New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller followed John McCain on his trip to the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which suffered grievously because of Hurricane Katrina, and filed a harshly cynical story to nytimes.com Thursday afternoon -- much of which was removed from the version that eventually appeared on Friday morning's front page.

From Bumiller's Thursday afternoon filing:

Senator John McCain took direct aim at the Bush administration on Thursday as he stood in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and declared that "never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled."

Mr. McCain, who was on the fourth day of a tour of America's "forgotten places" to try to prove that he is a compassionate Republican, ticked off a long list of mistakes: "There was unqualified people in charge, there was a total misreading of the dimensions of the disaster, there was a failure of communications."

....

What pundit uttered the following liberal canard that makes it sound like Republicans don't care about poor people?

"He's [John McCain] a conservative. The way he breaks out of it, though, electorally, is to be Teddy Roosevelt, and this is gonna be the toughest thing for his campaign. He's got a group of people around him, and frankly a group, a party that doesn't want the government to do anything to help poor people. And he has to break out of that."

Was it?

A.) Chris Matthews, MSNBC

B.) Geraldo Rivera, Fox News

C.) Eleanor Clift, Newsweek

D.) David Brooks, New York Times

The newspaper that endorsed McCain, once again tries to stir him up. McCain’s temper is one characteristic he needs to watch carefully if he wants to win this. (See Video Here)

Politico:

Bumiller, who took over the McCain beat from Marc Santora in January, quoted a 2004 story in which McCain said the Kerry meeting never happened, according to ABC News. McCain, whose temper does flare up at times, told Bumiller that everyone already knows this story, despite her persistent questioning.

Brietbart:

Republican Sen. John McCain, showing a flash of the temper he is known for, repeatedly cut off a reporter Friday when asked whether he had spoken to Democratic Sen. John Kerry about being his vice president in 2004.

The Times held a "Times Talks" event Tuesday night at TheTimesCenter (all one word), part of the new New York Times Building now dominating 40th and 41st Street in Midtown Manhattan like a behemoth power station. "Inside the News: The Issues & The Elections: Where Do the Candidates Stand?" was advertised as a sell-out, but there were at least 70 empty seats in the 373-seat auditorium.

From a low stage, Times journalists Richard Berke, Elisabeth Bumiller, Michael Gordon, David Leonhardt and Robin Toner took turns outlining the placement on the ideological spectrum of Obama and Clinton's various policies and advisors (McCain was often ignored). A bug kept zapping at the speakers in turn, to the amusement of the audience.

Around the 30-minute mark, moderator and Times Assistant Managing Editor (the title understates his influence) Richard Berke asked for a show of hands to measure support for the candidates. My very rough count in the darkened auditorium: 140 Obama supporters, 120 Clinton supporters, 50 independents and maybe half a dozen McCain supporters. Berke's follow-up call for Huckabee supporters drew derisive laughter.

The fallout continues from yesterday's New York Times hit piece on John McCain. The paper itself doesn't seem eager to put up a fight as network news broadcasts, liberal bloggers, journalism professors, and the general public are questioning the Times's journalistic standards.

Yesterday's inflammatory story, which used anonymous sources to forward nine-year-old allegations from his first presidential run suggesting an improper relationship by John McCain with a female telecommunications lobbyist, received prominent front-page placement; today's follow-up on McCain's press conference was relegated to page 20 -- Elisabeth Bumiller's "McCain Disputes That Aides Warned Him About Ties to Lobbyist."

From Elisabeth Bumiller's New York Times follow-up article of today [emphasis added]:

Later in the day, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers directed strong criticism at The Times in what appeared to be a deliberate campaign strategy to wage a war with the newspaper. Mr. McCain is deeply distrusted by conservatives on several issues, not least because of his rapport with the news media, but he could find common ground with them in attacking a newspaper that many conservatives revile as a left-wing publication.

Let me get this straight. The Times has run an article relying on anonymous, disgruntled former associates as sources, dredging up old stories and making base accusations with no hard evidence in support. But it's McCain who's waging war?

Former New York Times White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller is on the campaign trail after writing a book on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but Monday's "Once a Thorn, McCain Now Courts a Wary Party" betrayed some ignorance about the nature of past opposition to McCain.

At least Bumiller's honest about McCain's base:

He says he is not enough of a masochist to listen to Rush Limbaugh. He jokes at a Republican dinner about a looming foreign policy crisis: "I have a four-hour speech on the North Korean nuclear buildup that I know you've been waiting for." And he still treats the media as his No. 1 constituency, plying them with nonstop talk and stories, like one about a date from his Navy days who cleaned her nails with a switchblade.

