TimesWatch

Apparently it is politically significant, if not scandalous, that GOP candidate Mitt Romney wanted a little in-flight downtime without his attention being taken hostage by a seatmate haranguing him on health care. A Sunday evening post on the New York Times's “Caucus” blog by Emmarie Huetteman found out-of-touch Romney's behavior troubling: " An Aloof Romney in a Plane Encounter.” The Times…

In “Missed Jobs Forecast in 2009 Resonates in Campaign,” Richard Stevenson’s “Political Memo” buried in the New York Times's Saturday Business section, the paper’s political editor mounted a defense of Obama’s prediction of 6.5% unemployment and "stimulus," while regretting the administration’s “nuanced” argument would be buried by misleading Republicans: "Despite repeated Republican claims to…

The New York Times continues to treat toublemakers at Occupy Wall Street as a fringe minority, but the Tea Party was "responsible for the behavior of people" at their rallies. Sunday’s Metro section led with an above-the-fold look at the state of Occupy Wall Street as winter approaches from reporters Cara Buckley and Colin Moynihan, “A Protest Reaches a Crossroads.” They briefly noted the…

Eric Lichtblau is the latest New York Times reporter who can find no “liberals,” just well-meaning “advocates for the poor,” in a misleading left-wing publicity stunt to keep the welfare budget from being trimmed, in Friday's: “Interest Groups Seek to Catch Debt Committee’s Ear.” In fact, only the first three and last three paragraphs of his budget cut-story deal with the “food stamp…

Yesterday Times Watch asked how prominently the New York Times would play the undeniable violence, property damage, and arrests that took place during the Occupy Oakland protests on Wednesday night. The answer: On the front of the National section, page A15.  Reporter Maria Wollan got in some of the destructive details from the protests, but still tried to emphasize the “peaceful march” that…

In his Thursday New York Times column “The Birth Control Solution,” Nicholas Kristof becomes the latest Times person to use news of the world reaching an estimated seven billion to suggest there are too many people on the planet. (Yet no one is volunteering to leave.)

The New York Times’s coverage of the left-anarchist Occupy movement has been very favorable, pushing the group’s vague aims of “fighting economic inequality” while downplaying the anti-Semitism, violence, vandalism, and general squalor of the leftist campouts. Now that undeniable violence has broken out at an Occupy Oakland protest that blocked the city port and halted commerce, how will the…

Well, Maureen Dowd’s Wednesday New York Times column on anonymous accusations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain, “Cain Not Able,” certainly shows she has no fear of causing racial offense, at least when writing about conservative political figures: “Even Barack Obama couldn’t be lucky enough to waltz past two wacky black conservatives, first Alan Keyes and then Cain.”

New York Times reporter Mireya Navarro in Tuesday’s edition wrote sympathetically about the struggle of an environmental group “breaking the taboo” of discussing overpopulation in “Breaking a Long Silence On Population Control.” Such groups had it easier in the 1970s, Navarro wrote, before the rise of “social conservatism” and America’s “aversion to anything perceived as restricting individual…

The New York Times is once again trying very hard to make the GOP candidates’s tough stands against illegal immigration a damaging campaign issue. Saturday's entry was reported by Jennifer Steinhauer, “Some Republicans in Congress Are Pushing Steps to Ease Immigration.” She gave congressional Republicans backhanded praise for being "more nuanced and measured" on immigration than their…

New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, better known as James Taranto’s punching bag at Opinion Journal, has a new blog at nytimes.com, “The Loyal Opposition.” On Tuesday Rosenthal posted the provocatively titled “Herman Cain and the ‘Liberal Media,’” where he broadcasts his alarm at how “quickly the right wing jumps on an issue almost in unison,” blames Republicans for injecting…

There’s a clear double standard on sex allegations for presidential candidates in the New York Times. The Times put 15-year-old anonymous accusations of sexual harassment against GOP candidate Herman Cain on the front page Tuesday morning, in an off-lead story by Jim Rutenberg and Michael Shear written with help from five other reporters: “Cain Confronts Claim From 90s Of Harassment – He…

Former New York Times economics reporter turned editorial board member Eduardo Porter is the latest Times staffer to declare that the leftists of Occupy Wall Street have it figured out: “Wall Street Protesters Hit the Bull’s-Eye.” Porter wrote: "Their complaint that the privileged few in the top 1 percent are getting a disproportionate share of the nation's prosperity, however, is spot on."

Turns out there’s one union the New York Times is not totally enamored with: The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, New York City’s largest police union. Saturday’s front page featured a hostile anti-police story by N.R. Kleinfield and John Eligon related to charges of wide-spread ticket-fixing, “Officers Unleash Vitriol as Peers Are Charged in Ticket-Fixing.”   The reporters didn't seem…