McCain affair: NY Times criticizes itself

One of the weird things about the New York Times is that its staff is so huge (and its shoddy reporting growing so rapidly), it actually has an editor in charge of apologies.

Whenever it publishers a real boneheaded story, like the one last week alleging Sen. John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago, instead of the responsible editors or reporters apologizing, the Times unleashes the ombudsman, who gets to critique the paper’s actions on the paper’s front page.

This past Sunday, we were all treated to just such an outing.

The Times’ ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, admitted the paper had no business publishing the salacious allegations and had no evidence to back up its claims.

Being a Times employee, Hoyt has to cut his fellow editors and reporters some slack just so he doesn’t have to eat alone in the break room, so he insists they were on to a good story about McCain seeming to do a favor for a lobbyist while publicly campaigning against special interest influence.

However, Hoyt said, editor Bill Keller’s insistence that the story was not about an alleged affair was disingenuous:

“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.”

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign reports that fundraising since the article’s publication is way up.

The Times has been blatantly partisan for years, and a good chunk of the country knows it. Any time the Times gets egg on its face is a blow struck for truth in the media.