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For years, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has railed against lobbyists and the influence of "special interests" in Washington, touting on his campaign Web site his fight against "the 'revolving door' by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided." But when McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and...

Our disagreements and battles with John McCain are legion. We have argued, advertised, organized, lobbied and litigated against his positions - on taxes, on judicial confirmations, on illegal immigration, on his assaults on the First Amendment, including so-called campaign finance reform. We shall continue to do so. Still, we would not now nor ever have done what the New York Times did to him, which is publish a story based on implication and innuendo and zero proof beyond statements of former anonymous aides that they believed that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, and equally flimsy evidence that McCain...

Potentially lethal article triggers sophisticated and brutal pushback operation from McCain organization. Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign claimed vindication Thursday night after a sophisticated 24-hour counterattack turned a potentially lethal story in The New York Times into a conservative call to arms. The piece about McCain’s friendly relations with a telecommunications lobbyist — long-discussed in political circles and planned for weeks by McCain operatives — was the first test of his ability to confront a public-relations crisis since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee. But the reaction may have said as much about the mindset of the conservative movement on the...

With the New York Times smear on likely Republican nominee John McCain and his alleged inappropriate relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, Fox News political correspondent Carl Cameron called in to add his take. Cameron revealed on the February 21 edition of "Fox and Friends," that Fox News came across these rumors last fall. Cameron stated that they were "unable to substantiate any of it." In regards to the alleged affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, Cameron asserted that they "were able to find precisely nobody who would go on the record or even suggest off the record that there was truth...

McCain at War with the New York Times by Jed Babbin Posted 02/22/2008 ET Updated 02/22/2008 ET Sen. John McCain’s campaign promised to “go to war” with the New York Times according to a report in the Politico released the morning after the McCain-Iseman story was released, alleging the presidential contender's involvement with the attractive lobbyist. But will McCain counter attack? He should, and not just because he’s been attacked. The Thursday evening story was just another in a long string of timing plays, contrived stories and political activism pretending to be journalism. Every election in living memory has been...

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

Class act: John Weaver TRIBUNE-REVIEW In the media storm that was John McCain and the New York Times yesterday, one man from McCain’s campaign past remained a class act: close friend and former advisor John Weaver. The article’s liberal use of unnamed sources had many speculating that one of the unnamed was Weaver. Those speculators apparently have never met or had a conversation with Weaver.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will never get mistaken as a conservative publication. It routinely editorializes in support of liberal causes and candidates, and it has come in for plenty of criticism for its decisions on publication decisions. They also routinely publish stories from their subscription to the New York Times syndication product. Today, however, David McCumber explains why he took a pass on the Times' hit piece on John McCain: Obviously, the reporters, Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton, are not working for me. I have no way, other than their excellent reputations, of specifically evaluating...

A recent New York Times article examined a number of decisions by Senator John McCain that raised questions about his judgment over potential conflicts of interest. The article included reporting on Mr. McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee led by Mr. McCain. Since publication of the article, The Times has received more than 2,000 comments, many of them criticizing the handling of the article. Editors and reporters who worked on the article will be answering questions on Friday. Please send yours to askthetimes@nytimes.com.

ACTION NOTE: You can email the reporters here. Given the information below and their failure to be the least bit skeptical, you might want to do so. --------------- So much for your media friends, Senator McCain. The Washington Post piles on this morning in a most disingenuous way. In McCain's case, the fact that lobbyists are essentially running his presidential campaign -- most of them as volunteers -- seems to some people to be at odds with his anti-lobbying rhetoric. "He has a closer relationship with lobbyists than he lets on," said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics...

The New York Times may have done the impossible for the John McCain campaign and for Republicans in general. As predicted yesterday when their strange and threadbare allegations hit print, the attack united conservatives behind McCain. It also may have been an act of seppuku for the Times, as its claim objectivity and credibility have been discredited. The Los Angeles Times surveys the damage: Conservative commentators, including some who previously chastised McCain for not hewing closely to their principles, leaped to the candidate's defense. Radio personality Laura Ingraham, like other critics, noted that the newspaper had been researching the story...

