TimesWatch

The front of Thursday’s New York Times National section featured Jennifer Steinhauer’s “Birth Control is Covered, And G.O.P. Vows a Fight.” Steinhauer portrayed the fight in cynical political terms, showcasing Republicans as being opportunistic rather than motivated by principled opposition to Obama’s requirement that Catholic universities and charities violate their religious beliefs by…

“Stop Compromising,” pleaded New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal on his “Loyal Opposition” blog Wednesday morning. Rosenthal was aggrieved to hear Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod suggest the president was open to “compromise”on the administration’s plan requiring religious institutions to violate their beliefs and cover birth control in their employees’ health…

Staking a principled hard-left position on campaign finance, the New York Times wailed over President Obama’s reversal on Super PAC's in its lead editorial Wednesday, “Another Campaign for Sale – President Obama reverses position and joins the sleazy ‘Super PAC’ money race.” (Yet the paper's news coverage failed to highlight those hypocrisies.)

New York Times campaign reporters Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg found no hypocrisy in President Obama’s Monday flip-flop on the evils of "Super PAC" fund-raising in Tuesday’s front-page story, “Obama Yields In Marshaling Of ‘Super PAC.’” As of yesterday, Obama is encouraging Democrats to give to the political action committee Priorities USA, which is led by two former White House aides. After…

Potential Obama opponent Mitt Romney is “the gift that keeps on giving” according to the Obama campaign team, the New York Times' Helene Cooper eagerly reports in her Monday “Political Memo,” “The Flub Watch Never Stops for Obama’s Team.” The text box reads: “If Romney makes a misstep, the Democrats are ready to pounce.” And Cooper is right there to cover Team Ohama's glorious Twitter victories…

Sorry, Founders: The “terse and old” U.S. Constitution has been ruled out of date by Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak for failing to provide such “rights” as free health care. Liptak made the front of Tuesday’s New York Times “Sidebar” news analysis, “‘We the People’ Loses Followers,” the paper’s most e-mailed and viewed news story of the morning.

New York Times reporters Trip Gabriel (pictured right) and Ashley Parker, who follow Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, respectively, teamed up for Saturday’s report from Las Vegas, “Republican Candidates Wrangle Over Nevada," rushing to Obama’s aide after a mild attack by Mitt Romney, and accused conservatives of carrying a “caricature” image of lefty donor George Soros.

New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum wrote a valentine in news story format for Saturday’s edition on Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s heavily publicized donation to the abortion provider Planned Parenthood, after it initially lost funding from the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity: “With Fine Timing, Bloomberg Makes a Financial Pledge That Excites and Engages.” Raising not a whisper of…

On Sunday, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat highlighted the blunt favoritism shown by the media toward Planned Parenthood in last week’s headline-making spat with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, the breast cancer charity, after it announced it would no longer fund the prominent abortion provider: “The Media’s Abortion Blinders.” Douthat compared the popularity of the pro-…

After warning for years of the dangers posed by the Religious Right in politics, the New York Times is suddenly interested in injecting Mormon (and Catholic) religion into politics, at least when it comes to pet issues like amnesty for illegal immigrants. The top of Friday’s National section featured religion reporter Laurie Goodstein’s “Romney’s Tough Immigration View Is at Odds With His…

New York Times reporters Gardiner Harris and Pam Belluck passed on the outrage of pro-choice groups to news that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which fights breast cancer, is cutting financial support to Planned Parenthood in the wake of bad publicity and a congressional investigation. The Times reporters seemed pretty outraged about it themselves in Thursday's “Uproar as Breast…

Mormon fear at the New York Times. The paper’s online “Room for Debate” section, which “invites knowledgeable outside contributors to discuss news events and other timely issues” on Monday asked “What Is It About Mormons?," inspired by the prospect of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination for president. The fact that the Senate has for the last five years been led by a Mormon, Democrat…

Mitt Romney can’t win for losing. Wednesday’s New York Times “news analysis” by Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker posed as concerned over the “heavy new baggage” the Romney campaign had acquired by successfully going negative against Newt Gingrich in his Florida primary victory Tuesday night: “A Nasty Fight Carries Risks for the Winner.” Of course it does.

Did the New York Times learn nothing about rushing to judgement and presumption of innocence from its Duke lacrosse “rape” hoax debacle? More than any other media outlet, in 2006 the Times trumpeted black stripper's Crystal Mangum's rape accusations against three white Duke lacrosse players, accusations that quickly fell apart in a mass of contradictions and shifting stories. Yet even as…