Clark Hoyt, the New York Times ombudsman, has written his inevitable column on his paper’s rejection of McCain’s op-ed piece. (Actually, it came out a week ago, but it never got much attention and I only went looking for it today.)
Hoyt admits the paper screwed up. He concludes:
In the midst of an intense presidential campaign, publishing an Op-Ed from one candidate without a plan for one from his opponent, invites just the sort of beating The Times is taking this week.
But his critique is really that they should have finessed the issue better; he excuses the actual rejection:
Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page of The Times, said McCain’s Op-Ed was not rejected. Shipley was asking for revisions, just the way The Times asks every Op-Ed contributor for revisions, Rosenthal said. “Barack Obama’s Op-Ed was also edited,” Rosenthal said. “We asked for revisions, and it was edited. Every article in The New York Times gets edited.”
But McCain was not being asked for some minor, routine editing changes. What Shipley wanted amounted to a total rewrite.
This is a distinction without a difference. As anyone in academia knows, almost never is a paper rejected outright. Instead, the author is invited to resubmit the paper after making major revisions. Often, those required revisions are enough (or even intended) to scuttle the paper.
What revisions did the NYT ask of McCain? Just this:
“We don’t use the Op-Ed page for people to respond directly to articles in the paper or other Op-Eds. That’s what letters to the editor are for,” Rosenthal said. “The McCain campaign was aware of that before they sent in their draft.”
Shipley told Michael Goldfarb, the deputy director of communications for the McCain camp, “It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece.” The article “would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory – with troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”
The first bit (arguing that they don’t publish responses to op-eds as op-eds) is not really true, but more importantly it’s a red herring. If they wanted a non-response, they could have simply asked for that. Instead, they went on to give a set of requirements that were tantamount to an outline of the op-ed they would be willing to publish.
Here’s the point that Hoyt misses. The New York Times is hostile to McCain. They don’t want to publish an effective McCain piece, and even if they did, they don’t think like he does (as is quite evident from their outline’s talk of timetables). The New York Times simply cannot expect to dictate the content of an op-ed by the candidate they hate. If they really wanted to publish a piece from McCain, they needed to give him the latitude to convey his own message.
Hoyt misses two other points as well. First, their claimed “no response” rule, even if we accept that it is a real rule, hardly makes sense in this context. Obama’s op-ed attacked McCain, and attacked the policy McCain has advocated (i.e., the surge). Is it reasonable that Obama can attack McCain, but by virtue of having published first, he cannot be rebutted?
Second, even if we set aside the NYT outline, a piece explaining McCain’s policy would be pointless. He already has a record, and has consistently and publicly advocated the course that we are finally on. Unlike Obama, there is no need for McCain to explain what his policy is.
Internet Scofflaw 