Taking another look at the New York Times’ John McCain story

February 25th, 2008 | Category: Politics

My initial assessment of The New York Times‘ (NYSE: NYT) controversial story about John McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist gave the paper too much of the benefit of the doubt.

Originally, I wrote, “What public, particularly those external of the media, need to realize is that there rarely are smoking guns in these sorts of stories and that anonymous sources are a essential evil. At times, journalists have to build their cases using circumstantial evidence the same way lawyers do in court.”

But after reading Clark Hoyt, the paper’s ombudsman, blast the

piece in his column Sunday, I realized that I was too easy on the paper. The story, as Hoyt noted, “did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not build clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately - an affair or just an organization with a lobbyist that could look poor.”

Continue reading Taking another look at the New York Times’ John McCain story

Original post by Jonathan Berr

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