The latest from New York Times reporter Kirk Semple on the front page of Tuesday’s Times, “Muslim Youth in U.S. Feel Strain of Suspicion,” demonstrates that the paper’s strongest impulse after Islamic terror attacks is not to investigate what went wrong but to fret over perceived, anecdotal “Islamophobia” among their fellow citizens. It’s much like his previous, anecdote-heavy, statistic-free “CAIR” package (as in Council on American-Islamic Relations) that Semple delivered in late November, an article completely dominated by CAIR sources in which Semple quite comfortably accused his fellow Americans of Islamophobia on the basis of anecdotes.
Kirk Semple
By Clay Waters | November 26, 2015 | 3:00 PM EST
It took two weeks after the mass slaughter by radical Islamists in Paris, but the New York Times finally finds itself comfortable with raising the false spectre of American "Islamophobia," with an enormous assist from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the so-called civil-rights organization many consider a Muslim pressure group, and whose ties to Hamas have been documented in federal court and by Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer. Reporter Kirk Semple breezed past all that to repeatedly cite CAIR in Thursday's Metro story: "'I'm Frightened': After Attacks in Paris, New York Muslims Cope With a Backlash." The group was mentioned no less than four times in different contexts, making one wonder just where the Times' "Islamophobia" angle originated.
By Clay Waters | January 28, 2009 | 3:18 PM EST
Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand is the new senator from New York, replacing Hillary Clinton, who resigned her Senate seat to become Secretary of State in the Obama administration. But the New York Times hasn't exactly rolled out the welcome mat. So far the paper has done little but nag Gillibrand for being insufficiently liberal, pushing her to back away from her stands against amnesty for illegal immigrants and her support of gun rights. A Metro section story by Kirk Semple on Wednesday, "Drawing Fire on Immigration, Gillibrand Reaches Out," argued that Gillibrand must adapt by moving to the left to appease her diverse and apparently angry vast new constituency.
During her one term in the House of Representatives, from a largely rural, traditionally Republican district, Kirsten E. Gillibrand was on safe political ground adopting a tough stance against illegal immigration. Ms. Gillibrand, a Democrat, opposed any sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants, supported deputizing local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws, spoke out against Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposal to allow illegal immigrants to have driver's licenses and sought to make English the official language of the United States. But since her appointment by Gov. David A. Paterson last week to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ms. Gillibrand has found herself besieged by immigrant advocates and Democratic colleagues who have cast her as out of step with a majority of the state, with its big cities and sprawling immigrant enclaves.
By Clay Waters | August 7, 2008 | 3:16 PM EDT
Editor's Note: This originally appeared on our sister publication TimesWatch.org.The New York Times's front-page report Thursday marking the 500th death in Afghanistan (most but not all in combat) tracks through the same muddy ruts as the paper's previous four stories marking each 1,000 fatality mark in Iraq. It's taken almost seven years of combat in Afghanistan to reach the plateau of 500, which occurred on July 22 of this year. Apparently the Times couldn't wait for 1,000. The paper goes on to blame the public for ignoring the Afghanistan war, even though the Times's coverage of the war has hardly been comprehensive -- except when things are going badly.