Two thoughts:

1) Reporting news as soon as it is well verified enough to print has the great advantage of being fair to all parties. Every candidate is as likely as the next to have bad news come out at the wrong time.

2) The media's massive crush on McCain has to be a big factor here. It seems like we've seen a big push of "McCain is still in the race" stories recently, starting with his endorsement from the Manchester Union Leader. The thing that strikes me about these stories is that they are entirely media generated. There has been no change in the polls or McCain's funding situation. The only reason parts of the media can report that McCain is still in the race is that other parts of the media have decided to keep him in the race.

If Keller is right, then he in effect decides whether John McCain can win in Iowa.

New Hampshire. McCain has no shot in Iowa.

I see nothing to change my mind from your reflexive thought. A journalist thinks that his ethical obligation is to withhold a story because it might be influential? Because this truth might change people's minds before they vote? What a moron.

Not moronic: an educated incapacity.

The problem with publishing the truth is that the campaign might not have enough time to craft a convenient lie?

4: That doesn't speak well of education. My profession is not doing its job.

the problem, of course, is that it gives Bill Keller outsized influence.

That may be a problem, but I think Atrios' take raises a bigger problem: Drudge's outsized influence. At least Keller has some set of journalistic ethics, agree with him or not. Drudge is the gossip girl* of political journalism who will run any rumour, so long as it targets someone he hates.

*in the cheesy tv show sense, not the misogynist one.

Your first thought was the right one; the rest of it was rationalizing.

Refresh my memory, exactly how reliable should we consider Drudge again? The brief article quotes no one, refers to no legal documents on file, mentions no analogous stories in the past, and doesn't even have claimed to have tried to contact the people involved. It cites one source, once, anonymously: "newsroom insiders."

This is a puzzle, but on balance I'll take Bill Keller as a gatekeeper over Matt Drudge. Who knows what the actual story is?

The woman in question has retained counsel and strongly denies receiving any special treatment from McCain.

"Special treatment," eh? Drudge's language personalizes the matter in an odd fashion. He's not accusing McCain of giving the industry special treatment, but the lobbyist. I will leave it up to The Mineshaft to supply the appropriate innuendos.

She got the same paddling that everybody else gets.

"Thank you sir, may I have another?" "No, you may not!"

This has the typical stink of Drudge all over it, as pointed out in 8 & 9. My first thought was not of the NYT at all but to wonder which other candidate paid for the story in order to make McCain look even more wobbly by linking him both to a scandal and the NYT on a site where rumors are started and sometimes taken seriously.

The only thing of interest in "a Drudge bit" is to speculate about why Drudge thinks he'll benefit from posting it. Fibbers forecasts, and all that jazz.

why Drudge thinks he'll benefit from posting it

McCain is the GOP's Lieberman, with enemies galore. Drudge is doing somebody's bidding.

If it were true, it would be an absolute fucking disgrace. I can't believe any real journalist, or even anyone who worked at a paper with "Times" in its name, would behave like that; if it's untrue, it is a brilliantly done piece of black propaganda.

On balance, and despite Judy Miller, I think it is more likely to be untrue. Apart from anything else, editors kill stories. They don't postpone scandals. It's either go as soon as you have got it, or squash it flat.

They don't postpone scandals.

The NYT did sit on the NSA warrantless wiretapping story for over a year, when they had the story before the 2004 election. I tend to believe their defense that they sat on it out of concern for national security, but still.

Point. I had either forgotten that, or suppressed it in the interests of not suffering too much cognitive dissonance. National Security is different, perhaps, from political convenience, but not if you are fighting an existential war, rather than a couple of colonial ones. Jesus, would Bush have lasted longer than Neveile Chamberlain in a real war?

Controlling scandals are only half of the media's outsized influence, though. The media still has complete control over the narrative of the campaigns, and that's never going to change.

is

Can't we have some love for the phrase "Just weeks away from a possible surprise victory in the primaries"? You who else is just weeks away etc? Me.

I think it is more likely to be untrue

What part do you think is untrue?

21: Probably all of it. This is Drudge, after all.

I doubt there is actually a story there. If there is a story there, I suspect that Keller doesn't think his reporter has enough evidence to publish. I certainly don't believe that McCain has "personally pleaded with NY TIMES editor Bill Keller not to publish" it.

Interesting. Call me credulous, but I believe all of it.

You believed the rumor about the Democratic candidates, too, didn't you?

That Hillary is carrying John Edwards' love child? Yeah.

That John Edwards had turkey-basted Hillary and her lesbian lover, you mean.

But if this doesn't end up panning out, then Drudge's credibility is shot!

[pause for laughs]

But he basted her with love, destroyer.

Upon reading the scoop: A woman lobbyist is a much wickeder thing than just a lobbyist.

23: I think it's highly likely that a Times reporter thinks he has a good story - which, after all, is all that Drudge is reporting here. So I agree that this item is likely true.

Politico has confirmed that McCain himself had one conversation with Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in which the senator expressed concerns with how the story was being reported.

link

Just out of curiosity, why would anybody here not believe this story? It's completely consistent with McCain's past behavior.

how the story was being reported

But it's not being reported. What's the hold-up?

The only responsible choice, absent some truly extraordinary circumstance, is to report the news as they come across it, and let the chips fall where they may.

Doesn't this overlook the fact that news stories often aren't simply something one comes across, but that are dug up? Investigative journalism, they used to call it.

There is agency already involved in dredging up (the) news, in other words. Judgment in publishing anything found is then entirely appropriate.

This doesn't speak to the specifics of the McCain scenario, but to the general point.

But it's not being reported.

Drudge says it's coming out tomorrow and "reported" is a term of art that includes the research and interviews reporters do on a story.

Oh, sorry, messed up what was supposed to be a blockquote there.

From a meta point of view, it's interesting to see the doublethink inherent to journalism come out here: that journalists and the news media are impartial reporters of the news with no stake in in the events they report on something one stumbles upon, while at the same time media coverage is acknowledged to make or break a candidate.

Ogged: I thought that they could not be sitting on hard evidence of a misdemeanour without publishing it for fear that it would upset an election result.

Seeing Apo's link, I am less certain.

Drudge: IIRC, Drudge comes up with good stuff now and then, which is why people don't ignore him. Novak is the same way. In order to sow disinformation effectively, you have to mix in some valid stuff. A fine art. Double agents do the same thing.

So I think the story might be true, or it might be disinformation. No help there.

Times: A rule suppressing unproven new stories a week or so before an election makes sense to me. A lot of candidates have been destroyed by last-minute bombshells which turned out either to be false or else not as big a deal as they seemed.

I really think that all the big media are players, though, and that it's useless to wish for honest political journalism in the U.S.

The interesting thing is that this is probably Republican oppo research at work (through Drudge). It's amazing how many Republicans absolutely hate one of the major Republican candidates. I'm wondering whether the party bosses will have to dig up an unknown sleeper (which is what Dubya was, very little record) and run a brokered convention.

My guess is that a lot of the big players are bailing out on the Republicans and getting used to Hillary, Reid, and Pelosi. Bush did some work for him but he fucked up in some ways and is in disrepute. Time to slap in a new one.