A New York Times story examining Republican presidential candidate John McCain's relationship with a female lobbyist eight years ago has thrust the paper into the spotlight, with McCain slamming the story as a "hit-and-run smear campaign" and conservative pundits rallying to the senator's defense. The Times has stood its ground.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh dismissed the story as "gossip" on his show, accusing the paper of sitting on it until just before McCain had the Republican nomination wrapped up -- despite the Times having endorsed McCain on Jan. 25 for the New York State primary.
Separately, McCain's top aide Mark Salter told Time magazine he believed the Times ran with the story because The New Republic magazine was about to run its own story -- which it did post, on Thursday -- detailing the conflict within the paper over getting the article into print, and wanted to avoid embarrassment.
Bill Keller, the Times' executive editor, said in a response to questions from The Associated Press that The New Republic story "had nothing whatsoever to do with our decision to publish, or with the timing."
In its story, The New Republic magazine said the Times article came out only after three months of intense internal debate. The online Drudge Report had reported about those frustrations in December and said that McCain had been pressuring the Times not to print the story.
"I doubt if anybody involved would call it `dissent,'" Keller said. "As there always is on a big, long-running story, written by multiple reporters, there was lots of discussion along the way -- ending in a strong consensus that we had an important story to tell."
The Times story quoted unnamed McCain aides as saying that some of his top advisers feared that the senator was not aware of potentially damaging appearances of conflict of interest, and had asked the lobbyist to distance herself from him.
The issue is sensitive for McCain because he has staked much of his political career on standing up to special interests.
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