An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The paper’s decision to refuse McCain’s direct rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq’ has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.
‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’
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In McCain’s submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: ‘I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it… if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.’
NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’
[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]
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A top McCain source claims the paper simply does not agree with the senator’s Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not “re-work the draft.”
McCain writes in the rejected essay: ‘Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. ‘I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,’ he said on January 10, 2007. ‘In fact, I think it will do the reverse.’
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Shipley, who is on vacation this week, explained his decision not to run the editorial.
‘The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech); while Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans.’
Shipley continues: ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.’
Developing…
Drudge has a copy of the rejected McCain editorial.
Related: Rasmussen;
The belief that reporters are trying to help Barack Obama win the fall campaign has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help John McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage’.
UpdateExclusive: NY Times Editor David Shipley’s Notes On McCain’s Rejected Editorial
You know, I’m beginning to wonder if the media bias issue is not going to have a significant impact on the election but not in the way the media intends. People (especially Americans)don’t like being told what to think. I can see a backlash coming.
This is a political minefield, I’m afraid. Currently, the Democrats in the Senate and House are attempting to gather support for a re-application of the “Fairness Doctrine.” Essentially, this is a legislative edict that would require equal time for opponents to comments and reports made by radio talk shows, print media and the like. In other words, Liberal opinion mediums have always failed financially, while the “Rush Limbaughs” have reaped a windfall of listeners and profits.
The “Fairness Doctrine” approach is a way of silencing conservative opponents.
I bring this up, because this issue with the NYT’s straddles the fence of an “obligation.” I don’t see where a privately owned newspaper is required to give McCain a forum…especially in a rebuttal (read: debate) to a previous article from the other candidate.
Of course, they advertise their bias in that regard, but I don’t think the McCain folks should be up in arms about it. Instead, I think they should approach it in a way that discounts the legitimacy of the NYT’s. I’d even call them irrelevant and point out their current financial state as it relates to agenda driven “news.”
I think it’s pretty silly that a paper would object to printing an editorial by a presidential candidate regardless of the papers views, but I guess that’s their prerogative, if they decide to be completely biased, then that’s their choice.
On the flip side, if you look at the New Yorker’s cover, it points out just how badly Obama has been skewed in the media for the past few months by making light of the various claims or subtle allegations made against him.
Good post but the stock history is kind of irrelevant. All newspapers are going down the toilet, not just the NYT. Enter in the top newspapers into google and create a chart that shows them all relative to each other and the NYT is not at the bottom of the rankings. All are down about 25 – 75% since the beginning of 2007. The ones I used were NWS, NYT, WPO, and GCI (owns alot of republican newspapers).
Media manipulation is the stuff of Banana Republics. In a democracy they play on a populace too damned lazy to bother looking past their headlines and the biased TV commentators. The same game is played in the US by the Democrats and their media hacks. John Stossel wrote a book on
it some time ago.
The news on this serious problem is out, it’s well talked about and very obvious. The MSM has been an arm of the Liberal Party for decades, that’s undeniable. They still try denial but less and less people are buying it. The jig is up.
boudicae:
Though I hope your right, I’m not optimistic. I suspect that Americans, like the British of 1933-39, are desperate to believe that confrontation and hardship can be avoided if only we seek “understanding” through “dialogue”. Add to that white hypocrisy over racial disparities and you have a recipe for a Democratic victory in November. Reality will assert itself later.
I also am beginning to see a Democratic victory for the White House – much to my dismay.
I’m disappointed that all the Republicans could up with to represent them is a tired old man. I’m not saying that all ‘old men’ should be removed from running for President but in this current era what is needed is a sense of ‘cutting’ away from the old strategies and moving into a new phase. McCain doesn’t offer this to the people.
I’m equally disappointed that the Democrats would stoop so low as to come up with a candidate whose identity is pure fiction, whose past is pure sophistry, whose future is pure hypothesis. As such a manufactured fictional character, the Democrats decided to imagize this puppet within the strategy of ‘racims’. That’s appalling.
The US people are not racist; they don’t make judgments based on ‘race’ and to have them decide on their President within the category of race is a regressive, and yes, evil, strategy by the Democrats.
The MSM have fallen for this strategy. The pop culture population have fallen for his American Idol Song of Change – ignoring that all it is, is a song, all it is – are words.
If, If, the Republicans had offered a dynamic, vital candidate – I think they’d win on a dime. Americans are, and have always been, realists. But heck – two fictional characters?
