Northwest Reflections

The New York Times published a lengthy article this week about John McCain, alleging an “inappropriate relationship” with a female lobbyist, two words that are sufficiently vague to avoid accusing McCain of any specific misdeed and yet pregnant with the possibility of ethics and sexual misconduct. When you boil the story down to the hard facts you are left with suspicions voiced by two disenchanted aids about something they thought might have happened ten years ago. Both the lobbyist and McCain have strongly denied any wrongdoing or any romantic relationship.

This is news?

The article also provides a lengthy rehash of McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five Scandal in which McCain and four other Senators were censured by the Senate in 1991 (the Times fails to mention the others were Democrats). Years ago McCain openly acknowledged his mistakes in the Keating scandal and applied the lessons learned to a renewed commitment to ethics in government.

In my opinion, the Times piece isn’t news but a smear job. The theme is that McCain has an established pattern of making questionable decisions. But only by carefully reading and re-reading the article to dig out the facts do you realize its narrative is based entirely on ancient political history, rumor, and innuendo.

Should we believe everything we read? I learned many years ago to be generally skeptical of journalists, particularly when they report on politics or religion.

As a teenager in 1972, I worked for Richard Nixon’s re-election by delivering campaign literature door to door in my California hometown. I was rewarded by being bused to a rally of young Republicans at a downtown Los Angeles hotel. The rally offered food and music and a chance to mingle with other young people. I think there was something like two thousand of us there. The highlight of the rally for us was President Nixon’s flying in by helicopter and waving to us as he disembarked and entered the hotel. At some point during the event, I got bored and wandered to the front of the hotel with a few other rally attendees. On the opposite side of the street we saw less than a dozen anti-war protestors. A shouting match ensued between us and the protestors, and rally organizers hastily ushered us to the back of the hotel.

The next day, I was eager to see what the Los Angeles Times reported about our rally. After much looking, I finally found a tiny paragraph buried somewhere in the middle of the paper. But to my astonishment, there was a front page story talking about thousands of anti-war protesters choking the streets. Where were these legions of protestors and why had I not seen them?

Since then I’ve been skeptical of journalists, particularly when they have an agenda. It’s amazing how little reporting of direct factual observation occurs, and how much time is devoted to repeating what others said happened, or even more subjectively, what others say an event means. Unfortunately, people are so busy these days that they tend to simply accept what they hear or read without questioning it. We would all do well to ask ourselves, where are the hard facts that support this story?

I’m not a big McCain fan. But this hit piece does more damage to the sagging reputation of The New York Times than it does to John McCain.