In 1993, the novelist Michael Crichton predicted that the news biz would implode within a decade. He was off on the timeline, but otherwise, he was right on the money.

Jack Shafer reports:

As we pass his prediction’s 15-year anniversary, I’ve got to declare advantage Crichton. Rot afflicts the newspaper industry, which is shedding staff, circulation, and revenues. It’s gotten so bad in newspaperville that some people want Google to buy the Times and run it as a charity! Evening news viewership continues to evaporate, and while the mass media aren’t going extinct tomorrow, Crichton’s original observations about the media future now ring more true than false. Ask any journalist.

In an interview with Shafer, Crichton observes the single biggest change in the “news”—namely, there isn’t any. It’s all “views” [e.a.]: 

“The biggest change is that contemporary media has shifted from fact to opinion and speculation. You can watch cable news all day and never hear anything except questions like, ‘How much will the Rev. Wright hurt Obama’s chances?’ ‘Is Hillary now looking toward 2012?’ ‘How will McCain overcome the age argument?’ These are questions for which there are endless answers. Contentious hosts on cable shows keep the arguments rolling,” he says.

Crichton believes that we live in an age of conformity much more confining than the 1950s in which he grew up. Instead of showing news consumers how to approach controversy coolly and intelligently, the media partake of the zealotry and intolerance of many of the advocates they cover. He attributes the public’s interest in Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to its hunger for a wider range of viewpoints than the mass media provide.

This gets close to my own thesis but is slightly different. I think the public is interested not so much in new viewpoints but rather in new stories, and in new heroes and villains.

The White House calls bullshit on NBC, and the network digs in, likely to its detriment. David Bauder elaborates:

Through its unusual public criticism of NBC’s handling of Richard Engel’s interview with the president, the Bush administration struck at the soft white underbelly of the news division’s co-existence with the opinionated personalities of MSNBC.

“I’m sure you don’t want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the `news’ as reported on NBC and the `opinion’ as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines,” Bush counselor Ed Gillespie wrote to NBC News President Steve Capus in a letter pointedly released to the public.

Tom Rosenstiel is quoted making an obvious point:

“Getting into the game of trying to attract an audience based on your point of view rather than reporting is dangerous because it does invite this kind of backlash,”

Pshaw, says NBC’s Steve Capus:

“Viewers are savvy enough to know the differences in that kind of programming,” Capus said. “The mission of NBC News hasn’t changed. The difference is that MSNBC has had some success, and success comes with attention and scrutiny.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this laissez-fair attitude from NBC. Nor is this the first time I’ve written about this issue.

A year ago, I wrote [note that I have since then updated some inactive links]:

[Why would an organization like NBC News, which just two weeks ago had to [send representatives] on Oprah to explain why they aired as “news” the Cho sick fantasy tapes, be so sanguine about Olbermann switching between opinion (like his denouncement of Giuliani in a Countdown “Special Commentary”) and “journalism” (like his hosting the Republican debate, which featured Giuliani among others)?

Because infotainment rules (obviously!)—that’s why—and it’s up to us viewers to figure out what we should take seriously or not:

Olbermann knows to leave his opinions at home when he anchors events, said Phil Griffin, NBC News senior vice president.

“Keith’s an adult,” Griffin said. “He can tell when it’s appropriate to express himself in a commentary and when to be a journalist. That’s one of his strengths. He knows exactly the tone and his role when he’s doing anything.”

Of course political campaigns are also a circus, and politicians are the world’s most shameless showmen and -women … so, for all I care, Olbermann can throw tomatoes at all of them the next time he hosts a “debate”—that would be really fun!

But he’s still a despicable hack. And NBC News is inviting a further loss of its credibility by referring to Olbermann’s program Countdown as “news” and by referring to anything he does as “journalism.” At least CNN tries to distinguish between “news” and “views” and Glenn Beck refers to himself as a “rodeo clown.”

Since I wrote that post, Olbermann was of course elevated to serious anchor status, with a prominent seat and voice on primary Tuesdays.

David Carr, writing in the New York Times, notes the dearth of media coverage of Iraq:

Even as we celebrate generations of American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There’s plenty of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a government intent on controlling information from the battlefield.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September.

