TimesWatch

Thursday's New York Times led with Israel pinpointing targets in Gaza, including a direct hit on a Hamas commander, after years of rockets fired into Israel. The report from Jerusalem by Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram blamed the victim of scores of rocket attacks for an effective retaliation (a "ferocious assault"): "Israeli Assault Into Gaza Kills A Hamas Leader – Wider Conflict Feared –…

In NYT-land, the liberal cable network MSNBC has been "gaining ground" on conservative Fox News for years (without ever actually catching up). Times media reporter Brian Stelter (pictured) filed the latest enthusiastic installment in MSNBC's quest for the white whale of ratings parity with Fox News in "The Anti-Fox Gains Ground." Meanwhile, Stelter's media news colleague David Carr gave…

Since taking over the section, editor Andrew Rosenthal has transformed the New York Times Sunday Review from a selection of liberal-leaning political and sociological analysis into a bulletin board for the far left. From the softer end of the spectrum, an essay by Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt, who proposed liberal tax solutions to the "fiscal cliff" in "The Cliff Is a Hard Place to…

The New York Times issued a triumphant editorial Thursday, "Republicans, Unplugged – A diverse America hear the right-wing appeal to fear and resentment and didn't buy it." We’ll leave the Republicans to their discussions in quiet rooms in the hope that at least a few are suggesting throwing out their old and failing playbook, seemingly written by and for a dwindling society of angry white…

New York Times campaign reporter Trip Gabriel in the paper's Election 2012 section Thursday suggested Paul Ryan's brand of fiscal restraint was a dead end for the GOP in the "demographically diverse" United States: "Ryan in Republican Forefront, But Loss May Bring Blame – Questions on Whether Ticket Needed More Moderation." For Representative Paul D. Ryan, defeat is not the political career-…

The New York Times at least saved Jodi Kantor's gushing over Obama until the votes were in. Kantor, political reporter and sympathetic Obama biographer penned the pompously headlined "Now, a Chance to Catch Up to his Epochal Vision," about private dinners Obama took with left-wing professors to calibrate the strategy of his presidency and lauded "the urgency and seriousness that he brought to…

Just in time, New York Times media reporter Jeremy Peters noticed on Election Day that MSNBC has been rather slanted in its hostility toward Mitt Romney, and that it's starting to reflect badly on its sister network NBC, in "Dueling Bitterness On Cable News." Peters used findings from the Pew Research Center as his launching point to hit both MSNBC and Fox News for partisan stridency, though…

Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller visited Rep. Paul Ryan's alma mater, Miami University in Ohio, to examine Republicans in their natural element for his Monday column "The Republican ID," and seemed very concerned about the mindset of a college that actually favored the Republican candidate. This patch of southern Ohio between Cincinnati and Dayton is not the up-for-grabs…

This week's New York Times Sunday Review wasn't as loaded with bias as last week's edition, but did feature a political cri de couer by Times favorite Drew Westen, Emory University professor and left-winger, "America's Leftward Tilt?" Westen really went out on a limb: The presidential election is now a close contest, but barring an Electoral College tie, someone is going to win, someone is…

Through sympathetic alchemy, New York Times Magazine political writer Matt Bai managed to transform Barack Obama's factually loose biography as a sign of "his narrative sophistication, his novelistic instinct for developing themes and characters that make his point" in his profile capturing the disappointment of Obama's supporters (which seem to include Bai himself), "Still Waiting for the…

The New York Times leaned "Forward!" for Barack Obama's reelection in its campaign coverage over the weekend. The front of the paper's Saturday Election 2012 section featured a large photo from an Obama rally of a volunteer handing out flags at a fairground rally in Hilliard, Ohio on Friday. The caption noted "A crowd of 2,800 showed up to see Mr. Obama." Meanwhile, campaign reporter Ashley…

As Election Day draws closer, the New York Times's young star poll analyst Nate Silver (pictured) becomes more and more confident of an Obama win. As of Monday morning, his blog fixed Obama as having a 86.3% chance of winning re-election. Monday morning Silver posted this on Twitter: "Obama unlikely to win by anything like his post-DNC margins. But Romney has no momentum, Obama's state…

New York Times star poll analyst Nate Silver continues giving hope to Democrats, and he's getting more confident in an Obama victory as the election draws closer, pegging Obama's odds of victory at around 75%. After a heated debate on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the normally mild-mannered Silver offered via Twitter on Thursday to bet host Joe Scarborough $2,000 that Obama would win, which drew some…

New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal's Sunday Review was wall-to-wall for Obama this week, with two left-wing op-eds on Obama on the front page, a full-page endorsement of Obama for re-election, and three liberal columnists simultaneously obsessed with abortion, including the paper's foreign policy columnist Thomas Friedman. (Right-of-center Ross Douthat also covered women's…