An exchange from the Democratic debate involving Scandinavian economic superiority caught the elitist attention of economist turned Democratic political hack Paul Krugman. Bernie Sanders opined: "We should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people." That gave Krugman all the wedge to snobbily celebrate little Denmark for his Monday New York Times column." Krugman enthused that at least one party realized how brilliant the high-tax, high-spending Scandinavian model was, "as opposed to just chanting 'U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!'"
Clay Waters was director of Times Watch, a former project of the Media Research Center. His new mystery is titled Death In The Eye.
Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief whose reporting is heavily slanted toward the Palestinian cause and hostile toward Israel, made Sunday's front page with "East Jerusalem, Bubbling Over With Despair – The Frustration Behind a Series of Stabbings," which blamed Israel-fueled "frustration and alienation" for the "uprising." Rudoren's twisted priorities are evident both in the headline and her tone. Rudoren also discusses the "ugly barrier" built by Israel without mentioning all the Jewish lives it has saved from Palestinian terror.
Reporter Patrick Healy made the front of Friday's New York Times marveling at how differently Republicans and Democrats see America, in "One Nation, Under Debate. Or Are There 2?" Healy, who is hypersensitive to the political strengths of Hillary Clinton, portrayed the Republican presidential field as dour and negative, while his strange choice of cultural commentators for a political story -- playwrights Christopher Durang and Tony Kushner -- betrayed a left-wing cultural perspective.
New York Times reporter David "hard-line" Herszenhorn is making hostile labeling of conservatives a bad habit, especially in his post-Boehner reporting. The shock resignation of the Speaker of the House gave Times reporters an excuse to target the "far-right" conservatives who had supposedly hounded John Boehner out of office, and granting the speaker never a popular figure in Times-land, some retrospective honor. Thursday's story on the reluctant Speaker-elect Paul Ryan included three "hard-line" adjectives and one "hard-right," from a newspaper that rarely if ever refers to American Democrats as "hard-left," and worked in strong adjectives like "harsh," "absurdist" and "cruel," all the while marveling at Republicans who found Ryan insufficiently committed to conservatism.
Once again, the New York Times took sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, being dismissive of Jewish victims of Palestinian violence. Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem on the wave of stabbings of Israelis by Palestinians under the headline "Israeli Retaliatory Strike in Gaza Kills Woman and Child, Palestinians Say." There is an extremely strange emphasis in both that headline (what, precisely, was Israel retaliating against?) and the underlying article, which skipped what Israel was retaliating against until paragraph seven, while beginning with the deaths of Palestinians during the "retaliation." A follow-up article faulted the Israeli government's "clampdown" for contibuting to the "cycle of violence," a phrase that puts Palestinian murderers and Israeli self-defense on equal moral footing.
During the 2012 election the New York Times treated Rep. Paul Ryan, currently a reluctant Speaker-elect, as fearsomely conservative. But now the paper is defending him from the "far-right" on the front page. Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer got to the labeling bias right off the bat: "Far-right media figures, relatively small in number but potent in their influence, have embarked on a furious Internet expedition to cover Representative Paul D. Ryan in political silt."
In preparation for Tuesday's Democratic debate in Las Vegas, the New York Times Sunday offered side-by-side profiles by Jason Horowitz and Amy Chozick documenting the brilliance and tenacity of the top two Democratic candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. This goop was offered as a front-page tease: "He's So Confident. She's So Prepared. Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton will use debate skills on Tuesday that have been honed over decades."
Pushing every available emotional button, the New York Times and reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg used the anger and grief of two fathers to advocate for gun control with front-page placement in Sunday's edition: "Guns Took His Daughter; Anger Fuels His Crusade." Stolberg never even mentioned the Second Amendment while lamenting Virginia's "hostile" attitude toward gun control, and portrayed gun-rights advocates as potentially dangerous.
New York Times reporter Jada Smith celebrated "Justice or Else," an ominously named protest marking the 20th anniversary of the "Million Man March," led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the preacher notorious for his anti-Semitic and paranoid ravings: "Echoing Calls for Justice Of Million Man March, But Widening Audience." This year's version latched on to the harder-edged tone of the Black Lives Matter social media movement. But you wouldn't learn anything about organizer Farrakhan from Smith's adulatory treatment.
The surprise withdrawal of Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the race for Speaker gave the New York Times an excuse to issue a series of front-page stories larded up with hostile "hard-line" and "hard-right" labels mocking the apparent chaos surrounding congressional Republicans, being held "hostage" by the party's conservative wing.
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni quailed in horror at the prospect of concealed firearms being permitted in college classrooms at the University of Texas: "Guns, Campuses and Madness." Bruni, a former White House correspondent for the Times, at least found a novel angle to attack gun rights after the killings on a college campus in Oregon, by bizarrely suggesting conservatives want to infiltrate campuses with gun-toters as a way to (metaphorically?) attack liberal colleges. Bruni goes along with the infantalizing liberal concept of college students as fragile, overgrown children who require coddling from "microaggressions" and frightening thoughts about firearms.
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was blasted by the New York Times for allegedly dismissing the mass killings by a gunman at an Oregon community college as "stuff happens." The Times then invited President Obama to lambaste Bush's out-of-context two words in a Saturday print story. (Meanwhile, true Democratic gaffe-masters like Joe Biden get an "off-the-cuff" pass from the newspaper.) Although the Times accused Bush of having "invited" the firestorm with his comments, it was the Times and other outlets that poured the gasoline by using the wildly out-of-context quote to paint Bush as being flippant about the tragedy.
Religious double standards on the front of Thursday's New York Times: "The Pope, the Clerk and Culture Wars Revisited." During his U.S. tour, the Times celebrated Pope Francis's liberal tone on economic, environmental, and immigration issues. But when he reaffirmed his belief in religious freedom (and the Church's opposition to gay marriage) by secretly meeting with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who went to jail instead of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, the Times adopted a puzzled, chiding tone, fretting that the Pope was reigniting the U.S. "culture war."
New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak filed a liberal pleasing analysis Tuesday, fervently insisting Chief Justice John Roberts is a staunch conservative, despite what ridiculous right-wingers may think. His reported opinion piece, based on voting analysis by law professors, strained to show Roberts as a loyal conservative Justice, but the evidence is hardly as cut and dried as Liptak's charged tone would suggest. Liptak has always trended left, as when he faulted the "terse" old U.S. Constitution as outdated for failing to guarantee entitlements like health care.
The shock resignation of Speaker John Boehner has driven the New York Times into a labeling fit, fearing an even more unreasonably conservative Republican leadership team will emerge in the aftermath. A snotty front-page report Monday warned of "conservative rage" and included eight "hard-line" or "hard-right" labels, including two in one sentence: "Mr. Boehner expressed that exasperation on Sunday, accusing the hard-liners, in an interview on 'Face the Nation,' when he was asked if the hard-liners were unrealistic."
New York Times' reporter Jackie Calmes has been the paper's pointman in its journalistic campaign in defense of the nation's largest abortion provider, in the wake of undercover videos by David Daleiden documenting the callous sale of baby organs for money, sometimes without the knowledge of the mothers. Calmes, whose reporting has reliably shifted the subject from the gruesome videos to alleged Republican "overreach," laid out the organization's defense strategy on Sunday: "Reacting to Videos, Planned Parenthood Fights to Regain Initiative."
After the shock resignation of John Boehner, should you fear and dread the rise of a revitalized right wing in Congress? Sunday's New York Times front page featured a "news analysis" on the surprise retirement announcement of House Speaker John Boehner. The takeaway from Jonathan Weisman and Michael Shear's label-heavy story was encapsulated in the headline: "The Post-Boehner Congress and Washington's Sense of Dread." Fear and dread among those who hew to the conventional wisdom dispersed by the liberal media, at least.
A heavily politicized preliminary version of Friday's front-page New York Times story on Pope Francis's visit to New York City was another example of the sudden respect a religious figure garners from the liberal newspaper -- at least when he happens to agree on the Times' pet issue of immigration. Reporters Marc Santora and Sharon Otterman noted that the Pope's "words cut against the current political climate in which the debate about immigration often has a harsh and unforgiving tone."
Jason Horowitz, one of the New York Times more colorful reporters, gave Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker a gleeful finger upon his departure from the Republican presidential race, suggesting Walker has advanced his career on racist appeals in "Dismal Finish Is a Fitting Result, Old Foes Say." Horowitz wrote on Tuesday: "Old political adversaries of Mr. Walker greeted his dour denouement as a fitting result for a politician who they say began and furthered his career here with a divisive style, a penchant for turning out conservative supporters rather than working with opponents, and tacit racial appeals in one of the nation’s most segregated cities. But the irony is that Mr. Walker was eclipsed by candidates who have ignited the Republican base with more overtly nativist and, their critics argue, racist appeals." Those "racist appeals"? Actually tough-on-crime proposals targeted at victims of crime in Milwaukee.
Jonathan Martin, perhaps the most condescending of the New York Times stable of GOP-hostile political reporters, eagerly condemned the entire Republican presidential field as childish and divisive in "Without Calming Voice, G.O.P. Is Letting Divisive Ones Speak on Muslims." Reacting to a critical comment by candidate Dr. Ben Carson about the possibility of a Muslim presidency, Martin took the opportunity to smear the Republican Party en masse, noting that "For Democrats, there is an opening to use the criticism of Islam to portray Republicans as intolerant, reinforcing an image that has damaged the party’s brand."













