New York Times

Now we know why Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's de facto dictator, recently handed over responsibility for food production to the military: He's going to need soldiers on farms and elsewhere in the food distribution chain to keep conscripted workers in line. That's because on July 22, now over a week ago, Maduro's government decreed "... that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work…

The ultimate night of the Democratic National Convention saw the coronation of Hillary Clinton as the first female presidential nominee, celebrated on whole top half of the front page of Friday's New York Times. Meanwhile, Patrick Healy and Amy Chozick did their best to both humanize and historicize Hillary, "who sacrificed personal ambition for her husband’s political career and then rose to be…

New York Times coverage of Night 3 of the Democratic National Convention could be characterized by an hour-long swoon over Barack Obama’s speech -- pardon, his “stirring valedictory address." Also, Democrats were (again!) finding their voice on gun control, Bill celebrated Hillary, TMI-style, and Frank Bruni celebrated the president as "our national poet."

Night 2 of Democratic Convention coverage: A New York Times reporter referred to the Clintons’ “very rich and complicated relationship,” the “historic” card was played nonstop, and the editorial page owes Mitt Romney an apology on Russia. The reporters weren’t particularly thrilled with Bill Clinton’s speech, but one reporter still found a euphemism for Bill Clinton's personal sex scandals,…

The bias highlight of Night One of the Democratic National Convention from the New York Times was the laudatory coverage of “pop-culture heroine” Michelle Obama’s prime-time anti-Trump speech. The most prominent was Michael Shear and Mark Landler’a “Stirring Speech by a First Lady Backs Another." Nick Confessore found it "a moving political speech.” Meanwhile, Matt Flegenheimer looked back…

Monday’s New York Times highlighted Democratic “discord” on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, as outrage about the contents of a massive email leak from the Democratic National Committee, showing the DNC colluding to scuttle the insurgent campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton. But a “White House Letter” from Julie Hirschfeld Davis was more…

The real test for fair and balanced coverage isn’t the amount of airtime, but the spin reporters employ in reaction to the speeches and events at each convention. Using media coverage of last week’s Republican convention as a template, here are five ways the media can prove they’re not biased by treating the Democrats in a similar fashion.

Liberal journalists may be spending the weekend gnashing their teeth over the New York Times Public Editor’s promise to analyze why people think the paper has a liberal bias. Liz Spayd recently became the paper’s sixth Public Editor, and she quickly got provocative in her second column for the Sunday Review: “Why Readers See The Times as Liberal.” The text box provided the flavor: “The danger of…

Paul Krugman claimed recently that the Republican party “went over the edge…when supply-side economics became [its] official doctrine.” The Washington Monthly’s D.R. Tucker reveres Krugman, but he has a different choice for “the moment when the GOP truly lost it”: August 1, 1988, when Rush Limbaugh’s radio show went national. Tucker argued that Limbaugh has "removed all traces of logic, reason,…

Ideological double standards on display in the New York Times: While it’s a “dangerous anachronism” for Republicans to appeal to conservatives when picking a vice presidential candidate, it’s apparently absolutely necessary for Democrats to appeal to liberals. The Times noted the distaste for Hillary's pick, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, among the left, but surprisingly also identified Kaine with the…

It’s not a compliment when New York Times TV writer James Poniewozik summarizes Ailesgate with the tweet “On Roger Ailes, the J. Edgar Hoover of TV news.” When every other broadcast and cable TV network leans to the Left, somehow it’s Fox News that represents unaccountable and overweening political power? Apparently, having almost every other news outlet tilt toward the liberals means they’re…

The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column is running its critiques of the Republican convention this week, and in the process is trying again to rebuff a figure of $15,000 per household that I employ as a placeholder for the annual cost of federal regulations.  

No sympathy for the right-wing devil: After months of hostile coverage of Donald Trump, the New York Times saved its most personal hostility toward the only candidate on the Republican side that truly challenged Trump’s rise: Sen. Ted Cruz. The front of Friday’s New York Times featured a “political memo” by Jennifer Steinhauer and Matt Flegenheimer, “Cruz’s Gamble On Redefining Race for 2020 –…

The final night of the Republican National Convention that crowned Donald Trump as the party’s nominee was greeted in dark tones on the front of Friday’s paper. Reporters Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin found a “vehement” and “incendiary” candidate, while Michael Barbaro found himself flabbergasted by Trump’s failure to show  “humility, generosity and depth," and Adam Nagourney lamented "one of…