Then it's on to the myth about McCain's summer meltdown:

Kate Zernike's front-page profile of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (featuring a large picture of Pelosi shaking Bush's hand at last night's State of the Union address) opened with a celebration of Pelosi's femaleness and ends with "poignant commentary" by the left's new favorite Bush fighter, Democrat Sen. James Webb of Virginia.

"The first two words of the evening on Tuesday were evidence of how much has changed here: 'Madam Speaker,” boomed Congressional escorts, 'the president of the United States.'"

Today’s top story, naturally, is Bush’s speech to the nation last night concerning illegal immigration. Jim Rutenberg, rotating back onto the national news beat, leads off the coverage, correctly noting that conservatives are still unhappy with Bush on the issue. But where are the liberals?

"Some of the border state governors, Democrats in Congress, and others immediately raised questions about the practicality of the plan. Mr. Bush's broad approach also drew tepid reviews from some House Republicans and conservatives, whose support he will need as he grapples with a problem that has defied decades of proposed solutions: the continued economic imbalances between the United States and its trading partners to the south.

A "revelatory" article by Elisabeth Bumiller in today's New York Times article is laden with unanswered questions, assumptions and peculiarities.

Beginning with the lede, we get the “theme” of the article – the “erosion” of President Bush’s political capital.

“President Bush said Tuesday that the war in Iraq was eroding his political capital, his starkest admission yet about the costs of the conflict to his presidency, and suggested that American forces would remain in the country until at least 2009.”

Are Late Innings the Time for a Relief Pitcher?

The big question on the mind of certain New York Times reporters is one that has been repeatedly answered over and over with a resounding “No.” Well we can dream, can’t we?

In an attempt to portray the White House as disorganized, in constant conflict, lost, and on the verge of a “shake up,” Elisabeth Bumiller and Adam Nagourney again show that the NYT is reporting news it wishes to happen, rather than what actually has happened.

“President Bush's suggestion on Tuesday that he may add a new senior figure to his White House team raised questions about the future of two of his closest and most powerful aides, Andrew H. Card Jr. and Karl Rove, as they struggle to put Mr. Bush's White House back on course.”

The Times leads Wednesday with Elisabeth Bumiller’s take on Bush’s lively White House press conference, which the Times headlines “Bush Concedes Iraq War Erodes Political Status.”

“President Bush said Tuesday that the war in Iraq was eroding his political capital, his starkest admission yet about the costs of the conflict to his presidency, and suggested that American forces would remain in the country until at least 2009. In a quick remark at a White House news conference about the reserves of political strength he earned in his 2004 re-election victory -- ‘I'd say I'm spending that capital on the war’ -- Mr. Bush in effect acknowledged that until he could convince increasingly skeptical Americans that the United States was winning the war, Iraq would overshadow everything he did.”

Wednesday's New York Times gives anti-war Bush-hater Cindy Sheehan a platform at Bush’s sixth State of the Union address.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Anne Kornblut file “Antiwar Protester Arrested Before Speech, but Her Presence Looms Large,” accompanied in print by a large photo of Sheehan being escorted out of the House chamber.

“To spotlight his priorities, President Bush invited ordinary people -- a teacher, a physicist, an Afghan politician, the family of a fallen soldier -- to the State of the Union address on Tuesday. But a Democratic congresswoman turned the tables on Mr. Bush by inviting a guest of her own: Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar protester who has dogged Mr. Bush from his Texas ranch to the White House. Ms. Sheehan's presence loomed large in the House chamber, though she was not there. Capitol Police arrested her before the speech began, ejecting her from the gallery after they discovered her wearing an antiwar T-shirt. A police spokeswoman said Ms. Sheehan was charged with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.”

Over at NRO, Jay Nordlinger is on his annual jaunt to observe the global hoi polloi at Davos, Switzerland, but he has a telling tidbit of New York Times bias if you keep with it. Apparently, it's surprising that the President is reading books again, even those distasteful tomes about the dark days of mass murder in the communist bloc:

You may have seen, in the New York Times, that President Bush has been reading that big new book about Mao: Mao: The Unknown Story, by the husband-and-wife team of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. (Actually, I should have written "wife-and-husband team" — sorry about that.) Did you catch what the Times's writer, Elisabeth Bumiller, had to say about this? (Her story is here.) Very interesting.

New York Times White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller follows Bush back to the site of the Hurricane Katrina’s devastation for Friday’s “In New Orleans, Bush Speaks With Optimism but Sees Little of Ruin," and again tries to portray him as out of touch on Hurricane Katrina.

“Mr. Bush spent his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees. Mr. Bush's motorcade did pass some abandoned neighborhoods as it traveled on Interstate 10 into the city.”

Once again in 2005, the New York Times provided a bounty of material to choose from, whether it was a pattern of biased coverage -- Hurricane Katrina, Cindy Sheehan -- or a single bizarrely biased story, like one from Sarah Boxer on a pro-U.S. blog in Iraq.