One “expert” offers the usual bland and unrevealing “explanations”:

“Ironically, the success of the surge and a reduction in violence has led to a reduction in coverage,” said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There is evidence that people have made up their minds about this war, and other stories — like the economy and the election — have come along and sucked up all the oxygen.”

There is nothing ironic about the reduction in violence leading to a reduction in coverage. It is totally to be expected. The viewing audience, both for TV and for the movies, has proved to be allergic to the subject of Iraq, as Carr himself notes [e.a.]:

[W]hen Katie Couric, CBS’s embattled anchor, went to Iraq to report the story, she and her network were rewarded with their lowest ratings in over 20 years. Hollywood producers who had hoped there would be a public interest in cinematic perspectives on this war have been similarly punished.

Despite those callous Americans who are “punishing” well-intentioned media types who insist on bringing Iraq to their attention, some noble stalwarts continue to tell the story of Iraq [e.a.]:

Earlier this spring, Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times wrote about flying in a C-130 in Iraq, accompanied by soldiers, including one in a coffin at the back of the plane.

“I wondered what exactly he had died for. And although I did not know him, I felt melancholy as we flew onward, accompanied now by ghosts and memories of loss,” she wrote.

I wonder if it has ever occurred to Carr that this kind of coverage—or, rather, the mind-set that frames this kind of Iraq coverage—is one of the reasons for the audience’s lack of interest in media coverage of Iraq. It’s poisonous, and worse than no coverage at all.

When a reporter writes that she wonders what exactly a just-dead soldier died for, that isn’t a display of compassion, as Carr suggests. Because while Ms. Rubin is scoring “compassion” points with her own cohort, she is pouring salt into the wound of that soldier’s grieving family.

But never mind. Chances are, his family won’t be reading the New York Times. Chances are, they’ll be at a commemoration like the one I attended today:

—in a district where the supposedly bitter folks cling to their guns and their religion, a district that voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama by about 75% to 25%—no one expressed the least doubt about what our war dead have died for, and continue to die for: their country, if it came down to that.

There were no movie cameras recording the event I attended in rural America. There were no luminaries, or representatives from the government. Soldiers, sailors, local guys from the VFW, a pastor, the high school marching band, and maybe 100 local residents gathered to remember their neighbors, and their neighbors’ kids.

It was very moving. I wish David Carr had been there. Perhaps he would have understood that Ms. Rubin’s kind of reporting is worse than no reporting at all.

When I posted about the massive rally for Obama in Oregon, I titled the post “rock star numbers.”

Well, whaddaya know? Obama got 75,000 people at his “rally” because the “rally” started life as a free concert [e.a.]:

Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007’s The Crane Wife.

How many of the people showed up to hear Obama, and how many to hear the band?

Good question! But it doesn’t matter, because the “optics,” as I referred to them, told the story. Or, rather, the pictures that were spread far and wide (including by yours truly) told exactly the Big Lie that Team Obama wanted to communicate—that there is a huge, unstoppable “movement” for the candidate.

Let’s examine that proposition. There are indeed a lot of people in America who are excited by Obama. Many millions have voted for him in the primaries, and he has sparked the excitement of the “creative community,” which has turned him into a pop culture phenom, which in turn has made him into a celebrity, with legions of fans—which is unusual, to say the least, for a political candidate..

Indeed, it’s been a long time since a politician excited the popular imagination to this extent. Obama brings a great deal of talent, intelligence, skill, and flexibility, and great craftiness, to the practice of politics. He is particularly effective at deflecting criticism. He does it by appealing to political correctness, public decorum, and popular prejudices. (When you are the model of personal dignity and decorum, and a very cool cat to boot, how could you go wrong by decrying “divisiveness,” “distractions,” “distortions,” “Bush’s war,” “Bush’s failed policies” “endless war,” “fear-mongering,” “the same old solutions,”?)

