New York Times

Coverage of UAW-GM Tentative Agreement Perpetuates 'Concessions' Myth
By Tom Blumer | October 26, 2015 | 11:28 AM EDT

Late Sunday evening, the United Auto Workers and General Motors reached a tentative four-year agreement shortly before the union's 11:59 p.m. strike deadline.

The agreement was expected, simply because the financial and political blowback of a strike at a company bailed out by taxpayers at a cost running into tens of billion of dollars back in 2009 would have been severe. Also expected: the press buying into and perpetuating the myth that the union made significant concessions to GM and Chrysler during the course of those two companies' respective corrupt bankruptcies.

NYT's Hulse Snidely 'Translates' Speaker of the House Questionnaire from 'Hard-Right' Freedom Caucus
By Clay Waters | October 25, 2015 | 9:28 PM EDT

The New York Times' continuing hostility toward the GOP's conservative Freedom Caucus got snide in Sunday's news pages. "The Fights That Ryan Will Face as Speaker, In Plain English" was co-written by veteran congressional reporter Carl Hulse, who never hides his Democratic sympathies, certianly not in this snide, cynical "translation" of a Freedom Caucus-issued questionnaire, which converted standard congressional-ese into the apparently rude and aggressive demands that the "hard-right" caucus is prepared to make on Speaker of the House in waiting, Paul Ryan, including holding legislation "hostage."

Not News: UAW Considering Plan to Milk the Unemployment System If It Calls a GM Strike
By Tom Blumer | October 24, 2015 | 10:30 PM EDT

The news coming out of Detroit about near-deadline negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and General Motors has been pretty quiet. As the Sunday 11:59 p.m. deadline approaches, the Associated Press only has a four-paragraph blurb indicating that the union wants to get a richer package than it just garnered in negotiations with Fiat Chrysler. A Reuters report goes into detail about GM's cost structure still being higher than that seen at Toyota's and Nissan's U.S. plants by about 15 percent and 31 percent, respectively. The New York Times is only carrying reports from the wires.

One note of substance about the UAW's strategy covered at Bloomberg News — surely known to others following the industry who are filing bland reports — is that it plans to milk the unemployment insurance system in the event of a protracted strike.

NYT Front Page Indulges 'Blunt' Palestinian 'Protest Songs' Encouraging the Stabbing Murder of Jews
By Clay Waters | October 24, 2015 | 9:39 PM EDT

Jodi Rudoren and Rami Nazzal reported from the West Bank on the front page of Friday's New York Times: "Palestinians Set Their Rage to Violent Beat." The worst thing that Rudoren, the Jerusalem bureau chief, and Nazzal had to say about a new rash of "protest songs" (!) by Palestinians celebrating the stabbing of Jews is that they are "blunt" and "weak musically." (A sample lyric: "Stab, stab the Zionist – and say God is great!") There are even links to some of the violently inflammatory songs embedded in the online story, so the Times is also spreading anti-Jewish hate speech, including a charming ditty titled "Intifada of Knives"

On PBS, NYT's Brooks Sees 'Psychosis' in GOPers 'Obsessed' With 'Nothingburger' Benghazi
By Brad Wilmouth | October 23, 2015 | 9:51 PM EDT

Appearing in the regular "Shields and Brooks" segment of the PBS NewsHour on Friday, New York Times columnist David Brooks asserted that the Benghazi hearing this week yielded a "big nothingburger," and theorized that there is a "psychosis" around Republicans being "obsessed" with pursuing Clinton scandals.

Justin Gillis, NYT's Climate Alarmist-in-Chief, Finds Another Dubious Warming 'Record'
By Clay Waters | October 22, 2015 | 10:23 PM EDT

The New York Times featured more politicized environmentalist doom-mongering from Justin Gillis, the paper's chief alarmist, in "2015 Likely to Be Hottest Year on Record." Of course, the year isn't over yet, but that less-than-compelling news hook didn't stop Gillis from going beyond the stats to work in alarmist environmental and anti-"denialist" political points, while dismissing the inconvenient truth that temperature growth has stalled since 1998. Gillis has made a habit of establishing "historic" warming levels and pollution records that turn out to be rather less than they initially appear.

NYT Columnist: Ted Cruz Is Like a 'Menacing, Stalking, Relentless' Horror Movie Villain
By Tim Graham | October 22, 2015 | 7:18 AM EDT

Frank Bruni was a White House reporter for The New  York Times under George W. Bush, and found him both "lavishly self-deprecating" and "defiantly proud of his own failings and foibles." But he clearly shared something with Bush in his new Times column "The scary spectre of Ted Cruz."

Bruni accurately noted that "Dubya" rarely adds any opinion on current events or leaders in his post-presidency, and yet he was quoted attacking Cruz at a fundraiser for his brother Jeb. “I just don’t like the guy.” Bruni wrote: "I think a great many Americans — including a majority of Cruz’s colleagues in Congress — know exactly how he feels."

NYT's Steinhauer Laments Success of GOP Freedom Caucus: 'Gerrymandered Districts...Web of Conservative Media'
By Clay Waters | October 21, 2015 | 12:40 PM EDT

New York Times political reporter Jennifer Steinhauer filed "Influence of Freedom Caucus Ripples Through Washington" for Tuesday's front page, a long hostile introduction to a page of label-heavy profiles of five congressmen from the Freedom Caucus. Steinhauer's tone was resentful of the success of the new wave of conservative congressmen, alleging they had achieved their goals through "highly gerrymandered districts" and an "intricately coordinated web of conservative media" (as opposed to the coordinated web of liberal media consisting of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post) and had made it "much harder to get things done" in Washington.

NYT's Krugman Drools Over Democratic Embrace of Tax-and-Spend Denmark, 'As Opposed to Just Chanting 'U.S.A.!'
By Clay Waters | October 19, 2015 | 9:36 PM EDT

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.!'"

S-Word Avoided in Stories About Near Worthless Venezuelan Currency
By P.J. Gladnick | October 19, 2015 | 7:51 PM EDT

How inflated is Venezuelan currency? So inflated that even thieves in Venezuela are refusing to steal it. 

This has been reported in several media outlets such as the New York Times and Vox but a certain word is very noticebably absent in both reports. It is the S-word that dare not speak its name. One big reason it is taboo in liberal circles to associate that word with economic failure is that one Democrat candidate for president is openly an advocate of the unspoken system and most of the rest of the other candidates silently support it. We start with the New York Times story which avoids you-know-what word:

NYT's Rudoren Shifts Stabbing Blame From Murderous Palestinians to Israel-Fueled 'Frustration'
By Clay Waters | October 18, 2015 | 5:49 PM EDT

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.

Press Mostly Ignores Hillary's Praise of Australia's De Facto Gun Confiscation
By Tom Blumer | October 17, 2015 | 11:21 PM EDT

The establishment press is mostly ignoring what Hillary Clinton said about gun control at a New Hampshire town hall meeting on Friday morning. Searches on "Clinton Australia" (not in quotes), attempting to find her statement that a massive, coercive gun "buyback" such as that seen in the Land Down Under almost 20 years ago "would be worth considering doing it on the national level," indicate that the Associated Press has nothing, and that the New York Times web site has nothing. Related Google News results are overwhelmingly from center-right blogs and outlets.

Of the two exceptions I could find as of 10 p.m., one came from CNN. The other was a syndicated story from the New York Times which hadn't yet appeared at the Times's web site. Predictably, both are "conservatives attack" pieces which cherry-picked the NRA's criticism of Mrs. Clinton's remarks.