New York Times

New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro promoted billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's bankrolling of his latest liberal crusade on Sunday's front page: "TV Blitz on Guns Puts Swing Senators on the Spot."

Barbaro, who covered the Romney campaign in hostile fashion and hated Wal-Mart's occasional donations to conservative groups (dwarfed by the corporation's liberal giving), didn't ask whether big-money Bloomberg was playing an unfairly influential role by trying to buy legislation he favors through his group Mayors for Illegal Guns.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, a former White House reporter for the paper, followed Sen. John McCain in mocking attendees of the latest Conservative Political Action Conference (aka CPAC) as "wacko birds" in his column Sunday on gay marriage at the Supreme Court.

A front-page New York Times profile of Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which fights gay marriage legislation, was actually fair until reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg's laudatory reference to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which raises money by smearing social conservative organizations as "hate groups."

Stolberg's Saturday story, "Ready to Fight Gay Marriage At Court Door," briefly cited as an authority the opportunistic left-wing group:

Saturday's New York Times took an offensively soft approach to the death of a Hamas terrorist instigator who raised her sons to kill Jews: "Mariam Farhat, 64, the 'Mother of Martyrs.'" The text box couched the terrorism in passive terms: "A woman who took unusual pride in how three of her sons died." The word "terrorism" didn't even appear in the obituary by William Yardley, who also called the murderous part of Hamas the "military wing."

Searches at the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times done at 9:30 p.m. on "Obama Arafat" (not in quotes) returned nothing relevant to the matter I am about to note. A Google News search on the same term (sorted by date) returns only about a half-dozen relevant items (another very recent one is missing, and I'll get that one in a later post this evening).

On Thursday in Ramallah, as Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard blog noted, U.S. President Barack Obama "addressed the assembled journalists while standing under a Yasser Arafat banner." Arafat is rightly considered the “father of modern terrorism.” Since U.S. establishment press coverage is non-existent, I'll take readers to an outraged Nile Gardiner at the UK Telegraph to express how utterly offensive Obama's silently condoning Arafat's legitimacy really is:

Barack Obama's speech in front of a sympathetic young left-wing audience in Israel demanding that Israel's leaders take risks for peace with the Palestinians, and to end the Israeli "occupation," received gushing reviews for its "historic" nature from New York Times journalists. Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren joined host Marcus Mabry and deputy foreign editor Michael Slackman on Thursday's Timescast. Joining by phone from Jerusalem, Rudoren could hardly contain her excitement.

Rudoren: "Well, this was an audience of people who were predisposed to like the speech and like Obama, and they wanted to come, and it was a largely left-wing audience, and they [ate?] the speech up. They loved it. He spoke Hebrew, he made jokes, he handled a heckler well. And he just played the strings of, sort of, the Israeli public very effectively, talking about their ancient roots in land, and then he delivered what was a very tough message, which he said very strongly, Israel cannot remain a Jewish and democratic state if it continues the occupation of the Palestinian territory...."

New York Times economics reporter turned liberal columnist Eduardo Porter really buried the lead in his latest column, "A Model For Reducing Emissions." And what is that model, exactly? The recession!

Who would have thought the United States would one day be a leader in cutting greenhouse gas emissions?

The original online headline to Wednesday's New York Times budget legislation story, "Finance Bill, Nearing Senate Passage, Would Protect Some Favored Programs," likely captured what reporters Jonathan Weisman and Annie Lowrey really wanted to say, betraying their big-government default favoritism: "Plan That Would Spare Vital Programs Is Expected to Pass Senate."

"Vital" by whose measurement? The article is peppered with similarly loaded liberal language marking "the worst" cuts, and making the Keynesian argument that any reduction in spending would "inhibit long-term economic growth."

On Monday, President Obama tapped Thomas Perez, currently the head of the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, to take the helm at the Department of Labor, replacing outgoing Secretary Hilda Solis.  This will be the third controversial Cabinet appointment after Brennan and Hagel.  In covering the story, Peter Baker of the New York Times mentioned Republican opposition to his nomination, but failed to mention Perez’s radical past preceding his service in the Obama administration, much less his controversial actions while at Justice.

