Missed Correction of the Day

The New York Times has offered up the following correction:

A front-page article on Feb. 21 about Senator John McCain’s record on lobbying and ethics, including his role in the Keating Five case, described incorrectly the reprimand delivered to three other members of the Senate in 1991 for intervening with government regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr. The Senate Ethics Committee rebuked the three senators for improper behavior, but under a parliamentary agreement the full Senate did not censure them or take any other vote on the matter. (Go to Article)

That February 21 article is the one that caused a firestorm of anger and scorn of the paper by the insinuation that Sen. John McCain engaged in an extramarital affair with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.

Yet, this is all that the Times offers up as a correction? There was no factual evidence to support their lede:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

Even their public editor, Clark Hoyt, chastised the paper for running the story without corroboration even as editor Bill Keller doubled down and called his readers idiots for thinking the report was all about a possible sexual liason between McCain and Iseman.