McCain campaign manager Rick Davis requested a meeting with Steve Capus, president of NBC News, Sunday. The reason for the request was, in the words of Davis, NBC’s decision to abandon “non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race.”

Davis made the request in a letter he sent to NBC yesterday. It’s part of ‘an aggressive effort by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to counter news coverage he considers’ biased against him and in favor of Barack Obama, the Democratic leader.

The immediate cause for Davis’ letter is a statement made by ‘NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on “Meet the Press”.’ On this show she questioned ‘whether McCain might have gotten a heads-up on some of the questions that were asked of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who was the first candidate to be interviewed Saturday night by Pastor Rick Warren at a presidential forum on faith.’

McCain and his campaign say he truly was in a ‘cone of silence’ whereas Obama’s campaign and friends in the media argue he was not.

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.”

In his letter Davis writes that “[w]e are extremely disappointed to see that the level of objectivity at NBC News has fallen so low that reporters are now giving voice to unsubstantiated, partisan claims in order to undercut John McCain.  Nowhere was this more evident,” he goes on to say, “than with NBC chief correspondent Andrea Mitchell’s comments on “Meet the Press” this morning. In analyzing last night’s presidential forum at Saddleback Church, Mitchell expressed the Obama campaign spin that John McCain could only have done so well last night because he ‘may not have been in the cone of silence.’”

“Make no mistake: This is a serious charge. Andrea Mitchell is repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated in last night’s forum at Saddleback Church. Instead of trying to substantiate this blatant falsehood in any way, Andrea Mitchell felt that she needed to repeat it on air to millions of “Meet the Press” viewers with no indication that 1.) There’s not one shred of evidence that it’s true; 2.) In his official correspondence to both campaigns, Pastor Rick Warren provided both candidates with information regarding the topic areas to be covered, which Barack Obama acknowledged during the forum.”

“Indeed, instead of taking a critical journalistic approach to this spin, Andrea Mitchell did what has become a pattern for her of simply repeating Obama campaign talking points,” Davis writes.

“This is irresponsible journalism and sadly, indicative of the level of objectivity we have witnessed at NBC News this election cycle. Instead of examining the Obama campaign’s spin for truth before reporting it to more than 3 million NBC News viewers, Andrea Mitchell simply passed along Obama campaign conspiracy theories.”

Concluding, Davis writes, “[w]e are concerned that your News Division is following MSNBC’s lead in abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race. We would like to request a meeting with you as soon as possible to discuss our deep concerns about the news standards and level of objectivity at NBC.”

Although the press is used to being criticized, this could very well be the first time a campaign is truly fighting back. Most people do indeed believe the media to be pro-Obama. This would not be a problem if they would try to keep their personal preferences out of their reporting. Sadly, however, American journalists seem to have abandoned the principle of objective reporting.