TimesWatch

Krugman Credits Cali's Comeback to Fighting 'Fanatical' Conservatives on Tax Hikes
By Clay Waters | April 2, 2013 | 2:16 PM EDT

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was giddy over a triumph of the liberal vision in the supposedly resurgent California economy in Monday's "Lessons From A Comeback." The state has overcome a "fanatical conservative minority" to push through "desperately needed tax increases." But is California really back?

....California has been solidly Democratic since the late 1990s. And ever since the political balance shifted, conservatives have declared the state doomed. Their specifics keep changing, but the moral is always the same: liberal do-gooders are bringing California to its knees.

NYT's Trip Gabriel's Hostile Trip to 'White, Ethnic' Enclave of Pennsylvania 'Insensitive' to Illegal Immigrants
By Clay Waters | April 2, 2013 | 1:06 PM EDT

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel visited the "white, ethnic...stronghold" of Hazleton, Pennsylvania on Monday and cast it as reactionary under the headline "New Attitude on Immigration Skips an Old Coal Town."

Before Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, before “self-deportation” became the Republican presidential platform in 2012, there was Hazleton.

This working-class city in the Poconos passed the country’s first law aimed at making life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they would pack up and leave.

NYT's Public Editor Thinks Latest Front-Page NYPD Racial Profiling Accusations Overstated
By Clay Waters | April 2, 2013 | 8:45 AM EDT

New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan has weighed in on the paper's latest attack on the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk tactics, under fire from liberal activists like Al Sharpton, in her March 29 blog post, "An Officer’s Secretly Recorded Words About ‘Stop and Frisk’ Cause a Firestorm," addressed a misleading and controversial (but typically slanted) March 22 story by reporter Joseph Goldstein based on a secret recording between a Bronx police officer and his commanding officer:

For years, the debate over the New York Police Department’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics has centered on whether officers engage in racial profiling. Now, a recording suggests that, in at least one precinct, a person’s skin color can be a deciding factor in who is stopped.

End of a Sorry Student Testing Saga for the New York Times and Beverly Hall
By Clay Waters | April 1, 2013 | 4:01 PM EDT

Saturday's front-page New York Times story by education writer Michael Winerip on a school testing scandal involving Beverly Hall, former superintendent of Atlanta public schools: "35 Indicted in Test Scandal at Atlanta Schools." Hall is "charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison."

It's a sorry end to a saga that includes politically correct embarrassment for the paper and reporter Shaila Dewan, who defended Hall in two notorious stories from August 2010, trumpeting the false initial vindication of Superintendent Hall, who is black, while hinting at a racial element to criticism that Hall and the Atlanta school district had falsified minority student test scores.

The NY Times' Mortifying Easter Error: 'Resurrection Into Heaven of Jesus, Three Days After He Was Crucified'
By Clay Waters | April 1, 2013 | 11:52 AM EDT

Who says the New York Times is ignorant of religion?

Elisabetta Povoledo is a Rome-based reporter for the paper's international edition, but either she or her copy editor made a mortifying mischaracterization of the meaning of Easter in an online story on Pope Francis posted Monday: "Pope Calls for ‘Peace in All the World’ in First Easter Message."

Top 10 for the 10th Anniversary of Times Watch: Presenting the Absolute Worst From the New York Times
By Clay Waters | March 31, 2013 | 11:24 AM EDT

This week marks 10 years of Times Watch, the Media Research Center's project monitoring the liberal bias of the New York Times, America's most influential newspaper. Over the course of roughly 3,500 posts since March 2003, we have followed the Times through events historic (wars in Afghanistan and Iraq), pathetic (Jayson Blair, Howell Raines) and dangerous (the paper scuttling two separate anti-terror programs.) 

Here in rough chronological order are the Top Ten highlights of the New York Times' 10-year investigation into the bias of the New York Times.