ET sums the Americans situation up perfectly –
“I’m equally disappointed that the Democrats would stoop so low as to come up with a candidate whose identity is pure fiction, whose past is pure sophistry, whose future is pure hypothesis. As such a manufactured fictional character, the Democrats decided to imagize this puppet within the strategy of ‘racims’. That’s appalling”.
Usually Canada is twenty years behind the US in adopting their trends or issues.
In this instance the US is in reverse mode with Obama, a propos Trudeau and his crypto-communist vision for Canada.
The US may rue the day, if they elect leftist Democrat Obama as POTUS.
People, Obama only polls well because the public doen’t know him yet.
He doesn’t poll that well even then.
The real campaign will start and the more they see, the less of an idea he becomes and the more of a person he becomes. When they see what kind of person he is, get used to hearing about President McCain.
Consequently, a year ago I’d have contemplated “pres McCain” with loathing. See how perceptions change when your choices change? lol.
completely OT, but please, please Kate post a link to this piece of eastern canadian sensitivity:
network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/07/21/john-moore-big-oil-owns-alberta.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage
The Rhetoric continues to escalate.
They will never get the connection between that stock price chart and these asinine editorial positions, not even as they are slipping beneath the waves.
JR:
I agree that a newspaper must have the right to run anything they want for any reason they want. And reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine would be a brutal body blow to freedom of the press and expression.
But one still has the right to criticize a newspaper’s editorial policies. In this case, it’s strange that the Times did not want to publish an opinion piece from the Republican presidential candidate on one of the central issues (perhaps THE central issue) of the upcoming election.
It’s also strange that one reason for not running is that it contained no new information. Both Obama’s and McCain’s pieces were described as editorials. New factual information is not normally demanded of editorials.
Don’t sell the American public short. Osama will not win.
As far as the NYT’s is concerned the Republicans should issue a statement asking all Republican businessman to refrain from advertising in that paper. Money talks, no money screams.
ET said; The US people are not racist.
Well now ET, I have read some pretty good posts from your neck of the woods, but gotta differ with ya on this one, even though McCain was not our choice, dang-near every Southern White down heya, especially in Louisi-Yana, will vote McCain. And they do this because of our Southern White Heritage. We are still pee-od over the Civil War, and no Liberal Eastern, Northern or Western opinion will change that.
If the truth were told, the NAACP, EEOC, BET, ACLU, Rev. Wright, Jackson, Sharpton, Farakhan, Obama and the rest of the Millions of Blacks on the Dole has made voting very easy, and if that makes us Racist because we put our Culture and Heritage first than so be it.
Personally, I could never vote for the Present Day Galapagos Democrats where Self-Preservation is tossed out the window.
,
Why does it matter if anything is published in the NYT anyway? They don’t have much of a readership anyway.
McCain would do better putting his item up on Rush Limbaugh’s blog or on his radio show. He’s reach more than ten times the numbers.
John V,
Not Rush, those are not swing voters they’re solidly GOP.
NYT’s is hard-left democrats.
To win you have to chace the out-of-touch people who don’t normally give a rat’s hiney.
Try USA Today and put your essay between the latest story about Britney and the Baseball score.
ratt – heh. Yes, I admit that the ‘colour divide’ is real. After all, you’ve got the black vote and the Rev Wrights and their hysteria-inducing irrational screaming emotive rants…but, I don’t think that decisions by the govt or key institutions in the US are made on the basis of race.
Decisions by INDIVIDUALS are most certainly made on that basis. But that will never, ever, change, not in 1,000 years. Individual decisions will always include both reason and emotion.
What I tried to say, badly, was that an institution, ie, a political party, had deliberately set up this presidential election as one based on race. It had deliberately introduced ‘affirmative action’ so to speak, had deliberately introduced a variable that would make the individual ‘guilty’ of ‘racism’ if they voted against Obama.
The individual might really reject Obama because he’s a purely fictional creation, because he has no substance, because he’s like a computer Word Article that is being constantly written over and over again almost on a daily basis – without any memory or record of its past text.
They might reject Obama because they really don’t like what he says (today) about X; or because he has no experience..
But- the Democrats have set up the situation such that all of this is irrelevant. IF you reject Obama, you are, even unknown to yourself, really really doing it – because you are a Closet Racist.
Such a blatantly amoral strategy by a political party – now, that’s quite something.
