NYT Public Editor Criticizes NYT

[TahoeHorn]

The Public Editor of the NYT has spoken out against the McCain smear job. I'll edit this with a link when I can find one.

The gist of his criticism was that it was a cop-out to say that the sources speculated that McCain had an affair. He felt that the NYT should know that it was big news and that the readers would focus on that angle. The NYT should have either had more facts or passed.

 

[DCLonghorn8]

Agreed.

The NYT actually broke their own journalistic integrity policy with this story. I have had more than one NYT reporter yell at me for wanting to stay on background or not be sourced by name. They got pissed off because it is the policy of the paper to not accept any unnamed sources and the reporter doesn't have a story without names.

Granted, if the top dog managing editor is OK with it, I guess he can break the rule, but this is one more element to this thing that smells; beyond not mentioning that McCain had responded in writing 6 times (they only mentioned that he refused to be interviewed for the article), that they sat on it since December, and basically being nothing more than Page 6 gossip material.

 

[SomeMildLanguage]

There's a reason this story had no legs and went nowhere.

There wasn't any there there.

 

[TahoeHorn]

Here it is:

NYT