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."
New York Times
By Clay Waters | October 12, 2015 | 9:56 PM EDT
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.
NYT Skips Louis Farrakhan's Vile History in Fact-Free Celebratory Report from D.C. 'Justice or Else' Rally
By Clay Waters | October 12, 2015 | 10:51 AM EDT 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.
By Mark Finkelstein | October 11, 2015 | 12:51 PM EDT
Yeah, that's been our big beef with the New York Times: it's too tough on top Democrats . . .
So we'll all sleep better now that Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet has assured us that the paper is not "too aggressive" or "unfair" in its coverage of Hillary Clinton. On CNN's Reliable Sources today, Bacquet, as proof of the paper's even-handedness, noted to host Brian Stelter a Times story on Benghazi that "did not point a finger at her" and another story probing problems within the Benghazi committee.
NYT Bashes White, Rural 'Clutch of Unyielding Hard-Line Conservatives' in Congress That Can't Govern Itself
By Clay Waters | October 10, 2015 | 10:55 PM EDT 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.
By Tom Blumer | October 10, 2015 | 9:42 AM EDT
In an October 8 item at the New York Times ("Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place"), reporter Rick Gladstone pretended that it's an open question as to "whether" the two Jewish temples — one destroyed over 2,500 years ago and the second razed in roughly 60 A.D., ever existed on the 37-acre site known as the Temple Mount. In doing so, Gladstone gave credibility to Palestinians baselessly promoting "doubt that the temples ever existed — at least in that location."
There is no meaningful "doubt" on the subject at all. After what must have been a furious and completely justified backlash, the Times issued a correction on Friday (bold is mine):
By Bill Donohue | October 8, 2015 | 3:02 PM EDT
On September 30, the New York Times ran a front-page story that smeared St. Junipero Serra. Repeated attempts to have the paper correct the record have failed. This is yellow journalism at its worst. When I submit paid ads to the Times, I am often asked to identify my sources. Yet it accepts hit jobs like Holson's. The fact is there is no list of historians who claim Fr. Serra tortured Indians, and the Times knows it.
By Tom Blumer | October 7, 2015 | 10:25 AM EDT
On Saturday, conservative Australian columnist Miranda Devine revealed that an Australian engineer claims to have "fixed two errors" in "the basic climate model which underpins all climate science."
The person making this claim was a "climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office," and has "six degrees in applied mathematics." What he found is that "the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought." While some U.S. blogs have begun to relay the news (examples here, here and here), the nation's establishment press is ignoring it.
By Tom Blumer | October 4, 2015 | 11:11 PM EDT
One of the more tiresome criticisms the establishment press still levels at New Media from time to time is that they, unlike those awful bloggers, make sure their facts are right before they go to print or post a story online.
A story published at the New York Times on Wednesday about Donald Trump's wife Melania shows what obvious rubbish that claim often is. The Old Gray Lady had to issue six corrections over two days to (one would hope) finally get it right. One of the errors was so pathetically obvious that it's hard to imagine that Guy Trebay's story was subjected at all to the scrutiny of an editor.
By Clay Waters | October 4, 2015 | 9:35 PM EDT
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.
By Tom Blumer | October 4, 2015 | 12:13 AM EDT
In their coverage of government and other economic reports, the business press routinely tells readers that the figures they are relaying are "seasonally adjusted." That is, raw results are smoothed out to supposedly "remove normal, recurring variations" in data.
There's one notable exception: The government's monthly employment report.
By Tom Blumer | October 3, 2015 | 10:02 PM EDT
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations. As described by George Jahn at the Associated Press, it was "an impassioned speech interspersed with bouts of dramatic silence."
Jahn failed to report the absence of U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry. So did Rick Gladstone and Judi Rudoren at the New York Times. An unbylined Reuters report drily noted that U.S. representation at Netanyahu's speech consisted of "Ambassador Samantha Power's deputy, David Pressman, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro." Breitbart also noted the presence of "Richard Erdman, Alternate Representative to the UN General Assembly." Reuters uniquely explained why Power and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in town, did not attend (bolds are mine throughout this post):