It’s all so effective that even I want to believe him. And that is precisely what makes me wary. Because I don’t join movements. I am naturally skeptical, and deeply suspicious of mass enthusiasms, particularly in politics. After all, if a movie star has a lot of unthinking fans, the worst that can happen is that the star gets too big for his/her britches and annoys the hell out of the rest of us due to overexposure. By contrast, if a political star has a lot of unthinking fans …

Not that Dreams from My Father is Mao’s Little Red Book. But no political star can possibly live up to the hopes that people place in him or her. There are no magic solutions to intractable, centuries-old problems. There are no easy answers. To exploit people’s hopes is, in my opinion, just as cynical as exploiting people’s fears.

Barack Obama is one of the most cynical politicians I’ve ever witnessed. He’s a snake oil peddler of the highest order—slicker even than Slick Willy.

Those influential people who are overexcited by him and should know better—the opinion leaders of the MSM—should, like me, take that as a signal to brake.

Instead, they’ve put the pedal to the metal, as Alessandra Stanley details in today’s New York Times.

Even her victory speech in Kentucky, shown live on cable news, was given perfunctory attention — a footnote to someone else’s page in history. When MSNBC called the Kentucky primary early in the evening, Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press,” said her success with women and blue-collar voters “means Senator Obama has a lot of work to do” and sketched a rehabilitation plan. He did not mention Mrs. Clinton by name in that disquisition.

NBC simply erased Clinton from the picture, Ms. Stanley suggests. I would be full of admiration for Ms. Stanley’s courageous observation of a rival news organization if her own newspaper weren’t precisely guilty of the same thing.

Note that Clinton’s blowout of Obama in Kentucky isn’t even mentioned on the front page of the New York Times, or, for that matter, inside the news pages either. Indeed, as the headline writer says,

Clinton Fades Even in a Victory

Asserting their primacy, the media elite—from NBC to the New York Times—closes ranks and declares that it’s a victory only when they say it’s a victory. Obama is the clear winner.

Obama Declares Bid Is ‘Within Reach’

Perception is reality.

Will the American people buy this “truth”?

No.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m wondering when TV “journalists” will face the truth about their profession—namely, that what you see below is not just the future of “the news” but also the present.

(via FishbowlDC)

Fishbowl quotes some of the “juicy bits” from the upcoming NYT Mag article:

 

“By the way, have you figured me out yet?” Matthews said at the end of another phone conversation the following day. “You gotta under-stand, it’s all complicated. It’s not like Tim.” Tim — as in Russert, the inquisitive jackhammer host of “Meet the Press” — is a particular obsession of Matthews’s. Matthews craves Russert’s approval like that of an older brother. He is often solicitous.

In an interview with Playboy a few years ago, he volunteered that he had made the list of the Top 50 journalists in D.C. in The Washingtonian magazine. “I’m like 36th, and Tim Russert is No. 1,” Matthews told Playboy. “I would argue for a higher position for myself.”

Friends say Matthews is wary of another up-and-comer, David Gregory, who last month was given a show at 6 o’clock, between airings of “Hardball.” It is a common view around NBC that Gregory is trying out as a possible replacement for Matthews.

According to people at NBC, Matthews has not been shy in voicing his resentment of Olbermann. Nor, according to network sources, has Olbermann bothered to hide his low regard for Matthews, although when I spoke to him, Olbermann denied any personal animosity toward Matthews and told me that he appreciates his “John Madden-like enthusiasm for politics.”

Hmmm. Recognize anyone?

Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice, in The Entertainer
London, 1957, photo by Snowden

p.s. The last time I used that image was here, in May 2007.

The last time I wrote about Matthews was here.

————————–

*** When I claimed my blog on Technorati two years ago, this is how I described it:

They call it news. I call it infotainment.

No one can say that we weren’t warned well in advance. See, for example, Neal Postman and Michael Schudson and Joshua Gamson.

Somewhere in my drafts folder, I have a long post about how TV in general and the big cable channels in particular are a “news-free zone,” and one day I will polish it and publish it—it’s a work in progress.

Meanwhile, as my ideas marinate, I would like to note that there’s a new ethos in Cable Land, most tellingly represented by Chris Matthews, one of the talkingest talking heads on MSNBC.

