Clay Waters's blog

New York Times reporter Erik Eckholm (pictured), whose previous reporting betrays no conservative sympathies, listened to former presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday afternoon and winced at her attacks on President Obama. Thursday’s post for the paper’s “Caucus” blog, “Bachmann Assails Obama Before Conservatives.”

The Times is particularly sensitive to people accusing Obama of “apologizing for America” overseas. Public Editor Arthur Brisbane got huffy and pedantic in defense of the president back in January:

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll with a striking finding has New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal in dismay: 53 percent of self-described liberal Democrats support keeping Guantanamo Bay open. Does this mean their previous virulent opposition was not based on concern for civil liberties, but was just partisan Bush-hatred? Of course not.

Rosenthal’s Thursday morning post “Hurray for Guantanamo Bay” ignored that clear Democratic hypocrisy while making excuses for President Obama. Apparently it’s all the fault of Republicans in Congress. (Left-wing civil liberties advocate Glenn Greenwald strongly disagreed in a March 2011 op-ed for Salon.) Rosenthal wrote:

The front of Thursday’s New York Times National section featured Jennifer Steinhauer’s “Birth Control is Covered, And G.O.P. Vows a Fight.” Steinhauer portrayed the fight in cynical political terms, showcasing Republicans as being opportunistic rather than motivated by principled opposition to Obama’s requirement that Catholic universities and charities violate their religious beliefs by offering free birth control via their health insurance plans.

Congressional Republicans, seizing on the type of social issue that motivates and unifies their base, stepped forcefully Wednesday into the battle over an Obama administration rule requiring health insurance plans provided by Catholic universities and charities to offer free birth control to women, vowing to fight back with legislation to unravel the new policy.

“Stop Compromising,” pleaded New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal on his “Loyal Opposition” blog Wednesday morning.

Rosenthal was aggrieved to hear Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod suggest the president was open to “compromise”on the administration’s plan requiring religious institutions to violate their beliefs and cover birth control in their employees’ health insurance plans. (Apparently compromise is no longer a good thing in Washington.)

Rosenthal (pictured) urged Obama to make a more full-throated defense of the rule, pointing out that “this isn’t a theocracy.”

Staking a principled hard-left position on campaign finance, the New York Times wailed over President Obama’s reversal on Super PAC's in its lead editorial Wednesday, “Another Campaign for Sale – President Obama reverses position and joins the sleazy ‘Super PAC’ money race.” (Yet the paper's news coverage failed to highlight those hypocrisies.)

New York Times campaign reporters Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg found no hypocrisy in President Obama’s Monday flip-flop on the evils of "Super PAC" fund-raising in Tuesday’s front-page story, “Obama Yields In Marshaling Of ‘Super PAC.’” As of yesterday, Obama is encouraging Democrats to give to the political action committee Priorities USA, which is led by two former White House aides.

After the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United such Super PACs can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and invididuals. The Times' passive headline puts no responsibility on Obama, portraying his change of heart as a necessary evil he has little control over.

Potential Obama opponent Mitt Romney is “the gift that keeps on giving” according to the Obama campaign team, the New York Times' Helene Cooper eagerly reports in her Monday “Political Memo,” “The Flub Watch Never Stops for Obama’s Team.” The text box reads: “If Romney makes a misstep, the Democrats are ready to pounce.” And Cooper is right there to cover Team Ohama's glorious Twitter victories in loving detail.

Sorry, Founders: The “terse and old” U.S. Constitution has been ruled out of date by Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak for failing to provide such “rights” as free health care.

Liptak made the front of Tuesday’s New York Times “Sidebar” news analysis, “‘We the People’ Loses Followers,” the paper’s most e-mailed and viewed news story of the morning.

New York Times reporters Trip Gabriel (pictured right) and Ashley Parker, who follow Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, respectively, teamed up for Saturday’s report from Las Vegas, “Republican Candidates Wrangle Over Nevada," rushing to Obama’s aide after a mild attack by Mitt Romney, and accused conservatives of carrying a “caricature” image of lefty donor George Soros.

New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum wrote a valentine in news story format for Saturday’s edition on Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s heavily publicized donation to the abortion provider Planned Parenthood, after it initially lost funding from the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity: “With Fine Timing, Bloomberg Makes a Financial Pledge That Excites and Engages.”

Raising not a whisper of criticism about the righteousness of Bloomberg’s big pro-abortion donations, Grynbaum called it the mayor's “biggest political coups in years and gave him, at least for the moment, a rejuvenated voice on the national stage,” and claiming it “reflected the mayor’s longtime support for the causes of reproductive rights and women’s health.” But Grynbaum skipped the less flattering side of Bloomberg's apparent enthusiasm for abortion.

