot of smart media criticism about the story online, on all sides of the question. I'll point you toward Jack Shafer's defense of the piece in Slate, which I thought was pretty good.

What did you think of the story? Did it even register? I'd like to know.