Reporter on NYT McCain Hit Piece Also Targeted McConnell

A co-author of the New York Times' hit piece on John McCain's supposed scandals previously authorized a screed against Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell that has since been criticized on ethical grounds by the American Journalism Review.

While working as an editor at the Lexington Herald-Leader, Marilyn Thompson solicited and accepted a grant to fund an "investigative" series about McConnell. The grant came from the Center for Investigative Reporting, which was funded by the liberal Deer Creek Foundation -- an organization that had financed litigation against McConnell regarding campaign finance.

The AJR notes that:

In 2006, as editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky, Marilyn W. Thompson wanted her paper to undertake a major project examining Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell's political fundraising practices and suggestions of influence peddling. When she realized her lean newsroom budget alone wouldn't cover it, Thompson got her Knight Ridder bosses' enthusiastic approval to seek a grant from the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. The California-based center provided $37,500 to underwrite the salary of reporter John Cheves, who took an unpaid six-month leave of absence to do the project, as well as to cover expenses.

Following publication of the series on McConnell, Thompson left the Lexington Herald-Leader for the Los Angeles Times. And the Herald-Leader was purchased by McClatchy. After reviewing the funding for the series, McClatchy's vice president for news, Howard Weaver, decided to return the grant. Weaver said at the time, "I just think that the relationship [with the outside groups] was sufficiently unorthodox that we don't need to do it."

The pay-for-play funding of the McConnell series, and the controversy it generated, caused the Center for Investigative Reporting to change its procedures, according to the AJR:

The incident made a lasting impression at the center. While there always has been "a complete firewall" between editorial and fundraising, since then "we have made the case more strenuously to funders that we would prefer general operating support as opposed to project-specific support," says Christa Scharfenberg, the center's associate director. (Funding for the McConnell project had come from money Deer Creek had designated for campaign finance coverage.)

When a foundation provides a grant to a journalist, there is a risk, AJR cautions, that "raises concerns about editorial objectivity and whether it has been compromised by a funder." That risk increases where, as in the McConnell series, the grant maker specifies the topic.

After Thompson, the former Herald-Leader editor, left for the LA Times, she then went to the New York Times; thus her byline on the McCain piece. Note, however, that Thompson is the only reporter on the McCain piece whose byline does not include a hyperlink.

Here's why. Thompson left the New York Times to go to the Washington Post, apparently after working on the McCain piece, but before it was published. Consequently,the Post was able to respond to the New York Times McCain piece today -- the same day the New York Times published the McCain piece. Thompson had spent only six months at the Times and authored just four bylines, according to the New Republic.

The Post announced last week that Thompson will serve as "new Washington accountability editor on the National Desk." In that capacity, Thompson will "lead the newspaper’s accountability reporting efforts, including oversight of such Washington subjects and institutions as the White House, Congress, and 'the intersection of money and politics,' according to an internal memo. "

On the issue of the intersection of money and journalism, Thompson brings substantial first-hand experience to her new job.

Update: Although WaPo announced Thompson's hiring last week, it seems her official first day is today. I give her six months.

No, McConnell Doesn't Hate Kids

Undaunted by the facts, John Cheves and the Lexington Herald-Leader have once again taken Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell to task regarding SCHIP, the state child health insurance program. One would think, from reading the piece, that our senior senator grinds the bones of children to make his bread.

First, Cheves asserts that "Bush and congressional Republicans -- led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky -- have blocked expansion of the SCHIP program."

That is not the case. McConnell (unlike Wendell Ford) voted in favor of the original SCHIP bill in 1997. And McConnell has authored legislation, the Kids First Act, to expand SCHIP to cover additional poor children. In fact, the McConnell bill would insure more poor children than the bill supported by the Lexington-Herald and vetoed by the president.

