When all truth is relative

[Commentary] Last week, John McCain's campaign resorted to yet another Republican attack on the media, this time the New York Times, for being "150% in the tank" for Barack Obama. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was smarting from a story that revealed he had made a sizable amount of money as head of an advocacy group that represented the interests of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And instead of attacking the veracity of the story, the campaign initially attacked the messenger and called into question everything the Times -- and, I'd suggest, by implication the rest of the so-called liberal media -- reported on McCain's campaign. The revelations and the barbs continued to fly, with the Times uncovering additional payments from Freddie Mac to Davis' firm through last month, and the McCain side fulminating mostly about the "partisan paper of record" and claiming that Davis received no remuneration or profit of any kind from his firm since 2006. I'm no defender of the New York Times. I often find its high-and-mighty tone pretentious and self-serving. But it worries me that Republicans have made it a primary tactic to respond to negative news with immediate media smears and charges of bias.