Fun While It Lasted

"The Beauchamp affair should be taught in journalism schools as a case study of how not to conduct damage control. When it quickly became obvious that there were serious problems both with Beauchamp's 'diaries' and with the author himself, TNR should have cut bait. The magazine could quite reasonably have made a statement that they were taken advantage of by someone they trusted, who was married to someone on their staff who presumably vouched for him, and retracted the stories. It would have been embarrassing, but the matter would have concluded. Instead TNR stood by Beauchamp, tying the magazine's credibility to his, and suffering accordingly. Rather than admitting error and moving on, they invested time, money, and apparently a degree of political capital in fighting a clearly losing cause with no discernable upside even if they had prevailed. It is mystifying -- like Dan Rather defending those bogus National Guard documents, or Peter Arnett sticking to the story of the U.S. conducting Sarin gas attacks against captured American troops in Vietnam. How can people who are so successful make such astonishing errors in professional judgment?"

Ed Morrissey reprints part of the transcript in which Foer and his executive editor, Peter Scoblic, urge Beauchamp not to talk to me and a Newsweek reporter:

"Scoblic: We were told you were setting up interviews with the Times and the Post?

"Beauchamp: With Newsweek and the Washington Post, and it's basically to let the media know I'm not being censored. I can talk to the media, but I don't want to.

"Scoblic: Scott, all that does is trigger another round of stories. I mean, (unintelligible)

"Foer: (Unintelligible) You owe it to us ah to just ah .... you owe it to us to basically kind of report on ourselves and be able to put out whatever next thing ... I think you ought to basically talk to us, and let us control the way this story proceeds. I think that's the least you could do for us. I think it would be further evidence, further sign to us that you're just sticking it to us if you went and talked to these other guys before we could put out anything further.

"Beauchamp: So, um ... what are you saying?

"Foer: I'm saying that I'd rather you not talk to the Washington Post, Newsweek, or whoever else until we put our final judgment on your pieces.

"TNR made it clear that they felt they could not respond because the Army had hindered their access to Beauchamp. That's a lie, and one perpetrated by Foer and the senior TNR management themselves. They had access to Beauchamp and knew he could talk to the media -- and instructed him not to do so. They then stonewalled to make it look as though the Army was holding Beauchamp incommuncado.

"They have lost the last shred of journalistic integrity they could claim. Until August 10th, they could make a claim that they had been victimized by a fabulist. This transcript shows that they participated willingly in the cover-up."

There's not much on the liberal blogs, but TPM's Greg Sargent picks up on my story and says:

"An Army spokesman basically acknowledged here that while they're not willing to reveal the docs supporting their case to TNR, which is the actual target of its probe, someone internally is willing to give some stuff to Drudge, almost certainly with the intent to carry out payback against the mag. I'm not necessarily defending TNR here -- as Kevin Drum notes, this remains murky -- but the bottom line is that this Army conduct stinks really, really badly.

"In the snippet I quoted above the Army promises to 'investigate' this leak to Drudge. Somehow one doubts that this will be 'investigated' with anywhere near the zeal of the Army's probe into TNR and Beauchamp. Somehow one highly doubts that we'll ever learn what their 'investigation' into the leak to Drudge has found."

Finally, the Goldwater-Miller ticket won only six states in 1964--that's the campaign in which Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl. But there's a new Goldwater-Miller ticket: CC Goldwater, the late senator's granddaughter, and Stephanie Miller, the daughter of the late VP nominee Bill Miller. They're having a campaign rally in Phoenix tomorrow. They haven't filed any papers, but Miller's slogan might touch a nerve: "I believe America needs more eye candy."