Today, you will have to decide whether the McCain/lobbyist/NYT story has enough legs to keep moving forward.
This morning the
Times said:
Since publication of the article, the
Times has received
over 2,000 comments,
many of them criticizing the handling of the article. Editors and
reporters who worked on the article will be answering questions on
Friday. Please send yours to
askthetimes@nytimes.com.
Columbia Journalism Review suggests five questions for starters.
The New York Times story on Sen. John McCain's ties to lobbyists, particularly Vicki Iseman, raises all kinds of questions about sourcing, timing and the behind-the-scenes battle about whether a story is fit to print. Be sure to read some of my colleagues' thoughts
on how the Times framed the story.
Here I will explore the fallout from the
Times story, why the paper may have moved it today, who this lobbyist is and how newsrooms should handle their coverage.
What's the story really about?I think stories about lobbyists and politicians are fair game. But
as Poynter's Kelly McBride points out, the
Times' piece is bookended with innuendo of sexual involvement with a blondiful lobbyist.
As AJR points out:
But the Times doesn't assert that McCain and telecom lobbyist Vicki
Iseman had an affair. What it does say is that his top associates were
very concerned about his close relationship with someone lobbying about
issues before his committee, feared it may have become romantic and
actually staged an intervention to break it up.
The
Times' story raises legitimate issues of McCain's involvement with lobbyists who represent business before his Senate committee. McCain portrays himself as a reformer for campaign finance. He was, after all, the co-sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act, which banned unlimited donations (so-called "soft money") from corporations, unions and rich folks. But before that legislation was passed in 2002, he did what many lawmakers did. He hitched rides on corporate jets, even when the companies had business before his committee.
Yesterday. the media pack dutifully followed the story by showing split-screen images of McCain and the cocktail dress-wearing lobbyist. They didn't focus on campaign finance reform or lobbying laws. They didn't compare the legislation this lobbyist was pushing to McCain's support or voting record on that legislation. They focused on whether he had a romantic relationship.
In my video storytelling class I usually teach this lesson, "When the eye and the ear compete, the eye wins." No matter what you are saying while those images are on the TV screen, the audience will not hear you clearly. They will remember the images.
Reporting the storySo how do you report the story without any of your newsroom's original reporting? Here are some suggestions:
Explain to your readers/listeners/viewers when and how your own newsroom uses confidential sources. Make no mistake about it, McCain's attack on the
Times is in part an attack on all media's use of confidential sources. Consider publishing your guidelines on your Web site or in print. Explain how newsrooms sometimes use confidential sources and when it is appropriate.
When you tell the McCain story, you have a duty to explain more than the sexual innuendo story. Many broadcast reports, pressed for time, will start with something like, "Senator John McCain today denied having inappropriate sexual relations with a Washington, D.C., lobbyist." And the whole story will focus on that issue. The
Times story was mostly about McCain the reformer raising eyebrows by his relationships with lobbyists who have business before his Senate committee. It is a question of influence, not sex.
The Washington Post tackled the story in this way.
Consider when and how your newsroom will report potentially harmful stories about candidates. Imagine what the effect of this story might have been if it had been published back when the Drudge Report first mentioned it in December, a week or two before the Iowa caucuses. I suspect McCain, already fairly safe as the nominee for his party, will survive this. But how many times do these kind of stories arise in the closing days of a campaign? (Remember the
Los Angeles Times' Arnold Schwarzenegger stories just before the California election.)
Be VERY careful about what images, headlines and teases you use in your coverage. For television, showing McCain and Iseman on the screen at the same time may visually imply a relationship. And if you show Iseman at the same time that you are showing McCain standing with his wife, you are setting up a visual tension. For print, keep in mind that a headline that says "McCain denies inappropriate relationship" is very different from "McCain denies lobbyist ties " or "McCain says he is disappointed in the NYT."
The whole story may be a launchpad for you to explore how lobbyists and elected officials interact on the state/local/federal level. This story, I suspect, will perpetuate the notion that lobbyists are bad. I wonder if there is a different story. Sometimes lobbyists act not just in their own selfish interest, but in ways that benefit the public interest. I am thinking of a group in Tennessee (Tennesseans for Open Government, which I have contributed to) that lobbies for open meetings and open records. How do lobbyists educate lawmakers, not just fund them?
Let's not ignore the undue influence that lobbyists have. But remember that we all in some way are represented by lobbyists. Senior citizens are, criminals are, media are, journalists are, developers, airlines and oil companies are.
How the story is being reported around the WebThe
social bookmarking site Digg even has a headline that uses the word "mistress."
The Huffington Post's Sherman Yellen
ran a way-over-the-top piece called "McCain's Blue Dress" drawing a connection to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
Click here to see how other blogs and websites are covering the story:
Why now?
The Times' story is
linked to a story mentioned on the Drudge Report back in December. Drudge said that McCain was trying to convince the
Times to spike a story, something he denied. The McCain campaign is suggesting that the
Times moved on the story in part because
The New Republic was about to publish a piece asking why the
Times had not published what it found about McCain and lobbyists.
The New Republic story was
published yesterday afteroon with details of how the Times' story came about.
Who is this lobbyist?Here is a list of the clients Iseman represented between 1998 and 2006. The list includes a number of media properties including Telemundo, Univision, Sinclair Broadcasting, Paxson Communications and others.
Her official company bio says she did a lot of work on behalf of broadcasters:
She has extensive experience in telecommunications, representing corporations before the House and Senate Commerce Committees. Her work on the landmark 1992 and 1996 communications bills helped secure cable access for broadcast television stations. Her experience in the communications field includes digital television conversion, satellite regulations and telecommunications ownership provisions.
McCain's Commerce Committee, of course, takes on many telecommunications issues. Iseman's clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.
The
Times story says McCain and Iseman attended a small fundraising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications.
The Times story recounts:
A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman�s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.
In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain�s staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain�s staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.
Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman. In an embarrassing turn for the campaign, news reports invoked the Keating scandal, once again raising questions about intervening for a patron.
Mr. McCain's aides released all of his letters to the F.C.C. to dispel accusations of favoritism, and aides said the campaign had properly accounted for four trips on the Paxson plane. But the campaign did not report the flight with Ms. Iseman. Mr. McCain�s advisers say he was not required to disclose the flight, but ethics lawyers dispute that.
The list of Iseman's firm's clients includes local governments from all over the country, including Marin County, Calif.; Miami; Palm Springs, Calif.; and Hillsboroough County, Fla.
Many city governments are on the list, which on the surface seems to be no news at all to me, but I wanted you to have the list in your pocket.
