A Little Something for the Ladies (JM)

Unless you live in a cave you must have heard about the NYT story about Johnny Mac's possible tryst and inappropriate relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Last night, before I went out for the evening, I listened to Keith Olbermann read this article aloud on MSNBC. I thought to myself, man this just does not seem substantial at all. A plan hatched, as soon as I got home, I was going to write a piece excoriating the NYT for its shabby journalism and the liberal blogosphere for hopping on board like we're some sort of inverse Dittoheads.

Sadly, my best laid plans were derailed, because the truth is I simply did not have enough respect for the liberal intelligencia. Greg Sargent, at TPM, had an excellent column discussing the legitimacy of the NYT writing. Kevin Drum of the estimable Washington Monthly was also critical. As were many of the other members of the liberal blogosphere. I am a huge cynic, but sometimes it's nice to see that while liberals can be awfully self-righteous, there are occasions on which we are deservedly so. That said, I would just point out that while the media is perfectly willing to challenge one of its own in protection of John McCain, they are way less likely to do so for Hillary Clinton. It's an odd dynamic, I would contend, however, if a story this sketchy about a Clinton scandal were to be published a lot fewer people would be upset and many more would be likely to simply believe it on face.

There are numerous interesting questions that this article raises, but one of the ones that hearkens back to the days of Watergate is what is the role of unnamed and background sources in publishing a story. Back when Woodward and Bernstein were attempting to establish the picture of the Watergate scandal, they often ran in to sources who were unwilling or could not go on the record (like FBI #2 man, Mark Felt, better known as Deep Throat). There was a real tension behind trusting information as an institution and putting out information the public will trust. The relevance to this article is that there is much speculation that the four reporters who penned this article all feel very strongly that they have this story, and it may be because of sources and evidence that they simply cannot release to the public.

So the question this raises in my mind is: Is it acceptable to publish something you absolutely know to be true, but cannot provide the evidence for reasons of journalistic ethics? On one hand, it seems like this is somewhat reasonable. If a news source has built up a level of credibility to the point that they can be trusted to establish fact to such a high level that they are satisfied, I almost okay ceding them the right to publish authoritative statements without providing all the information that led down that path. I would hold this akin to governmental decisions that are made on the basis of highly secure intelligence. We allow Senate Select Committees and executive officials make crucial decisions without transparency to maintain secrecy. This seems like an apt analogy and because we all know about the potential failures of such a system we can see the problems this presents as well.

People should have the right to challenge evidence facing them. While the NYT is not a court of law, the court of public opinion matters a great deal; particularly, to a presidential candidate. It's patently unfair to John McCain to publish an article with low-grade evidence and anonymous quotes, because it doesn't give him ground to push back. By implying that there is more evidence that cannot be evoked, well that's even worse for McCain. You cannot fight what you cannot see. This is also a problem for establishing trust, without evidence to judge the validity of the NYT claims we are merely relying on their authority in evaluating this incident. In the long run, we'll never actually learn about the quality of their reporting if its key element, evidence, is kept under wraps no matter how compelling their reasons for doing so.

For these reasons I am obviously in no position to evaluate the claims the NYT makes. If they are true, they are a big deal. However, instead this seems to be benefiting Team McCain more than it's hurting them. Even Rush came out and defended McCain today against the big, bad liberal NYT. It's mobilizing his base, which is something the Democrats cannot afford. No one, for now, should touch this issue. Instead, be thankful that we live in the world of the internet and blogsphere. Instead of four intrepid reporters from the NYT, there are now millions doing research and hunting down leads. I suspect we will learn more about this incident quite soon. Until then, I plan on looking the other way, until I am convinced that there are truths in these charges. Until then, doing otherwise would be unfair and probably help the GOP more than it will hurt it. Against all of the right wing tirades about how unfair this article is, the way to one up them is to be skeptical and reasonable. If it's real there will be time enough to hammer him with it, if it's not it will only come back to haunt us.

Also this post is called "A Little Something for the Ladies" because of the unworldly awesome picture of John McCain above. Also she was 30 years his junior, that's like me dating someone who is -3. That was a flawless analogy.

Should Reporters Vote/Is There Such a Thing as Truth? (JM)

So there is a rather interesting debate going on amongst several online journalists about whether or not political reporters should vote in elections. Over at The Politico, John Harris, Mike VandeHei and John Harris all contributed their views on this argument. In turn, Chris Cillizza at The Fix (an AOTG favorite) weighed in noting that while he does not vote he can see that it it possible for reporters to be both fair and neutral. I would highly recommend reading both of these articles, they are interesting and present good arguments from every perspective. But let's take a look at this issue from a ground up perspective.

The primary reason why a reporter would not vote is that he wants to maintain a level of objectivity. I reject this initial premise on face, not voting does not remove the preference from the realm of existence. It's an outward symbol of objectivity, but it is not itself objectivity. If a reporter has no desire to vote, that would be something different, as the desire to vote is actually the meter stick of objectivity, not the action. Simply not voting means very little in the philosophical sense of maintaining an objective press corps as a sort of fourth column.

But for advocacies sake let's say that the very act of voting forces journalists to consider questions they otherwise try to avoid. That by voting they sublimate an opinion that was only partially-formed at the time. Is this a problem? I think not, in fact I think it is totally impossible to separate one's personal preferences from any knowledge-based activity. When a journalist investigates, writes about or argues an issue he or she is already beginning from a set of personal preferences and premises which inform their investigation. For instance, most journalists begin with a very real opinion of what "truth" might be. They have a standard for determining just how many sources they require and the veracity of those sources. They further have a standard for setting opinions on strategy, judging the merit of policy arguments and any other manner of issue they attempt to evaluate.

I think the barebones truth is that there really is no such thing as objectivity. Objectivity would call for some sort of natural law existence of right and wrong that doesn't exist. All people have opinions skewed by our position in society, our childhood, the people know, the things to which we have been exposed. We can be as fair as we like, but we have to remember that applies only to our own deeply personal sense of fairness. So, what does this have to do with journalists voting? It is an action that grants journalists the ability to think about these core premises and preferences. Probably the best way to move towards some sort of standard of objectivity is to be clear with ourselves and others about where we are coming from intellectually. I recognize my opinion on this is informed largely by my belief in social and moral relativism. Not that I think we should just allow anything to go, but I believe that most of what we believe to be wrong or right is conditioned by the society in which we live. This is not the most controversial position, but rarely do people think about what this means in practice.

However, when it comes to journalism I sincerely wish we could move away from the we must be objective standard, to the we must be as fair as possible standard. It is INSANE to me that people like Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly claim to be objective arbiters of the truth. In fact, by doing so there is never a chance I can accept their evaluations fairly. However, if I am explicitly clear on the premises from which a particular individual operates then I can evaluate the internal consistency of his or her logic and consider the premises from which they build arguments as well. This is why the blogosphere has been an amazing thing for news analysis. More of the blogs I see are way more intellectually honest about their political positions, then mainstream media, and this allows me to evaluate the worth of the arguments in a much more cogent way.

In sum, vote all you want, you're citizens, in fact some of the best equipped citizens for voting. I would say there is an argument that just allowing Chris Cillizza to decide our next president is better than allowing the entire country to decide. But either way, I would like it more if you were clear about who journalists vote for and why you're doing so. Not voting doesn't mean you have no preference, it just means that you don't want your readers to know it, and that's a shame.