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McCausation

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One of the chief complaints about The New York Times’ story on the relationship between McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman is that the paper is implying more than it has proven. That’s certainly true, but as far as journalism goes, it’s an awfully wrongheaded criticism.

So much of reporting, especially reporting on situations where the facts are hidden, unclear, or developing, depends on creating meaning from only what is known, which is often a set of suggestive, but not definitive, facts. A lot of journalism magic happens between readers’ ears.

With that in mind, let’s look at the facts about political influence in the story, the information presented about McCain’s Commerce Committee work on issues of interest to Iseman’s clients:

* He wrote letters to the FCC asking them to rule in a way that would allow a company to own two television stations “in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman’s clients.”

* He favored a minority-ownership tax incentive program. Iseman had several clients who favored that step.

* He twice tried to “advance” legislation permitting companies to own stations in overlapping markets. This issue “was important” to Iseman’s client Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks).

* In late 1999, Iseman asked McCain’s staff to intervene with the FCC on behalf of Paxson. McCain agreed, and he sent two letters to the FCC.

Look at the first three. Two concern loosening ownership laws, a step that, while controversial to some, is fully consistent with McCain’s deregulatory ken. It’s also not clear if Iseman’s lobbied McCain on those issues, and her clients are far from the only ones who would have been aided by those actions. Parse the Times’ phrasing, and you’ll see what I mean.

The tax program can’t be explained as deregulatory, but the best the Times can do is say that “several business” represented by Iseman favored such a program. And so, presumably, would many others. So where’s the evidence this had anything to do with her?

But the last bullet is quite something: the letters helping Paxson Communications are the only solid suggestion of an Iseman-McCain quid pro quo. And to my mind, that makes this as much of scandal of influence as a scandal of sex.

The Paxson letters broke in The Boston Globe on January 5, 2000. (“MCCAIN PRESSED FCC IN CASE INVOLVING MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR.”) Follow up stories like “Cash-cut crusader accused of hypocrisy” and “A Maverick’s Paper Trail” kept up the heat. It was a major embarrassment for John McCain, and pierced his reformist armor as a New Hampshire battle with George W. Bush drew near.

Now let’s take a quick look at what’s actually said about the Iseman-McCain relationship:

* After becoming “convinced” that it was a “romantic relationship” top advisors took several steps to distance the two—asking her to avoid the senator. They confronted the senator. They asked staffers to “block” her access. All that’s according to “several people involved in the campaign”

* When McCain started getting negative press attention for sending letters to try to aid one of her clients, campaign aides worried that press attention would turn to “her involvement”

* They said this was especially concerning, because “even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist” could undermine his Straight Talk reform image.

There are some more details about Iseman and McCain, but not many. Various sources report that they two were spotted together (on her client’s jet, in his offices, at events and fundraisers). Two sources say they confronted McCain and that he acknowledged that he’d been “behaving inappropriately.”

Of course, everybody knows that politicians get money from and take meetings with lobbyists. And everybody knows that politicians do things that favor those lobbyists’ clients. But proving causation between the two events is next to impossible, absent a Duke Cunningham-esque smoking gun-like document.

So usually the best journalists can do is imply causation: “Mayor Hizzenhonor overruled city engineers and moved a planned sewage plant after accepting campaign donations from a neighborhood association.”

Go back, if you will, to those first three bullets. Here, we have the Times—weakly, I’d say—implying that sort of garden-variety political-corruption causation between three McCain actions and Iseman. The fourth bullet, the Paxson letters, strikes me as quite different—especially since we now know how seriously his aides took the developing scandal at the time.

But it’s the reporting on the affair that has everyone clucking. Few balk when the Times, or any other paper, does that sort of investigative grunt work, about the dry world of political influence: cataloging checks and votes, suggesting with words and backslapping photos, and leaving readers to draw a conclusion about cause and effect. But this time, there’s a whiff of sex, and everyone’s all distracted that the paper implied what it didn’t prove. Presumably the Times went as far as it could go in showing us the truth. And now readers are drawing their own conclusions on the character of the relationship, from less than complete—but quite suggestive—facts.