Here, courtesy of Gail Shister at TVNewser, Matthews explains how it is that he can send valentines to Barack Obama several times per hour every day on his show Hardball and yet claim that he is not endorsing Obama [e.a.]:

Matthews — dubbed “Rain Man” by Brian Williams in a Christmas staff video — is just reporting the facts, m’am.

The leg thrill “was an honest reaction to the speech,” he says. “I have no regrets. I report what happens. I report my reactions to speeches. I react emotionally and intellectually.

“People are allowed to criticize me. I want to be honest. I give an honest report of what I experience. It’s a fuller report than others have given.”

This kind of “reporting” is what’s considered important by MSNBC. You’ll note that Matthews’s feelings are issue number one—for him and his viewers.

Funny, I don’t see any news value in that metric.

In the Politico, Mike Allen tracks the arc of the Rev. Wright story (which had been simmering beneath the surface) as it exploded into the MSM yesterday. And he also clarifies what catapulted it out of the “undernews” [see Mickey Kaus; scroll down] and into the stratosphere.

Unsurprisingly, it was videotape [e.a.]:

Politicians know a troublesome story has “broken through” the Eastern media echo chamber when Jay Leno is laughing at them.

In the case of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., retiring pastor and outgoing spiritual adviser to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), it took less than 48 hours.

The fracas started Thursday morning, when ABC’s “Good Morning America” ran a Brian Ross expose on Wright that included old video of him saying: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God bless America’? No, no, no. Not God bless America. God [expletive] America.”

What Allen meant to say was that it took 48 hours after videotape surfaced for the story to explode. The story of the pastor who hates Whitey and takes every opportunity to announce it had been lying in wait for 20 years—or, more precisely, since January 2007, when Obama announced his candidacy.

And as Allen says, Obama’s opponents had been pushing the press to write about the controversial and inflammatory Wright. To no avail, Allen admits. Not even after ABC broke the story.

Allen suggests that the press failed to jump on (”pile on”) the story after that  out of defiance against the overzealousness of Obama’s opponents:

On Feb. 20, after a fiery guest sermon by Wright in Little Rock, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran an article that said: “On Tuesday, Wright criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq and likened the insurgents to the Israelites under Babylonian rule.”

At 9:20 that morning, Obama opponents were already trying to get Politico to link to the story.

That’s why many news outlets — including Politico — did not initially pile on with rehashes after Ross’s story on “Good Morning America.”

But that was a reminder that it’s possible for regulars on the trail to be too familiar with the material. With the video widely available in the heat of the race, readers and viewers were thirsty for coverage.

So the public had to demand coverage of this story before the press would tell the wider audience what it knew but failed to reveal.

Very interesting.

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who has detected the stirrings—at long, long last—of a press that has been scandalously reluctant to exercise skepticism when it comes to Barack Obama.

Jeff Jarvis, who has also been on the case, adds a few logs to the fire today.

Mickey Kaus wrote about a category he called “undernews”—stuff that’s out there that doesn’t “bubble up” into the mainstream news. (I will reprint the entire post below***; it’s well worth reading.) In mid-January, Kaus addressed (not for the first time) some (a fraction) of the undernews then available about Obama:

Undernews Alert: It’s hard to believe that Obama’s Afrocentric church–with its troubling attack on “the pursuit of middeclassness”–isn’t going to be an issue in the campaign, soon. There are already wild, inflammatory emails circulating, apparently. … Update: Here is the offical Obama response page. Excerpt:

“There is information on the Black Values System in the new member packet provided at Trinity, and the new member classes put the Black Values System in the historical context of the civil rights movement.”

Hmm. It must be understood in “the historical context.” That’ll reassure nervous white voters! The Obama camp would seem to be severely underestimating its vulnerability on the church issue if it thinks lecturing people on the civil rights movement will solve this problem for them in the long run. … 1:18 A.M.

Here’s some fallout from just a fraction of the Obama undernews, reported in today’s New York Post. (I alluded to it the other day as Obama’s Jewish problem.)

Hikind, a Democrat who has yet to endorse a candidate for president, said Obama had not satisfactorily distanced himself from Wright, his Chicago-based personal pastor, noting, “This is a man who thinks Farrakhan is a great guy and God’s gift to the world.”