As media digest the recent John McCain sex scandal allegations [0] by the New York Times, one side of the story seems destined to get ignored: one of the four co-authors took money from a liberal activist group to fund a hit piece about Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) in 2006. Before becoming an investigative reporter for the Times, Pulitzer Prize winner Marilyn W. Thompson was editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. As Howard Kurtz reported [1] in October 2006, Thompson was in the middle of what one might call a pay for play hit piece against that state's leading...

If John McCain weren't such a trusting soul he would have wondered why the New York Times endorsed him -- a member of the hated Republican Party -- as their (slightly) preferred candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, especially when he knew they were preparing a slanderous, largely anonymously sourced, story bound to damage his candidacy and his reputation.

If it were to be impeccably documented that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Washington's own Mr. Clean, did in fact permit his Senate vote to be improperly dictated by, as the expression has it, special interests, that would indeed be a major story. But the 3,000 word front-page piece that appeared in The New York Times Thursday ain't it. As an elected official who has excoriated the power of money and lobbyists in Washington, John McCain is, true enough, an inviting and appropriate target for scrutiny. Even he acknowledges that a gap between his declared standards and his actions would...

Talk To The Newsroom - The McCain Article. ...The Times has received more than 2,000 comments, many of them criticizing the handling of the article. Editors and reporters who worked on the article will be answering questions on Friday. Please send yours to askthetimes@nytimes.com.

What qualifies one to be a publisher at the New York Times? Apparently living through birth...if your name is Sulzberger. Other than that, Pinch Sulzberger is totally unqualified to be the publisher of even a freebie rag you see on the stands outside of supermarkets. So is that my own vicious rightwing conclusion? No. Liberal Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at New York University, also believes that Pinch Sulzberger has serious problems due to the New York Times "McCain Scandal" story as you can see in his HUffington POst BLOG titled, "For the New York Times, as Well, Self-Confidence...

All three broadcast network evening newscasts led Thursday night with the New York Times story alleging an improper relationship by John McCain with a female lobbyist, but questions about the journalistic standards of the newspaper were given as much consideration as the allegations against McCain. All three ran a soundbite from Rush Limbaugh denouncing the paper while ABC and CBS featured establishment media observers who castigated the Times for basing a story on the feelings of unnamed sources: Ken Auletta on ABC and Tom Rosenstiel on CBS. “John McCain began his day answering questions about a story in the New...

Allegations about Sen. John McCain's relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman have resurrected questions over his role in WQED Pittsburgh's controversial, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to sell its sister television station WQEX-16 in the 1990s. The proposed three-way deal involved a license swap between Ms. Iseman's client, Paxson Communications Corp., and Christian broadcaster Cornerstone TeleVision of Wall, which operated WPCB Channel 40. The transaction called for Channel 40 to assume the noncommercial license of Channel 16 and sell its own commercial license to Paxson for $35 million, split between Cornerstone and cash-strapped WQED. Paxson would gain entry into the Pittsburgh market...

The New York Times is in the crosshairs after publishing a lengthy and critical profile of John McCain Thursday that suggests that McCain had a romantic relationship with a female lobbyist. The New Republic published a long article Thursday afternoon on its Web site detailing the story behind the story and claiming, “What’s most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all.” The New Republic lambasted The New York Times for giving the green light, claiming the piece was “filled with awkward journalistic moves” and that it stepped around the suggested trysts with lobbyist Vicki...

From Elisabeth Bumillers' New York Times follow-up article of today [emphasis added]: Later in the day, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers directed strong criticism at The Times in what appeared to be a deliberate campaign strategy to wage a war with the newspaper. Mr. McCain is deeply distrusted by conservatives on several issues, not least because of his rapport with the news media, but he could find common ground with them in attacking a newspaper that many conservatives revile as a left-wing publication. Let me get this straight. The Times has run an article relying as sources on anonymous,...