New York Times

Is Barack Obama just too complex for voters to figure out? That was the premise behind the New York Times's Sunday Week in Review lead story by Richard Stevenson,“The Muddled Selling of the President.” Stevenson denied Obama was a liberal (despite his push for government-supervised health care and $787 billion in “economic stimulus” spending), suggesting he was too “complex” for such a label.…

On Saturday, NB's Noel Sheppard reported on this statement made by Education Secretary Arne Duncan: "I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster. It took hurricane Katrina to wake up the community and say we have to do better."CNN host T.J. Holmes read that quote aloud during a broadcast. "Of course I…

The New York Times certainly doesn’t have dazzled stars in its eyes when it writes about Mel Gibson. What could have been a standard weekend-box-office-receipts piece by Brooks Barnes on Monday sounded like an attack piece: LOS ANGELES - And the blue money just keeps rolling in.The much-hyped return to the multiplex of Mel Gibson, whose drunken and anti-Semitic outburst in 2006 turned him into a…

"Never before have you seen an allegation of corruption going that close to the governor's office in modern history." So said a Democratic consultant in North Carolina reacting to the latest casualty in the ongoing investigation of former governor Mike Easley. The scandal has brought down Easley's wife, bankrupted his coffers, disgraced a state university, and now, most recently, set federal…

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs put the New York Times at the center of the ceremonious unveiling of his company's iPad tablet device, the implication was clear: this is the future of the news--or at least Jobs wants us to think it is. He stands to gain not only financially but politically as Apple becomes a major gatekeeper for information.The news media industry itself is divided on whether e-readers…

CRITICAL UPDATE AT END OF POST: Obama praised the 2009 budget when the Senate passed it!After President Obama told the nation during Wednesday's State of the Union address that he inherited the huge budget deficits befronting the country, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) turned to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and said, "Blame it on Bush."In reality, this was one of many Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) moments…

When the ACORN scandal broke, the New York Times dragged its feet for six days before issuing a story on the devastating footage from conservative activist and guerilla film-maker James O'Keefe, who caught on video the left-wing housing group giving advice to a "prostitute" and "pimp" on how to shelter illegal income from taxes. But following Tuesday afternoon reports of the Monday arrest of O'…

On the eve of President Obama's first State of the Union address, the lead story in Wednesday's New York Times by Jackie Calmes focused on Obama's abrupt transformation into a born-again deficit hawk: "Obama, On Own, To Set Up Panel On Nation's Debt."In a related video, Calmes played along with Obama's sudden about-face, claiming "the president wants to make deficit reduction a big part of his…

UPDATE: The New York Times joined the fray as well with a similar article.  Must be a slow news week. Both Time and the Washington Post reported yesterday on a rehashed two-year-old study about rising teen pregnancy rates. "Pregnancy rates among U.S. teenagers," wrote Time's Belinda Luscombe, "which had been dropping since 1990, took an upturn in 2006, according to newly released data." This "…

As the new year began, The New York Times offered a 780-word article to a protest for illegal immigrants – with four marchers walking from Miami to Washington. But on Saturday, tens of thousands of Americans gathering in Washington for Friday's annual March for Life received – part of a sentence.In the Saturday paper on January 23, an article on the trial facing the killer of late-term…

It's curious to see people in the mainstream media try to make sense of the Tea Party movement. The New York Times, which once called the Tea Parties a psychological phenomenon rather than a political movement, has now changed its tune. In the wake of the stunning upset by Scott Brown in the Jan. 19 Massachusetts special election to fill the seat vacated by Ted Kennedy's death, the Times is…

On Monday, the New York Times joined other media outlets in suddenly uncovering sexism in overwhelmingly liberal Massachusetts, after the shocking takeover by Republican Scott Brown of a seat held by Democrats for almost 60 years. Katie Zezima reported from Boston: "After Senate Race, Some Say Barrier for Women in Massachusetts Still Stands." Not mentioned in the laundry list of accusations of "…

If you're totally reliant upon print media, some of the major newspapers that is, you might not have noticed the news about former Democratic Senator and 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards' admission that he was indeed the father of his campaign mistress's daughter. That story couldn't so much as garner a single front-page story from any of the nation's top five major newspapers - USA…