TimesWatch

Peculiar priorities at the New York Times. Reporter Scott Sayare, in Toulouse in the aftermath of the killings of seven by a radical Muslim, seemed to think that the top story out of the tragedy was Muslim fear of rising tensions and loss of "diversity": "After Killings in France, Muslims Fear a Culture of Diversity Is at Risk."

Toulouse is by no means without racism, anti-Semitism, crime or the deep social segregation that marks many French cities, but with a culture shaped by successive waves of immigration, it is described by its inhabitants as a place of particular tolerance.

New York Times reporter turned columnist Frank Bruni is on a nasty streak. He devoted his long Sunday Review column, "Rethinking His Religion," to a former classmate with a pat liberal morality lesson that seemed a lot like an invasion of patient privacy, then attacked Newt Gingrich and insulted Gingrich's wife. James Taranto at Best of the Web explained:

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni has some insufferable friends. Yesterday he spent nearly 1,500 words profiling one of them, a classmate at the University of North Carolina whom he knew at the time as a conservative frat boy who "attended Catholic services every Sunday in a jacket and tie." Bruni, who is gay, "kept a certain distance from him" under the assumption that the young man, whom he does not name in the column, would be hostile to the future Timesman because of his sexual orientation.

Movie reviewer A.O. Scott on Wednesday applied his expertise to the scientific ssue of global warming and rising sea levels, in his sarcasm-laden review of "The Island President," a documentary about "climate change" and the danger it supposedly poses to the island of Maldives: "In Paradise, and Closer Than Ever to Disaster."

There was some strange poll placement in Tuesday's New York Times, which led with "New Poll Finds Drop In Support For Afghan War." Yet the paper buried a story from the same poll, showing people are strongly against ObamaCare, on page 17. Given that the Supreme Court is now arguing the issue, wouldn't it have been more timely for the Times to lead off with or at least front its ObamaCare findings?

"Most Oppose at Least Part of Overhaul, Poll Finds," by Dalia Sussman, Helen Cooper, and Kate Phillips, brought the bad news for ObamaCare, but also found some caveats, including the fact that people apparently just don't understand the law:

The New York Times coverage of the Pope's trip to the dictatorship of Cuba has a strange, cheap-shot emphasis on how the Cuban people are coerced to attend such rallies, an authoritarian power play, but one the paper rarely if ever bothers to address during Cuban May Day rallies held in celebration of communism. A nytimes.com search suggests the Times has never previously used the words "orchestrated" or "intimidation" to describe the Cuban government coercing people to attend May Day parades.

So why use that explanation for the crowds surrounding the Pope, but leave that obvious explanation off when talking about crowds listening to dictator Fidel Castro's latest multi-hour-drone-a-thon of a speech?

Saturday's front-page New York Times story by Susan Saulny focused on the Santorum campaign in Louisiana before Santorum's easy win in the Republican primary there: "On the Right, Santorum Has Women's Vote."

Saulny emphasized the religious angle of Santorum's appeal. The condescending story provided slight corrective to the paper's misleading previous coverage assuming Santorum lacked support from women, but maintained the unsubstantiated idea, embraced by the Times, that moderate Republican women are turned off by appeals to social conservatism.

Has the New York Times Business section gone soft on former New Jersey Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, now under the scandal spotlight for his service as chief executive of the failed financial services firm MF Global?

Saturday's Business Day story by Azam Ahmed and Ben Protess buried intriguing details that reflect suspiciously on Corzine under the bland headline, "Congressional Memo Sheds New Light on MF Global." The paper didn't even identify the scandal-plagued former governor as a Democrat.

The New York Times's Scott Sayare reported on Saturday from Toulouse, France, the sight of the killing of Jewish schoolchildren by a radical Islamist, "After Unity Over a Rampage in France, Politics Drives in Wedges," and accused the French paper Le Figaro as being "increasingly viewed as a mouthpiece" for tough-on-crime French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

That's quite ironic, considering Sayare himself functioned as a mouthpiece for Obama in a September 23, 2010 story, calling the president "a powerful symbol of hope" among poor Muslims in the Paris slums. And the paper has long been irredeemably hostile to President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom the Times can never forgive for being friendly with President George W. Bush.

Former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, who previously confessed she couldn't grasp "the moral compass" of people who opposed Obama-care, denied the need for any balance when discussing the constitutionality of the matter in her Wednesday column, since the measure's opponents are so obviously wrong.

Journalistic convention requires that when there are two identifiable sides to a story, each side gets its say, in neutral fashion, without the writer’s thumb on the scale. This rule presents a challenge when one side of a controversy obviously lacks merit. But mainstream journalism has learned to navigate those challenges, choosing evolution over “intelligent design,” for example, and treating climate change naysayers as cranks.