On Sunday, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat highlighted the blunt favoritism shown by the media toward Planned Parenthood in last week’s headline-making spat with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, the breast cancer charity, after it announced it would no longer fund the prominent abortion provider: “The Media’s Abortion Blinders.”

Douthat compared the popularity of the pro-life position among Americans with the unanimous hostility the media unleashed on Komen, and the universal respect accorded Planned Parenthood: “... on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant and its blinders impenetrable.”

After warning for years of the dangers posed by the Religious Right in politics, the New York Times is suddenly interested in injecting Mormon (and Catholic) religion into politics, at least when it comes to pet issues like amnesty for illegal immigrants. The top of Friday’s National section featured religion reporter Laurie Goodstein’s “Romney’s Tough Immigration View Is at Odds With His Church.”

There was no “I Wouldn't Buy the Underwear Just Yet” mockery of Mormons this time. And while the paper aimed a harsh front-page spotlight on the Mormon church for its involvement in passing California’s Proposition 8, which preserved the state ban on gay marriage, Goodstein has no criticism of its involvement in the Democratic-friendly cause of amnesty.

“Immigrant Worker Firings Unsettle a College Campus,” New York Times reporter Jennifer Medina’s sympathetic report from Claremont, Calif., on immigrants without proof of legal residency being fired from the Pomona College cafeteria, blamed the firings on union-busting on the part of campus administration and failed to pose the obvious factual question: Were the workers here illegally or not? (Not that the Times has ever shown much concern about illegal immigration in its news coverage.)

New York Times reporters Gardiner Harris and Pam Belluck passed on the outrage of pro-choice groups to news that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which fights breast cancer, is cutting financial support to Planned Parenthood in the wake of bad publicity and a congressional investigation. The Times reporters seemed pretty outraged about it themselves in Thursday's “Uproar as Breast Cancer Group Ends Partnership With Planned Parenthood.”

The Times helped push the story with two pro-Planned Parenthood images; a ridiculous-looking posed shot of three pro-abortion activists in Richmond, Va., trying a Twitter campaign to boycott Komen, and an anti-Komen satirical liberal greeting already making the rounds on the left side of the web. While the reporters found "conservative women" that supported Komen's move, there was no liberal label for Planned Parenthood acolytes, who were merely "prominent women’s groups, politicians and public health advocates."

Mormon fear at the New York Times. The paper’s online “Room for Debate” section, which “invites knowledgeable outside contributors to discuss news events and other timely issues” on Monday asked “What Is It About Mormons?," inspired by the prospect of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination for president. The fact that the Senate has for the last five years been led by a Mormon, Democrat Harry Reid, has failed to trigger similar concerns at the Times. The Times also shows it feels free to shower at least some religions with derision and mockery.

Mitt Romney can’t win for losing. Wednesday’s New York Times “news analysis” by Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker posed as concerned over the “heavy new baggage” the Romney campaign had acquired by successfully going negative against Newt Gingrich in his Florida primary victory Tuesday night: “A Nasty Fight Carries Risks for the Winner.” Of course it does.

Did the New York Times learn nothing about rushing to judgement and presumption of innocence from its Duke lacrosse “rape” hoax debacle?

More than any other media outlet, in 2006 the Times trumpeted black stripper's Crystal Mangum's rape accusations against three white Duke lacrosse players, accusations that quickly fell apart in a mass of contradictions and shifting stories.

Yet even as the case fell apart and other liberal media outlets backed away, the Times issued a now-notorious, error-riddled 5,000-word lead story by Duff Wilson, concluding that there was enough evidence against the players for Michael Nifong, the soon-to-be-disgraced-and-jailed local prosecutor, to bring the case to trial.

As part of Obama-care “reform,” the administration is requiring religious organizations include free birth control in their employee insurance plans. Monday’s front-page story on the controversy by Denise Grady took the perspective of supporters of the rule change, which Catholics and others call an attack on religious freedom: “Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges.”

The jump-page photo featured Fordham law student Bridgette Dunlap (pictured right), who organized an off-campus clinic to provide birth control for students, and the story both began and concluded from her perspective, in defense of the change.

Emily Ramshaw’s New York Times report on new abortion regulations in Texas, “Required Delay Between Sonogram and Abortion Creates Logistical Issues,” made the national edition Sunday. In an odd twist for the liberal Times, Ramshaw lamented the plight of abortion clinics having to comply with regulations. And isn’t it ironic for the pro-regulation Times to criticize a “bureaucratic nightmare”?