According to Investors Business Daily, Perez was involved in the following:

Pot, kettle: New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani reviewed Tuesday a new biography by Zev Chafets of Fox News president Roger Ailes under the headline, "A Soft-Focus Look at Fox's Tough-Talking Tough Guy." Kakutani faulted the book for relying on familiar stories and, of course, for Fox News's conservatie viewpoint: "There is little cogent analysis in these pages about how Fox News frames its reports from a conservative point of view, or the effect that this has had on the national conversation."

Hypocritically, Kakutani provided no analysis, cogent or otherwise, on how the Times frames its reports from a liberal point of view, and has been doing so for far longer than Fox News.

The New York Times reported on the tragic death of seven Marines on a training exercise in Nevada that took place Monday night. Reporters Eric Schmitt and Timothy Williams on Wednesday even selectively quoted Democratic Majority leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada on the tragedy, but left out Reid's despicable reference to the sequester (as has the Washington Post and all three broadcast evening news shows so far).

The New York Times stands with Rand – on a pro-Democratic issue, at least. Times reporters snidely dismissed Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul's standing filibuster against Obama's drone policy on the March 9 front page, but Wednesday's lead story by Ashley Parker and Michael Shear saw Rand's comments on possible amnesty for illegal immigrants as foreshadowing a conservative cave-in: "G.O.P. Opposition To Migrant Law Is Falling Away – Eye On Hispanic Voters – Paul Is More Welcoming – Rising Chances for an Overhaul."

Much of the press is describing the EU's demand that Cyprus seize a portion of bank account holders' deposits, a demand rejected yesterday by the island nation's legislature, as a "tax."

I think it's reasonable to suggest that this characterization is designed to minimize the frightening authoritarianism the EU has just attempted. In a bit of a pleasant surprise, one organization openly calling the move an attempt at "seizure" is the Associated Press.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal cracked on New York Times columnist Frank Bruni for his Sunday Review column urging the new pope to "dwell less in the bedroom, more in the soup kitchen." (Last week Bruni guest-hosted the Charlie Rose show and pushed similar talking points.)

Taranto had fun with Bruni in his "Best of the Web" column Monday:

Monday's lead New York Times story was a long investigation by Michael Luo into what the Times sees as an NRA-fueled failure to properly protect women from former spouses by allowing the men to keep guns: "Ruled a Threat to Family, But Allowed to Keep Guns – Weapons Advocates Oppose States' Efforts to Bolster Orders of Protection."

Luo's usual beat is campaign finance, where he has a hobby of trying to get the IRS interested in GOP fundraising tactics he doesn't approve of. On Monday Luo displayed a very trusting nature in government regulation, assuming that the men lawless enough to murder women would have been stopped by gun restrictions.

Betraying his impatience with the Republican Party's insistence that President Obama cut spending, New York Times political reporter Jonathan Weisman sounded shocked that the GOP wasn't simply surrendering its principles in the wake of Obama's four–point victory last November, in Monday's "Republicans Determined To Press On With Air, If Not Vote, of Confidence." (Nice flattering photo of Paul Ryan, by the way.)

A year ago this month, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin stood on the floor of the House and declared that the ideals of small government, privatized health care and rigorous spending discipline captured in the budget plan about to pass the House would and should be central to the 2012 election campaign.

There was nothing but festering distress and especially "division" on the right at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference held last week, at least according to the New York Times. As noted previously on NewsBusters, CPAC generated headlines like this one from Saturday: "G.O.P. Divisions Fester at Conservative Retreat."

As Noel Sheppard pointed out, George Will picked up on that headline on ABC's This Week: "...I guarantee, if there were a liberal conclave comparable to this, and there were vigorous debates going on there, the New York Times headline would be, 'Healthy Diversity Flourishes at Liberal Conclave.'" Actually, Will wasn't far off. A contrast of headlines from this year's CPAC and previous years of Netroots Nation -- a roughly equivalent annual meeting of liberals and leftists --shows an obvious disparity in tone.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its 2013 pity party -- er, annual report -- on the State of the News Media (home page; full overview).

Two things struck me in my initial scan-through: First, the whining about newsroom cutbacks, which are largely related to pervasive bias and misplaced priorities; second, the characterization of newsmakers' improved ability to take their cases directly to the public "without any filter by the traditional media" as some kind of automatically negative trend.

