On Friday morning, just before Memorial Day weekend, a small group of reporters [1] will get the first crack at John McCain’s medical records spanning from 2000 to now.

And since the McCain campaign only chose two newspapers, the Washington Post and Arizona Republic, several major national daily papers were excluded, such as The New York Times.

In the past few months, there’s been tension between the Times and the McCain campaign on a couple occasions — from "going to war [2]" over the lobbyist story to campaign reporter Elisabeth Bumiller’s straight-to-YouTube spat [3] with the senator.

“When we learned of the arrangements for the release this week, we made a number of very specific requests to be included and they turned us down,” said Times political editor Richard Stevenson.

Asked about whether the aforementioned incidents have strained relations, and could be a factor, Stevenson said, “We’ve gone about doing our jobs the way we always do.”

Stevenson added that the Times has requested medical records “for a very long time, predating the arrangements of this particular release.”

But they're not the only ones. as the Los Angeles Times reported [4]:

The campaign has also been under fire for delaying the release of the documents. A reporter for The [Los Angeles] Times was told last year they planned to release records of McCain's health exams within weeks. They did not. Earlier this year, campaign aides said the records would be available in mid-April, and that was pushed to Friday.

Senior adviser Mark Salter wrote in an e-mail to Politico that the Post reporter will handle a print pool report for other papers covering the candidate. Also, the wire services, broadcast and cable will be represented

“Additionally,” Salter wrote, “we will post extensive summaries on website and make his docs available to all interested reporters.”

Reporters will have access to the records from 7 to 10 a.m. Pacific time, with doctors made available to answer questions at 11 a.m.