Friday's New York Times column by Paul Krugman is titled "Paranoia Strikes Deeper." (It's evidently a sequel to Krugman's "Paranoia Strikes Deep" column of November 9, 2009. We eagerly await the final installment of the trilogy, "Paranoia Strikes Deepest," which should come out before the 2012 election.)

Scott Sayare and Steven Erlanger reported for the New York Times from Toulouse, France on Thursday on the cornering of the killer of seven people in France, including three children: "Shooting Suspect, Cornered and Armed, Tells French Police That He Killed 7." The story was filed before the suspect, Mohammad Merah, was shot dead in a police raid.

Merah's confession obviously made it hard for the Times to avoid the fact he's an Islamic radical inspired by Al Qaeda:

Comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO's panel show "Real Time," appeared in Thursday's New York Times, pleading for a cease-fire in the current culture wars over insensitivity: "Please Stop Apologizing."

It's quite a convenient argument for Maher, given that he's been under fire from conservatives lately for his vulgar and demeaning descriptions of Sarah Palin, delivered last year both on his HBO show and in his comedy act (and refused to apologize). Conservatives have argued there is a media double standard against conservative figures, noting that radio host Rush Limbaugh was excoriated for calling a Georgetown law student a "slut," but that Maher suffered no censure for his far more vile comments about Palin (you can read them in this Reality Check from Rich Noyes of the MRC).

What makes Maher's appearance in the Times galling is that the paper has yet to inform its own readers of Maher's previous comments, even though conservatives have spent weeks making them an issue. Not even a front-page Times story that included details of Maher's $1 million donation to a pro-Obama SuperPAC roused the Times to mentioning his attacks on Palin.

In his latest "Economic Scene" column for Wednesday's New York Times, "Inequality Undermines Democracy," Eduardo Porter seemed puzzled by why Americans aren't into class warfare.

Porter, a former economics reporter for the Times, fretted America was turning into a "hereditary plutocracy" and put in another plug for the lefties of Occupy Wall Street.

What did French president Nicolas Sarkozy ever do to the New York Times to incur such outsized wrath?

In a line of attack reminiscent of the Times's sordid attempt to link the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to the conservative movement, Paris bureau chief Steven Erlanger on Wednesday used the killings at a Jewish school in France ("Killings Could Stall Elections' Nationalist Turn") to suggest Sarkozy's tough-on-immigration re-election campaign rhetoric could be contributing to a violent anti-immigrant mood in France. (The gunman, whose identity was unknown at the time of filing, is apparently an Islamic extremist who trained with Al Qaeda.)

The New York Times, laboring under the false impression it participated in George W. Bush's "rush to war" in Iraq, is pushing back hard against the prospect of preemptive action against Iran's nuclear threat, raising the specter of another Middle East quagmire for the United States.

Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker reported Tuesday's lead story, "U.S. Simulation Forecasts Perils Of Strike At Iran."

New York Times energy reporter John Broder, who is notoriously receptive to climate-change hysteria and dismissive of skeptical arguments, played defense for President Obama in Tuesday's "Obama Energy Policies Differ From Romney's Portrayal." The online headline is harsher: "Romney Misleads on Obama and Energy Prices." But did he really?

Note: The link goes to an online version of the story that is significantly altered from the story that appeared in print Tuesday morning, from which this text comes:

A tribute to veteran feminist Gloria Steinem by contributor Sarah Hepola that compared her to Martin Luther King Jr. led the New York Times's Sunday Styles section, "A Woman Like No Other." Famous (now infamous) Obama portraitist and hagiographer Shepard Fairey contributed the large likeness of Steinem that dominates the page.

After some background on Steinem pushing the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970, Hepola asked the question nobody but the New York Times is asking:

The latest New York Times' "Long Run" profile on Saturday's front page featured Rick Santorum ("A Passionate Persona Forged in a Brutal Defeat"), accused by reporter Katharine Seelye of having "contributed to the circuslike atmosphere" in the case of Terry Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman involved in a controversial "right-to-die" case: "The spectacle left much of the public aghast."

One reason why the public felt that way was the coverage of liberal outlets like the Times, slanted heavily toward the view of Terry's husband Michael, who fiercely advocated pulling the plug.

Last year at NCAA basketball tournament time, President Obama's "pool" garnered fawning coverage, with New York Times political reporter Michael Shear praising the president's round-ball acumen when some of the president's early predictions came through: "Mr. Obama knows his hoops."

This year the praise can be found in the sports section itself. Reporter Mark Viera covered the North Carolina State-Georgetown University game under this headline: "N.C. State, President's Pick, Sends the Hoya to Another Early Exit."

