Why taking down McCain was the worst decision of Timesman Bill Keller's career

The decision of the New York Times last week to imply a romantic relationship between Senator John McCain and a female lobbyist 30 years his junior was beyond the pale.

This is what seems to have happened. Four reporters spent many weeks researching the story. They and their editor, Dean Baquet, the popular Washington bureau chief for the Times, became convinced that McCain's relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman had in fact been a sexual one. Matt Drudge printed an item last December saying a story was underway, which prompted a public denial from McCain. According to Gabe Sherman's authoritative account for the New Republic, a lengthy struggle then ensued between New York and Washington.

For several months, Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor, quite properly refused to print a story that included a reference to a romantic relationship, because his reporters could provide neither independent evidence nor an on-the-record source to confirm their conviction—and both McCain and Iseman had denied such a relationship. During the same period, Times political reporter Marc Santora asked to be relieved of the McCain campaign beat, because he felt that the paper's continuing pursuit of this story had made it impossible for him to do his job.

After that, on February 11, the Washington Post announced that Marilyn Thompson, one of the four reporters on the McCain story, was leaving the Times to return to the Post. Later that same week, Keller had to tell the Times newsroom that he had been ordered to reduce the size of the staff by 100 positions.

Finally, last week, Keller caved into the pressure from his colleagues—and made the single worst decision of his career.

The searing irony was that by including unconfirmed details about a possible romance, the newspaper ended up doing McCain a gigantic favor. The next day, nearly all of the stories about the Times story focused on this journalistic felony, instead of all the other interesting facts about McCain's extraordinarily wide and deep connections to the Washington lobbying industry. Former McCain enemies among conservative talk-show hosts suddenly rallied around the Republican, and contributions to his campaign surged.

Almost lost in the firestorm over the newspaper's bad judgment was the fact that virtually every senior McCain aide in his campaign, as well as the head of his Senate office, is a current or former lobbyist. To give you an idea of just how convoluted Washington thinking is on this subject, McCain's chief political adviser is Charles Black, who continues to run his lobbying firm from his seat on the bus that is McCain's "straight talk" express. And although Black has previously lobbied McCain on behalf of aviation, broadcasting, and tobacco concerns, he told the Times with a straight face, "Unless [McCain] gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don't think his personal and social relationships matter."

The only newspaper smart enough not be distracted by the sex was the Washington Post, which demonstrated exactly what the Times should have done. The Post ran two stories detailing all of McCain's lobbying connections. The Post even mentioned the concern of McCain's staff members over his closeness to Vicki Iseman. But because the paper never suggested it was a sexual relationship, it avoided the catastrophe created by the Times.

After the story broke, Keller strained to have it both ways. "If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we'd have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members," he told the paper's public editor, Clark Hoyt. "But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career." In an online conversation, Keller repeated his "surprise" over "how few readers saw ... the larger point of the story."

But the fundamental flaw in the thinking of Times editors was illuminated best by the online comments of Times managing editor Jill Abramson. Responding to the bafflement of hundreds of readers over the newspaper's odd decision, Abramson explained it this way:

"We believed it was vital for the story to accurately reflect the range of concerns shared by our sources ... If the editors had summarily decided to edit out the issue of romance, because of possible qualms over 'sexual innuendo' ... our story would not have been a complete and accurate reflection of what our sources told our reporters."

In other words, when reporting on prominent presidential candidates, the new standard for fairness at the Times is that it must include every salacious detail an anonymous source shares with its reporters, even if there isn't a shred of independent evidence to confirm those details.

When I asked Dean Baquet today if he had lobbied in favor of the story, this was his reply:

"I think one of the great misconceptions is that there was some huge fight over the story, and the there had to be 'lobbying' in favor of publication. The truth is, there was lively discussion, as there should have been. But by the end of it everyone involved was in favor of publication, and publication the way you saw it in the paper."

This explanation leaves devoted Times readers with just one question: How was it possible for every senior editor of the Times to forget that this is the very definition of news that is not fit to print?

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