Glenn Reynolds: 'New York Times' shows its 'gotcha' colors

So Friday's New York Times contained an enormous scoop — one so important that it was bylined by two reporters, Alan Rappeport and Steve Eder, and a researcher, Kitty Bennett. The scoop? That Marco Rubio had some traffic tickets. Well, actually, only four in 18 years. But the story combined Rubio's driving record with that of his wife so that it could maintain that the couple "had a combined 17 citations."

In other words, Rubio had four, and his wife had 13. Worse yet, we're told, the Rubios had to attend driving school on four occasions.

I have some firsthand experience with this phenomenon. A few years back I was leaving the Palm Beach International Airport on a divided multilane road with interstate signage, going about 50. I got pulled over in a radar trap, where I was informed that the speed limit was 35, though I hadn't seen any signs. Like one or the other of the Rubios, I got the ticket dismissed in exchange for sitting through a Florida traffic school (mine was online).

Also like the Rubios, I was solicited from lawyers who said things such as, "Have you received a traffic ticket? Don't pay it." But because I'm a lawyer myself, I didn't hire them; I just paid the court costs and traffic school fees. Does the Times think I'm a scofflaw?

Rappeport, Eder and Bennett's earth-shattering traffic scoop produced rather a lot of mockery from people on the right, and from some on the left. Longtime political correspondent Jeff Greenfield tweeted: "Rubio TrafficTicketGate? This a parody of political journalism gone nuts, right?"

Yeah, pretty much. To add to the embarrassment, the Times, though it has since silently corrected the piece, referred to Marco Rubio's Ford F-150 pickup as a "sports utility vehicle," displaying the level of automotive literacy expected of Manhattan residents.

Folks on Twitter mocked the Times with the #RubioCrimeSpree hashtag, featuring such other alleged crimes as "Drank milk after the expiration," "Red wine with fish," and my favorite, "Called Chris Matthews, asked him if his refrigerator was running."

Even most of the major newspapers and networks declined to treat the Times' story seriously. Fox News emphasized the hit-piece style of the story, and TheWall Street Journal mocked it; CNN was mum; and TheWashington Post's Erik Wemple warned the Times it is setting itself up for criticism if it doesn't hold other presidential candidates to the same level of scrutiny. Of the major networks, only MSNBC gave the story the time of day.

Well, that's fine. The Times did some digging, and the best it could come up with was evidence that, unlike many politicos, Rubio didn't pull strings to make his tickets vanish.

Er, except that maybe the Times didn't do the digging. TheWashington Free Beacon's Brent Scher reported that the Times likely got the records from a Democratic opposition research firm, American Bridge. "Records show that each of the citations mentioned by the New York Times were pulled in person by American Bridge operatives on May 26, 2015. ... Neither of the reporters, Alan Rappeport and Steve Eder, appeared on the docket records for any of the traffic citations for Rubio and his wife. An additional researcher credited in the New York Times, Kitty Bennett, also does not appear on any of the court records."

When Scher asked the Times for comment, he got no reply. Instead, the Times went to Politico's Dylan Byers to give its side of the story. Byers published its denial that American Bridge was behind the story. (Scher is skeptical.) I'm not sure what's worse: The possibility that the Times just reprinted opposition research from a partisan source (while crediting two reporters and a researcher), or the Times thinking on its own that this was a big scoop.

Oh, well. I'm inclined to agree with Jeff Greenfield that this is a parody of a political gotcha story. But if you think that the Rubios are a menace on the road, perhaps you should vote for the senator for president, so that he and his wife will have drivers. Look at Hillary Clinton: Her husband got elected to the White House, and she hasn't driven a car herself since 1996.

And if Times journalists wonder why so many people think they bend over backward for gotcha stories involving politicians they disfavor, well, perhaps they should ponder this example. Everybody else is.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author ofThe New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.

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