Evidence? We don' need no steenking evidence!

*
NewsBuster Tim Graham recalls how the national media beat itself up during the Clinton presidency "for being too quick to acknowledge when women suggested they'd had affairs or been harassed by Clinton." In retrospect the press admitted that it would need to be cautious about reporting an alleged cheating scandal without knowing the details or having compelling evidence. So why, Graham wants to know, is the media repeating unsubstantiated adultery allegations against a woman made by a blogger with a documented history of domestic violence?

Because she's a Republican? In Mark Sanford's South Carolina? Sarah Palin-endorsed South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley has seen an unsubstantiated adultery charge spread by the Associated Press, The Washington Post, Newsday, and CNN, whose Wolf Blitzer ran to the evidence-free story on The Situation Room Monday.

Blitzer gave his lead-in to correspondent Lisa Sylvester, who mentioned, in her report:

Will Folks, who says he is a Haley supporter [!], says he decided to come forward after rival campaigns began leaking the story to the media. Folks, who resigned from the state government in 2005, before admitting a domestic violence charge, says he isn't saying anymore.

If, as Folks maintains, rival campaigns were leaking details to the media, why had no media outlet reported on the alleged affair before Folks made his accusations on his blog? The question apparently never crossed the minds of either Blitzer or Sylvester to ask. Graham comments:

Earth to CNN: it is not impressive "news judgment" to conclude "there's something in the South Carolina water" and spread this story without proof. Surely CNN wouldn't have started telling adultery stories about other Arkansas politicians on the principle "if Clinton does it, they must all do it." But then CNN compounded the offense, by psychologizing Haley as an offender:

Temple University professor Frank Farley says politics, by its nature, draws a Type T personality -- T for thrill seeker. They're natural leaders, charismatic, but there is a down side.

PROF. FRANK FARLEY: The T negative, unfortunately, is where they take risks in destructive ways, either self-destructive ways or in ways that are destructive of other people. And it's like you sometimes -- it sometimes overflows in a sense. You know, you may be this big T personality out there, a leader, changing the world, but you also have a little bit of that negative potential.

A week after the Monica Lewinsky story broke, CNN aired a self-flagellating special titled "Investigating the President: Media Madness?"

Jeff Greenfield began: "More than 200 years after the Founding Fathers risked their lives to found a nation built on the idea of freedom, after crafting the Bill of Rights, whose very first guarantee is the right of a free press to inform and educate the people, millions of those people are asking the press one question fraught with significance: What the hell are you people doing trying to find out what kind of sex the President of the United States might or might not be having?"

They didn't offer the same regrets for Nikki Haley.

CNN cannot seem to understand why the first all-news network is floundering. That it chose to run with a blogger's unproven charges -- in particular when that blogger was reported by the largest newspaper in his state to "shrug off accusations that he is paid to publish certain stories" might be a big clue for CNN as to why it is in a state of free fall.

- JP