CNN host Jake Tapper took The New York Times to task on Sunday for failing to respond to requests for comment from The Washington Free Beacon, instead giving its comment to Politico's media blogger Dylan Byers.
Tapper said the responses sounded like the act of a political campaign.
Tapper, who hosts
"The Lead with Jake Tapper" on weekdays and
"State of the Union" on Sundays, made his comments after two recent incidents in which the Free Beacon questioned the Times in its reporting.
In the first case, the Free Beacon reported that the Times' story on traffic tickets given to Florida Senator and GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio and his wife were actually uncovered by American Bridge PAC, a Democratic opposition research group.
In the second case, the Free Beacon reported that the Clinton Family Foundation donated $100,000 to a New York Times charity in 2008, the same year the Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
In both cases, Free Beacon reporters requested comment from the Times. Instead, the Times gave its comment to Byers.
Byers himself reported on the Times' comments, but
questioned why it didn't respond to the Free Beacon when it appeared to be doing legitimate journalism in both cases.
The Times told Byers the donation story was "preposterous from start to finish," but Byers noted that the foundation has not donated to the Times' charity again since the 2008 gift.
The Times also claimed that it did not receive its information on the Rubios' traffic tickets from American Bridge, but had pulled the records on its own.
Hot Air reports that the Free Beacon's Brent Scher said he has since gone back to the document retrieval service the Times says it used and found that no search for the Rubio records have been made since American Bridge made the search in person in late May.
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