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February 21, 2008

McCain "Exposé" Leaves Me Queasy

I heard yesterday that some big exposé on John McCain was in the offing, supposedly detailing his unethical relationships with lobbyists. But when I read today's big story in the New York Times all I got from it was a queasy feeling. Not about McCain, but rather about the desperate, shoddy journalism that would produce something like this and try to pass it off as a big story.

I've seen a real-life exposé of real substance up close and personal before. I'm dreadfully familiar with the feelings experienced by campaign staffers who know the morning paper will probably drop a nightmarishly black cloud over their lives. In our case, we expected something mild stretched to absurd levels in an attempt to look like a big deal; instead we were hit with a legitimately big deal that grew even larger over time. In McCain's case, however, the public was led to believe this morning's paper would drop a big bomb, and instead it's brought us an embarrassingly big to-do over nothing of substance.

McCain may or may not have been romantically involved with the lobbyist in question, and frankly, I don't care. Let me just remind everyone that many of our presidents, senators, and congressmen throughout history have dallied on the side - personally reprehensible behavior, to be sure, but none of the country's business. What would bother me is if he was using the power of his office to do her favors that were not in the country's best interests simply because they were romantically involved. If that happened, the New York Times offers no evidence of it. The paper also offers no evidence of any of the rest of the laundry list of implications it throws out. There probably is truth in the assertion that McCain is "imprudent" and that he has pushed the lines, but we can't know that he has crossed any lines with such short-cutted, un-cited and synoptic writing. It's simply lazy and irresponsible journalism - particularly so considering the man is running for President.

Quite the opposite journalistic approach occurred back when Bill Sizemore was running for Governor of Oregon. The Oregonian employed at least one full-time journalist for months to do some actual investigative reporting. When the paper stated on that fateful morning that Sizemore's financial background left something to be desired, every point was fully documented and sourced. None of this "anonymous campaign staffer" and generalized statement crap. Only a great desire to disbelieve it, to the point of outright denial, could overcome the sheer irrefutability of the accusations. All that effort to defeat Sizemore was apparently worthwhile for a statewide paper like The Oregonian, but exerting any real effort to do some actual digging to verify the veracity of the claims about a presidential candidate is apparently too much for a national newspaper like The New York Times. Disgraceful, really.

Posted by Becky at February 21, 2008 10:00 AM