The Coalition for the Homeless released a report Tuesday finding a record number of people living in homeless shelters in New York City.
For some reason, the New York Times chose not to report it.
The Coalition's press release claimed:
The Coalition for the Homeless released its 2013 State of the Homeless report today showing that for the first time the number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping in emergency shelter each night has passed 50,000 – a 61% increase since Mayor Bloomberg took office in January of 2002. The number of homeless children is now over 21,000 per night, also an all-time high.
The Wall Street Journal elaborated:
"New York is facing a homeless crisis worse than any time since the Great Depression," said Mary Brosnahan, president of the Coalition for the Homeless.
State and local governments nationwide have struggled to accommodate a homeless population that has changed, including large numbers of families with young children. Homeless advocates said the Obama administration has focused on more visible problems, such as those sleeping on the streets, taking resources away from families. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials, who oversee federal homelessness programs, didn't respond to requests for comment.
In the New York area, the Daily News, Newsday, and the Post all reported the Coalition's findings.
But according to LexisNexis and Google News searches, the New York Times didn't.
Why might that be? It's not like the folks at the Gray Lady are opposed to covering the homeless.
On Monday, they published an article that talked about how budget sequestration might increase the number of homeless.
I guess at the Times, homelessness is only important when it helps President Obama's agenda.
Yet the Times wasn't alone in ignoring this report.
According to LexisNexis, through Tuesday evening, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, and PBS didn't do one story on this subject.
As for ABC, Good Morning America logged this brief report Tuesday:
JOSH ELLIOTT (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) The homeless population is now at the highest level in this country since the Depression. On the average night in New York, more than 50,000 people, nearly half of them children, are now sleeping in homeless shelters.
And that as they say was that.
I guess the media aren't very concerned with homeless people when there's a Democrat in the White House.
It might tarnish Obama's image as being a defender of the poor.
