How the 'Times' Blew It on McCain Ethics Story

Did The New York Times wait too long to publish its front-page story on John McCain's ethics, or did it not wait long enough?

Yes. Exactly.

The 3,000-plus-word, quadruple-bylined piece is a great big tuna casserole with a lot of macaroni but very little tuna. Its central assertion -- that John McCain had a relationship with a female lobbyist close enough to alarm his aides and cause them to take precautionary measures -- is newsworthy on its own merits and not even in dispute*. As McCain himself once wrote, "[Q]uestions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics." It would've been just as newsworthy back in December, when the reporters working on the story originally filed it.

But somewhere along the way, someone decided it wasn't enough. It was decreed that, having failed to substantiate the obvious implication of that relationship -- that it was not only inappropriate but adulterous -- it could only serve as a datapoint in a bigger feature on McCain's ethical blind spots.

That was a bad call. The result is an article that Josh Marshall aptly describes as feeling overly-lawyered, heavily hedged and jumbled, and Matt Cooper calls "journalistic doublespeak." Worse, by turning a small story into a big one, the Times has opened itself up to all the usual accusations of political bias and left-wing water-carrying.

The irony here is that surely Bill Keller et al thought they were doing the responsible thing by putting the relationship in a broader context. But their good intentions are bound to go unappreciated thanks to a piece that stinks of timid insinuation.

*Update, 3:48 p.m.: Okay, so maybe it is in some dispute; McCain now says his staff never confronted him about the relationship.