This article is so ridiculous as to be laughable. I’m not a TNR reader, and I don’t wholeheartedly buy Beauchamp’s story, although it’s clear from the reading I’ve been doing on this that the maze of charges and counter charges is being interpreted according to existing biases, both on the left and right. But for an article that takes TNR to task for shoddy reporting, this piece is remarkably thin. Using a jilted ex-fiance to not only assess a man’s charcter, but also to analyze his real reasons for marrying someone else? Are you kidding? Oh, but wait, in e-mails “she comes across as pretty generous and fair-minded.” In that case, no problem. Analyze away.
And McGee, whom I’ve seen described elsewhere as a temp (which, if true, is a pretty significant omission on your part) posts information he’s learned while working at a magazine to right wing blogs that are attacking the magazine, and you treat it as a scandal that he was fired? In what universe does a guy doing that get to keep his job? Especially if he is indeed a temp. The fact that he chose to post to right wing attack blogs says more than a little about his politics and agenda.
I have no idea what happened at TNR, and I find the firestorm around it more interesting than the actual articles. But to see commenters on this site praising this as an example of “great reporting” is a joke.