Here are some samples fromTimesWatch's top 3 examples of the worst from the liberally slanted year of coverage.

#3 Relaying Reckless Leftist Charges Against Pro-U.S. Bloggers in Iraq

Reporter Sarah Boxer achieved instant notoriety in blogging circles for an irresponsibly speculative piece January 18 on a pro-U.S. blog run by Iraqi brothers. Boxer began in a breathless style that probably helped her story garner the top slot of the Arts front page: "When I telephoned a man named Ali Fadhil in Baghdad last week, I wondered who might answer. A C.I.A. operative? An American posing as an Iraqi? Someone paid by the Defense Department to support the war? Or simply an Iraqi with some mixed feelings about the American presence in Iraq? Until he picked up the phone, he was just a ghost on the Internet. The mystery began last month when I went online to see what Iraqis think about the war and the Jan. 30 national election. I stumbled into an ideological snake pit." But her story was rooted entirely in the speculative postings from a far-left group blog called Martini Republic.

From promoting the "socially conservative instincts" of Sen. Hillary Clinton to lamenting the lack of gas rationing in support of the Iraq War, there was no shortage of bizarre bias in the New York Times in 2005. To celebrate the year in slant, Times Watch presents a selection of the absolutely most biased quotes from Times reporters and writers.

Below are a few higlights from the Times Watch 'Quotes of Note Worst of 2005," posted yesterday to TimesWatch.org.

 The Deaniac Award for Iraq War Defeatism...

As reported by NewsBusters here, the New York Times’ William Safire made some statements on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on October 30 concerning his view of a changing tide in the media’s opinion of the president. This morning’s panel on NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” proved Safire as being rather prophetic.

To refresh everyone’s memory, Safire said that day: “Now, the wonderful thing about American attention and media coverage, is the narrative has to change.  It can't stay the same, or else it's not newsworthy. And so the story will be the comeback.”

The White House is counterattacking anti-war critics charging that "Bush lied" us into Iraq, and Elisabeth Bumiller files a short piece showing the vice president has joined in ("Cheney Says Senate War Critics Make 'Reprehensible Charges'"). Cheney was speaking to a Frontiers of Freedom gathering in Washington when he said those accusing Bush of manipulating war intelligence were making "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."

The updated, online version of Bumiller's article claims:

"In his speech, Mr. Cheney echoed the argument of Mr. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the past week that Democrats had access to the same prewar intelligence that the White House did, and that they came to the same conclusion that Mr. Hussein was a threat. The administration, however, had access to far more extensive intelligence than Congress did. The administration also left unaddressed the question of how it had used that intelligence, which was full of caveats, subtleties and contradictions. Many Democrats now say they believe they had been misled by the administration in the way it presented the prewar intelligence."

The Times plays up Judge Samuel Alito's conservativism -- but ignored Ruth Bader Ginsberg's liberalism in 1993.

Tuesday's lead New York Times story on Bush's Supreme Court pick (by Elisabeth Bumiller and Carl Hulse) plays up Alito's ideology from the start, nothing the federal appeals court judge has a "conservative record on abortion." Later they note he is "solidly conservative" and has "bona fide conservative credentials" and the paper's front-page subhead emphasizes that he's "Hailed By Right."

By contrast, when President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, Richard Berke's lead story in the June 15, 1993 edition didn't describe Ginsburg, a feminist and former ACLU lawyer, as liberal. Berke even let Clinton get away with saying (without rebuttal from Republicans or anyone else): "Ruth Bader Ginsburg cannot be called a liberal or conservative. She has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels."

The Times' personal profile of Bush's pick by Neil Lewis and Scott Shane takes a similar tone. The headline to the jump page notes Alito's "Clear Conservative Record" and the text describes him as "solidly conservative."

In another contrast, on June 15, 1993, the Times' profile of Ginsburg took Clinton's lead in positioning Ginsburg as a centrist: "Despite her long record as a champion of women's rights, Judge Ginsburg has occasionally disappointed some of her former allies in the liberal advocacy groups. In her 13 years on the appeals court, she has often gone out of her way to mediate between the court's warring liberal and conservative factions."

(On June 27 of that year, the paper ludicrously termed Ginsburg, a former director of the Women's Rights Project of the ACLU, as a centrist: "Balanced Jurist at Home in the Middle.")

Harriet Miers was the victim of conservative "attacks," according to the lead story and its two headlines in Friday's New York Times, and another story advances a theme of vicious and unfair attacks against Miers.

"Bush's Court Choice Ends Bid After Attack By Conservatives -- Too Many Doubts," is from Elisabeth Bumiller and Carl Hulse. The headline on the jump page is similar: "Bush's Nominee for Supreme Court Ends Bid After Persistent Attacks by Cons