New York Times reporters Michael Shear (pictured) and Erik Eckholm filed an 1,189-word dispatch Friday from the Conservative Political Action Conference, the conservapalooza held annually in Washington, D.C. Perhaps caught up in the excitement, the reporters committed some amusing label overload: “Romney Takes Conservative Leaders’ Questions in Bid to ‘Reconnect’” contains 22 examples of the word “conservative,” the headline making 23.
Fifteen of those 22 incidents are descriptions of groups and individuals by the reporters themselves. By way of comparison, the common conjunction “and” appears 24 times. Here’s a representative slice:
Michael Shear
By Clay Waters | February 10, 2012 | 3:29 PM EST
By Clay Waters | January 27, 2012 | 8:40 AM EST
Who cares what an unelected dictator thinks about the U.S. presidential campaign? Well, New York Times reporters do. Michael Shear and Trip Gabriel were in Miami following the campaign in the runup to next Tuesday’s Florida primary and quoted Fidel Castro in Thursday’s “Candidates Scramble to Win Hispanic Voters in Florida.”
They even suggested the dictator (who they merely called “the retired Cuban leader”) “had reason to be annoyed” at threats voiced by Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
By Clay Waters | November 18, 2011 | 7:58 AM EST
A day after Times Watch noted that the New York Times virtually ignored Obama’s supposedly “famous” “57 states” gaffe during the 2008 campaign, reporter Michael Shear rectified that omission, albeit in a story on gaffe-prone GOP candidates, "Flubs Rubbing Some Republicans the Wrong Way," in Wednesday's paper.
By Clay Waters | November 15, 2011 | 12:38 PM EST
The latest New York Times weekly “Caucus” podcast, hosted by reporters Sam Roberts and Michael Shear, opened with Gov. Rick Perry’s blank-out over the third federal agency he would shut down at last week’s Republican presidential debate, an event the Times and other media outlets rewarded with blanket coverage. Shear compared Perry’s flub to a supposedly “famous” one by candidate Barack Obama in 2008, in which Obama appeared to think there were 58 states in the U.S. But was it famous in the Times? Hardly.
The exchange from the podcast, created last Thursday and posted to nytimes.com on Friday.
By Clay Waters | September 29, 2011 | 1:34 PM EDT
Does the New York Times fear a Chris Christie presidential run?
On Thursday reporters Michael Shear (pictured above) and Richard Perez-Pena issued the New Jersey governor a pre-emptive reality check in response to his speech at the Reagan Presidential Library: “Not All Buy Christie’s Assertions of Bipartisanship – New Jersey Governor’s Critics Say Acrimonious Dealings Accompany Accomplishments.” But the Times provided a lopsided portrait, either by leaving out the offensive things Christie’s opponents have said about him, or actually quoting Democrats insulting Christie as if that somehow proves Christie is offensive.
By Clay Waters | September 23, 2011 | 1:58 PM EDT
In a Thursday morning post setting the table for last night’s Republican presidential debate in Orlando, New York Times chief “Caucus” blog reporter Michael Shear became the latest Timesman to falsely finger the Tea Party audience at a CNN debate last week as cheering on the prospect of letting a hypothetical man die for lack of health insurance.
Shear listed six things to watch for in Orlando last night. The last item:
By Clay Waters | September 7, 2011 | 12:23 PM EDT
New York Times online political reporter Michael Shear made Saturday’s front page with his close reading of the oeuvre of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and was predictably disturbed by what he found. “Perry’s Blunt Views in Books Get New Scrutiny as He Joins Race” amounts to a handy bit of opposition research before Perry’s debate debut on Wednesday (contingent on the wildfires in his home state of Texas).
Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, believes that climate change is a “contrived, phony mess.” The federal income tax was the “great milestone on the road to serfdom.” And the Boy Scouts of America are under attack by “a radical homosexual movement.”
