Triple Shot Thursday: Ed Morrissey has an interesting story up

Does the New York Times leverage access to campaign events through threats of negative news articles? According to one source at the McCain campaign, the answer is yes. (Ed mentions many of the Times’ dishonest stories, which then moved to the editorial page)

All of that brings us to today. It’s no secret that the McCain campaign believes the Times to be dishonest in its reporting on the candidate, and they decided not to extend an invitation to the Times for the media pool at the release of the medical records on Friday. According to my source close to the part of the campaign that deals with these issues, they have invited a variety of media outlets, including national-reach newspapers, wire services, and cable-news networks into the pool, but told the Times that they would not receive any credentials for the event.

This prompted a conversation between one Times editor and the campaign staff. Again according to the source, the editor told the campaign that the Times would take a negative view about the release of the records if an invitation was not forthcoming. It was clear that an invitation to the pool would change the nature of the coverage.

So, a bit of extortion from the Paper of Record. Read the rest of Ed’s post and see what the Times’ ethics policy is.