McCain vs. The New York Times

Republicans love to rail against liberal media bias, said Sam Stein in The Huffington Post. John McCain used to be different, but no more. McCain’s campaign officially ended his days as a media darling by accusing The New York Times of being “150 percent in the tank” for Barack Obama.

It’s hard to quibble with the complaint that campaign coverage is tilted in Obama’s favor, said Jennifer Rubin in Commentary online. Going to war with the Times might not do McCain any good, but “it may be the only realistic counteroffensive McCain has available in a hostile media environment and a collapsing economy.”

But the Times has done plenty of probing articles on Obama, said Andrew Romano in Newsweek online. If anything, the media’s real bias—“tension, bias for conflict, bias for drama”—works in McCain’s favor. It certainly allowed his staff’s “attack on the Times” to overshadow his latest speech on the touchy subject of economics.

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