NYT reporter Adam Nossiter has an eager story about a “very conservative congressman” pushing what Nossiter calls “the ultimate big government solution” for post-Katrina rebuilding in New Orleans. The headline writers and editors were also wooed by Rep. Richard Baker’s apparent apostasy (“A Big Government Fix-It Plan for New Orleans”), putting the story on Thursday’s front page.
“Representative Richard H. Baker, a Republican from suburban Baton Rouge who derides Democrats for not being sufficiently free-market, is the unlikely champion of a housing recovery plan that would make the federal government the biggest landowner in New Orleans -- for a while, at least. Mr. Baker's proposed Louisiana Recovery Corporation would spend as much as $80 billion to pay off lenders, restore public works, buy huge ruined chunks of the city, clean them up and then sell them back to developers.”
Nossiter informs us that Baker is a “staunch Republican who boasts of near-perfect rankings from conservative groups.”
Nice to see the Times finally employing some methodology to its labeling -- but why not employ it on liberals as well, and not just “very conservative” congressmen who seem to be acting against their ideologies?
The American Conservative Union awards Rep. Baker a lifetime ranking of 91 out of a possible 100. That makes Baker precisely as conservative as Sen. Hillary Clinton (who garners a 9 out of a possible 100 points) is liberal. Yet the Times has consistently ignored Sen. Clinton’s “near-perfect rankings" from liberal groups (NARAL in fact gives her a perfect score of 100), and the Times utterly refuses to even call her a “liberal.”
For more examples of New York Times bias, visit TimesWatch.
