New York Times Soils Journalism -- AGAIN

The big story today is a story the New York times printed smearing John McCain.

WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

If you stopped reading there, you'd think John McCain's candidacy is dead in the water. You'd think he received sexual favors in exchange for political favoritism to a lobbyist.

But, if you read further, you'd see nothing but innuendo and rumor, totally unsupported by facts or sourcing. That isn't journalism, that's grocery store tabloid garbage.

Coincidentally, Bob Bennett, who defended Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case, was on Hannity and Colmes last night and said the story was total bunk. He said he investigated John McCain for 18 months for Congress over the Keating Five scandal and recommended to the Democrat Congress that McCain and John Glenn be cut from the hearings, because McCain was totally honest. The Democrats ignored the request because they didn't want to hold hearings with just Democrat suspects facing them. The NYT is going to take some well-deserved hits on this one. the talk shows should be interesting today. It's no wonder their circulation is plunging and they just had to fire 100 people in the newsroom. They blame it on the Internet and cable news, but it's pretty obvious that it's their intellectually corrupt bias that's at fault.