Lies from the NY Times

(Newser) - The New York Times will report almost anything newsworthy—except a rumored affair between its publisher and Caroline Kennedy, Gawker reports. When a reader commented on the paper’s City Room blog wondering if the Times would address the gossip surrounding the two, the comment was deleted with the explanation that “We don’t report stuff like this, regardless of people involved.” Uh, sure. More »

(Newser) - John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin continues to hurt his chances of winning Tuesday's election, a poll from the New York Times and CBS shows. In the survey, 59% of voters said Palin is not qualified to be vice president, up 9 points in a month. About a third of voters said the VP choice would be a major factor in how they vote, and most of those people are picking Barack Obama. More »

(Newser) - With one week to go until the election, political coverage on TV "should probably come with a spoiler alert," writes Alessandra Stanley. With every poll predicting a major win for Barack Obama, terms like "touchdown favorite" and "near-insurmountable" have become ubiquitous on the networks. You have to switch to Fox News, writes the New York Times television critic, for coverage that ignores the "flood of predictive data." More »

(Newser) - While no more Saks and Barney's charges have surfaced, records for the first 2 weeks of October indicate that Sarah Palin's makeup artist was the highest paid individual contributor to the McCain campaign effort, pulling in $23,000. Amy Strozzi easily beat out McCain's foreign policy adviser (just $12,500) and senior communications staffer ($12,000), reports the New York Times . More »

(Newser) - With the election season winding down and the economy slumping, Fox News could have trouble paying the heavy hitters it's signed and re-signed to multimillion-dollar contracts, the New York Times reports. Experts agree that advertising, a big chunk of Fox’s budget, will fall off after the amazing expenditures during viewer-magnet election coverage. Whether the outcome of the vote will matter is another question entirely. More »

(Newser) - It won't surprise anyone that Rupert Murdoch managed to get his hands on an advance copy of Michael Wolff's upcoming biography of him, despite a strict embargo, or that he complained to the publisher over some of the contents. Murdoch gave Wolff more than 50 hours of interviews and access to everyone from his top execs to his 99-year-old mother, and he told them to be candid. The New York Times chronicles the ensuing brouhaha. More »

(Newser) - The McCain campaign and the New York Times are at it again after the paper published a partly unflattering profile of Cindy McCain today, Lynn Sweet reports for the Chicago Sun-Times . Mrs. McCain’s lawyer fired off an angry letter at the Times , asking why it drudged up old stories on Cindy's drug use and charitable life. "You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book," he wrote. “There is a terrific lack of balance here." More »

(Newser) - Vicki Iseman lashed out at the New York Times and a former John McCain adviser for the February story that implied an affair occurred between her and the Republican candidate, the National Journal reports. “I did not have a sexual relationship with Sen. McCain,” Iseman says. In fact, the lobbyist amplifies, “I have never even been alone with Sen. McCain.” More »

(Newser) - Barack Obama’s success in recent debates has less to do with out-talking his opponent than in letting US voters become familiar with him, the New York Times reports; Obama’s contest was as much to prove himself to an electorate uneasy with his novel candidacy. Polls show more confidence in Obama after the first two debates, while John McCain’s backfiring campaign strategy widened the gap. More »

(Newser) - John McCain's flurry of attacks against Barack Obama has done the Republican more harm than his opponent, according to the latest New York Times /CBS poll. Obama now commands a 53% to 39% lead, with voters seeing McCain as running the more negative campaign of the two, the poll found. More than 60% felt McCain was spending more time attacking Obama than explaining what he'd do as president—and most thought less of him for it. More »

(Newser) - Down in the polls and facing brutal criticism from his own party, John McCain is returning to an old persona: the "happy warrior" that won the GOP primary. Tempering attacks that have proven counterproductive, McCain presented himself as a prepared, tested leader who could bring forceful leadership to the White House, writes Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times . More »

(Newser) - As recently as 1998, John McCain told Esquire that being introduced as a “great war hero” was enough to “make your skin crawl.” Today, however, his POW experience is a pillar of his presidential campaign, a change David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times attributes to the formative process of crafting his family memoir Faith of My Fathers . More »

(Newser) - John McCain’s campaign isn’t working, and if he’s smart, he’ll “junk the whole thing and start over,” William Kristol writes in the New York Times. McCain’s current “combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic,” the high-profile conservative argues. McCain should pull all of his attack ads (“they’re doing no good anyway”) and go back to being a "cheerful, open" candidate. More »