Jonathan Weisman

NYT's Peters 'Cleans Up' Jonathan Weisman's Original Report on Friday's IRS Scandal Hearing
By Tom Blumer | May 18, 2013 | 10:19 PM EDT

Clearly, the New York Times couldn't run with Jonathan Weisman's headline or opening sentence in the report he filed shortly after Friday's portion of Friday's testimony at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee in its Saturday print edition. And it didn't.

The original headline at Weisman's story, as seen here (HT Ann Althouse via Instapundit), was "Treasury Knew of I.R.S. Inquiry in 2012, Official Says." His opening sentence: "The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was auditing the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year." Along came Jeremy Peters, who helped to "properly" frame these matters, turning it into yet another "Republicans attack our poor innocent administration" piece. That is what made it to today's paper -- on Page A12, naturally accompanied by a "better" headline. Meanwhile, except for excerpts captured at places like the indispensable FreeRepublic, Weisman's original has been flushed down the memory hole.

NYT Front-Page 'News': Federal Aid Recipients Replacing 'Prayers of Hope With Efforts to Cope'
By Clay Waters | May 6, 2013 | 3:01 PM EDT

After a long delay, the New York Times has finally located some sympathetic victims of the federal budget sequester and placed them on Monday's front page. Jonathan Weisman reported "Stories of Struggle and Creativity As Sequestration Cuts Hit Home."

Earlier, reporter Nelson Schwartz celebrated a little burst of job growth but warned it could end thanks to federal "austerity" (i.e. sequestration) in Saturday's lead story.

Bitter NYT Laments 'Gift to Travelers,' 'People With Money' as GOP Stops Politically Motivated Flight Delays
By Clay Waters | April 29, 2013 | 4:46 PM EDT

The Democrats blinked in the sequester tussle -- by wide margins Congress passed, and the president promised to sign, legislation that would end the furloughs for Federal Aviation Administration employees, which had caused flight delays that Republicans claimed were politically motivated by the Obama administration.

Saturday's New York Times lead story by Jonathan Weisman admitted a victory for the GOP, but he could not hide his liberal bitterness in "House Approves Bill Seeking End To Flight Delays – G.O.P. Claims A Victory – Exceptions to Broad Cuts Allows Shift of Funds to Traffic Control." Neither could the paper's editorial page. Weisman wrote:

NY Times: Cantor Changing 'Uncompromising Conservatism to Something Kinder and Gentler'
By Clay Waters | April 25, 2013 | 1:19 PM EDT

New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman documented the failure of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to remake the GOP's "uncompromising conservatism to something kinder and gentler" in "House Majority Leader’s Quest to Soften G.O.P.’s Image Hits a Wall Within," in a slanted story that's being passed off as straight news. Weisman emotionally warned: "But these days, those who linger in the middle of the road end up flattened."

"A kinder, gentler nation" is of course the phrase George H.W. Bush used in his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president in 1988, apparently to distance himself from the more conservative Ronald Reagan.

NY Times, Not Taking Defeat of 'Gun Safety' Well, Faults 'Gun Lobby's' 'Disputed Talking Points'
By Clay Waters | April 18, 2013 | 2:27 PM EDT

The New York Times led Thursday's edition with the Senate defeat of President Obama's gun control proposals in a series of procedural votes, including one on expanding background checks that Democrats had hoped would pass. The front page featured a photo of an angry Obama in the Rose Garden after his quest for more gun control laws in the wake of Sandy Hook came up short: "Gun Control Drive Blocked In Senate; Obama, In Defeat, Sees 'Shameful Day.'"

The Times, which has avidly pushed "gun safety" measures since the massacre, portrayed it as a "search for solutions to the violence" tragically cut short. Jonathan Weisman:

NYT's Lead Story Foresees 'Egg-on-the-Face Moment' for Conservatives if Gun Bill Gains Support
By Clay Waters | April 10, 2013 | 4:01 PM EDT

Wednesday's New York Times's lead story by Jennifer Steinhauer and Jonathan Weisman, "Threat To Block Debate On Guns Appears To Fade – Reid Sets Senate Vote – Some G.O.P. Senators Reject Filibuster, but Hurdles Remain," hyped the prospects of Obama's gun-control legislation while foreseeing a possible "egg-on-the-face moment" for conservatives who tried to filibuster the legislation.

