TimesWatch

More New York Times' s crusading against state spending cuts in Tuesday's edition. Reporter Michael Cooper’s “Michigan, With Persistent Unemployment, Cuts Jobless Benefit by Six Weeks” raised quite a grand commotion out of a small cut in Michigan’s unemployment benefit plan: The state will now pay only 20 weeks of benefits to the jobless, instead of the standard 26 weeks (and even those come…

New York Times reporter Jennifer Medina’s Sunday story from Sacramento focused on the state’s cute political couple, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his young budget director Ana Matosantos: “Political Odd Couple, United by Crisis In California Budget.” They are a constant if unlikely pair these days: the oldest man elected governor of California and the woman who is its youngest budget…

A New York Times reporter who came under fire from the paper’s executive editor for his “cringe-making” and “ham-handed” reporting on a young rape victim in Texas returned to the story for Tuesday's front page: “3-Month Nightmare Emerges in Rape Inquiry.” Keller criticized Houston Bureau Chief James McKinley’s March 9 story in his March 27 column for the Times Sunday magazine, giving it…

There was some labeling slant in New York Times reporter Kim Severson’s take on a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Southern states in Saturday’s “Southern Lawmakers Focus on Illegal Immigrants."

 Sunday’s New York Times's National section led off with Kirk Johnson's “Inundated With News, Many Find It Difficult To Keep Up on Libya,” which dug up some novel excuses for the public’s resistance to Obama’s war in Libya (a Gallup poll shows only 47% approve of the bombing strikes): Information “overload,” “compassion fatigue,” and the NCAA basketball tournament. Denver Bureau Chief…

The latest installment of New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s Sunday Magazine column, “Among the Guerrillas -- What role do the mainstream media play in an environment beset by Assanges and O’Keefes?” likened conservative guerrilla film-maker James O’Keefe, who brought down ACORN and the executive suite at National Public Radio with his hoaxes, to Julian Assange, the anti-American…

President Obama arrived home to the White House on Wednesday from his five-day trip to Latin America and found himself locked out of the French doors to the Oval Office, as captured by several news organizations. My Media Research Center colleague Tim Graham reminded me that back on Nov. 21, 2005, the New York Times published on its front page a photo of President George W. Bush making a…

Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner on Friday filed a story on a heated debate at the Israeli Parliament over the advocacy group J Street, a flock of pro-peace doves who want to "end the occupation" of Palestinian land by Israel, “U.S. Group Stirs Debate on What It Means to Be ‘Pro-Israel.’” The Times has been pushing the “moderate” (actually left-wing) group J Street since its 2008…

Friday’s New York Times obituary by Bruce Weber of radical lawyer Leonard Weinglass, described in the Times headline as a “Courtroom Defender Of Radicals and Renegades,” glossed over the radicalism of Weinglass’s notorious clients. The text box gushed: “A man one colleague called ‘our era’s Clarence Darrow.’” Leonard I. Weinglass, perhaps the nation’s pre-eminent progressive defense lawyer,…

Liberal columnists who were reliably opposed to Republican presidents warring against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (see Bush I and II) often do an about-face and strike up a martial tune when it's a Democratic president dropping bombs. Ask former New York Times columnist and good liberal Anthony Lewis, who pushed the Clinton administration to intervene in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The reliably…

New York Times political blogger Michael Shear used loaded language to describe the Republican Party’s “assault” on Obama-care on the one-year anniversary of that “historic measure," in his Wednesday morning post “Boehner, McConnell Push Assault on Health Care Law” A year after President Obama signed his health care law into effect, the two leading Republicans in Congress are making it clear…

New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal has found another unlikely environmental menace: Cats, an invasive species that disturbs the natural order, like kudzu. That’s the takeaway from Monday’s report on the grave danger felines present to birds: “Tweety Was Right: Cats Are a Bird’s No. 1 Enemy.” While public attention has focused on wind turbines as a menace to birds, a new study shows…

A Monday New York Times business story by Elizabeth Olson provided some unusual good press to Big Food, at least in aid of the wildly overstated liberal cause of “hunger” in America: “From a Food Giant, a Broad Effort to Feed Hungry Children.” Conagra Foods, whose social cause is ending child hunger, is taking a new approach to raise the issue’s visibility. The company is starting its largest…

Saturday’s New York Times featured a flattering profile by David Halbfinger of Long Island Rep. Steve Israel, whose job it is, in his new role as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to return the party to power: “L.I. Congressman Leads an Uphill Charge Toward a Democratic House.” It may seem surprising that the job of taking back the House -- Democrats need 25 seats…