Fox News Issues Press Release Against the New York Times Over McCain Story

Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left at 6:36 AM on February 21, 2008.

While only a few news outlets have picked up on the story in the New York Times about a close relationship John McCain had with a telecom lobbyist, one of the first out of the gate is actually Fox News. Of course, the story from Fox News is actually about how bad the New York Times story is. Check out the first paragraph in their version:

John McCain's campaign lashed out Wednesday at a new report in The New York Times alluding to the Republican presidential candidate's relationship with a female lobbyist.

Yeah, that is how the story starts on Fox News. After long quotes from the McCain campaign blasting the NYT for publishing the story, here are the final four paragraphs, blasting the NYT itself:

When McCain denied the allegations in December, including the alleged affair, he was responding to expectations that the Drudge Report was going to preempt the investigation before the newspaper actually reported it, campaign officials said.

Though Drudge did not print the story, campaign officials contend that the newspaper decided to go ahead and publish it now because The New Republic was planning a scathing critique of the newspaper for revealing the contents of its investigation.

McCain campaign officials said two weeks ago, they got a call from The New Republic asking for comment and information because it was planning a story on the newspaper's investigation.

Officials argued The New York Times, buffeted by reporter scandals in recent years, is covering itself, publishing a deliberate smear under pressure from the magazine and because of sensitivity to its reputation caused by reporter Judith Miller, who investigated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and was a key player in the subsequent CIA leak investigation involving Valerie Plame.

It is pretty hilarious to see a "news" outlet issue an attack story on another news outlet for a story that outlet published only three hours earlier. It is a bit more sad when one considers that this is the very same "news" outlet that many Democrats have recently thought it was a good idea to debate on, only to temporarily break under pressure from the grassroots. Because, you know, we should be appearing on media outlets that issue press releases against other media outlets for publishing information that could potentially be damaging to Republicans.

Expect more over the top pushback from right-wing media outlets on this one. Heads are exploding as we speak.

Tagged as: new york times, fox news, mccain, media reform, iseman

Chris Bowers was a full-time editor at MyDD from May 2004 until June 2007. Some of his projects have included the creation of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, the first scientifically random poll of progressive netroots activists, the Use It Or Lose It campaign, the nation's most accurate forecast of Democratic house pickups in 2006, and the 2006 Googlebomb the Elections campaign.