Trip Gabriel

The New York Times's Trip Gabriel reported Tuesday that each side has rested its case in the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, on trial for four charges of infanticide at his Philadelphia clinic. The first paragraph is revealing:

“They are known as Baby Boy A, Baby C, Baby D and Baby E, all of whom prosecutors call murdered children and the defense calls aborted fetuses -- the very difference in language encapsulating why anti-abortion advocates are so passionate about drawing attention to the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, which wrapped up here on Monday with summations by both sides.”

A mere month after the trial began, the New York Times has, under pressure, sent a reporter to Philadelphia to cover the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell on charges of mass infanticide.

Trip Gabriel did indeed file from Philadelphia on Tuesday, "Online Furor Draws Press to Abortion Doctor's Trial." But his location was mostly irrelevant, as he only pinned two and a half paragraphs from what happened in court on Monday to the end of his report. Most of the story was a recap of the trial's "grisly details," accusations from "conservatives" that the media was ignoring the story, and defenses from unlabeled liberal media "experts" denying a coverup.

At least one major paper is taking seriously the illicit taping of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell's strategy session by a left-wing Democratic PAC, which then found its way into the left-wing magazine Mother Jones.

The magazine's first foray into hidden video struck left-wing gold -- capturing candidate Mitt Romney's claim at a fundraiser about the "47 percent" who would vote for Obama because they were dependent on government. But this new clip, in which McConnell's staff discusses a potential Democratic opponent, actress Ashley Judd, seems to have backfired on the magazine and the liberal PAC Progress Kentucky, who provided the clip, both of which are in legal hot water.

But New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel saw only embarrassment on Sen. McConnell's side in his Friday account, buried under an innocuous headline on page 14, "McConnell Recording Is Linked To a PAC."

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel visited the "white, ethnic...stronghold" of Hazleton, Pennsylvania on Monday and cast it as reactionary under the headline "New Attitude on Immigration Skips an Old Coal Town."

Before Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, before “self-deportation” became the Republican presidential platform in 2012, there was Hazleton.

This working-class city in the Poconos passed the country’s first law aimed at making life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they would pack up and leave.

The perils and victims of the round of the mandatory federal spending cuts known as sequestration led the New York Times' weekend coverage, with the 2.4% cut in annual federal spending that went into effect starting Friday labeled "austerity" and ushered in with headlines warning that "Poor May Be Hit Particularly Hard." Also: those who still approve of Congress tend to be "Obama haters," according to a news story.

Predictably, it was pro-Obama White House reporter Jackie Calmes' lead story in the Sunday edition that forecast the "new round of austerity" and predicted less economic growth as a result: "Cuts To Achieve Goal For Deficit, But Toll Is High – $4 Trillion In 10 Years – No 'Grand Bargain,' and a Drag on Jobs and Economic Growth."

In "G.O.P.'s Ideological Split Appears in Virginia Governor's Race," New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel saw a controversial candidate on one side of the Virginia governor's race -- Republican candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general, who has support in the Tea Party and social conservative wings of the party.

His likely Democratic opponent? Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and controversial fundraiser for the Clinton administration. But judging by the paper's lack of coverage so far, only Republicans have a problem. Gabriel doesn't even mention Democrat McAuliffe until paragraph 12, and in an odd omission, calls him only "a businessman and former political operative."

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel promoted movie star and aspiring liberal politician Ashley Judd on Saturday: "Kentuckians Don’t Rule Out a Star as a Senator." Gabriel wrote: "How serious could such a candidacy be? Plenty, it turns out."

New York Times campaign reporter Trip Gabriel in the paper's Election 2012 section Thursday suggested Paul Ryan's brand of fiscal restraint was a dead end for the GOP in the "demographically diverse" United States: "Ryan in Republican Forefront, But Loss May Bring Blame – Questions on Whether Ticket Needed More Moderation."

For Representative Paul D. Ryan, defeat is not the political career-ender that it is for Mitt Romney. For one thing, he still has his day job -- he won an eighth term from his Wisconsin district on Tuesday. For another, Mr. Ryan is now a household name who is situated, at age 42, at the forefront of the next generation of Republicans.

On Monday's front page, New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Trip Gabriel used the upcoming vice presidential debate to criticize Obama's performance in his debate with Mitt Romney last week: "Biden Up Next, Obama's Aides Plot Comeback."