“media bias”
it sounds bad, sort of. Bias means “one sided”. The press is not really being “fair” then. Sort of like a ref in a hockey match. Gee, that’s not good is it. We in the Western World value “fairness”.
Of course that sort of simplistic approach fails to take into account precious context: the integral role of an impartial media to any representative democracy.
Why is it that the hallmark of any totalitarian regime is control of the media/information? After all, totalitarian thugs have guns pointed at their people, who cares what the people think. However, providing the masses with only one viewpoint, the “chosen” party’s viewpoint, has the effect of controlling reality such that the masses willingly, albeit ignorantly, do as the “chosen” party desires. No guns are necessary.
The willingness of today’s media to manipulate the flow of information to the masses to favor the “chosen” ones cuts to the very heart of our democracy.
Some have described the coverage of Obama as “creepy”. I’d call it good old fashioned authoritarian.
Now that’s the ET I know.
Not to mention: it was a win/win for the Galapogas Democrats with Hillary or Obama on the ticket. You either hated women or blacks.
,
From the NYT in defending its decision to print a terrorist propaganda (titled “the Dangers of a One-Sided Debate”):
“Op-ed pages should be open especially to controversial ideas, because that’s the way a free society decides what’s right and what’s wrong for itself.”
Here:
http://tinyurl.com/57f9u8
John V, you’re missing out on the NYT websites stats. They recorded 555 million hits in March 2005…with the growth of internet users etc. you could argue it’s even higher, but with the number of independent news blogs and stuff out there, I would venture a guess it’s stayed fairly static or grown to maybe 650 million. That’s about 18.5 million hits a day, so that beats out Rush’s. I was unable to find his website stats though so it could arguably be higher.
This is absolutly great for McCain and the GOP!
What better coverage and bias can you get without lifting a finger or spending a buck? The NY Slimes have just given the right-thinking swing voters a boost for McCain.
These people are idiots. No thoughts about the consequences of their decisions. I firmly believe that we don’t have to defeat them, just leave them alone and they will eventually destroy themselves. John Kerry proved that in spades four years ago.
“The belief that reporters are trying to help Barack Obama win the fall campaign has grown by five percentage points over the past month.”
I think its more of an observation than a belief. Pretty soon even the most disinterested voters are going to look up from their cell phones and think “Jeeze, they expect me to believe THAT?”
This is one of those “things always look darkest just before they go completely black” situations for the American MSM. The Times in particular has sold their legacy credibility for a kiss and a promise from Obama. Their market capitalization is going to be below the value of that building Schultzburger is sitting in.
Man, I can hardly wait.
Lets see: America 300 million souls,
Black America less than 4 million souls,
You do the math.
Even if every negro in America voted twice it ain’t enough.
Kate,
Slightly off topic, but an itch needs to be scratched.
In their rush to present the Democrats and their African American Messiah, the MSM continues to play to the stereotype that the Democrats give a rats a** what the average African American thinks. Poll indicate a 98-2 split in favour of BO, yet where is the the history of African Americans reaching the higher echelon of the Democratic Party.
While I do not agree with many of their policies, they left their best and brighest ( Harold Ford Jr.) behind, to be the voice of reason for their soon-to-be vacuous leader. In the meantime, those big bad ugly Republicans have had two Secretaries of State (Powell and Condi) a congressman who reached number 3 in the party hierarchy (JC Watts, a former Ottawa Rough RIder QB, no less)and yet thanks to people like Jackson, Sharpton and of course Oprah we are led to believe this is next Great Not-White Hope.
Hopefully, in my lifetime, both in America and Canada, we will finally reach a point where actions really do speak louder than words.
I can’t say I am terribly hopeful since, as a tie-in to Dr Dawgs post, we have “progressed” from Whos Hot/Whos Not, to Cheers and freekin Jeers.
When will we reach bottom?
Blacks are 12.4% of the US population, but they dont tend to vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_demographics_of_the_United_States#Black_Americans
with election results a mere 1% apart in the last election having 90% of 12.5% can be significant. Id say it will depend on how the Obamarama handles the Latinos more than anything.
FREE:
According to Wiki, African-Americans comprise 12.8 % of the US population or 36.6 million in 2000.
I might buy the NYT stock at this price(“chuckle”) just based on that 7% dividend. Nevertheless the red ink spilled everywhere over the past 10 yrs in terms of earnings.
“Osama will not win.”
