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Will Femia is a Weblog enthusiast who, through good fortune and dumb luck, was introduced to the form as his position as chat producer for MSNBC.com careered into obsolescence. On any given day, Will can be found having already spent an unhealthy amount of time squinting at a computer screen.

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Follow-up links to that McCain story

Posted: Friday, February 22, 2008 7:04 PM by Will Femia

Some follow-up links for those of you who've been interested in the McCain story from the NY Times:

Here the Times answers readers' questions about what they were thinking in publishing the story. I still can't decide if I think they were foolish for not anticipating the reaction the story got. That's been the most interesting question for me through this. The story is about how a man whose public image is based on his reputation plays fast and loose with that reputation and how it freaks out his aids. Should the Times have known that the cable news echelon of our media class would relay it as "The Times says McCain had an affair and did favors for this attractive woman." Surely we can agree that anticipated reaction should not alter an organization's news judgment, but maybe the story should have been presented differently?  Remember a few years ago when a member of Congress used the word "niggardly" and everyone went crazy with condemnation before they actually bothered to look up the word to find out that it has nothing to do with the forbidden n-word? How much of that did the member of Congress bring on himself by using that word in the first place? Correcting: It wasn't a member of Congress, it was a local official. Interesting recent history of that word.

This is the New Republic piece that supposedly forced the Times to print the story before they were really ready.

Why the Seattle PI didn't run the story when it came up in the feed.

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Comments

Yes.  Well.  I wish they would have held off after the Republican nominating convention, frankly, because I'd surely hate to see the other Republican candidates get the nod...

Kate (Sent Friday, February 22, 2008 11:04 PM)

Whether McCain had "an affair" with the lobbyist is unprovable, and isn't even the crux of the story.  The point is that he met with her and her clients, and pressured the FCC to quickly decide on a ruling that would keep a loophole open, which would greatly benefit the client.  

Is doesn't really matter how she got his favor or if they had sex.  The Times isn't even reporting that, as far as I can tell.

Chris Manes (Sent Monday, February 25, 2008 4:57 PM)



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