McCain: ‘I Do Not Complain About The Media’. Yesterday during an interview with Fox News’s Carl Cameron, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) astonishingly claimed that he has not had any complaints with the way the media is treating him or his campaign:
MCCAIN: I do not comment on the media treatment of me or Sarah. Complaining about something we are doing voluntarily that we want to do and get done I think would just not be productive. […] But I do not complain about the media and I will not complain because thats not appropriate for me to do so and frankly it doesn’t do me any good if I did.
Watch it (beginning at 1:15):
Anyone paying any attention to anything in recent weeks knows that this claim is beyond absurd. In fact, McCain himself just recently railed against “gotcha journalism” when CBS News’s Katie Couric asked about Sarah Palin’s recent claim that the U.S. should “launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan to, quote, ‘stop the terrorists from coming any further in‘” — a position that McCain opposes and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) supports.
The McCain campaign has been waging a well-known and well-documented war against the media for what they consider to be biased coverage. Some of the battles:
– McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer blasted a recent interview Couric conducted with Palin as “a series of trapdoor questions.”
– Top adviser Steve Schmidt accused the media of being “on a mission to destroy” Palin by displaying “a level of viciousness and and scurrilousness” in pursuing questions about her personal life.
– Schmidt attacked a New York Times article about how Palin was vetted before becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee as “a complete work of fiction.”
– Schmidt said of the Times: “This is an organization that is completely, totally 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate. It is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside it’s journalistic integrity to advocate for the defeat of John McCain.”
– During her speech at the Republican National Convention, Palin hit the media, saying “if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”
– McCain himself recently canceled an interview with Larry King because a CNN reporter conducted a challenging interview with campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.
– The McCain campaign demanded that the media treat Palin with “deference.”
Also, just today, McCain complained that PBS’s Gwen Ifill would be moderating today’s Vice Presidential debate because she is writing a book that is perceived as favorable to Obama.
[Think Progress]
4:35:06 PM 
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