The Old Gray Gossip II

Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the NYT commented on the McCain story in today's Times - “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,” [NYT executive editor Bill Keller said.] “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.”

I think that ignores the scarlet elephant in the room. A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.

Well duh, but the irresponsibility of Mr. Keller on this story - or the blatant political purpose of the story - should not be ignored. Hoyt quotes a reader from Philadelphia suggesting that the Gray Lady “has sunk below its standards and created a salacious distraction from an otherwise substantive campaign. And for the record, I am an Obama supporter.” An Arizona reader stated “I am most disappointed in The New York Times for engaging in this sort of trash-the-candidate journalism.” According to Hoyt the story generated more than 2400 responses, most of them negative. But was Keller's point news of something later for the eventual democratic candidate?