The Times didn't flinch from calling out Obama's "disaster" of a debate performance, but did find some excuses for the president, including distractions like the terrorist massacre in Libya (though that didn't stop Obama from attending a fundraiser in Las Vegas the next day). The Times also dropped in this revelation: "Mr. Obama made clear to advisers that he was not happy about debating Mr. Romney, whom he views with disdain."

Vice President Joe Biden's latest gaffe came when he asked a North Carolina crowd how Romney and Ryan can "justify raising taxes on the middle class that’s been buried the last four years?" perhaps forgetting his boss has been in charge during that exact time frame (and that the Romney campaign denies it will raise taxes on the middle class). It predictably failed to make the print edition of the New York Times.

Campaign reporter Trip Gabriel did blog about it on Tuesday, but did his best to minimize the damage by suggesting the comment was a "stray sentence" wrenched from proper context: "Republicans Seize On Biden’s ‘Middle Class’ Remark."

New York Times campaign reporter Trip Gabriel joined vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and his brother Tobin on a plane above the Rocky Mountains – and devoted a full story to probing Ryan's claims on climbing them, in Friday's "For Ryan, Perks Of Joining Ticket Can Be Weighty."

Gabriel rode with the paper's trendy passion for partisan-slanted "fact-checking," but at an even more petty level. After last week's controversy over Ryan's marathon time, Gabriel portrayed Ryan as on the defensive over another silly atheletic-related controversy, this time over how many mountain summits he had climbed, which Gabriel linked to Ryan's debunked claim to have run a super-fast marathon.

The photo caption: "Paul D. Ryan with his brother Tobin on Wednesday over the Rockies, where they sorted out the facts behind a mountainous claim."

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel posted Wednesday on "Chris the Baker" -- Chris McMurray, a cookie store owner who made waves when he turned away VP Joe Biden from a prospective shop visit. Yesterday he joined Rep. Paul Ryan at a campaign rally in Roanoke, Va., site of President Obama's infamous "You didn't build that" remark, widely seen as dismissive of individual initiative and entrepreneurship.

Gabriel predictably accused McMurray and the GOP of "willfully twisting the president's remark" and blamed Ryan for having "continued the misrepresentation" of what Obama actually said. But do Obama's actual words help him at all?

On Thursday Jackie Calmes (pictured) and Trip Gabriel, two of the New York Times's more slanted campaign reporters, teamed up to cover Obama's campaign trip to Colorado and Romney's trip to Iowa: "Obama Assails Romney on Women’s Health Care." Covering Obama in Denver, the Times credited the president's popularity among women, while the Romney coverage from Iowa emphasized a controversy in that state, underlined by an accompanying photo caption: "Mitt Romney, visiting Iowa, kept quiet about his opposition to tax credits for wind power."

Riding to the defense of the Obama administration, New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel questionably termed allegations by conservatives that Obama had weakened federal welfare policy "a stretch" in a Wednesday news story, "Romney Presses Obama On Work in Welfare Law."

But scholars from the Heritage Foundation disagree and rebut the main point in defense raised by the Times. "[Health and Human Services] now claims that states receiving a waiver must 'commit that their proposals will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared to the state’s prior performance.' But given the normal turnover rate in welfare programs, the easiest way to increase the number of people moving from 'welfare to work' is to increase the number entering welfare in the first place." Heritage also defended Romney against the White House's hypocrisy charge.

New York Times reporters have been hammering away at Mitt Romney over his handling of the immigration issue, using last week's Supreme Court decision that unanimously upheld the main component of Arizona's immigration enforcement law to portray him as in an awkward and defensive position with Latino voters (while downplaying the fact that illegal immigration is a lower priority for Latinos than employment).

Campaign reporter Jeff Zeleny said on PBS's Washington Week last Friday that Romney "really took a hard right stance during this Republican primary nomination" on immigration enforcement, and several minutes of Friday's TimesCast were devoted to portraying Romney on the defensive.

New York Times campaign reporter Trip Gabriel followed up on his vital hard-news front-page expose of Ann Romney's horseback riding with an update on Sunday that also conveniently illuminated the stereotype of the Romneys as rich and out of touch, this time with the help of that quintessential man of the people, comedian Stephen Colbert: "Romney Horse Wins Spot on Olympic Dressage Team."

