In April 24 articles discussing a recent ad produced by the North Carolina Republican Party that attacks Sen. Barack Obama for his relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times reported that Sen. John McCain disapproved of the ad and called on the North Carolina GOP not to air it. But like NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell on NBC's Nightly News, the articles did not note that this ad is part of a pattern in which McCain supporters and even McCain staff members have spread smears about Obama, and McCain has denounced those smears even as he has reaped their benefits. Slate.com contributor Melinda Henneberger noted this effect on the April 23 edition of MSNBC Live, “McCain gets to have it both ways. He gets to take the high road and say that these attacks are absolutely unwarranted ... and yet the ads are still out there doing him some good for the general [election].”

The articles also failed to note Obama's response to McCain's statement: “My understanding is that the Republican National Committee and John McCain have both said that the ad's inappropriate. I take them at their word, and I assume that if John McCain thinks that it's an inappropriate ad, that he can get them to pull it down since he is their nominee and standard-bearer.”

An April 24 Washington Post article and an April 23 Associated Press article noted all or part of Obama's statement, but not the pattern of McCain's condemning smears of Obama made by state parties, supporters, or his own campaign, while still benefiting from those smears.

From the Los Angeles Times article:

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Wednesday urged GOP officials in North Carolina to remove a new television ad that brands Democratic candidate Barack Obama as “too extreme for North Carolina.”

“We asked them not to run it. I'm sending them an e-mail as we speak, asking them to take it down,” the Arizona senator told reporters aboard his campaign bus as he traveled to a town-hall-style meeting in Inez, where President Johnson launched his 1964 campaign on poverty.

[...]

“I hope that I don't see [it],” McCain said of the ad. “I had enough of a description of it to know that that's the kind of campaigning that I have told the American people we're not going to do.”

Aides to McCain said campaign manager Rick Davis called the North Carolina Republican chairman Tuesday and left a long message urging the state party not to run the ad. The campaign also recruited North Carolina Sen. Richard M. Burr, a McCain supporter, to make the same request -- but the effort was apparently unsuccessful.

From the New York Times article:

Despite objections from Senator John McCain, the North Carolina Republican Party is planning to roll out a television advertisement on Monday attacking two Democrats who are running for governor by linking them to Senator Barack Obama and playing a clip of his former pastor excoriating the United States.

The release of the commercial, which Republican officials in North Carolina said would make its debut during the 6 p.m. newscasts, injects a potentially divisive racial element into the campaign for the state's Democratic presidential primary, which is on May 6.

In the advertisement, a narrator intones, “For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor.” Then a video clip of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who was Mr. Obama's pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is cued up.

[...]

Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, along with officials at the Republican National Committee, implored the state party on Wednesday not to run the advertisement.

“There's no place for that kind of campaigning,” Mr. McCain said. “The American people don't want it, period.”

In a letter his campaign released to Linda Daves, chairwoman of North Carolina's Republican Party, Mr. McCain said the advertisement “degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats.”

Mike Duncan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee who was traveling with Mr. McCain on Wednesday, said he had a left a message with Ms. Daves also asking that the advertisement be pulled.

But Brent Woodcox, communications director for the state party, said it still planned to broadcast the commercial, although for how long and how extensively throughout the state had not yet been decided.

From the Washington Post article:

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, denounced the ad, and Obama suggested that it was up to McCain and the Republican National Committee to take it off the air.

“I assume that if John McCain thinks that it's an inappropriate ad that he can get them to pull it down since he's their nominee and standard-bearer,” Obama told reporters while campaigning in Indiana.

State party officials declined to pull the ad, and late yesterday the party's Web site was still soliciting donations to keep the ad on the air.

From the AP article:

“We asked them not to run it,” McCain told reporters traveling with him in Kentucky. “I'm sending them an e-mail as we speak asking them to take it down.

”I don't know why they do it. Obviously, I don't control them, but I'm making it very clear, as I have a couple of times in the past, that there's no place for that kind of campaigning, and the American people don't want it," McCain said.

McCain said the ad was described to him: “I didn't see it, and I hope that I don't see it.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, who accompanied McCain, said he had left a voice mail message for state party chairwoman Linda Daves asking her to pull the ad.

McCain, in an e-mail to Daves, said he will draw sharp contrasts with Democrats. “But we need not engage in political tactics that only seek to divide the American people.”

Asked about the ad during an appearance in New Albany, Ind., Obama said: "My understanding is that the Republican National Committee and John McCain have both said that the ad's inappropriate. I take them at their word, and I assume that if John McCain thinks that it's an inappropriate ad, that he can get them to pull it down since he's their nominee and standard-bearer.