New York Times

Chalk another story up to the media exaggerating a problem that's bad enough on its own. On July 30, The New York Times reported on the front page of its business section that "several national restaurant chains were shuttered on Tuesday." But only two chains were closed, and both were owned by the same company. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "several" as "being of a number more than…

How many Germans would vote for Barack Obama for our president? CNN claims to know. During the last weekend that Barack Obama was in Germany, CNN used a graphic on the Wolf Blitzer show that claimed that 72% of Germans preferred Obama with only a mere 11% who favored John McCain. Of course, CNN didn't think it relevant to mention that only 501 Germans were even polled, nor that the poll was…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is doing a media tour, touting her new book, "Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters." On Monday night she sat down for a Q&A with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller inside the awkwardly named TheTimesCenter, an auditorium connected to the paper's headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Book flacks aggressively marketed Pelosi's autobiography at the…

Whoops.  On the very day that the New York Times takes President Bush harshly to task for failing to promote human rights in China, the president meets at the White House . . . . with five Chinese human rights activists.Railed the Times in this morning's editorial, Past Time for Speaking Out:Two weeks before he goes to the Beijing Olympic Games, President Bush remains unacceptably silent about…

New York Times reporter Patrick Healy's lead story in the Week in Review, "An Exclusive Club Gets Included," posed the question: Why, after a long spell of senators trying and failing to win high office, are two senators now in line for the presidency? Healy's short answer: It's all Bush's fault, for his "go-it-alone strategy in Iraq" and his "with-us-or-against-us presidency." The Times is quite…

UPDATE:  The original version of this item reported Joe Scarborough's statement, as transcribed below, that there were no Republicans on his MSNBC staff, with  executive producer Chris Licht confirming Joe's assertion. Joe has been in touch to say he and Chris Licht were speaking tongue in cheek and that the remarks about there being no Republicans on the Morning Joe staff were a joke.Mika…

Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid created quite a stir in the blogosphere yesterday with their dispatch from Baghdad, "Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost." NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard accurately called it a "stop the presses" story, and ended his post with an important perspective that you really must read if you haven't already. Now that the story has had one overnight news…

The New York Times, while fawning all over Barack Obama's European sojourn, just couldn't resist taking potshots at John McCain who remained here in the United States -- you know, campaigning for the votes of people that can actually vote for him:On Thursday evening in a glittering Berlin, cheered by as many as 200,000 people, Mr. Obama delivered a tone poem to American and European ideals and…

** Now With Update... A Soldier Speaks ** The New York Times is miffed. They aren't happy that there has been a dearth of news photos showing dead American soldiers in the war in Iraq. The Times is lamenting that there have been "4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images," so more carnage and death is their druthers. Well, more American dead, anyway. They aren't interested in the…

Just when you thought it was safe to cook in your kitchen, it turns out your kitchen might be cooking you. At least that is what CBS's "The Early Show" led viewers to believe on July 25. Co-host Harry Smith warned viewers about what might be "lurking inside" granite countertops - radioactivity. "There's granite all over the place in modern kitchens, sometimes you have a little breakfast nook…

Barack Obama is still giving Chris Matthews thrills. On Thursday night's "Hardball," before throwing to an Obama clip, Matthews gave the following rave review, on his July 24 show, to the Illinois senator's speech in Germany:CHRIS MATTHEWS: What, what do you make of this? Let's take another bite here because it was quite a speech. You have to judge for yourself but the speech had its thrill…

The Columbia Journalism Review, not previously known as a Republican stronghold, sees liberal bias in the Times's rejection of an op-ed by John McCain supporting the war, a week after the paper ran an anti-war op-ed by his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. CJR contributor Lester Feder wrote of Deputy Editorial Page Editor David Shipley's rejection:McCain partisans have decried the Times's…