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter's Friday story -- adapted from a longer post on his "Media Decoder" blog -- relayed the changing of the prime time guard at the nation's most liberal news channel: "Weekend Host Chris Hayes to Take Over 8 P.M. Slot on MSNBC." Stelter praised Hayes for his "well-regarded morning program," crediting it for "long, thoughtful conversations about politics and public policy," though conservatives would question how deep that surface sheen of sophistication truly is.

Chris Hayes will take over the 8 p.m. time slot on MSNBC in the next month, the Comcast owned channel announced on Thursday, the day after the current host of that hour, Ed Schultz, said he was moving from the weekdays to the weekends.

New York Times Atlanta bureau chief (and foodie) Kim Severson got rather insulting while writing about a new Mississippi law forbidding any locality from making rules on food size or content, passed in the wake of NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg's thwarted attempt to limit the size of sugary drinks New Yorkers could order: "'Anti-Bloomberg Bill' in Mississippi Bars Local Restrictions on Food and Drink."

The New York Times' long propaganda campaign supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants continued on the front of Thursday's National section, led by the paper's most slanted immigration reporter, Julia Preston -- "U.S. Citizens Join Illegal Immigrants In Pressing Lawmakers for Change."

Preston can hardly contain her enthusiasm for the movement, especially when she's discussing the "Dreamers" – the young people brought to the country illegally pushing for an accelerated path to citizenship.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires is now Pope Francis, and Thursday's New York Times front-page "Man In the News" profile by Emily Schmall and Larry Rohter, "A Conservative With a Common Touch," opened respectfully. But after a dash of local color and historical context, the Times quickly mounted its old hobby horse: the Church's positions on liberal issues like abortion and gay marriage:

But Cardinal Bergoglio is also a conventional choice, a theological conservative of Italian ancestry who vigorously backs Vatican positions on abortion, gay marriage, the ordination of women and other major issues -- leading to heated clashes with Argentina’s left-leaning president.

New York Times economics reporter Annie Lowrey's "news analysis" on Wednesday downplayed the gargantuan national debt: "Dispute Over a Balanced Budget Is Philosophical as Much as Fiscal."

Lowrey, who on March 2 called the hard-to-detect budget cuts of sequestration "painful and stupid," gave the game away in her lead sentence, signaling that she doesn't really think that enormous debt is much of a crisis:

National Review magazine has published an excellent and comprehensive response to New York Times Book Editor Sam Tanenhaus's dishonest smear of conservative thought in a cover story for The New Republic. The article by National Review contributors Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg appears in the March 25 issue.

After first explaining that for the left, "The explanation for conservatives’ opposition to President Obama and his agenda must be found not in our ideas but in our pathologies," they argue (bolds added by me):

In Monday's New York Times, in a report which appeared online late Sunday, reporters Richard W. Stevenson and John Harwood devoted considerable space to the idea that President Obama's latest "outreach" effort is primarily an attempt to "salvage a big deficit-reduction deal," and not a political ploy to show voters in the 2014 congressional elections that he's really interested in achieving a compromise when no genuine desire exists.

Steven Hayes at the Weekly Standard believes it's the latter ("For Obama, It's All About 2014"), as should anyone, probably including the reporters just cited, who is on the mailing list of Obama's permanent campaign known as Organizing For Action. On Thursday, three days before the Times reporters tried to convince America that Obama is in deal-making mode, OFA, which self-evidently tailors its message to the White House's true desire went into over-the-top scaremongering mode in an email from proven prevaricator Stephanie Cutter (bolds are mine):

Incivility. It is a word that tripped off the lips and pens of liberal commentators great and small after the deadly 2011 shootings in Tucson that ended the political career of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. One of the most vocal critics of the right’s incivility in word and deed was The New York Times, which ran more than one finger-wagging editorial and found column inches for more of the same from its opinion columnists.

So what ever happened to the left’s j’accuse campaign? It was buried under an avalanche of its own shameless and uncivilized behavior that ranged from death threats to candidate Mitt Romney leading up to last November’s election to tweets of ‘F**k white people’ in response to Obama’s victory.

Our left-wing media’s somber, mourning coverage of Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez once again demonstrates the double standard journalists reserve for dictators.

Seven years ago, the left’s greatest South American hate object, Augusto Pinochet, passed away. Never mind how he used free-market reforms to modernize Chile. Never mind that after 15 years of rule, he allowed a national plebiscite to vote against him, and he stepped down peacefully. The left-wing outrage pulsed on the front pages.