After weeks of wild speculation about a rumored "bombshell" article to be published about Governor Paterson in the NY Times, yesterday the paper's public editor, Clark Hoyt, weighed in on the non-scandal, and whether the Times was right to wait several days before clearing the air. Times executive editor Bill Keller told Hoyt that addressing rumors just "spreads them and gives them an aura of credibility, even if the intent is the opposite. For The Times to issue a statement saying, ‘We are not investigating rumors about the sex life or drug use or financial shenanigans of Public Figure X’ doesn’t clear the good name of Public Figure X. It simply announces that we’ve heard the rumors and for some reason chose not to look into them."
Hoyt sides with Keller here, writing, "I think The Times and Paterson were caught in a terrible spot, but I think the paper is right to maintain its silence until ready to speak with an article on its own pages. It could have denied the Paterson rumors. But what if the next time it really was looking into a scandal involving a public figure? Silence then would speak volumes."
A good point, but Hoyt's a little off when he frames the affair as "an explosive collision in which new media’s demand for instant information ran head-on into a traditional news organization going about its business of carefully gathering information." Let's not forget that all this "scuttlebut" started because reporters for "traditional news organizations"—The NY Observer and the Daily News—started talking about a forthcoming Times "bombshell."
Speaking of the Daily News's Elizabeth Benjamin, she's reporting today that the Paterson's campaign "is in such disarray that he considered scrapping his statewide launch this coming weekend because too few fellow Democrats were willing to show up," according to a party leader. Paterson insists he will still announce his run as planned at Hofstra on Long Island, but two officials who support Paterson tell Benjamin they haven't been contacted about attending the event, which is planned for the tail end of the Legislature's midwinter break, when many lawmakers are out of the state on vacation.
