Clay Waters

New York Times Australian bureau chief Damien Cave somehow keeps making it into the paper “news” pages with the same old shameless left-wing crusading against coal and mockery of conservatives: “As Australia Burns, Its Leaders Trade Insults.” The text box: “Classic pragmatism seems to stop at climate change.” The online subhead: “The country has long been a model for common-sense public policy. But this week’s fires have revealed once again that its pragmatism stops at climate change.” So what does Cave’s “common-sense” “pragmatism” entail in Australian reality? Nationalized health care and gun bans.

The New York Times offered up a silly time-waster of a “news analysis” from Charlie Savage and Michael Shear in Saturday’s paper, one that elevated Trump’s mean tweets about former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch to “witness tampering" They huffed: “President Trump on Friday attacked Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine he summarily removed this year, even as she testified in the impeachment inquiry about how she felt threatened by Mr. Trump. Did his behavior amount to witness tampering?"

The New York Times doesn’t just inject anti-capitalist and anti-conservative positions into its “news” coverage, but uses every section to make its arguments, concealed under the rubrics of Arts or Style. The Times is gleeful over the inevitable demise of capitalism, as demonstrated by an enraptured take by culture reporter Jennifer Schuessler of a hard-left satirical exhibit, “Museum of Capitalism."

New York Times Australian bureau chief Damien Cave defended the disruptive activists who make up the Extinction Rebellion climate cult, who disrupt people going about their way in an attempt to get arrested, to help save the earth, or something: “Why Is Australia Trying to Shut Down Climate Activism? -- An increasingly outraged public is demanding action in a nation intimately linked to coal mining. The government has responded by threatening a new law to punish protesters." 

The New York Times sounded perturbed that the blue state of Washington was resisting a return to the old divisive days of “affirmative action.” An editor insisted on calling it “Unlikely resistance to a ballot measure in Washington State” in a text box, although it makes sense that Asian-Americans would resist affirmative action, having been successful as a group without such assistance. Reporter Mike Baker’s story was loaded in favor of the ballot measure to “allow concerted efforts to increase diversity,” which sounds distressingly vague.

President Trump’s dangerous Twitter. That was the paper’s overriding obsession in Sunday’s edition. The enormous story launched on the top half of the front page and jumped to a special 10-page section, “The Twitter Presidency.” The timing is apt, considering the paper is pressuring Twitter to be better than Facebook and actually squelch political messaging as the 2020 campaign nears. One reason why Trump’s tweets are under attack was this line, which appeared in print over a graphic of 5889 little rectangle shapes representing Trump tweets (an undeniable wise use of time, energy, and ink): “Since he became president, the most frequent targets of his ire have been Democrats, investigations and the news media.”

The New York Times, which dispenses unlabeled liberal reporting as slant every day, is keeping a wary eye on any conservative competition in the news business, eager to drop the “fake” label on their heads. Friday’s Business pages included the warning, “Americans Trust Local News. That Belief Is Being Exploited,” by Dartmouth College professor of government Brendan Nyhan. The URL includes the words “fake local news,” perhaps an artifact of a harsher previous headline. After noting misinformation distributed by the infamous Russian Internet Research Agency, Nyhan found “dubious outlets” on only one side of the political divide.

New York Times political writer Lisa Lerer made Tuesday’s edition with news of the resignation of the formerly rising Democratic Rep. Katie Hill of California after a bizarre sex scandal involving campaign and congressional staffers, fueled by explicit photos reported by a conservative website. The headline was loaded to show how disturbed the Times felt about the spectacle of a Democratic congresswoman forced out of office in such fashion: “Revenge Porn Reaches Washington.”

The New York Times has abruptly changed its tune on the “Deep State,” a name given to the entrenched bureaucracy supposedly determined to work via secret machinations and selective media leaks to bring down the Trump administration from within. As Trump and his Republican allies railed against the “Deep State,” the Times typically mocked the very idea as a phony conspiracy theory. The headline under a March 2017 analysis: "What Happens When You Fight a ‘Deep State’ That Doesn’t Exist.” But the Times has changed its tune in startling fashion. Now the Deep State is real, and it’s just wonderful.