John McCain and Vicki Iseman, All the Innuendo That’s Fit to Print?
As dutifully as it reported its eight-year-old unproven allegations that Senator John McCain had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, the New York Times reports on his denial.
Senator John McCain said Thursday that an article in The New York Times about his close ties to a woman lobbyist was untrue, that he had no romantic relationship with the lobbyist and that he had no confrontations in 1999 with worried staff members who told him to stay away from her.
“Obviously, I’m very disappointed in the article — it’s not true,” Mr. McCain said at a morning news conference in Toledo, where he was campaigning for president. “At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust or make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest or would favor anyone or organization.”
Asked if he ever had a romantic relationship with the woman, Vicki Iseman, 40, Mr. McCain, 71, responded, “No.” He described his relationship with Ms. Iseman as “friends” and said he had last seen her “several months ago” at an event.
Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, stood at his side throughout the news conference. She told reporters that she was also disappointed with The Times. “And more importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America,” Mrs. McCain said. “He’s a man of great character.”
You can watch the video of the February 21, 2008 John McCain press conference here.
The McCain campaign launched a broadside against the New York Times today, saying the story about the Arizona senator’s relationship with a female lobbyist fell short of the newspaper’s standards.
“This is much more a story about journalism than it is about John McCain,” said senior adviser Steve Schmidt, speaking to reporters as McCain flew here from Ohio.
“Obviously, we were very angry,” he said. “When we read the story, my initial reaction was that it was something you would see in the National Enquirer, not the New York Times.”
Schmidt said the fact that the Times was examining McCain’s relationship with Vicki Iseman was an “open secret in Washington for many, many months.” He asserted that the newspaper rushed the story into print because it was worried about a pending article in the New Republic about an internal debate about whether to run the story. Schmidt said the New Republic reporter also called the McCain campaign, saying the Times story had been twice killed and that there were divisions over it between editors and reporters.
Schmidt said that “in the post-Jayson Blair, post-Judith Miller world,” the Times went through a “painful period of self-examination” and announced a new policy on the use of anonymous quotes.
Blair was fired after he was found to have made up many facts in his articles, while Miller resigned in the wake of the criminal probe of a White House leak that led to the conviction of White House aide I. Lewis Libby.
Schmidt asserted: “What happened here is a very quick decision was made: Do we publish a story that we know doesn’t meet our standards or do we allow a news organization to once again cast a light on goings-on and dysfunction in our newsroom?”
Before Schmidt spoke, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller issued a statement saying the Times publishes stories when they are ready.
Thus, The Washington Post admits they published their own version of the Times article.
Almost immediately after it appeared, critics assailed the Times for running the story – which the newspaper had been working on for several months – and for the timing of its release. McCain aide Mark Salter suggested to Time magazine that the decision to run the story now resulted from the Times becoming aware that the New Republic was working on a story of its own about internal strife in the Times over whether to run it.
“That sounds about right to me,” a former senior Times journalist very familiar with the paper’s deliberative process told CBSNews.com. “They would be terrified of people thinking they would be holding the story, for people to think they’re soft.”
“I think you’ve got a fair story about lobbyist influence and possibly being too close,” the former Times staffer said. “But…any imputation of an affair is from unnamed sources, and that’s foul play by the Times’ own written standards. The Times’ written standards require that they do not base negative accusations on unnamed sources except in very specialized cases.”
The Times’ standards on unnamed sources can be found here. They include this: “We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack.”
Many more press reactions are reported here and here.
The New Republic also weighs in. Here is a brief excerpt
What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn’t. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.
Fortunately, for Vicki Iseman, massive worldwide Google searches have not done much to violate her privacy. Only publicly available information has emerged. No embarrassing photographs for instance. Quite the contrary.
As The Huffington Post has reported, the lobbying firm for which she works, Alcalde & Fay, has pulled her biography. The Indiana University of PA (IUP) Fall Magazine 2002 published a glowing portrayal.