President Obama on Friday bypassed Congress to put in place the New York Times' beloved Dream Act by executive order that halted deportation of young people who came to the United States illegally. That merited Saturday's lead story slot, occupied by immigration beat reporter Julia Preston and John Cushman, "Obama To Permit Young Migrants To Remain In U.S."

Preston and Cushman devoted precisely two of their 28 paragraphs to opposing views from "angry" Republicans in Congress. The rest were devoted to Obama's announcement, joyful illegals, and their liberal supporters happy that immigrants could finally, as the Times has reported ad nauseum, "come out of the shadows" (Preston's reporting in particular is notoriously pro-amnesty.) And the paper's succeeding stories on the issue were little better.

"Christians On Right Urge Reform On Migrants," ran the headline over Trip Gabriel's Wednesday piece. If it sounds familiar, it's because the New York Times runs these wishful-thinking "conservative Christians break with movement on immigration enforcement" on a regular basis.

From a July 2010 article by Laurie Goodstein: "At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders."

The Sunday New York Times devoted a 2,300-word front-page story by Trip Gabriel helpfully reminding everyone that the Romneys are really really rich. The ostensible subject of the pointless piece, "In Rarefied Sport, a View of the Romneys’ World," was Ann Romney's participation in "dressage," "in which horses costing up to seven figures execute pirouettes and other dancelike moves for riders wearing tails and top hats."

The Times, being a good liberal paper, of course consistently discourages ostentatious displays of wealth by never glorifying the lifestyles of rich and famous Manhattanites, and would certainly never try to make a buck off same.

The New York Times's Monica Davey and Trip Gabriel shared Democratic "giddiness" over the possibility of winning a Senate seat in the Republican-leaning state Indiana on Thursday: "With Primary Over, a New Battle for Indiana Senate Seat Begins." The text box was all sunshine for the Democratic Party's prospects for the Indiana seat: "Strategies emerge as Democrats now see a chance at a win."

The morning after Senator Richard G. Lugar, in his 36th year in office, was overwhelmingly defeated in a Republican primary election, this state awoke on Wednesday to another surprise: A new battle, now likely to be far fiercer and costlier than once expected, was already brewing over the seat he leaves behind.

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel is still searching out electoral problems for Republicans among Hispanics: "Crucial to Romney, Florida’s Latino Voters Are Wary of Him, Too."

If Mitt Romney is to overcome his problem with Hispanic voters, he is going to have to start by changing a lot of minds in central Florida.

A key battleground in a vital swing state, the region is home to growing numbers of non-Cuban Hispanics who have always been viewed by Republicans as open to their economic and social views but reluctant to back the party in part because of its position on illegal immigration. With Mr. Romney having taken hawkish stances on immigration during the primary season, he and his campaign are now trying to shift the debate to what they feel will be friendlier terrain -- jobs.

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.

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.

After trashing his warnings of a potential nuclear-based EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s policy prescriptions are once again in the sights of the New York Times. Campaign reporter Trip Gabriel suggested Gingrich had a simplistic vision of the Iran threat in Thursday’s “Gingrich’s Foreign Policy Words Summon the Cold War, but Enemy Is Iran.”

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel, covering the Gingrich campaign, inflated conventional pro-Israel, anti-"peace process" opinions delivered by Newt Gingrich into a diplomatic drama about Gingrich scrapping the two-state solution worthy of "damage control," in Saturday’s “Gingrich Suggests a Reversal of Mideast Policy.”

The New York Times “Caucus” podcast recorded December 1 featured reporter and podcast host Sam Roberts wondering if it was a potentially dangerous tactic” for GOP candidates to insult the Occupy Wall Street movement. This exchange came a minute and a half from the end, after Roberts asked how the Occupy movement’s “99%” slogan was playing out in the Republican primary.

The New York Times has been anxiously awaiting the day the “sleeping giant” of the Hispanic vote wake up with an electoral roar to slaughter the G.O.P. once and for all. It hasn’t happened yet, but perhaps in 2012 the Republican line on immigration reform will cost Republicans the Hispanic vote and the presidency. After all, “some party officials,” allied with “some Republican strategists,” think it may.

Thursday’s bit of wishful thinking came from reporter Trip Gabriel, “Tough Immigration Talk Heats Up Debate, and Alienates Some Hispanics.”