Ramshaw is a reporter for the Texas Tribune, a left-leaning nonprofit news organization based in Austin that has a content partnership with the Times. Back on September 30, 2011 she filed “Few Bright Spots in Perry’s Health Care Record,” a negative piece on Texas governor Rick Perry, at the start of Perry's brief presidential campaign.

New York Times reporter Mark Landler’s lead story for Saturday’s National section boosted Obama (and slapped down Mitt Romney) via the unlikely topic of the president's reading material: “Obama Buttresses Case for U.S. Resilience With Book From Unlikely Source.” Landler reveled in what he called a "delicious coincidence for the White House."

When Senator Barack Obama was photographed clutching a copy of “The Post-American World” as he left his campaign plane during the Democratic primaries in May 2008, some critics viewed it as a telling sign that he embraced a view of the United States as a waning world power.

First it was New York Times reporters who were quoting unelected Cuban dictator Fidel Castro insulting the “idiocy and ignorance” of the two lead candidates for the GOP nomination, in a January 26 story. Now columnist Thomas Friedman gets in on the act, quoting Castro approvingly in Sunday’s “Made in the World.”

New York Times reporter Helene Cooper, touring the West with the president, claimed that the dust-up between Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer and President Obama on an airport tarmac in Phoenix could help him among Hispanics: “In Airport Run-In, Democrats See Help for Obama Among Hispanics.”

A flattering photo from Las Vegas of Obama and some star-struck preteens was just part of the spin in her Friday story:

Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s 2,400-word front-page Friday New York Times profile of Republican candidate Newt Gingrich, “Gingrich Stuck to Caustic Path in Ethics Battles,” rehashed the standard liberal storyline about the former House Speaker’s aggressive stance against Democratic corruption, which eventually won Republicans the House of Representatives. (Plus a severely unflattering photo on the jump page of the former speaker from 1995 heading into a hearing on ethics complaints filed against him.)

As she has before, Stolberg suggested Gingrich was to blame for today’s current partisanship – “many fault him for erasing whatever civility once existed in the capital.” As if Gingrich’s attacks on Congressional Democratic leaders could be blamed for what liberal Democrats tried to do to Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991.

Who cares what an unelected dictator thinks about the U.S. presidential campaign? Well, New York Times reporters do. Michael Shear and Trip Gabriel were in Miami following the campaign in the runup to next Tuesday’s Florida primary and quoted Fidel Castro in Thursday’s “Candidates Scramble to Win Hispanic Voters in Florida.”

They even suggested the dictator (who they merely called “the retired Cuban leader”) “had reason to be annoyed” at threats voiced by Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

Michael Schmidt reported from Baghdad Wednesday for the Times on the conclusion of the trial (held in California) of the last Marine accused in the so-called Haditha massacre in Iraq: “Anger in Iraq After Plea Bargain Over 2005 Massacre.” Although Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich pled guilty to a single misdemeanor that called for a maximum of 90 days in jail, Schdmit insisted on calling him a "ringleader" in the "massacre."

After the incident came to light in July 2006, Times reporter Paul von Zielbauer filed over 30 stories on the alleged killings of two dozen Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha, which anti-war activists were quick to compare to the My Lai massacre of Vietnam. The Times has long presumed the guilt of the Marines involved, while barely covering the steady drip of acquittals of all but one of the eight Marines charged in the “massacre.”

Right from the start, Trip Gabriel’s account Wednesday of Newt Gingrich’s campaign ride through Florida cast a overdramatic and condescending color on conservatives: “Gingrich Tries to Lure Tea Party Support in Florida.”

There was more tax-hike propaganda from the New York Times on Wednesday’s front page, as reporters Nicholas Confessore and David Kocieniewski matched President Obama’s campaign strategy by taking an obsessively detailed look at Mitt Romney’s recently released tax returns while suggesting the findings bolstered Obama’s argument that the rich are undertaxed: “For Romneys, Friendly Code Reduces Taxes.”

There was even a small photo of the top of Romney’s tax return included in the story, which was tucked under Helene Cooper's pro-Obama lead story on the State of the Union address in a manner suggesting the two stories were linked.

Times Watch has shown how deeply the left-wing motif of Occupy Wall Street – of the embattled impoverished 99% battling the over-privileged 1% – has sunken into the collective consciousness of New York Times journalists. It was all over the Times this weekend, from front page news to a special Education pullout featuring interviews with "aspiring idealists" fighting "the political and financial masters of the universe."

The special Sunday section of Education Life featured Cara Buckley’s “The New Student Activism – The Occupy movement on campus seems to have legs. But how strong is their will?”