Washington Post Attacks Washington Post

McCain asks Washington Post if it is a credible source.

The Washington Post's Michael Dobbs fact checks the ad this campaign released yesterday titled "Advice":

So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth.

Pretty flimsy? As Dobbs goes on to say, that "pretty flimsy" source is his own paper, the Washington Post. The Post reported that Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." It then recycled that information into two more pieces, one of which was an editorial. But we're willing to make a deal. If Dobbs admits his newspaper is not a credible source, we'll take down the ad.

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin has a roundup of McCain initiatives against the media.

The McCain camp calls out — by name — another reporter (this one from TIME) and goes to far as to quote her snide response when provided with information which contradicts her storyline. Ouch. And the Post’s media critic isn’t any better–neatly ignoring that the basis of the McCain ad in question was the Post.

And then, yowser, the McCain camp dares the Post to call itself “not credible.” I don’t know about the campaign against Barack Obama but I could watch this duel for awhile.

Hard to argue with this: “ Really, if you were trying to discredit the traditional media it would be hard to do better than they’ve been doing themselves.”