And why, exactly, is that such a scandal?

CJR

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Comments

padikiller

Thu 21 Feb 2008 09:10 PM

A pathetic, toothless "watchdog" of "professional journalism" wrote

Of course, everybody knows that politicians get money from and take meetings with lobbyists. And everybody knows that politicians do things that favor those lobbyists’ clients. But proving causation between the two events is next to impossible, absent a Duke Cunningham-esque smoking gun-like document.

So usually the best journalists can do is imply causation...

padikiller scoffs

John Edwards spent a whole lot of one-on-one time on the road with a staffer who ended up pregnant and sequestered in hiding...

Obama is fighting a behind-the-scenes battle to hush up a man (Larry Sinclair) who claims that he and Obama had a homosexual encounter and used drugs together in 1999.

Hillary spends a WHOLE lot more time at home with her little hottie of a personal assistant than she does with Billy Jeff...

Let's run with the CJR logic here in the "implying causation" department... Shall we?

Of course not... CJR's "watchdogs" would sooner die than examine these stories...

CJR has become nothing more than an amateurish liberal mouthpiece...

AhmNee

Fri 22 Feb 2008 11:09 AM

What have we here? An attempt to obfuscate the matter at hand with talk of sex?

I don't see anywhere in your accusations against Edwards, Obama or Clinton anything about them giving special political consideration in exchange. That's what the meat of the McCain story is about.

padikiller

Fri 22 Feb 2008 01:35 PM

And I don't see anything in the Slimes piece that proves that McCain was having a sexual relationship with a lobbyist... There is no "meat" to the NYT's time bomb hack job.....

Jay D

Mon 25 Feb 2008 01:46 PM

McCain noted in his press conference that the Paxton letters - that you tout as your smoking gun - did not ask for a decision on the matter, either favorable or unfavorable, but were only a request to speed up the decision (which had already taking a year longer than normal).

Funny how you neglected to mention that, instead implying that McCain was acting improperly. Is this what you mean by "journalism magic"?

Clint Hendler

Tue 26 Feb 2008 11:10 AM

Jay D:

You’re right that the letter didn’t demand that FCC rule in Paxson’s favor, but it did demand a ruling—pronto. That was enough to earn McCain a rebuking letter from the FCC's chair.

McCain can try to spin this, but here are the facts about the Paxson letters:

Before the letters, McCain used Paxson’s private jet for campaign travel on four occasions, reimbursing the company far below the flights’ market value.

Before the letters, according to Newsweek [Jan 15, 2000], Paxson’s CEO “co-hosted a fund-raiser and arranged for more than $28,000 in contributions” to McCain’s campaign.

McCain wrote the FCC at the direct request of Paxson’s lobbyist, i.e. Iseman. In fact, Iseman drafted the request for his staff.

The FCC’s chair at the time, according to the Boston Globe [Jan 5, 2000], “deemed the Senator's letter ‘highly unusual’ and suggested it was inappropriate.”

After The Boston Globe broke the Paxson letters story in 2000, Paxson canceled a second planned fundraiser. This one was supposed to be at his Florida home, and was expected to net McCain another $50,000. “Now,” Paxson grumbled to Newsweek, “I've got 1,200 crab cakes left in my house.”

padikiller

Tue 26 Feb 2008 03:46 PM

Another CJR "Watchdog" Runs From Reality

What the "watchdog" wrote then: "let’s look at the facts about political influence in the story... ...He[Sen. McCain] wrote letters to the FCC asking them to rule.."

What the "watchdog" weasels now: "You’re right that the letter didn’t demand that FCC rule... McCain can try to spin this..."

padikiller schools

Now the general rule, among "professional journalists" is that when the facts are misrepresented to readers, one of those "correction-thingies" needs be rendered..

Unfortunately, this general rule is inapplicable in McLearyland... Where any little falsehood is fine... As long as we make sure that a Republican can't "try to spin it" (as we all know they do when they're not kicking puppies or torturing innocent "insurgents"...)