A week ago the New York Times (reg. req.) ran a story rehashing a bunch of dirt that we Illinoisans all already knew about Sen. Barack Obama, chiefly noting his ties to indicted businessman and bipartisan political gadfly Tony Rezko. Fair enough. Such stories have been circulating Illinois media for years so it’s little wonder the NYT would pick it up and run with it as they begin focusing on the presidential candidates. As Rich Miller pointed out, the Gray Lady didn’t reveal much new info but the article was interesting in that the rest of the national media often follow in the NYT’s footsteps, and according to Mr. Miller they did.

At the time I pointed out that the New York Times may have an interest in helping a certain Senator from New York who just so happens to be running for president. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Time, and any emerging patterns from their articles, will tell.

But Friday’s NYT article about Sen. John Edwards is a significant step toward bolstering that line of thought. Either that, or the New York Times has grown disturbingly lazy in its reportage.

MissLaura at Daily Kos quotes the dire-sounding article:

John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.

Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself, tax filings show.

Claiming that a person was using a charity for both financial and reputational gain is a pretty serious charge, especially when that person is running for the highest office in the land.

You’d think the New York Times would want to temper that by including some real-world discussions with folks who have used the center, even if just to get their take on whether or not the charity was working as promised and truly benefiting people (or not, as this article may come off sounding).

As MissLaura notes, Greg Sargent asks the pertinent question:

here’s no indication that the reporter made any genuine independent effort at all to discover whether the programs helped anyone.

Such an effort might entail, you know, speaking to such people, among other things. Yet no such people are quoted in the story.

So we checked in with the Edwards campaign. And yep — the campaign confirmed that the paper had turned down the chance to speak to any people directly impacted by Edwards’ programs. (emphasis added)

Were their phones not working that day? Or was it their brains that stopped computing?

This sort of major media editorializing-by-omission (disguised as news, no less) is conduct unbecoming for a newspaper that claims to be a leader.

New York Times, explain thyself.