Hikind went on, “Obama has said that you can be a supporter of Israel even if you’re for giving up land to the Arabs, which is true - but for a guy running for president to take a position like this in advance of getting into office, combined with everything else going on in the Middle East, that scares the hell out of me.

“There are a hell of a lot of Jews who are concerned about these issues, and they go way beyond Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, people I describe as conservative Reagan/Giuliani Democrats,” said Hikind, who backed Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984.

Hikind’s warning about Jewish concerns over Obama are being widely but privately voiced among top New York Democrats.

“There is anxiety, there is concern, on the part of a lot of important Jewish Democrats in New York,” one of the state’s most influential Democratic activists told The Post.

Upshot: There’s trouble in River City.

————–
*** Here’s Mickey Kaus, in December 2007, on the “undernews”:

update: This reprint does not contain the original boldface, italics, or links provided by Kaus. To get those, you’ll have to visit his site—which you should do anyway.

Friday, December 21, 2007

The Matrix: Room Eight’s Jerry Skurnick has suggested that the electoarate is splitting into two diverging parts–people who follow politics and people who don’t–with the people who follow politics much better informed than they were before (thanks to cable, web, etc.) and the people who don’t follow politics less well informed (they used to get at least some information from Walter Cronkite). That certainly rings true to me. And it may, as Skurnick claims, explain some of the new volatility in polling–e.g., when the uninformed majority suddenly discovers, say, that Rudy Giuliani has been married three times.

But there’s a second way to divide the electorate that asks how the voters inform themselves. Do they rely on the traditional Mainstream Media (MSM), or do they get their political information from the Web, from cable news, from the tabloids, etc. This division may have once seemed unimportant, but it doesn’t anymore–its seriousness is suggested by the MSM’s impressive resistance to stories bubbling up from the blogs and the tabs that don’t meet MSM standards (putting aside whether you regard those standards as high or merely idiosyncratic). “Rielle Hunter”–the woman whom the National Enquirer alleges was John Edwards’ mistress–was the top-searched name on the MSN site at one point Thursday, I’m told. Meanwhile, in the traditional mainstream press, ‘Rielle Hunter” was mentioned only … well, zero times.

Of the two ways to divide the electorate, the second is arguably more important. After all, even those who don’t follow politics, will eventually inform themselves before the election.** But if the MSM/Web barrier remains as robust as it’s been, those who inform themselves from the MSM will find out something different, when they finally tune in, than those who go to the Web and learn both the news and what might be called the “undernews.” *** If you’re thinking of voting as a Democrat in Iowa or New Hampshire, you might watch NBC and never know about this messy Rielle Hunter business. Or you might read DailyKos know the whole allegation plus the arguments against it plus seven theories about how it came to light. That knowledge might cause voters to vote against Edwards or to vote for him–but either way first they have to find out.

Likewise, TNR’s Noam Scheiber suggests that the egghead sector ( “urban, college-educated liberals”) of the Democratic party–which used to be less partisan and combative than the blue-collar/labor sector–is now more partisan and combative, because its eggy heads are wrapped up in Kos and other anti-Bush sites, where they absorb the latest undernews about the machinations of Karl Rove and Tom DeLay. Scheiber argues this is a good development for Obama, who surprisingly doesn’t have to become more partisan then he actually is in order to win over non-egghead (labor) Dems.

The 2008 campaign will be a test of the relative strength of these various differently-informed electorates. Of those who follow politics (Skurnick’s first group) how many follow the “undernews” and how many merely watch Brian Williams? Of those who don’t follow politics (Skurnick’s second group) how many bone up in the end by madly googling the candidates, and how many just read the editorial endorsements in their local papers? The non-MSM Enquirer will be in the checkout aisles all over Iowa, but will it have an impact?

