President Obama has congressional Republicans right where he wants them, thanks to his clever constitutional bypass on immigration, if you believe the New York Times. Immigration is the issue the paper shows its most slant, and its latest story sports a familiar-sounding headline doubtless employed by the Times several times before: "Battle Over Immigration Poses Risks for G.O.P."
Michael Shear
NYTimes, Wash Post Compete for Most One-Sided Coverage of Obama's Constitutional End-Run on Amnesty for Illegals
By Clay Waters | November 14, 2014 | 9:43 PM EST The New York Times and Washington Post both enthusiastically greeted the announcement of President Obama's plans (conveniently announced after the election, constitutional objections aside) to bypass Congress and declare amnesty for some illegal immigrants, or as the Times cutely put it, "to enforce the nation’s laws with discretion."
By Clay Waters | November 2, 2014 | 7:48 PM EST
The New York Times saw grim tidings for Democrats in the congressional elections, but over the weekend, one could spot the paper subtly separating President Barack Obama from the travails of his party. And one headline should make the Hall of Fame for wishful thinking on the part of the liberal media.
By Clay Waters | October 20, 2014 | 11:33 AM EDT
The New York Times is one of the media's prime carriers of sickly White House assurances about Ebola, dictating unfounded claims that it has the disease under control, while dismissing calls from Republicans and health experts for banning flights out of infected countries as paranoid, unscientific overreaction.
NYTimes, Wash Post Target Obama From Left Via Emotional Anecdotes; a 'Solemn Pledge' Broken on Amnesty
By Clay Waters | September 8, 2014 | 9:24 AM EDT Continuing a broader mainstream media pattern Sunday's New York Times and Washington Post hit Obama almost exclusively (and emotionally) from the left on his decision to hold off on his brand of unilateral immigration "reform" until after the 2014 election cycle.
By Clay Waters | July 1, 2014 | 8:52 AM EDT
The Supreme Court on Monday delivered its verdict in the closely watched Hobby Lobby case, ruling 5-4 that the Christian-run craft store doesn't have to obey the Obamacare mandate that requires health care plans to pay for birth-control drugs that may induce abortion. Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion stated that requiring such closely-held corporations to provide such coverage violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Yet New York Times legal reporter Adam Liptak's lead story Tuesday, under the banner headline "Court Limits Birth Control Rule," managed to quote liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent in the second sentence.
Press Ignores How Judicial Watch Had to Go to Court to Force Obama Admin to Respond to FOIA Requests
By Tom Blumer | May 21, 2014 | 9:27 AM EDT During the Obama administration, the Associated Press has annually gone through the motions of noting its lack of transparency in responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. In March, its coverage of 2013 FOIA results led with the following sentence: "The Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data." Then everyone went back to work defending the administration against the information seekers.
Part of that defense includes mischaracterizing the legal hurdles those who file FOIA requests must overcome to get the administration to do what it is legally required to do right off the bat. Three sentences from recent coverage of Judicial Watch's attempts to pry information out of the State Department will make my point.
By Scott Whitlock | March 27, 2014 | 4:22 PM EDT
New York Times journalists Jim Yardley and Michael Shear on Thursday compared Barack Obama to Pope Francis. According to the writers, the pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage Barack Obama and the pro-life, anti-gay marriage religious leader have a lot in common.
Yardley and Shear connected "an Argentine pope and an American president who each burst onto the global scene as a history-making change agent." They insisted that each arrived "promising to promote a new post-partisan ethos, each having made the cover of Rolling Stone."
By Tom Blumer | November 13, 2013 | 11:28 AM EST
At the New York Times on Tuesday evening for the front page of Wednesday's print edition, Michael D. Shear and Robert Pear wrestled with how to characterize President Barack Obama's false guarantee that "if you like your health care plan" (and doctor, and provider) "you can keep your health care plan" (and doctor, and provider.
The headline called it a "vow" (actually a pretty good word). In their opening paragraph, they called it a "promise," and indicated that the President's guarantee related to "insurance coverage." In the next paragraph, they described Obama serially presented guarantees as "wrongly assuring Americans that they could retain their health plans if they wanted." In Paragraph 6, the guarantee became an "incorrect promise." Excerpts follow the jump (HT Rare via Twitchy, which describes it as "epic bootlicking"; bolds and numbered tags are mine):
NYT Puts Michael Shear's Pathetic Coverage of Obama's 'You Can Keep Your Plan' Excuse-Making on Page A14
By Tom Blumer | November 9, 2013 | 2:51 PM EST In a Thursday evening writeup (HT Twitchy) which appeared on Page A14 in its Friday morning print edition, Michael D. Shear at the New York Times reported on President Barack Obama's attempt to clean up the four-year mess he made (from June 6, 2009 through September 26, 2013) in over three dozen statements and published items. The mess was Obama's guarantee — not a promise, a guarantee — that "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan."
Despite the fact that Obama's serially made guarantee doesn't square with what has really happened, and that Obama and his administration have known for over three years that the millions of individual plan cancellations which have occurred would indeed occur, Shear blandly accepted Obama's claim that "Mr. Obama said he had not purposely misled anyone." He also accepted an almost definitely untrue contention Obama made as an indisputable fact: "[He] (Obama) emphasized that most people who were forced off a current plan would be able to find new insurance that was cheaper and provided better coverage." People who have been able to do that and have said so publicly have thus far been very few and far between. Excerpts follow the jump.
By Tim Graham | July 30, 2013 | 8:23 AM EDT
Over the weekend, The New York Times promoted its July 24 interview with President Obama – after being shut out for almost three years – but reporters Jackie Calmes and Michael “Macaca” Shear couldn’t find time for a single question about the IRS scandal, Benghazi, or other Obama scandals. They found time to ask a softball about whether Obama would help observe the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. This could explain Obama’s last words: “Thanks, guys. Appreciate you.”
But Calmes and Shear did throw a series of hardballs about how Obama’s not getting around Republican obstructionism on the economy. In a question pushing to end the sequester, Calmes spurred Obama to talk about his passion for deficit reduction (despite the need for a laugh track, he’s not kidding):
By Ken Shepherd | June 11, 2013 | 6:26 PM EDT
Yesterday evening the Obama administration announced it would back down from plans to fight a federal judge's ruling that the Plan B emergency contraception pill must be made available over-the-counter and without age restriction in U.S. pharmacies. Previously the FDA permitted over-the-counter sales to girls and women aged 17 and older and the Obama administration wished to revise that age requirement down to 15.
But in reporting the story, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal omitted any objection from pro-life or parents rights groups, even as they reported the reactions of abortion rights advocates. "We are pleased that women should soon be able to buy Plan B One-Step without the arbitrary restrictions that kept it locked behind the pharmacy counter when they needed it most urgently," the Journal's Jennifer Corbett Dooren quoted Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights at the close of her 11-paragraph, page A3 story for Tuesday's print edition.