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You are here: Home / Politics / Media / The Iseman Walkback

The Iseman Walkback

by John Cole|  February 20, 20094:57 pm| 22 Comments

This post is in: Media, General Stupidity

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I’m late to the game on this, but I see that Vicki Iseman dropped her lawsuit against the NY Times in return for letting her lawyers make a statement, and the NY Times contends that they were not and are not apologizing while Iseman has told the Politico otherwise.

You can read the original story here, and I still think now, as I did then, that what the Times did was sleazy and wrong. They essentially published rumors that McCain staffers had at one point thought McCain was having an affair with Iseman, and somehow or another the Times wanted us to believe that they were not asserting that McCain had actually had the affair, just that others thought he had (wink wink). It was a pretty crappy spectacle, if you ask me, and it is a mark on the Times.

Beyond that, though, I think it was just terrible journalism, because the sexing up (if you will) of the story with the affair nonsense obscured the entire premise, which the Times didn’t even get to until the sixth paragraph of the original story:

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)

Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.

There was and still is no reason for the Iseman stuff to underscore anything- the subsequent examples about the corporate jets made the point by itself. When you consider that there was much noise at the time about the fact that many of McCain’s campaign team were in fact lobbyists, this was a valid point, but it got lost in the sleaze of the Iseman rumors. And because the lead of the story was a bunch of stuffs about an affair, you know what everyone was talking about the next day. McCain supporters had every right and reason to be furious about this.

It was sleazy, and the Times did themselves and their readers a profound disservice, and continue to do themselves a disservice with their weaselly handling of their statement yesterday.

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Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    Zifnab

    February 20, 2009 at 5:06 pm

    Beyond that, though, I think it was just terrible journalism, because the sexing up (if you will) of the story withe the affair nonsense obscured the entire premise, which the Times didn’t even get to until the sixth paragraph of the original story

    It reminds me of the Dan Rather bit investigating Bush’s career in the air national guard. Both were terrible pieces of journalism if only because they completely dodged the issue at hand: in the latter, that Bush’s "military" creds were a load of bull, and in the former, that McCain was joined at the hip with lobbyists in a very financial sense.

    But the actual vetting was bad, the presentation from a hyped-up angle was weak, and for their troubles both journalists took black eyes for what should have been slam dunks.

    You’re never going to beat a Republican by out-sleazing him. Once your reputation is blown, you’re no better than he is. It’s a shame when the GOP is able to completely defuse a story like this, because these are the stories people really should give a fuck about. Not windsurfing and love-boating and secretly conspiring with communists.

  2. 2.

    MikeJ

    February 20, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    The Times and CBS were under the impression the Clinton rules applied. If you say something about a Republican it had better be rock solid. You can slander Democrats with impunity, but even (especially?) when you tell the truth about Republicans they’ll howl non-stop.

  3. 3.

    Comrade Stuck

    February 20, 2009 at 5:23 pm

    @MikeJ:

    The Times and CBS were under the impression the Clinton rules applied. If you say something about a Republican it had better be rock solid. You can slander Democrats with impunity, but even (especially?) when you tell the truth about Republicans they’ll howl non-stop.

    They consider dems family cause most are dems, and they will forgive you no matter how many times you stab them in the back.

  4. 4.

    Stoic

    February 20, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    One has to wonder, if the WAY these stories get "fucked up" is just a deliberate way for the editors to obscure real issues that would hurt the pol. Congressman John Doe was accused, by un-names sources, of having sex with little furry aliens, oh, btw he also seems to be taking bribes for his votes on the defense committee.

    Everyone gets outraged over the "sex controversy" and the thing that would really hurt him is buried and forgotten.

  5. 5.

    Binkyboy

    February 20, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Stoic starts to make a good point.

    What if politicians start sleazy leaks about themselves in order for the noise to drown out any other scandals that will be airing at the same time? Sex sells. Lobbyist plane rides don’t.

  6. 6.

    Zifnab

    February 20, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    @Binkyboy: That’s a little too conspiracy theory-ish for me. I like to believe that Congressmen who get into money and power scandals just choose not to skip on the amoral sex, either. I mean, when you’re breaking every other law…

    And a media that’s really just pining to go full Jerry Springer is more prone to report on the latter than the former.

  7. 7.

    AnneLaurie

    February 20, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    There was and still is no reason for the Iseman stuff to underscore anything- the subsequent examples about the corporate jets made the point by itself. When you consider that there was much noise at the time about the fact that many of McCain’s campaign team were in fact lobbyists, this was a valid point, but it got lost in the sleaze of the Iseman rumors.

    … Except the Times, like all the other ‘papers of record’, couldn’t be bothered to report all the stories about lobbyists basically treating McCain like a housepet or other wholly-owned subsidiary, until they had a Sexxxy Scandale to get lathered over. It’d be nice if the Media Village Idiots assumed us proles cared as much about how members of the Political-Industrial Complex were fvcking us all over as they do about which members of the PIC are fvcking each other, wouldn’t it?

  8. 8.

    DesertScorpion

    February 20, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    Sorry, I’m from Arizona. Nothing the Times did could be sleazier than McCain himself is.

    As less than stellar jobs of journalism go, this is a pea under the mattress in a world full of boulders as big as Winnebagos.

    Much ado about — not just nothing, but the wrong thing.

  9. 9.

    kid bitzer

    February 20, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    zifnab’s #1 is exactly what i was going to say.

    somehow the rules for holding republicans accountable say that if you can put forward a mountain of evidence of wrongdoing, but somewhere in that mountain there’s one piece of evidence that doesn’t hold up, then the defendant is acquitted on all counts.

    must be nice to be republican.

