Back in May, I wrote about how Los Angeles Times Ron Brownstein had failed to disclose his engagement to John McCain's communication director when he hyped McCain's 2008 presidential prospects. To his credit, Brownstein eventually ran a disclosure after getting married. LAT Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus later commented it was ok for Brownstein to discuss McCain "in a minor way." I've been corresponding with McManus in the period since in the hopes of getting more specifics on the newspaper's policy toward Brownstein's relationship, but no official statement has yet been produced.
I don't want to pick on Brownstein, who I think is one of the nation's very best political reporters and analysts. I would hate to see him taken off the beat because of his marriage. At the same time, though, I think it's crucial for him to be aggressive about disclosing the conflict of interest that exists. In the clubby world of Washington, those sorts of disclosures rarely happen because the relationships are well known among elites (but rarely known by the wider public). Thus, NBC's Andrea Mitchell fails to mention she's married to Fed chairman Alan Greenspan; Time Magazine's Matt Cooper doesn't note that he's married to Democratic consultant Mandy Grunwald; and so forth.
So I decided to take a look at the transcripts of Brownstein's frequent television appearances -- the worst medium for disclosures because guests have no control of the topics that are discussed and very little time in which to speak. As a result, disclosures almost never happen. And that's exactly what's happened with Brownstein.
The list of times McCain has come up since Brownstein got married is growing. Brownstein briefly discussed McCain's views on immigration on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on May 20 and McCain's views on the filibuster/"nuclear option" debate on "Inside Politics" on May 23, July 1, and July 4, never mentioning his wife (you can find transcripts for those shows here). And Brownstein implicitly praised McCain's immigration proposal in a LAT column on July 11 that ran without a disclosure.
I would rather see Brownstein write and speak about McCain as much as he wants, but disclose the relationship as openly as possible so that readers/viewers can draw their own conclusions. Instead, we're getting a worst of both worlds solution where Brownstein doesn't talk about McCain much, but when he does there's no mention of his relationship. This is especially ill-advised on television, where there can be no reasonable assumption that CNN viewers read Brownstein's LA Times disclaimer.
Great point.
Posted by: tony | July 24, 2005 at 09:55 PM