Oh yes he can I’m afraid. Remember Jimmy Carter. Obama has a massive fundraising advantage over McCain and the Democrats control Congress. This is why Romney is likely to be on the ticket.
Free- you are missing the point. The Democrats don’t expect only black Americans to vote for Obama (and frankly, many of them don’t like Obama); they are after the ‘white’ vote who will be made to feel racist if they don’t vote for him.
The strategy that the Democrats set up, to make the vote dependent on the voter’s ‘guilt’ (at being either ‘racist’ or anti-female) is unethical, is amoral…They’ve taken the focus away from the merit of the individual, and put it on the ‘value of a group’. That’s not democracy.
The NYT certainly has the right to print whatever or whomever they darn well want. What irks me are the gutless, lame excuses for flagrant bias. I could respect them if they simply came out and said, “We’re a liberal/left paper and we have no intention of giving Republicans a platform.” At least that would be honest. Instead they go for the weasel words like, ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’ i.e. write what we want to see or get lost. It’s akin to the NYT’s pathetic excuse for failing to print the Mohammed cartoons — not wanting to offend religious sensibilities, and then one week later publishing a depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in human excrement.
And these guys wonder why their credibility is at the bottom of a well!
If they printed Obama’s offering without requesting any rewrites, then this does say something about the paper. They certainly have the right to print or not print whatever they like for whatever reason. It is good that they have this choice, as we now can see what they are about. Any claims they may have to being a free forum have been exposed as false. This is not a problem, we just know that we have to look elsewhere for any opinions from McCain.
Alternatives exist. NYT is just helping people to explore those alternatives (Drudge comes to mind). Good on them.
I see this as a twofer. New York Times looks bad and makes Obama look bad too.
McCain shouldn’t whine though. He should post a rebuttal on his website. With all the attention this is causing probably more people will read it than the submitted NYT piece. Obama’s numbers have trended downwards of late and all the adulation may be creating a backlash but its way too early to tell. Bottom line there’s is a lot of time left and McCain needs to capitalize on Obama’s mistakes- every one.
For those who are interested there is a great article by Michael Barone (who knows his tuff) about how Gerald Ford nearly won. Check it out, I hope McCain has.
Its can be found here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGI5NjRkZmJmMTJhYjVmMGU0ZWUwNGJiNzU4ODM4MmQ=
“I can see a backlash coming.” — I hope so. I am embarrassed for the New York Times. This is such a blatant abandonment of professional responsibility. They don’t have to agree with McCain . . . but with two candidates running for the most powerful office in the land, I would have thought that they would see the importance of getting two view out there. Really it is unforgivable.
I would like to know where this huge lead for Obama is. He is barely leading. The polls skew Demcrat whether intentionally or not. It may be that people who think the govt ought to mind their own business also refuse to answer polls. I don’t know. But in all of the elections I have seen, the only time a Democrat out performed their poll numbers was Al Gore. The drunk driving thing came out on Thursday before the election. Absent that little shot and the election would not have been close.
McCain will win by a landslide with Romney as the VP and the president in waiting after McCain’s one year term. People know, as does McCain himself, that he will not run for a second term as he would be way to old……after McCain first term we will see what a good and intelligent man Romney is as VP…Romney will then run for President and hold the office for two terms….you see…all is right in the world and it will unfold as it should.
No media bias at the NYT? Naw, never believe it – eh!
Obama and McCain are tied now. Whodathunkit? One trends down, the other trends up, this was not the way it was supposed to be. And that was before Obama gave his idiotic defense of his earlier judgement on the surge. “We don’t know if my idea would have worked or not.” What a pantload. He thinks that the Mahdi Army stood down of their own accord, not because they were soundly beaten on the battlefield. Same with Al Quada. Iraqis have been sick of the terrorists for years, but they have also been afraid to act on it ’til the terrorists were beaten on the battlefield. There is now a KFC in Fallujah. The only ones buying Obama’s rationalizations are the ones who drank the Kool Aide months ago.
Obama does not understand that warlords like Sadre and military groups like Al Qaeda only make political concessions when the military situation forces them. This is the man we want negotiating for the US? Even Canadians would not wish that on the world, though I am sure Russia and China are licking their chops to get this guy accross the table.
87% of the msm in the u.s. vote democrat. who do you think is going to get favourable press? duh.
Has anyone seen the egg that I laid here last night?
I saw a great flash of light, a loud boom, and then all went dark.