THE John Edwards “love child” story finally hit the national news media and made the front page of yesterday’s Times. For weeks, Jay Leno joked about it, the Internet was abuzz, and readers wondered why The Times and most of the mainstream media seemed to be studiously ignoring a story of sex and betrayal involving a former Democratic presidential candidate who remains prominent on the political stage. . .
Murray Bromberg of Bellmore, N.Y., was glad The Times was not touching this seamy business. “I heartily approve,” he said. But everyone else I heard from over the past several weeks was either puzzled or outraged that the newspaper, which carried front-page allegations of a John McCain affair, was ignoring the relationship between Edwards and Hunter. John Boyle of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said, “I hope you will find the time to tell me why this news story is not reported by your paper.” Some readers, like Bert A. Getz Jr. of Winnetka, Ill., were sure they already knew the answer: liberal bias.
I do not think liberal bias had anything to do with it. But I think The Times — like The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, major networks and wire services — was far too squeamish about tackling the story. The Times did not want to regurgitate the Enquirer’s reporting without verifying it, which is responsible. But The Times did not try to verify it, beyond a few perfunctory efforts, which I think was wrong. Until the ABC report, only one mainstream news organization, McClatchy newspapers, seemed to be making headway with the story.
Not that it would have been easy. David Perel, the editor of the Enquirer, said, “This is a very hard story to prove, and I think that has frozen people in place.”
Oh, boo hoo. Reporting is just too hard. Better not to try.
Anyway, Hoyt’s shtick is familiar now: admit that the NYT screwed up (it’s generally inarguable anyway), but deny bad faith. Sometimes, though, denying bad faith is hard. For example, he has to explain why they ran the Vicki Iseman story (an undersourced, inconclusive story about an affair that some people thought McCain might have had), but wouldn’t touch this:
[NYT editors] Keller and Stevenson said it was wrong to equate the McCain and Edwards stories, as so many readers and bloggers have. The editors saw the McCain story as describing a powerful senator’s dealings with lobbyists trying to influence government decisions, including one who anonymous sources believed was having a romantic relationship with him. “Our interest in that story was not in his private romantic life,” Keller said. “It was in his relationship with lobbyists, plural, and that story took many, many weeks of intensive reporting effort.”
I would not have published the allegation of a McCain affair, because The Times did not convincingly establish its truth.
Hoyt is too much of a company man to point out that the last sentence refutes Keller and Stevenson’s argument. Their case might hold water, if they had been able to establish any of what they insinuated. But, as it turned out, they had nothing — unlike the Enquirer — and the story they ultimately ran hinged on the conjecturally salacious lede.
Internet Scofflaw 