On Monday the New York Times offered yet another unsubstantiated tale of the GOP scaring away female voters. Reporter Ashley Parker's story, under the headline "Romneys Court Women Alienated by Contraception Issue," not only fails to back up the headline, but contradicts itself.

The paper's own recent poll finding, buried by the paper last week, found most women oppose the Obamacare mandate that religious institutions provide contraception coverage. That tidbit from the poll didn't make it into Parker's story. And Parker didn't seem to realize the implications of a poll result she did cite: Social conservative candidate Rick Santorum is far ahead of the more moderate Mitt Romney among female Republican primary voters. If the paper's headline were true, wouldn't those "alienated women" be flocking to moderate Mitt instead of scary Santorum?

The New York Times tried to tie Mitt Romney to Communist China's video surveillance of its citizens in a Friday front-page story from Beijing by Andrew Jacobs and Penn Bullock, "A U.S. Tie to Push On Surveillance In Chinese Cities -- Firm Romney Founded – Bain Bought Supplier of Cameras Used in Monitoring." But the Times left off the fact that employees at Bain Capital have given more money to Democrats than Republicans over the last four years.

The Web headline was more explicit: "Firm Romney Founded Is Tied to Chinese Surveillance." Romney's name was mentioned 12 times in the 1,800-word story, although the Times itself admitted (in paragraph five) that he has had no role in Bain’s operations since 1999.

Here's your daily dose of liberal hysteria, courtesy of New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal's Thursday evening post, "Grand, Old and Anti-Woman." Previously Rosenthal called Republican House Speaker John Boehner a racist  for asking President Obama to delay a speech to Congress.

The partisan liberal news site Talking Points Memo managed to be tougher on President Obama's Thursday speech in Maryland than reporter Mark Landler of the New York Times, at least in his initial online filing on Thursday afternoon, "Obama Defends Energy Policy, Hitting Back at Presidential Candidates." TPM reporter Benjy Sarlin did the sort of aggressive fact-checking of Obama's claims that the Times reserves for Republican candidates and politicians.

Landler wrote for the Times:

Neil Munro of the Daily Caller reports on a double standard on religious-bashing ads in the New York Times involving Pamela Geller (pictured), the activist against radical Islam whose "venomous" rhetoric the Times finds offensive, especially after her involvement in the opposition to building a mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero.

New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman portrayed conservative Republicans as reeling from the renewed focus on so-called women's issues, but only vaguely mentioned that Obama's approval ratings have actually slipped since the public focus on abortion and contraception, in his front-page story Thursday, "Women Figure Anew in Senate's Latest Battle."

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter wrote a column for Wednesday's Business section on the "offensive figure" Rush Limbaugh ("After Apology, National Advertisers Are Still Shunning Limbaugh") on the radio host losing advertisers after his "slut" comment on birth-control activist Sandra Fluke was inflamed by the left.

But the Times has thus far ignored the counterexample raised by conservatives of comedian and HBO "Real Time" host Bill Maher, who used a far more vile word to describe Republican Sarah Palin in March 2011. (The word's very offensiveness makes it unprintable, unlike Limbaugh's comment, a standard of obscenity that actually shields Maher.)

Forget everything New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written before about Hillary Clinton. In 1996 Dowd was scathing about the disconnect between Hillary's self-serving role as secular saint, and the vengeful politician lurking behind the scrim.

But now Hillary is a feminist heroine (and perhaps a presidential candidate?) once again, at least in a battle with Republican pols suffering an "insane bout of mass misogyny," her term for Republican positions against forcing employers to pay for birth control, and legislation in some states requiring an ultrasound before an abortion: "Women have watched a chilling cascade of efforts in Congress and a succession of states to turn women into chattel, to shame them about sex and curb their reproductive rights."

The New York Times most apocalyptic environmental reporter Justin Gillis returned with another scary front-page story Wednesday. Last Christmas, Gillis penned a warning about Republicans imperiling climate research funding that environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr.called "perhaps the worst piece of reporting I've ever seen in the Times on climate change."

His latest is even more urgent: "Sea Level Rise Seen as Threat to 3.7 Million." The story is based on research from Climate Central, which employs Heidi Cullen as chief climatologist. Cullen is notorious for suggesting in 2007 that meteorologists who doubt global warming should have their credentials revoked.

It was Mitt Romney's turn in the barrel for the New York Times's recurring front-page political profile feature, "The Long Run." Walmart-hostile reporter Michael Barbaro did the honors Saturday, scouring the former Massachusetts' governor's former associates and rivals in the Boston statehouse and devoting nearly 2,000 words to the same "sometimes awkward style and aloof manner" criticism that the Times has been uncovering for the last several months: "Legislators Recall Governor Who Didn't Mingle."