WASHINGTON, D.C. — “What the [bleep] is Politico
doing?” said the man on the phone. “And how the [bleep] are they
getting away with this [bleep]?”
Reporters rival sailors for their proficiency in profanity, and
one of the most experienced political journalists in Washington was
cussing a blue streak Thursday evening as he railed against the
shoddiness of Politico’s reporting on the Herman Cain
“scandal.”
Scare-quotes around the word “scandal” are necessary in that, as
of Thursday night, Americans still had only vague suggestions of
what it is Cain is accused of having done to women who worked at
the National Restaurant Association during his tenure as president
of that organization in the late 1990s.
“Five days!” yelled the veteran reporter on the phone. “Five
days and what have we got? Nothing! What the [bleep] were they
thinking about, running with a piece of [bleep] story like
that?”
The excrement to which my friend referred was the
2,100-word article Politico published Sunday, the lead
paragraph of which read: “During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head
of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two
female employees complained to colleagues and senior association
officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving
their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to
POLITICO.”
So far, so good — this is true, as Cain himself has
confirmed, but the shortcomings of Politico’s article
become obvious to anyone who reads beyond the first paragraph. All
of the sources cited for the accusations against Cain were
anonymous, and the accusations were described in such general terms
that readers were left to wonder, “What exactly did Cain do?”
Despite the dribbling out of “details” this week, we still don’t
have the names of the accusers or anything like a coherent
narrative of what Cain allegedly did. This was shocking to my
friend the veteran journalist, who bent my ear for 45 minutes with
blistering denunciations of Politico’s shoddy reporting.
“What have they got? They got nothing,” he said, finally managing
to speak two consecutive sentences without a cuss word.
After that call ended, I finally got a call-back from Cain’s
campaign chief of staff, Mark Block. I’d called him hours earlier
to get his reaction to a
PJM article that seemed to provide some details of the
accusations. But long before Block called back, PJM had issued a
correction that reduced the big scoop to the revelation that
lobbyists like to have parties at a restaurant called Ciao Baby
Cucina. And, like my friend the veteran journalist, Block wanted to
talk about Politico’s shoddy reporting. Block said someone
had e-mailed him the code of ethics of the Society
of Professional Journalists. “I haven’t had a chance yet to
forward it to the reporter and the editor at Politico, but
if they lived up to the code of ethics, they both should resign,”
the pack-a-day campaign wizard said.
“We’re not playing their games anymore,” Block said. “The
American people are sick and tired of the cesspool in Washington,
D.C. We’re not responding to any more inquiries, any more
questions — period, end of story.”
This morning at breakfast, I picked up The Washington
Times and saw
Wes Pruden’s column, which absolutely nailed it:
Politico, the political daily of liberal pedigree that set the
hounds on Mr. Cain, has not said what he is guilty of, or when, or
where, or who says so. Innuendo is enough. Politico says it has a
half-dozen sources “shedding light on different aspects of the
complaints.” Once upon a time, a reporter trying to get a story
merely “shedding light” on “aspects” past a gruff old city editor
would have been thrown down the stairs if the gruff old city editor
was having a particularly bad day.
Having spent a decade working in Pruden’s newsroom, I can attest
that he would have summarily fired anyone who even suggested that
his newspaper publish anything as shoddy as what Politico
published on Sunday. Throwing the fired employee down the stairs,
however, might be considered “harassment.”
The other big headline today was in the Washington
Post: “Cain
rises in Post-ABC poll despite scandal; most Republicans dismiss
allegations.” Clearly, Block is onto something when he says
Americans are sick and tired of the “cesspool” standards of D.C.
media — and even some in the D.C. media are sick and tired of
it. The question now is why more reporters aren’t beginning to ask
questions about Politico? Why aren’t the Washington
Post and the New York Times and other respectable
news organizations investigating how and why Politico
dropped this stink bomb of thinly-sourced innuendo in the middle of
the Republican presidential primary? Who tipped them, and what kind
of agenda are they pursuing?
Who, what, when, where, why and how — somebody once taught
me that these are questions journalists are supposed to ask. And
somebody needs to start asking those questions about
Politico.
Stephen Engleberg’s criticism in Pro Publica is a good
starting point, but it’s only a start.
The question of motive has been raised: Was this attack on
Herman Cain done at the behest of his Republican rivals? Or has
Cain gotten a rude introduction to Team Obama’s Chicago-style
methods? Between epithets and obscenities Thursday night, my
veteran journalist friend voiced his own suspicion that the White
House was behind the Politico story. Cain is “their worst
nightmare,” he said. “He’s the American dream — they gotta be
scared to death of that guy.”
And this points back to the real scandal this week, as
expressed in a question by Jeff Goldstein at the Protein Wisdom
blog: “What did
Politico know and when did they know it?”
