McCain "Working the Refs" at NBC

Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) campaign manager Rick Davis asked Sunday for a meeting with Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, to protest what the campaign called signs that the network is "abandoning non-partisan coverage of the presidential race." Specifically the campaign is objecting to a statement by NBC's Andrea Mitchell on "Meet the Press" questioning whether Sen McCain might have gotten a heads-up on some of the questions that were asked of Sen Barack Obama (D-IL), who was the first candidate to be interviewed Saturday night by Pastor Rick Warren at a presidential forum on faith. Warren told the audience that Sen McCain was being held in "a cone of silence" so he wouldn't hear the questions, which were similar for both candidates. Mitchell reported that some "Obama people" were suggesting "that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well prepared." A McCain aide said that is not the case: "Senator McCain was in a motorcade led by the United States Secret Service and held in a green room with no broadcast feed." NBC responded saying, "We welcome any opportunity to speak with officials from both campaigns, and many of us at NBC News are in contact with the McCain campaign literally on a daily basis. With all due respect to the campaign leadership, they are viewing our coverage thru a political prism. We stand by our reporting, our journalism and our journalists."