But McConnell and the President correctly recognize that any expansion of SCHIP must be carefully drafted, because not all states use the program to fund insurance for poor children. To the contrary, New York sought to insure families with annual incomes of $82,000. New Jersey, likewise, wants to insure families with incomes of $70,000. And though the program was intended to protect children -- thus the "c" in "SCHIP" -- New Jersey spends half of its SCHIP funds on adults.

As a consequence of abuses by states like New York and New Jersey, the President vetoed legislation that failed to close a number of loopholes.

A point on the numbers: Cheves states that "[i]n 2006, Kentucky's SCHIP program spent $90 million to cover 51,000 children."

McConnell's Kids First Act would provide $161 million to Kentucky children in the SCHIP program (K-CHIP), according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The bill which the president vetoed, in contrast, would have provided $158 million. So the McConnell bill is actually more generous to Kentucky children than the bill that the Herald-Leader supported.

But the McConnell bill stays true to the original intent of SCHIP -- to provide health insurance for children from families too poor to buy private insurance, but with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid -- and still closes the loopholes exploited by middle-class adults in other states.

Cheves' fallacy is that he confused the intent of SCHIP, which McConnell supports, with the program's actual consequences, particularly the way in which it has been abused. McConnell and the President simply wanted to end the abuse and give the savings to the poor children who legitimately need the insurance.

McConnell's Kids First Act shows that he cares about and wants to help the poor children of Kentucky, but as for those middle-class adults in New Jersey trying to scam the tax-payers, not so much.

Whoops, They Did it Again

It's a recurring pattern. The Lexington-Herald's John Cheves writes an "investigative" piece, accusing Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell of some impropriety. McConnell writes an op-ed to set the record straight. The Herald-Leader, however, doesn't print the McConnell letter without first redacting information that might undermine the paper's credibility.

Earlier this month, the Herald-Leader delayed printing and then excised a chunk of a McConnell op-ed. McConnell had questioned the impartiality of Cheves, who had written an article complaining about a Congressional earmark to a Louisville defense contractor, BAE. (See John David Dyche's column and related coverage).

Cheves is now "investigating" federal funding of a financial data retention site at the University of Kentucky, though his real focus is McConnell's motive for securing the funding. The senator wrote to address Cheves's innuendo.

The Herald-Leader printed McConnell's response -- but once again, only in part. The paper did not warn readers that it had redacted a large portion of the senator's response, let alone explain why.

If McConnell censored the Herald-Leader, First Amendment advocates would protest the prior restraint. But when a liberal paper censors a conservative, it's business as usual.

Here's the portion of McConnell's letter that the Herald-Leader failed to print, according to an anonymous source:

If readers knew that Mr. Cheves worked as a staffer to a liberal Democratic Senator in Washington, D.C., until just two months ago, they would understand his partisan slant.

Before working for a Democrat, Mr. Cheves wrote a series of one-sided articles funded by a liberal special-interest group. When word of the shady funding leaked last year, the Herald-Leader’s owner, the McClatchy Co., embarrassingly—but correctly—made the paper refund the group’s money.

Bob Steele, who teaches journalism at the respected Poynter Institute, called the Herald-Leader’s actions “ethically problematic.”

A number of people interviewed by Mr. Cheves for those articles dispute his description of their discussions. Wendy Baldwin, formerly of UK, called Mr. Cheves’s characterization of their conversation “very misleading.” A former Treasury Department official interviewed by Mr. Cheves said he “certainly misrepresented what we told him. In fact, he lied.”

I sat with Mr. Cheves for hours of one-on-one interviews for those articles and refuted every one of his charges. My staff provided documentation backing up my positions. Not surprisingly, Mr. Cheves’s stories included virtually none of my side of the story.

Instead, they merely repeat the preconceived conclusions that he and the liberal special-interest group funding his attacks have clung to for so long.

Interestingly, the Courier-Journal gave the Herald-Leader an opportunity to respond to John David Dyche's column about the first redacted op-ed. The C-J printed the Herald-Leader's response as a sidebar to the column, the same day.

