Megan Thee-Brenan

“Almost half of the public” thinks the left-wing Occupy Wall Street movement accurately reflects the views of Americans, claims the New York Times in Wednesday’s off-lead,
“New Poll Finds A Deep Distrust of Government – Anxiety Over Economy – Concentration of Wealth Seen as Key Issue in a Volatile Time.”

Jeff Zeleny and Megan Thee-Brenan played OWS approval high, in paragraph three.

The New York Times on Friday downplayed results in its own poll that found 44 percent of respondents think the cuts in the debt deal didn't go far enough, versus only 15 percent who said "too far." In an article starting on the front page, writers Michael Cooper and Megan Thee-Brenan didn't mention this fact until the ninth paragraph of page A-14.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner found the media elite tried and failed to goad the public into opposing the new Arizona immigration-enforcement law. A new CBS/New York Times poll discovered 51 percent found it "about right," and only 34 percent checked the media's strongly preferred answer of goes "too far." York suggested the stories on the poll hinted heavily that the questions were loaded. Check out how Brian Montopoli at CBS reported its findings:

Despite their expectation that it will burden police departments and disproportionately affect certain ethnic groups, a slim majority of Americans believe the controversial illegal immigration measure recently signed into law in Arizona is “about right” in its approach, according to a newly-released CBS News/New York Times poll.

Randal Archibold and Megan Thee-Brenan of the Times reported the story this way:

[D]espite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.

Thursday's lead New York Times story on a new poll of Tea Party members (a joint effort by the Times and CBS News) got off to a promising start with a headline that probably truly qualified as news for the paper's liberal readership: "Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated."

The story by Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan also began on an upbeat note (Zernike has evidently taken L.A.-bound reporter Adam Nagourney's place on the poll-watch beat):

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as "very conservative" and President Obama as "very liberal."

But by paragraph four, the Times began to portray the movement as "angry," paranoid, and possibly anti-black.