I love the New York Times . So much that when I moved to Los Angeles a few months ago, I began having it delivered to my door every Sunday so I could read Frank Rich with the smell of newsprint and the feel of folded inky paper in my fingers rather than the smell of old plastic and the feel of a keyboard beneath my hands.
Frank Rich is an editorial writer and a good one. It's clear he's a democrat and it's clear he supports Obama over Clinton, but, you know what, that's fine, because he's an editorial writer. And a good one.
Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn Thompson, David Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton are the writers of the recent increasingly notorious “McCain Article” the New York Times published on February 21, 2008. Bill Keller is the executive editor. They do not work for the editorial department of the New York Times . They work for the news department, and, as Keller will tell you , the news department and the editorial page are completely autonomous.
My question is: why did these men and women publish the McCain article ? Why not someone in the Op-Ed pages? And is publishing a "news" article with such vague research and dubious integrity responsible? Is it ethical?
I'm not a journalist. (But I know if I put something on the television show for which I work that isn't cited and isn't true, things don't turn out well. I probably have two times to do that before I'm fired.) So I posed the questions to a few journalists (whom I'd cite if this were a news piece instead of an editorial piece) and they all had the same answers.
They think there is certainly basis for the story. However, they would have published this article either in an editorial section or online where jumps could further elaborate the points of the authors. Problem with the McCain Article online is that there are no jumps . There are only terms defined: John McCain , Rupert Murdoch , FCC , and so on.
There is a basis for the story, an important basis, if the sources are accountable and the references are checked properly. We don't need references based on postulation or speculation in a NEWSpaper any more than we need them in a courtroom – oh yeah, those references are not allowed in court rooms.
They are not allowed in courts because their veracity is questionable -- just as it is here in a prominent, respected paper from which many people draw their truths, if not their facts.
But there are various truths to the McCain article. The authors comment on the feelings of advisers: “According to two former McCain associates, some of the senator's advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.”
The advisers don't know McCain's romantic feelings and the associates don't know the advisers' concerns and I don't know if speculation of another person's “concern” that was speculation of another person's unnamed feelings would exactly hold up in court.
But should we hold our newspapers and journals to the same standards we hold our courts? Maybe. After all, we are looking to them for facts. We look to editorial for an interpretation of the facts or various versions of truth – it's important to keep in mind that there are always various versions of truth.
This should be the last time, for a while, that I rely on John Steinbeck for wisdom, but here we go. Steinbeck writes that he was cautious to consider places or people as constants in Travels with Charley :
And in this report I do not fool myself into thinking I am dealing with constants. A long time ago I was in the ancient city of Prague and at the same time Joseph Alsop, the justly famous critic of places and events, was there. He talked to informed people, officials, ambassadors; he read reports, even the fine print and figures, while I in my slipshod manner roved about with actors, gypsies, vagabonds. Joe and I flew home to on the same plane, and on the way he told me about Prague, and his Prague had no relation to the city I had seen and heard. It just wasn't the same place, and yet each of us was honest, neither one a liar, both pretty good observers by any standard, and we brought home two cities, two truths.
Now read that again Madlibs-style replacing the word “city” with “man” and the word “ Prague ” with “John McCain.” (It's hard to make it through the second sentence without laughing, but push through.)
I wish the New York Times would have taken out their Madlibs books during discussions about publishing the McCain Article; they would have seen various truths, various men, various interpretations that shouldn't necessarily live in the news department, but on the editorial page.
Or on the internet, because, clearly, nothing on the internet can be trusted – not like everything on the inky paper between your fingers