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By Jeff Emanuel Posted in 2008 | liberal media | liberal media bias | Media | publications as trustworthy as the National Enquirer — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

As Soren posted on yesterday, and as California Yankee mentioned elsewhere last night, the New York Times, which has taken after John McCain with a white-hot fury since the man who was once their favorite Republican -- and whom they endorsed in the GOP race -- locked up the nomination a few months ago. This latest episode, related to the release of McCain's medical records, which the Times has been harping on for some time now, appears to be more of the same.

Ed Morrissey, now of Hot Air, has the details. Basically, the Times -- whose ethics policy states "We do not threaten to damage uncooperative sources, nor do we promise favorable coverage in return for cooperation" -- has sent a message to the McCain camp that failure to invite the NYT to the May 23 unveiling of Mr. McCain's medical records will result in far less favorable coverage of that release, and of those records, than McCain will receive if the Times is credentialed and invited to the presser.

Pardón? (Read on)

Ed has this to say:

It’s no secret that the McCain campaign believes the Times to be dishonest in its reporting on the candidate, and they decided not to extend an invitation to the Times for the media pool at the release of the medical records on Friday. According to my source close to the part of the campaign that deals with these issues, they have invited a variety of media outlets, including national-reach newspapers, wire services, and cable-news networks into the pool, but told the Times that they would not receive any credentials for the event.

This prompted a conversation between one Times editor and the campaign staff. Again according to the source, the editor told the campaign that the Times would take a negative view about the release of the records if an invitation was not forthcoming. It was clear that an invitation to the pool would change the nature of the coverage.

That sounds a lot like extortion, doesn’t it? Is that acceptable practice for the American mainstream media? This kind of hostility calls into question their motivation for all of their past articles and stories. Did the McCain campaign do something to annoy the editors in February and March while all of these hit pieces got trotted out?

This is, of course, nothing new from the Times, which has been on McCain like ants on a watermelon at a summer picnic since February. As Ed briefly recounts:

The New York Times has published a series of articles and editorials that have called its objectivity towards John McCain into question. The first shot across the bow came in February, when the paper ran an allegation that McCain had a “romantic” relationship with a lobbyist in a story that turned out to have no evidence except two unnamed, disgruntled campaign workers. A month later, one of their reporters wrote about how McCain’s temper had erupted, only to get embarrassed by a video that clearly showed their reporter to be either insanely sensitive or outright lying. The Gray Lady then ran an analysis of McCain’s foreign policy that declared him a “neocon” because he had meetings with Robert Kagan and Max Boot, among many other people.

It's been obvious for some time now that the New York Times is neither an objective nor a serious journalistic outfit. From their highly partisan "news" stories, to their rush to divulge any and all classified and national-security-related information they can get their hands on, the NYT has been a one-paper thorn in the side of everybody within reach for far too long.

I don't advocate revoking the organization's media credentialing or official recognition, of course -- nor do I advocate shutting it down any more than one would seriously advocate shutting down the National Enquirer and its ilk. After all, we have a free press in this country -- and that includes those who have no journalistic ability, inclination, or integrity.

However, the Times has repeatedly shown that it *does* deserve to be considered in the same category as those other agenda-driven, not-necessarily-real-news outlets, which are not prevented from publishing their versions of "news," but which (a) generally do not rate an invitation to serious news events and presidential campaigns, and (b) have every single item on their "news" pages, when read, consumed with a large quantity of salt, despite their (and the last of their dying readership's) endless protestations about objectivity.