NY Times Lets 'Visibly Frustrated' Obama 'Sternly' Lecture Congress on Gun Control
By Clay Waters | March 29, 2013 | 1:47 PM EDT

Barack Obama doesn't want the tragedy in Newtown to go to waste, using emotionally manipulative language to push gun control in a White House speech while surrounded by relatives of victims of gun violence. Jeremy Peters and Peter Baker reported in Friday's New York Times, "Months After Massacre, Obama Seeks to Regain Momentum on Gun Laws."

With resistance to tougher gun laws stiffening in Congress, a visibly frustrated President Obama on Thursday implored lawmakers and the nation not to lose sight of the horrors of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Barbaro's Bashing of NYC's GOP Mayoral Candidate Highlights NYT's Double Standards on Religious Mockery
By Clay Waters | March 28, 2013 | 5:39 PM EDT

Joseph Lhota is a moderate Republican running for mayor of New York City, but Michael Barbaro's front page Thursday story focuses on an incident back in 1999 when he inflamed Manhattan's artsy liberal elite: "For Mayoral Hopeful Who Lost Fight to Remove Art, No Regrets." Barbaro also reminds us that the New York Times is guilty of double standards in its treatment of art that offends religious sensibilities.

Lhota was deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani when controversy erupted over the Brooklyn Museum's display of Chris Ofili's painting of the "Holy Virgin Mary," clumped with elephant dung.

A New York Times Blessing for Gay Activist Lawyer Mary Bonauto, '...a Woman Making History'
By Clay Waters | March 28, 2013 | 2:12 PM EDT

After two days of same-sex marriage arguments at the Supreme Court, New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg bestowed a blessing on the "serious and unassuming" Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). Even the headline equated gay marriage with the civil rights fight, citing the legendary civil rights lawyer who became a Supreme Court Justice: "In Fight for Marriage Rights, 'She's Our Thurgood Marshall.'"

The Marshall reference comes from left-wing former Rep. Barney Frank, who is openly gay and married. We also learn "Ms. Bonauto is too busy juggling legal briefs, homework and piano lessons to see herself as a woman making history." But not too busy to be feted in the news pages of the Times.

Frank Bruni Again Attacks Conservatives Like Palin and Ted Cruz as 'Loons, 'Wacko Birds' in NYT
By Clay Waters | March 27, 2013 | 9:43 PM EDT

In two New York Times columns in a row, George W. Bush-era White House reporter Frank Bruni has giddily borrowed Sen. John McCain's description of conservatives like the drone-filibustering Sen. Rand Paul as "wacko birds" ("Rand Paul’s Loopy Ascent").

When you’ve got loons the likes of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin fluttering about, I suppose it’s easy not to seem like such a wacko bird yourself.

'Extreme Wing' Pro-Lifers Wins in ND, but Civil Unions Means 'Jubilant' Moment for Gays in CO
By Clay Waters | March 27, 2013 | 2:56 PM EDT

Only some social issues are divisive in the Plains states, or so implies the New York Times. A sour tone permeated Wednesday's front-page story by John Eligon and Erik Eckholm from Fargo on North Dakota's strict new abortion laws, which ban abortions based on sex or disability and forbid abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable: "New Laws Ban Most Abortions in North Dakota." Yet Colorado's passage of civil unions legislation for gay couples was celebrated with no dissenting voices.

And alhough the quotes from sources pro and con were balanced, with two people quoted in favor, two against, and one classified as neutral, the two pro-life sources were the last two quoted, in paragraphs 26 and 29-30 of the 31-paragraph story.

Why Did Bill Clinton Sign DOMA? Sleep Deprivation and '96 Opponent Bob Dole, Suggests NY Times
By Clay Waters | March 26, 2013 | 3:16 PM EDT

As two gay-marriage cases reach the Supreme Court this week, the New York Times's Peter Baker served up Bill Clinton's mea culpa on the Defense of Marriage Act, which the president signed into law in 1996, in the heat of his re-election campaign.

While letting Clinton explain his reversal on DOMA, which ensured that no state is obligated to recognize a same-sex marriage conducted in another state, Baker relayed the former president's exceedingly lame explanations for angering the left and signing it into law -- apparently Bob Dole (his '96 election opponent) made him do it. And, sleep deprivation.