TimesWatch

With 14 million Americans out of work, New York Times economics reporter Catherine Rampell is wondering where the left-wing mobs are in the front-page story for Sunday Business, “Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible.” The text box imagined a better time: “In the 1930s, Americans did not endure unemployment so quietly.” (Back on June 18, Rampell agonized over how “one little word” was…

New York Times Executive Editor and "collapsed Catholic" Bill Keller reviewed “Absolute Monarchs – A History of the Papacy” by John Julius Norwich --the cover review for the Times Sunday Book Review. The issue included an editorial note at the front of the magazine confessing the paper’s rough relationship with the Catholic Church (which Times Watch has documented).   Through the years, The…

President Obama’s budget blueprint may have been unanimously rejected by Congress in late May, but suddenly the president is the courageous, ambitious one on budget talks after issuing new rhetoric indicating a willingness to make cuts in social programs like Medicare.   In his Sunday front-page story, “House Speaker Is Pulling Back On Deficit Deal – $4 Trillion Plan Stalls Over Tax…

Tuesday’s notorious column from the New York Times’s “conservative” David Brooks, “The Mother of All No-Brainers,” in which he accused Tea Party sympathizers of having "no sense of moral decency," is getting fulsome praise from staunch conservatives like Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Here’s Politico: Reid, on the floor on Tuesday, gave his approval to many of the points…

Frank Rich, the New York Times’s puzzlingly influential former op-ed columnist and over-dramatic hater of the Bush administration and the Tea Party, has landed with a splash at New York Magazine,penning the magazine’s new cover story, “Obama’s Original Sin,” going after the president's timidity from the left in a way he never managed at the Times. What haunts the Obama administration is what…

A defense of infidelity, put forward by gay-rights activist and explicit sex-advice columnist Dan Savage and penned by Mark Oppenheimer, “Married, With Infidelities,” served as the cover of the latest New York Times Sunday Magazine. The subhead to the banner headline in the print edition described Savage as a “devoted husband, proud father, sex columnist.” Left off the resume: Doorknob licker…

The latest edition of the New York Times’s Sunday magazine gave conservatives a rare opportunity to repurpose Times Executive Editor Bill Keller as a pinata, though the paper’s intent may have been to make its conservative critics look irrational. Readers responded bluntly to Keller’s trashing of Sarah Palin in his column for the June 19 issue, in which he claimed “most journalists would recoil…

Do Republican Tea Party sympathizers “have no sense of moral decency”? That suggestion comes not from conservative-loathing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, but the paper’s chief “conservative” columnist David Brooks on Tuesday, “The Mother Of All No-Brainers.” While omitting the phrase “Tea Party,” Brooks claimed a “faction” of the Republican Party was more interested in “…

The New York Times celebrated the Independence Day holiday weekend with a joyless story on the front of Saturday’s Business Day on the cancer threat posed by your all-American cookout. William Neuman reported “What’s Inside the Bun?” (Back in April, Neuman revealed the “darker side” to Captain Crunch cereal.) If there is no such thing as a healthy hot dog, how do you limit the damage at…

New York Times contributing writer Jonathan Mahler was featured on the front of the Sports section Saturday, opining on two drug-related prosecutions in the sports world, “Why Clemens and Armstrong Aren’t Worth Pursuing Anymore.“ Mahler, who writes for the paper’s Sunday magazine and the Book Review, managed to drag the Iraq War, the Bush administration, even the ancient Ken Starr…

New York Times reporters Danny Hakim and Nicholas Confessore filed another in a series of front-page stories Friday  revolving around the natural gas industry, especially the “fracking” process by which natural gas is obtained from shale and is opposed by liberal environmentalists. This time the scene is the paper’s own backyard: “Cuomo Moving To End a Freeze On Gas Drilling.” The Cuomo…

The New York Times once again checks in with a hostile peek at Florida’s conservative Gov. Rick Scott. Don Van Natta Jr. and Gary Fineout reported from Miami on Scott’s poll travails, even suggesting his current low standing could cost the Republicans the state in the 2012 presidential election, a mere 16 months away: “Sinking Poll Numbers May Put Florida in Play – Strategists Sy the Governor’s…

New York Times Washington reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg has fired two warning shots on consecutive days across Barack Obama’s left flank, regarding his hesitation to fully endorse gay marriage. Wednesday’s “Obama’s Position on Gay Marriage Faces New Test” painted Obama in an “awkward” situation regarding his gay supporters. Stolberg twice shoe-horned in race-based arguments to challenge Obama…

Recently the New York Times has run several stories on various abortion legislation in the states, none more slanted than Eric Eckholm’s piece on Monday, “New Laws in 6 States Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks.” In February, Eckholm called the abortion providers Planned Parenthood “advocates for women’s health,” and his new story had a similar case of bias by omission involving abortion providers.…