The smearing-by-innuendo of John McCain by the New York Times drew this response from the blogosphere (via Memeorandum):

  New York Times:For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk  +Discussion: The Swamp, CNN, Washington Post, Don Surber, Buck Naked Politics, After W, The Carpetbagger Report, Outside The Beltway, Guardian, Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Hullabaloo, US Elections, Betsy’s Page, ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES, Bark Bark Woof Woof, Publius Pundit, The Natural Truth, Bang the Drum, Political Radar, Political Punch, The Campaign Spot, American Spectator, Los Angeles Times, TalkLeft, Washington Monthly, NewsBusters.org, Right Wing News, Politics1, You Decide 08!, South Texas Chisme, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Patterico’s Pontifications, Emptywheel, Group News Blog, DownWithTyranny!, Shakespeare’s Sister, FOX Embeds, Daily Kos, Booman Tribune, Reason Magazine, Left in the West, NO QUARTER, Salon, The New Republic, PERRspectives Blog, Open Left, About US Politics, No More Mister Nice Blog, TownHall Blog, Political Machine, Riehl World View, Pensito Review, The Moderate Voice, Mercury Rising, All Spin Zone, the talking dog, Washington Wire, Wonkette, D-Day, Attytood, Prairie Weather, Jules Crittenden, Pandagon, Megan McArdle, TBogg, Politics Blog, Gateway Pundit, McCain Central, THE LIBERAL JOURNAL, MyDD, The Democratic Daily, Sister Toldjah, PrestoPundit, Commentary, Oliver Willis, michellemalkin.com, Lawyers, Guns and Money, JammieWearingFool, Truthdig, Big Head DC, BlueOregon and Brains and Eggs

 

 

« Hide All Related Discussion

RELATED:

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:

THE MCCAIN STORY  —  This afternoon, before the Times story came out, I was working on a post about national political reporters’ tendency not to give much of any scrutiny to various McCain flipflops, contradictions and bamboozlements.  Obviously, the terrain has changed a bit since …

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Publius / Obsidian Wings:   McCain  —  Gotta say, I’m underwhelmed by the NYT’s McCain bombshell.

Mark Kleiman / The RBC:   The Iseman cometh  —  Apparently this has been an open secret for years.

Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone:   L’affaire McCain?  —  Just landed in San Francisco to the news …

Washington Post:

McCain’s Ties To Lobbyist Worried Aides  —  Before 2000 Campaign, Advisers Tried to Bar Her  —  Aides to Sen. John McCain confronted a telecommunications lobbyist in late 1999 and asked her to distance herself from the senator during the presidential campaign he was about to launch …

 

 Pam Spaulding / Pandagon:   McCain and the lobbyist: the final straw for the GOP Base?

NY Daily News:   Tale’s tall on innuendo, short on proof

Bob Fertik / Democrats.com:   VickiGate  —  So did John McCain cheat on his wife, the taxpayers, or both?

Kevin Hayden / American Street:   Justice & Hope, day 51  —  On occasion, an exceptional moment arrives …

David Freddoso / The Corner:   The Times piece on McCain

Smintheus / Daily Kos:   McCain: Experienced in the ways of Washington lobbyists

David Kurtz / Talking Points Memo:   WAPO: MCCAIN’S TIES TO LOBBYIST RATTLED ADVISERS

Tom Maguire / JustOneMinute:   The Times’ McCain Scandal - Sex Or Ethics?

Michael Crowley / The New Republic:   Weaver’s Revenge?  —  An interesting footnote to the Times bombshell …

Lyzurgyk / PSoTD:   Vicki Iseman

Jane Hamsher / Firedoglake:   Late Nite FDL: It’s Not The Sex, It’s The Corruption

Noam Scheiber / The New Republic:

Bonus TNR Angle on the McCain Story  —  The McCain campaign is apparently blaming TNR for forcing the Times’ hand on this story.  We can’t yet confirm that.  But we can say this: TNR correspondent Gabe Sherman is working on a piece about the Times’ foot-dragging on the McCain story …

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

 Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:   McCain Will Hold Press Conference

Dan Collins / protein wisdom:   Olberdouche on McCain/Lobbyist Article in NYT

Krooney / The Page:   McCain Job #1: Discredit the New York Times to Rally the “Other” Base

Rich Lowry / The Corner:

First-Blush Reaction  —  The Times doesn’t have the goods—at least from what’s in the story—and shouldn’t have run it.  Let’s be honest: this story is all about the alleged affair, and all the Keating Five and campaign finance reform re-hash is window dressing.  A key passage:

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

 James Kirchick / The New Republic:   What Story?  —  So here’s the essence of the Times’ 3,000-word “bombshell” on John McCain.

