New York Times

When Bob Herbert, a columnist for the New York Times since 1993, recently charged in his column that the Republican Party deliberately targets black Democrats using ads featuring attractive white women to exploit racial resentment, and claimed as proof that the GOP does not run such ads against opponents who are white, the liberal columnist could have disproved this thesis by consulting a 1994…

In its haste to publish the news about columnist Robert Novak's retirement (reported earlier by my colleague Matt Sheffield), the Associated Press left out an important word that might have led readers to believe that up until recently, the longtime journalist was emulating Ray Bolger in "The Wizard of Oz."The following was published by AP Online at 2:09 ET (photo right courtesy Yahoo): Novak has…

Warning: excessive adulation of Barack Obama is harmful to the vision and can in extreme cases cause hallucinations. We're all familiar with how an Obamania overdose produced strange tingling sensations in Chris Matthews.  A new, virulent strain of the affliction has now emerged, claiming its first victim in the person of Bob Herbert, who on live national TV saw visions of the Leaning Tower of…

Deborah Solomon, reporter for the New York Times Magazine, conducted her weekly Q&A this Sunday with Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, ostensibly discussing his plan to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by harnessing wind power. But Solomon, who admitted voting for Al Gore in the 2000 election, also posed hostile questions about Pickens's involvement in the 2004 campaign against Democrat…

Is reporter Michael Powell at the New York Times auditioning for Comic Relief? At next year's event, Powell's headline at his August 2 story (HT Weapons of Mass Discussion) about Obama's repeated hypocritical invocations and charges relating to race (of course, that's not how he sees it), along with his report's first 10 words, would bring the house down: With Genie Out of Bottle, Obama Is…

The Cornell golf club championship is next weekend, and I had been planning [brag alert] to defend the senior men's title I won last year.  But now, I just might have to think about entering the women's division instead.  The field is much smaller, not nearly as tough, and playing from the red tees should give me quite an advantage.  But what if tournament organizers balk at my entry, you ask? …

The battle between John McCain and the New York Times is getting very interesting.According to the Associated Press, the McCain campaign has struck back at two Times editorials this week highly critical of the Arizona senator. In fact, a campaign spokesman even went so far as to liken the editors of the Times to a blogger "sitting at home in his mother's basement and ranting into the ether…

On Friday, NewsBusters wondered how much attention media would pay to the Republican revolt that occurred after Speaker Pelosi adjourned the House for a five week vacation without allowing a vote on offshore oil drilling.It turns out that if you rely on the evening news programs of the three broadcast networks, you didn't hear about this extraordinary event at all (photo courtesy AP). And, if you…

The back and forth of racial accusations between the Obama and McCain camps made the front of Friday's New York Times in "McCain Camp Says Obama Plays 'Race Card,'" by Michael Cooper and Michael Powell. The reporters bizarrely suggested that it was the GOP, not Obama, that has injected race into the campaign, and relayed some dubious anecdotes to suggest Obama has been a victim of racist…

The good folks at MSNBC's "Hardball" might be pointing fingers at presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama for playing the race card with his response to a new ad by the McCain campaign, but the editorial board of the New York Times ain't buyin' it!Forgive the obvious pun, but color me -- amongst other things! -- unsurprised. In a posting at the Times' blog "The Board" published…

"McCain Goes Negative, Worrying Some in G.O.P.," the New York Times fretted Wednesday in a headline over a story by reporter Michael Cooper. Times readers learned that while it's perfectly acceptable for the Times to call conservative Sen. Tom Coburn "Dr. No" in a front-page headline, it's bad for John McCain to call Barack Obama the same thing.Cooper opened his story:In recent days Senator John…

Chalk another story up to the media exaggerating a problem that's bad enough on its own. On July 30, The New York Times reported on the front page of its business section that "several national restaurant chains were shuttered on Tuesday." But only two chains were closed, and both were owned by the same company. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "several" as "being of a number more than…

How many Germans would vote for Barack Obama for our president? CNN claims to know. During the last weekend that Barack Obama was in Germany, CNN used a graphic on the Wolf Blitzer show that claimed that 72% of Germans preferred Obama with only a mere 11% who favored John McCain. Of course, CNN didn't think it relevant to mention that only 501 Germans were even polled, nor that the poll was…