One liberal paper offered another an advance opportunity to rebut a charge of bias. It was easier for the Herald-Leader to get its response published in the C-J than it is for Kentucky's senior senator to get his letter printed in the Herald-Leader-- that is, without the Lizzie Borden-like editing.

The Herald-Leader's response to the C-J stated that when Cheves worked for a liberal Democrat senator until recently, his "work was not political in nature." The paper noted that Cheves was paid by a fellowship from a "non-partisan group that has run a congressional fellowship program for more than 50 years."

If Cheves's fellowship was so above-board -- so prestigious, even -- then why does the Herald-Leader keep chopping references to it from McConnell's letters to the editor?

Did Cheves's Dog Eat McConnell's Op-Ed?

When it comes to Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, the Lexington Herald-Leader has dropped all pretense of impartiality or even professionalism.

Take, for example, how the Herald-Leader handled a letter to the editor that Senator McConnell submitted to it. The paper gave McConnell's letter to its reporter to use in a story and yet failed to print McConnell's letter. That is, the Herald-Leader allowed its reporter to rebut McConnell without letting readers see the actual letter.

It all started when reporter John Cheves attacked McConnell on Saturday, October 27th for an earmark to fund defense industry jobs in Kentucky. BAE, the British company slated to build the armaments, is under investigation for bribing the prince of Saudi Arabia.

On Monday, October 29th, McConnell sent by email a letter to the editor to respond to Cheves's accusations; Cheves had implied that the BAE earmark was a payback for its campaign contributions to McConnell. These were serious insinuations to which the senator was entitled to respond.

One would expect the Herald-Leader to print McConnell's response, and to do so quickly. Days passed, however, and still the Herald-Leader did not print McConnell's letter. That was not an innocent omission; it turns out that the paper gave the letter to Cheves.

Consequently, on Friday, November 2, the paper printed a follow-up by Cheves. Incredibly, Cheves quoted a snippet of the text of McConnell's letter -- and yet the paper still refused to print the letter itself. This was not an editorial oversight. To the contrary, the Herald-Leader wrote an editorial to accompany Cheves' follow-up.

In his follow-up, Cheves whined that "McConnell's office did not return repeated calls for comment." But McConnell had already commented at length in his letter to the editor -- the same letter that the Herald-Leader was hiding from its readers.

Finally, one week after McConnell emailed his letter, the Herald-Leader printed a redacted version of it on Monday, November 5. The paper did not have the fairness or courtesy to notify McConnell of the substantive changes it made to the senator's op-ed without his permission.

It's instructive to compare the version that the paper published with the original, unedited version of McConnell's letter. Plainly, the Lexington-Herald did not edit the Senator out of a concern for clarity or grammar. The paper deleted all reference, context and background on Cheves:

Reporter John Cheves, the man who did a series of lengthy articles last year attacking me, is at it again. Shortly before those stories appeared in the Herald-Leader, it came to light that the research had been funded by a liberal, out-of-state special-interest group. Once that news broke, the owners of the Herald Leader insisted that the paper return the funds that had been provided to the reporter. Now, the same reporter who was tarnished by the out-of-state special-interest funding, and who recently returned from spending the last year on the staff of one of the most liberal United States senators. . . .

No wonder the Herald-Leader did not want its readers to learn of Cheves's role as a Democratic Senate staffer, or his history of pay for play journalism to attack McConnell. Cheves is not just an author of a series of stories about McConnell: Cheves is the story.

Cheves and his paper delayed McConnell's response for an entire week, without explanation. But the reason -- or at least the consequence -- is clear: that delay bought time for "non-partisan" groups to organize opposition to the BAE earmark.

BAE workers in Kentucky, meanwhile, are left wondering how long they will have jobs -- even though BAE has not even been indicted for anything, and is not alleged to have done anything improper regarding its Kentucky facility. If all it takes to get an earmark dropped is an unproven allegation of impropriety anywhere in the world, then all workers for government contractors should be worried for their jobs.