Mark Finkelstein / NewsBusters.org:   New Republic Editor: ‘Times In the Tank’ for Dem Nominee

Hindrocket / Power Line:

THE TIMES UPHOLDS ITS STANDARDS  —  The New York Times smears John McCain in tomorrow’s paper, accusing him of ethics violations and insinuating that he had an affair with a lobbyist.  What is most striking, though, if you actually read the story, is how thin it is.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Discussion: The Huffington Post and protein wisdom

Marc Cooper / The Huffington Post:   Why John McCain Owes The New York Times a Thank You Card

Dan Collins / protein wisdom:   McCain Lobbyist Affair Rumor Reported, NYT

Mary Katharine Ham / TownHall Blog:

What’s the Quickest Way to Rally Conservatives ‘Round McCain?  —  A sandbagging from the NYT of just this skeezy a nature.  —  This doesn’t reflect badly on anyone but the Times, as far as I’m concerned.  The innuendo and full-on craptastic nature of the lede alone is enough to damn …

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

 Jules Crittenden:   WaPo Writes It With A Lede

Ed Morrissey / Captain’s Quarters:

Slimes At The Times  —  The New York Times launches its long-awaited smear of John McCain today, and the most impressive aspect of the smear is just how baseless it is.  They basically emulate Page Six at the Post, but add in a rehash of a well-known scandal from twenty years ago to pad it out and make it look more impressive.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

:Tim Graham / NewsBusters.org:   NYT Suggests Unproven Adultery by McCain — Unlike Clinton

Ana Marie Cox / TIME: Swampland:

McCain Senior Adviser Responds to Times Story  —  Mark Salter, John McCain’s obstreperous senior aide, just responded to Time’s query about the New York Times’s long-simmering McCain-mixed-up-with-lobbyists story.  —  Speaking from a parking garage in Toledo, where the campaign is overnighting …

Jennifer Rubin / Commentary:   Rapid Response 101  —  Well so far both the Right and the Left …

Taylor Marsh:   Will McCain Story Hit New York Times Instead?

Krooney / The Page:   Morning Show Summary

Kevin Drum / Washington Monthly:   JOHN McCAIN AND THE TELECOM LOBBYIST….OK, let’s dive into the John McCain story.

Allahpundit / Hot Air:

NYT: McCain may have behaved unethically and cheated on his wife, but we’re not sure; Update: Pressured by the New Republic?  Update: McCain responds; Update: Carl Cameron video added; Update: TNR confirms?  Update: WaPo piles on  —  A sex scandal that may not be a scandal tucked inside …

Don Surber:   Sex is private, 2008  —  Dems drop the blond bomb on John McCain.

Jimmie / The Sundries Shack:   The McCain Story is No Biggie, If You Ask Me.

Noam Scheiber / The New Republic:   McCain Bombshell

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Quin Hillyer / American Spectator:Who is John McCain?  —  Here’s the deal, folks: The New York Times …

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Joseph / CANNONFIRE:   A most salacious post. (”Heh heh. He said ‘post’!”)

INSTAPUTZ:   The American Spectator was Prescient.

Joe Sudbay / AMERICAblog:   NY Times: McCain staffers confronted Senator about inappropriately …

NewsMax.com:Inside Cover  —  Bennett Slams NY Times Hit Job on McCain

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 Cenk Uygur / The Huffington Post:   NY Times Holds Stories Because They’re Afraid of Conservatives

David Kurtz / Talking Points Memo:   MCCAIN CAMPAIGN ISSUES STATEMENT

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RADAR:WAS JOHN MCCAIN GETTING ‘LOBBIED’ BY A WOMAN 30 YEARS HIS JUNIOR?

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 J.P. Freire / American Spectator:   McCain Affair Story

Marc Ambinder:McCain/Lobbyist Story In The New York Times Finally Drops

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 Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs: