Joe Nocera

NYT Op-ed About Sheldon Silver, and Its Lengthy Correction, Fail to Tag Him as a Dem
By Tom Blumer | February 4, 2015 | 7:02 PM EST

On Friday, Joe Nocera at the New York Times, in the words of a February 4 Times correction, premised his op-ed column "about the indictment of the longtime New York State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver ... on several factual errors."

The correction failed to correct yet another factual error, namely that Silver, who was arrested, as the Times itself reported, on January 22, has not yet been formally indicted. Here is the full text of that correction (HT Instapundit; bolds are mine throughout this post):

Double Action: Two NY Times Columnists Embarrass Themselves on Guns in Sunday Review
By Clay Waters | April 8, 2013 | 8:51 PM EDT

Two New York Times columnists embarrassed themselves over the weekend, betraying anti-gun ignorance in the paper's Sunday Review.

Frank Bruni went hunting for the first time (with the chef of a ritzy Manhattan restaurant), and remarked "what an unfair fight" hunting is, as if he was the first person to think that up. After lamenting "how thoroughly a weapon can be romanticized and fetishized," he pivoted to easy access to guns in "this country of ours."

MSNBC's Wagner Omits Report Showing American Energy Independence by Oil
By Matt Vespa | February 22, 2013 | 5:42 PM EST

Yesterday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner featured a discussion about the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is anathema to the environmental left, and which President Obama cynically delayed a decision on until after the 2012 election.  With the decision to approve or decline the project still looming for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry -- who technically is the point person on approving the project -- Melinda Pierce of the Sierra Club was brought on the panel to discuss the pending doom we face with climate change, and disseminate the message that we can’t drill our way to energy independence.

To Wagner’s credit she did cite a piece from, of all things, Joe Nocera of the New York Times to give an alternative view to Pierce’s. Whereas Pierce responded by equating the approval of the pipeline to setting off a “carbon bomb”:

Lies My Textbooks Told Me: Judging Current Supreme Court Justices
By Paul Wilson | May 8, 2012 | 11:07 AM EDT

Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect history textbooks to present and analyze events and epochs with complete objectivity. But it’s entirely reasonable to demand that they don’t actively reinforce the news media’s liberal bias when it comes to recent history and individuals who are still alive and active in shaping that history. 

Yet commonly used American history textbooks have eschewed historical analysis when discussing recent Supreme Court justices, and in its place substituted partisan political commentary.

NYT Columnist Joe Nocera Defends Chevy Volt, Reveals His Obsession With Car Critics Fox News, Rush
By Clay Waters | April 9, 2012 | 9:54 PM EDT

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, who in an August 2011 column likened the Tea Party movement to terrorists strapping on suicide vests (he later apologized), fiercely defended the Chevy Volt electric car against what he saw as a Fox News conspiracy campaign against it.

Nocera had breakfast with Volt owners during the New York International Auto Show for his Saturday column, "The Right Flames the Volt," and sounded like an enthusiastic gear-head himself when it came to the Volt:

NYT's Nocera: Obama Rejected Keystone Pipeline 'Because He Had to Politically'
By Tom Blumer | February 8, 2012 | 6:11 PM EST

On Monday (appearing in the print edition on Tuesday, New York Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera gave President Barack Obama a pass for rejecting the Keystone Pipeline. In the process, he also complained about "the way our poisoned politics damages the country," and, in a revelation which shouldn't but did surprise him, learned that far-left environmentalists want to stop all tar sands development and not just the pipeline. Imagine that.

Here are several paragraphs from Nocera's column (my comments are in italics):

New Times Watch Quotes of Note: 2011 Worst Quotes of the Year
By Clay Waters | December 31, 2011 | 8:55 AM EST

Times Watch’s end-of-year awards issue celebrates the best of the worst quotes that appeared in the paper or were uttered by Times reporters and columnists during 2011.

The New York Times spent much of the year in pro-Obama defense mode, excoriating the Tea Party and conservative opposition to Obama's agenda. Yet the paper found one movement it could embrace wholeheartedly – the leftist campouts known as Occupy Wall Street. And sometimes - as when China-loving columnist Tom Friedman spouted, "If this were China they would have walked to the game in the snow, and doing calculus along the way," Times journalism was just too ridiculous to take seriously. Paul Krugman made his usual sterling showing as well, using the tragedies of 9-11 and the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to attack conservatives.

This year there were three categories of bias:

Wires Virtually Ignore Corzine's Dem Party ID, Rarely Associate Him With Obama Fundraising
By Tom Blumer | November 2, 2011 | 12:19 AM EDT

Consider this post the print and online follow-up to the report early Tuesday evening by Matthew Balan at NewsBusters on the failure of the Big Three TV networks to note the Democratic Party/Obama fundraising affiliation of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, whose now-bankrupt MF Global financial firm has apparently admitted to diverting client money in a futile attempt to battle its financial free-fall.

Balan found that the Big Three's morning shows "omitted the party affiliation of Jon Corzine as they reported on the federal investigation into his brokerage firm," and that ABC didn't even mention Corzine's name. This is not surprising, as the wire services which provide much of the raw material for these shows for the most part similarly failed, and have continued to do so. A rundown of much of what the wires have produced, along with a look at several New York Times items, follows the jump:

NYT Ombudsman Finds Editors Who Don't Mind Joe Nocera Comparing Tea Party to Terrorists
By Clay Waters | August 16, 2011 | 10:13 AM EDT

New York Times’s Public Editor (or ombudsman) Arthur Brisbane weighed in on columnist Joe Nocera, who apologized in print last week for having compared Tea Party members to terrorists in a column August 2.

Just four months into his new job as a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, Joe Nocera banged out a blistering screed against Tea Party Republicans who “have waged jihad on the American people.”

These “terrorists” were willing to sacrifice the nation’s creditworthiness to achieve deep spending cuts -- a goal they believed was “worth blowing up the country for,” he wrote in his Aug. 2 column. He concluded the piece by saying that, for now, “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough.”

NY Times Vet Recounts His Insular World: Didn't Meet Any Republicans Until Well Into Adulthood
By Brent Baker | August 9, 2011 | 8:23 PM EDT

Recalling how he was raised in “heavily Democratic Providence, R.I.,” New York Times columnist Joe Nocera revealed: “It wasn’t until I moved to Washington after college that I got to know any Republicans. Not until I was nearing 30, and living in Texas, did I see how conservative most of the country truly is.”

NYT's Nocera Apologizes for Calling Tea Partiers 'Terrorists'
By Noel Sheppard | August 6, 2011 | 10:30 AM EDT

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera took a lot of heat this week for writing an article calling Tea Party members "terrorists" wearing "suicide vests."

On Saturday, he apologized:

NYT's Joe Nocera Spews Venom at 'Terrorist' Tea Partiers for Strapping on 'Suicide Vests'
By Scott Whitlock | August 3, 2011 | 12:10 PM EDT

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera on Tuesday viciously attacked Tea Party Republicans as "terrorists" who wore a "suicide vests" during the debt ceiling debate.

Continuing the paper's habit of comparing congressional GOP members to murderers, Nocera derided: