By The Prowler on 2.22.08 @ 12:09AM
To paraphrase Bill Keller, the N.Y. Times's hit job on John McCain bespeaks a lack of sources.
"On the substance, we think the story speaks for itself. In all
the uproar, no one has challenged what we actually reported." That
is what New York Times executive editor Bill
Keller claimed during media interviews on Thursday after
publication of the Times' attack on Sen. John
McCain.
But that isn't entirely true, say Times reporters with
knowledge of the debate between reporters and editors at the
Times over the past three months. "In fact, several
longtime McCain aides and congressional staffers disputed the facts
in what the New York Times was trying to push," says one
reporter with knowledge of the reporting. "That's why it took them
so long to run with the story. People critical to the reporting of
the story were disputing the facts and knocking it down."
According to Times sources, one current volunteer
adviser to McCain, who worked for the Senator on Capitol Hill for a
number of years, and had knowledge of McCain's involvement in
telecom issues, disputed just about every fact the New York
Times presented to him in attempting to verify parts of the
story.
"There were pieces of information that would have placed McCain
in a worse light that never made it into the story because
reporters couldn't confirm the information and they tried like hell
to do it," says another Times source. "We had information
about private meetings and dinners that we couldn't confirm because
we couldn't find a second or third source to back it up."
Not that the Times didn't try. At one point, according
to McCain sources, Times reporters were calling McCain
sources on their private cell phone numbers and private office
numbers. "That gave us a pretty good idea about who the original
source of this story was, because only two or three people in
McCain's inner circle, or former inner circle, would have all those
numbers," says a current McCain campaign aide.
These reporters were claiming to have more than 14 "on the
record" sources for the story as they attempted to sway longtime
McCain advisers to cooperate in the story. As it turned out, the
Times had fewer than three.
topics:
NATO