  10. 10.

    Aaron

    February 20, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    Seriously, if you were the mccain camp and the republicans, this could not have been better. A front page story about a corrupt politician? would have been great. A front page story about an old politician who is having affairs with a much younger women, when voters are worried that he is too old? political gold. This story helped undercut the ‘mccain is told old’ argument. And of course it gave republicans fresh ammo for the ‘nytimes is a liberal msm outlet that hates republicans’ argument and the whole ‘just how corrupt is this joker’ gets lost in the outrage. compare that to the NYTimes front page story about Hillary back in the day whose underlying premise seemed to be ‘ is Hillary may be an inhuman robot or just devoid of actual human emotions’, and 1400 words later we learned that anonymous sources who could not even be quoted anonymously tell us it could go either way. but her office did confirm that she sees bill around half of the month. which was just the biggest bit of dreck.

  11. 11.

    Atanarjuat

    February 20, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    A liberal rag like the New York Times publishing sleazy misinformation about conservatives?

    Unpossible! The Gray Lady is the Paper of Record! As in a broken record, repeatedly bashing conservatives without fail.

    Had Senator John McCain won the presidential election (which he would have, if not for the criminal ACORN schemes), the NY Times would have done all in its wilting power to smear McCain every day during his presidency. Little wonder this Pravda-on-the-Hudson is sliding into irrelevancy.

    -Country First.

  12. 12.

    handy

    February 20, 2009 at 10:16 pm

    @Atanarjuat:

    It must suck for you seeing the Times do that while simultaneously burying the DAMNING ties between Obama and William Ayers and Tony Rezko, as well as the theological and socio-political roots of his thinking in Reverend Wright. Oh Gawwwwd, the iniquity must sting!

  13. 13.

    cosanostradamus

    February 20, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    .
    Now if she could just get that old man taste out of her mouth.
    .

  14. 14.

    Wile E. Quixote

    February 20, 2009 at 11:28 pm

    @attanut

    Had Senator John McCain won the presidential election (which he would have, if not for the criminal ACORN schemes fact that he was a useless old douchebag and all of his supporters are mentally retarded)

    Fixed.

  15. 15.

    Wile E. Quixote

    February 20, 2009 at 11:28 pm

    @attanut

    Had Senator John McCain won the presidential election (which he would have, if not for the criminal ACORN schemes fact that he was a useless old douchebag and all of his supporters are mentally retarded)

    Fixed.

  16. 16.

    Wile E. Quixote

    February 20, 2009 at 11:36 pm

    Sorry about the double post. Yeah, it’s gotta suck if you’re a wingtard like attanut. I mean not only are you retarded, but you’re also a member of a political party that doesn’t know how to steal elections. I mean really, Bush stole Florida with what, 539 votes back in 2000 but ACORN, man they came through last year and stole the election by millions of votes.

    Of course now that Obama is elected we can go ahead with the next phase of our plan which is to round up conservatives like Attanut, cut their balls off and give them vaginaplasties and put them in our Democratic sex camps where they will be used as pleasure objects by Barney Frank, Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno. Man, I can’t wait until the footage of Attanut being used as the meat in a strap-on wielding Maxine Waters/Barney Frank sandwich hits Youtube. Especially when Barney pulls out at the last minute and shoots a big, gooey load all over his face.

  17. 17.

    TenguPhule

    February 21, 2009 at 12:13 am

    (which he would have, if not for the criminal ACORN schemes)

    And I would have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!!

    Now get off my lawn!

  18. 18.

    TenguPhule

    February 21, 2009 at 12:14 am

    he was a useless old douchebag

    Redundant.

  19. 19.

    Steeplejack

    February 21, 2009 at 12:52 am

    The Iseman Walkback? Wasn’t that the one after The Quiller Memorandum? I thought both of those were good. . . . Hmm, maybe I’m confusing it with Funeral in Berlin.

  20. 20.

    mapaghimagsik

    February 21, 2009 at 1:15 am

    Yeah, if this was about Kerry, even after the story was debunked, they’d still be talking about Iseman’s "stained dress".

  21. 21.

    Patrick

    February 21, 2009 at 9:51 am

    I was (am) a fanatical Obama partisan and was glad to see almost any criticism of McCain in the press during the campaign, but even I couldn’t stomach that Times piece, for exactly the reasons that you so clearly express here. The decision to run it was an appalling journalistic misjudgment, and I’m now actually sorry that they were not required by this settlement to apologize to Iseman, McCain, and their readers.

  22. 22.

    dan robinson

    February 21, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    I don’t think the Times went over the line with the story. McCain was pitching this ‘straight talker’ image as who he would be in office and there were a lot of reasons to believe that McCain was more than a little bent.

    The ethics coin has too sides, rights and responsibilities. Did the Times have a right to publish the facts as they understood them? Yes. McCain’s staffers had tried to keep Iseman away from McCain because they thought she was either having an affair with McCain or was trying to start one. McCain was either unwilling or unable to see that, so the staffers were stepping in to make sure McCain was not compromised by poor choices in who he associated with. As it turns out, McCain did make bad choices in the area of who he should associate with, e.g., Sarah Palin. What were the Times responsibilities? They were not responsible for whatever people inferred from the story. When people, like me, saw John Edwards with Wily Hunter, or whatever her chosen name is, they inferred that there was more to the story than Edwards was admitting to. And they were right.

    What are/were McCain’s rights and responsibilities? Iseman’s? Iseman wanted the appearance of being close to McCain so that she could sell that access to her clients. If that closeness is interpreted as something else, that is her problem.

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