N.Y. Times' Editor Bill Keller Responds to McCain Flap

Power Line's John Hinderaker labels it a smear:

"What is most striking . . . if you actually read the story, is how thin it is. It's mostly about the Keating Five scandal, which dates to the late 1980s. The 'news' that gives the story a hook has to do with McCain's friendship with a pretty blonde lobbyist that apparently ended in 2000. As for the purported affair, the Times offers zero evidence. This line sums up, I think, the absurdity of the paper's attempt to cobble together an anti-McCain story out of these widely-separated elements:

" It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain's political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal.

"Just a decade! Every ten years, McCain does something that the Times can unfairly paint as inappropriate."

National Review's Rich Lowry is in the same camp:

"The Times doesn't have the goods -- at least from what's in the story -- and shouldn't have run it. Let's be honest: this story is all about the alleged affair, and all the Keating Five and campaign finance reform re-hash is window dressing . . .

"What does 'behaving inappropriately' mean? And what were the details? A lot hangs on this passage and it's extremely vaporous."

Slate's Jack Shafer says the Times piece, while flawed, makes a contribution:

"The story portrays McCain as way too close to lobbyist Iseman and cites unnamed advisers who believe that the relationship was 'romantic,' although McCain and Iseman deny that specific allegation. The piece fails for [some] critics because the newspaper does not produce sheets from McCain and Iseman's enseamed bed to prove their intimacy . . .

"Where there's smoke, there's sometimes fire. That the imperfect Times article doesn't expose a raging blaze isn't sufficient cause for condemning it. The evidence the paper provides more than adequately establishes that McCain remains a better preacher about ethics, standards, appearances, and special interest conflicts than he is a practitioner, something voters should consider before punching the ballot for him."

Those who say the Times sat on the story don't quite get it, says American Journalism Review Editor Rem Rieder:

"What all of this disregards is the way newspapers work. A 'story' is not a completed, off-the-assembly-line product, an immutable narrative etched in granite. There's a long distance between initial tip and above-the-fold scoop on a story of this nature and magnitude, particularly one which a high-powered Washington criminal lawyer, not to mention a presidential candidate, is mau-mauing editors to kill. The amount of scrutiny and debate is often staggering.