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Thursday, October 17, 2002
Probing George Pataki's ability to dodge scandal, James Mckinley, Jr. goes to significant lengths in today's Times to mark him as the "Teflon Governor"(link via politicsny.com). Of course, what is odd about a newspaper reporting on a politician's ability to avoid scandal is that it is the newspaper's responsibility to make sure that that doesn't happen. It would be one thing if McKinley were trying to say that you just wouldn't expect a politician to be able to keep his nose this clean -- but he's not saying that, at all. He's shocked -- shocked! -- by the fact that when reporters seem to think they've caught him in a scandal, he actually refuses to answer their questions. Surely, this should not come as a surprise to a political reporter, yet it does. The Times as a whole, and its reporters individually, have been so lazy in reporting this race, that they don't even know how to find a scandal to report on.
McKinley's piece doesn't even mention any of Pataki's real scandals. Neither he, nor anyone else at the Times has reported on what may be the ultimate scandal of this election season, the contributions of those hired by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The Post picked up the story, and it's supposed to be a low-quality, Republican-Party proxy paper. Instead of actual scandals involving Pataki, McKinley cites a series of occurrences that have only the slightest illusion of impropriety -- Pataki's endorsement by unions in exchange for gaining them a better contract, for example -- and then, to prove that Pataki knows how to avoid such potential improprieties, he cites Pataki's avoiding pointed questions about these topics. Of course, Pataki avoids the question, and that is certainly to his credit as a slick politician; but that he is allowed to avoid scandal is solely owing to the laziness of McKinley and his colleagues in reporting that.
It's as though McKinley is turning exasperatedly to the public and saying "why is George Pataki able to avoid your scrutiny?" As though it's the reader's job to use a lunch break to look through Pataki's records and campaign finance filings and then demand accountability...isn't that what Times reporters get paid for?
Steven I. Weiss 6:55:00 PM
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