Media Mythbusters Blog

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

Did you read the article in the New York Times today implying that John McCain sold political favors to an Arizona real estate developer that is also a big campaign donor?

I’m no McCain fan, but after reading all four pages, I’m left still waiting for some substance, some sort of bombshell, that legitimizes this story as news.

Real estate developers try to make money from land deals? They’re willing to trade for properties that they feel may be more profitable to them, and discard those properties they feel aren’t going to be as profitable? Real estate developers try to attract and keep the attention of politicians by raising money for them?

Shocking. I’m sure such things have never before happened in the history of earth.

For the story to have merit and legitimacy it needs a “gotcha,” an impropriety, some sort of ethical or legal breach on behalf of the businessman by the politician. This story runs on for four long pages, but the authors never present anything approaching unethical conduct on the part of the candidate.

To the contrary, instead of making a solid case based upon evidence, the article editorializes, it speculates and implies, but provides nothing to support the implied thesis of McCain’s corruption.

In fact, the only evidence the story supplies are specific instances where McCain rejected inappropriate interventions, including one instance where McCain allegedly stopped speaking to the developer for a year over behavior — hiring a personal lobbyist — that was self-serving but entirely legal.

This Times story sought to create a furor over shady, unethical behavior, and it has done that in spades.

Jim Rutenberg, one author of the article and a man who has apparently discarded his integrity as a reporter to write political hit pieces. This is the second Rutenberg article attacking John McCain in the Times in recent months, neither of which has had provided any actual evidence of impropriety. The first alleged an affair with a female lobbyist that was remarkably evidence free, a trait that today’s article also seems to share.

Rutenberg has now twice attempted to smear McCain with charges unsupported by evidence, and twice his editors have not only elected to run the hit pieces, but gave them prominent placement in print editions.

We’ve been fortunate in knowing for some years now that we don’t have to wonder about the editorial biases in play at the New York Times, and now because of these articles and others like them we have no reason to question their ethics… they have none.

In the end, Rutenberg and other newsroom editorialists at the Times are hastening their own demise with this kind of journalism.

I’m not sure who will miss them when they’re gone.