"NYT: McCain camp pushed Ayers report"

You might thing it's just the economy on the edge of fall, but for many it's the mainstream media; by fueling the nasty and silly season of politics.  Four weeks before the general elections, cable networks, some of the newspapers and major talk shows systematically divert the attention of people from the first issue of the United States, economy, to the nasty attacks that are used by Sen. McCain's campaign against Sen. Obama. It was not surprising, and is not the first time, that the Times distance itself from objective journalism and will not be the last one, but it's a sad sign for the media which instead of being a pillar for democracy is a major factor to distort it:

"As the McCain campaign has launched a full-scale assault on Barack Obama’s relationship to ‘60s radical William Ayers, vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has explained the timing this way: The New York Times made us do it.

The Times published a front-page story about Ayers and Obama on Saturday, and Palin said Tuesday she was simply “responding to the news of the day” by repeatedly mentioning Ayers on the stump.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, sees the timetable for the Ayers uproar in a very different way, however. He told Politico that the paper was motivated to report out the Ayers link because the McCain campaign has been pushing it — not the other way around.

“We've reported the Ayers relationship before, and we had it on our to-do list for a while to take a more comprehensive look,” Keller said in an e-mail. “When the McCain campaign began to make it a major focal point of ads and stump speeches, we decided the time was right.” (Read the rest of the story here)