It Began with Drudge
21 February 2008 1:30 pm by Taylor Marsh
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The New Republic now has its
piece on McCain up.
… .. Two days after that meeting, on December 20, news of the Times’ unpublished
investigation burst into public view when Matt
Drudge posted an anonymously sourced item on the Drudge Report. “MEDIA
FIREWORKS: MCCAIN PLEADS WITH NY TIMES TO SPIKE STORY,” the headline
proclaimed; the story hinted around the core of the allegations and
focused on Keller’s decision to hold the piece. “Rutenberg had hoped
to break the story before the Christmas holiday,” the item said, quoting
unnamed sources, “but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about
journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election.”Immediately, the media pounced on the budding scandal. “If John McCain
has hired Bob Bennett as his lawyer,” one commentator said on Fox News,
“that’s a big–you don’t hire Bob Bennett to knock down a press story.
You hire Bob Bennett because you have serious legal issues somehow.”
On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan speculated that the Times newsroom was the source of
the leak. “They’ve been rebuffed and rebuffed on this story, and they
say we’ve had it, and they go around then and Drudge pops it just like he
popped the Monica Lewinsky story first.”Initially, the McCain campaign refused to acknowledge the Drudge post. But
by the afternoon of December 20, McCain denied the allegations at a press
conference in Detroit, and his campaign released a statement deriding the
Drudge item as “gutter politics.”Rumors of the unpublished Times piece swirled through the Romney campaign,
then still locked in a tight dogfight for the Republican nomination. After
the Drudge item flashed, Romney’s traveling press secretary Eric Fehrnstrom
went to the back of the campaign plane to ask New York Times reporter Michael
Luo, who was covering Romney, if he had heard when the piece was running.
… ..
The piece goes on: “The fact that it ended up on Drudge pushed it
into secrecy.”
I really believe my initial take on this is going to be proven correct. The New York Times doesn’t have the story, but printed it anyway, because The New Republic was about to blow the whistle on them spiking the story in the first place, which just so happened to take place right before a big primary. The question floats in the ether: What might have happened to the McCain campaign if this story had broken and who would have become the nominee? I think the Times remains the one in the hot seat on this one.