By Clay Waters | August 20, 2011 | 9:57 AM EDT
A brief item by Michael Shear in Friday’s New York Times, “Huntsman Makes Bid To Step Out From Crowd,” faulted moderate Republican candidate Jon Huntsman for not sufficiently “standing apart from the pack” of conservative presidential candidates by calling for higher taxes – or in Shear’s words, “revenue increases.”
Shear called it a “missed opportunity,” as if Huntsman should have argued the liberal line on raising taxes solely to stand out from the conservative crowd.
Mr. Hard News: NY Times's Michael Shear, Bitter About Talking Weiner, Spends Next 2 Days on Palin Emails
By Clay Waters | June 13, 2011 | 3:59 PM EDT Michael Shear, chief writer for the New York Times’s “Caucus” blog, sounded sarcastic and bitter, almost angry, at the opening of the paper’s last “Caucus” podcast on Thursday about having to talk about the Anthony Weiner sex scandal.
Host Sam Roberts: “But you pointed out that this is a particularly inopportune time for this latest sex scandal to break in Washington. Why is that?”
Michael Shear: “Lots of policy and we’re going to start with the sex scandal! That’s fine. Yeah, it’s not a good time for Democrats.”
So what vital hard-core political news did Shear spend the entire following day covering to compensate for having to discuss Weinergate? The three-year-old trove of Sarah Palin emails from her time as Alaska governor.
By Clay Waters | May 31, 2011 | 1:25 PM EDT
New York Times chief political blogger Michael Shear is a bit annoyed that Sarah Palin is successfully attracting media attention while ignoring reporter’s inquiries and playing hide-and-seek with the press on her "One Nation" bus tour. (Photo by the Times's David Winter.) Shear, who has filed multiple blog posts on the Palin family's historical trail through the Northeast, made Tuesday’s print edition with his gripes: "Palin Family Hits Road, if Not 2012 Trail."
Ms. Palin announced her bus tour with great fanfare last week and is using it on her Web site to raise money for her political action committee. Despite that, she is acting as though her family is just like any other on vacation.
Never mind the charter bus plastered with images of the Constitution. Or the fact that her family vacation has a name: the One Nation Tour. Or that she is documenting her family’s movements on a Web site that invites Americans along. Or that she might just run for president.
Perhaps he resented following Palin over the Memorial Day holiday?
By Clay Waters | April 28, 2011 | 2:22 PM EDT
President Obama authorized the state of Hawaii to release a copy of his long-form birth certificate, resulting in massive media attention and a front-page splash by New York Times reporter Michael Shear on Thursday, “Citing ‘Silliness,’ Obama Shows Birth Certificate.”
But a Times media reporter wrongly suggested the “Birther” theories only erupted after Obama became president, among conservatives, when in fact they first circulated during the Democratic primaries, stirred up by supporters of Obama rival Hillary Clinton.
NY Times: Obama Will 'Spare,' 'Reduce the Growth' of Medicare, But GOP Threatens to 'Shrink' It With 'Big Cuts'
By Clay Waters | April 14, 2011 | 1:21 PM EDT Thursday’s New York Times led with Obama’s partisan budget speech, “Taking On G.O.P., Obama Unveils Debt Relief Plan – Calls for Spending Cuts and Tax Increases but Spares Medicare and Medicaid,” and once again did a double-standard dance around the politically inflammatory issue of changes in Medicare spending when proposed by a Democratic president.
While previous attempts at reform of Medicare by Republicans were eviscerated in the Times as “big Medicare cuts” or (just this week) a “shrinking” of the program, the paper greeted Obama’s own vague proposals with benign, soothing words like “overhaul” or claims that Obama was merely looking for Medicare “savings.” Thursday’s headline insisted Medicare and Medicaid would be “spared” and the text by reporters Mark Landler and Michael Shear described Obama as only proposing “changes to social welfare programs” and to “strictly limit the growth of Medicare and Medicaid.”