NY Times Calls Tiny Sequestration Cuts to 'Vital' Programs 'the Worst,' Hurtful to Economic Growth
By Clay Waters | March 21, 2013 | 1:54 PM EDT

The original online headline to Wednesday's New York Times budget legislation story, "Finance Bill, Nearing Senate Passage, Would Protect Some Favored Programs," likely captured what reporters Jonathan Weisman and Annie Lowrey really wanted to say, betraying their big-government default favoritism: "Plan That Would Spare Vital Programs Is Expected to Pass Senate."

"Vital" by whose measurement? The article is peppered with similarly loaded liberal language marking "the worst" cuts, and making the Keynesian argument that any reduction in spending would "inhibit long-term economic growth."

NYT's Weisman Wonders Why GOP Won't Just Capitulate After Obama Win: "What Are Elections For?"
By Clay Waters | March 18, 2013 | 2:40 PM EDT

Betraying his impatience with the Republican Party's insistence that President Obama cut spending, New York Times political reporter Jonathan Weisman sounded shocked that the GOP wasn't simply surrendering its principles in the wake of Obama's four–point victory last November, in Monday's "Republicans Determined To Press On With Air, If Not Vote, of Confidence." (Nice flattering photo of Paul Ryan, by the way.)

A year ago this month, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin stood on the floor of the House and declared that the ideals of small government, privatized health care and rigorous spending discipline captured in the budget plan about to pass the House would and should be central to the 2012 election campaign.

As Cuts Loom and Public Shrugs, NY Times Suddenly Spins Other Way on Sequestration
By Clay Waters | February 28, 2013 | 2:45 PM EST

Spinning the sequester in the New York Times. After weeks of cringing over the supposedly damaging federal cuts due to take effect tomorrow (even as the public shrugs them off) Jonathan Weisman made an 180-degree turn on the front of Thursday's paper: "Parties Focus On the Positive As Cuts Near." The text box: "An onerous possibility turns out to be not quite so onerous."

Suddenly the Times is seeing a win-win-win situation, for liberals, conservatives, and the White House.

New York Times Again Sees a Looming 'Era of Government Austerity' in a $3,500 Billion Budget
By Clay Waters | February 25, 2013 | 4:35 PM EST

Over the weekend the New York Times painted the $85 billion in budget cuts that will start kicking in Friday – known in Washington-speak as sequestration -- in dramatic terms, falsely heralding a new age of "government austerity" (since when?) and passing along stories of budget-cut fear-mongering from the state level.

Saturday's lead from Michael Cooper painted a White House-friendly horror story: "Fear of U.S. Cuts Grows In States Where Aid Flows – Recovery Seen At Risk – Wide Impact Looms on Jobs, Tax Revenue, and Schools."

NY Times Suggests Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz Takes Confrontation to New Lows of 'McCarthyism'
By Clay Waters | February 18, 2013 | 6:09 PM EST

Newly minted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party politician, is "raising bipartisan hackles" and otherwise being a "bad boy" in the previously collegial U.S. Senate, opined political reporter Jonathan Weisman on the front page of Saturday's New York Times: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack And Raises Bipartisan Hackles."

Clearly disturbed about Cruz's treatment of Obama's nominee for defense secretary Chuck Hagel, reporter Weisman even put a mike in front of not one but two liberal Democratic senators who likened Cruz to notorious Sen. Joe McCarthy. Well, at least Cruz is liked by what Weisman called "ardent conservatives."

NYT's Weisman Doesn't Get Why House GOP Rejected Fantastic Fiscal Cliff Deal
By Clay Waters | January 3, 2013 | 12:28 PM EST

New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman strangely painted the fiscal cliff deal (which displeased conservatives with its tax increases and lack of spending cuts) as a fiscal dream come true for Republicans in his "news analysis" for Wednesday's front page. Weisman also mocked the GOP's historical support for low taxes.

Just a few years ago, the tax deal pushed through Congress on Tuesday would have been a Republican fiscal fantasy, a sweeping bill that locks in virtually all of the Bush-era tax cuts, exempts almost all estates from taxation, and enshrines the former president’s credo that dividends and capital gains should be taxed equally and gently.