Across the pond

That staid old lady of American journalism, the New York Times, is looking decidedly frisky tonight. It has scooped all its competitors with what may well prove the ‘sexiest’ story of the year. All tomorrow’s American newspapers will be giving huge prominence tomorrow to the hastily called press conference given by Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York. Spitzer apologised for his behaviour with his wife by his side, but stormed out of the press conference when journalists started asking questions. He refused to go into detail. He refused even to say whether or not he was going to resign.

But I doubt whether tomorrow’s American and British newspapers will tell their readers what their journalists know, but which their readers do not. The reason the press conference was called, and the reason that the journalists asked such presistent questions, was because of of the questions that New York Times reporters had been asking Spitzer. And because, by the time that the press conference happened, all the reporters (factual correction: not including the lazy ones) had read the earliar story on the New York Times website. Which reported what was happening. I cannot prove this to you, because when I checked the New York Times website after returning from the National Film Theatre, it was swamped with their coverage of what has happened recently.

Like seven minutes ago, and thirty-six minutes ago. While I had been watching a documentary about life in Britain in the 1930s, thousands of words were being written by journalists all over the world about Elliot Spitzer, although many of those journalists had probably never heard of him before they were assigned to the story.

And the New York Times web site has masses of new stuff. It focusses on what has happened while I was watching a film and having dinner on London’s South Bank.

Part of the reason for that is that the New York Times employs about a million times more journalists than the British Independent and a thousand times more journalists than The Guardian and the London Times. (This is an exagerration, probably. But I don’t know the facts, and neither does anyone else. But no-one who knows journalism would deny that there is a huge difference. And that this matters.)

So this time, the New York Times has struck gold. Unlike their story on John McCain’s possible affair with his ‘friend’, a young blonde woman lobbyist for powerful busineess interests. The New York Times investigated this very carefully over several months. They did not publish their story until they felt they had proof that the blonde was a very close friend of McCain’s, but they could not prove they were lovers, because both McCain and the woman concerned, denied that they had been between the sheets together.

As a result the NYT McCain scoop did far more harm to the New York Times than it did to McCain. Most of the rest of the world’s media then had a field day in which they attacked, or made fun of, the New York Times.

Tomorrow, I predict, that the world’s media will be reprinting second hand the fact, that the Governor of New York is alleged to have resorted to prostitutes and that he has not denied claims. Most of them won’t even mention that they learnt about this from the New York Times website.

The British journalists who report this will be confident that they are not endangered by the Brittish libel laws, which make it possible for Spitzer to sue for millions, any British newspaper who has even reported such allegations. Because they know he won’t. Because they know the reality. Spitzer called the press conference because he knew, what the rest of the world did not know, that he was guilty and that the defendants in a current law suit were also guilty. Although their trial has only just started. But the evidence for the prosecution, includes federal wire tapping of conversations by the clients, who included someone referred to in the courts as client nine.

Accordding to the New York Times story, client nine, was none other than Spitzer. He registered at the Mayfair Hotel, with his own address, but with the name of George Fox. The New York Times has discovered that one of Spitzer’s close asseciates is named George Fox. He denies that he was in Washington on the said dates, and refuses to comment on why his name is on the hotel register.

The New York Times has not proved that it was Spitzer who signed in under that name. And many readers might well think why would a man who had risen to be Governor of New York be so silly as to sign a hotel reggister in the name of a close friend. Ratther than signing as Mark Twain or Jesus Christ.

I  do not find this strange. Because in real life, powerful people quite often do things that only happen in fiction.

If you want to know the truth about today’s world, you should read the novelists, as well as the journalists, who are under enormous pressure to file their considered comments, befoe they have had any time to do their reseach. To talk to the people who have actually benn making the decisions.

So the much attacked NYT has hit the jackpot. Tonight’s story will stand the test of time. By his behaviour Spitzer has admitted that he consorted with prostitutes. In my view.

The NYT has caught a Governor with his fingers in the place they ought not to be, when he is a married man, who has campaigned in the past on ethics and as lawyer prosecuted call girl rings.

So this story is sexy in the geneally accepted sense that it involves human beings cavorting under the bedsheets.

But it is also ‘sexy’ in the journalistic sense. It has serious implications for politics. So tonight the American media are already talking about who will be the next Governor of New York.

And already the journalists leaning towards the Clinton camp are spinning in case Obama uses it agaiinst Clinton in the presidential election. Because, like the Clintons, Spitzer is a product of the mainstream of American Democratic politics. And as Governor of New York he has had many meetings with Hillary Clinotn, who is the senator for New York City. And, of course, as a Governor he is one of the super delegates, whose vote will decide whether in 2009 America will have Clinton, Obama or McCain as their next president.

But tonight I could not find any evidence of the Obama campaign cashing in by relatiing Spitzer to the Clintons. But I did find a blog on the London Politico site, proclaiming the opposite. That Hillary Clinton should be thankful that her links with Spitzer were ‘slight’. Several comments to that blog disagreed.

But that does not matter to the mainstream coverage. The fact that the Obama campign has not been slaughtering Hillary today is used as evidence that Obama will not be able to beat the real opponent, McCain and the Republicans.

He clearly does have much less experience than Hillary, when it comes to playing it dirty, while maintainingg a devoction to ethics,  morality, etc.,  what every decent mother or father would want for their children in the next president.

But maybe this year, America is looking for something different.