For Shame, GQ

Ron Rosenbaum, who now writes a longish column for Slate called the Spectator, puts GQ magazine in its place:

GQ commissioned Joshua Green, a serious political reporter on the staff of the Atlantic, to do a piece on infighting within Hillary Clinton's campaign. . . .

Green was a good choice: He knew the turf, having written a much-admired cover story on Hillary for the Atlantic last winter. But in the course of reporting, Green had dinner with a Hillary mouthpiece. Next thing we know, one of Bill Clinton's aides is in the GQ editor's office telling him there'd be a "problem" with granting access to Bill Clinton for GQ's "Man of the Year" issue if GQ ran a muckraking Hillary story.

Of course, any editor with a backbone would say, "Thank you, your crude effort to kill this story will be included in the story. Goodbye."

Instead, the GQ editor killed the story. Profile in courage!

What is even more reprehensible is that GQ's editor then began to claim—in a cringe-inducing, unconvincing way—that the visit by a Clinton consigliere had nothing to do with his killing the piece. Instead, unforgivably, he turned on his own reporter and in a spectacularly demeaning way suddenly claimed there were "problems" with the story unrelated to Clintonian pressure.

Here's what reporter Joshua Green told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post: "GQ told me it was a great story and a hell of a reporting job, but they didn't want to jeopardize their Clinton-in-Africa piece. GQ told me the Clintons were unhappy and threatened to revoke access to Bill Clinton if the Hillary story ran."

And here's what GQ editor Jim Nelson said: "[T]he story didn't end up fully satisfying. . . . I guarantee and promise you, if I'd have had a great Hillary piece, I would have run it." He added that there was no connection between the two Clinton stories.

Who do you think is telling the truth here, and who is shamefully prevaricating? I know who I believe.