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Showing posts with label Newspapers Timeswatch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newspapers Timeswatch. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

NYT Aggressively Pushing Gun Control in Massacre Coverage, Promises More to Come

TimesWatch

NYT Aggressively Pushing Gun Control in Massacre Coverage, Promises More to Come





New York Times' Helene Cooper: Choose Between 2nd Amendment Rights or 'Kids [Being] Safe' at School
New York Times White House reporter Helene Cooper: "And if killing, you know, twenty 5- to 10-year-olds doesn't do it for this country, then than means the other conversation we should be having is just simply saying, 'You know what? The right for older people to bear arms is more important than the right of little kids to be safe when they go to school.'"


NYT Aggressively Pushing Gun Control in Massacre Coverage, Promises More to Come
The Times aggressively promoted Democrats exploiting the massacre to push for gun control legislation. "Democrats seemed to be hoping to seize on the momentum from the shooting, in which 20 first graders were killed, and the resulting outrage and despondency of millions of Americans, to gingerly build a coalition of lawmakers who might be able to create some form of compromise limits on gun sales or types." The Times also ran three editorials pushing gun control on Tuesday, and promised more to come.
*****

Friday, October 28, 2011

TimesWatch Tracker: Times Almost Ignores Anti-Cop Violence at Occupy Oakland

TimesWatch Tracker: Times Almost Ignores Anti-Cop Violence at Occupy Oakland

TimesWatch


More Melodramatic Coverage from Robertson of Alabama's Crackdown on Illegals
That's one way of putting it. Campbell Robertson reports "The champions of Alabama's far-reaching immigration law have said that it is intended to drive illegal immigrants from the state by making every aspect of their life difficult."

Laughs Ahoy for NYT's OWS-Comedy Coverage: Sometimes 'You Need a Little Knife in the Gut'
Corey Kilgannon relays some "jokes" from an Occupy Wall Street comedy night. Imagine the Times' reaction if it had been a Tea Party gathering. "'You need a little knife in the gut once in a while,' joked the comedian Danny Vitale, during a comedy night held for the protesters at the Yippie Museum Café on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village on Wednesday night. Mr. Vitale said that even the Peace Movement of the 1960s had a need for some muscle, citing the claim that the Hell's Angels were used as a security force at the 1969 Altamont Speedway Free Festival."

Times Almost Ignores Anti-Cop Violence at Occupy Oakland
The Times virtually ignores anti-cop violence at the Occupy Oakland encampment, in favor of a sympathetic story on a veteran injured at the protest: "For supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose diffuse anger has been a defining and sometimes distracting characteristic, the wounding of an Iraq war veteran here has provided a powerful central rallying point."

Check out the all new CNSNews.com

More Melodramatic Coverage from Robertson of Alabama's Crackdown on Illegals

Campbell Robertson offered up more melodramatic coverage of Alabama’s tough new immigration enforcement in his Friday New York Times story “ Critics See ‘Chilling Effect’ in Alabama Immigration Law.”

Robertson’s October 4 report led off with an image that could have come from an M. Night Shyamalan movie: “The vanishing began Wednesday night, the most frightened families packing up their cars as soon as they heard the news.”

The opening line to Friday’s story sounds a lot like Robertson putting words in an illegal immigration opponent’s mouth (the Times likes to cartoonishly characterize pro-enforcement sources as having their main goal in life merely to make life hard for illegal immigrants).

The champions of Alabama’s far-reaching immigration law have said that it is intended to drive illegal immigrants from the state by making every aspect of their life difficult. But they have taken a very different tone when it comes to the part of the law concerning schools.

“No child will be denied an education based on unlawful status,” the state attorney general, Luther Strange, argued in a court filing.

The man who wrote the schools provision says the same thing, that it is not meant as a deterrent -- at least not yet. It is, however, a first step in a larger and long-considered strategy to topple a 29-year-old Supreme Court ruling that all children in the United States, regardless of their immigration status, are guaranteed a public education.

The provision, which is known as Section 28, requires primary and secondary schools to record the immigration status of incoming students and their parents and pass that data on to the state.

Critics say it is a simple end in itself, an attempt to circumvent settled law and to scare immigrants away from school now, not at some point in the future. Weeks of erratic school attendance figures and a spike in withdrawals show that this has worked, they argue. And indeed, a federal appeals court on Oct. 14 blocked the provision pending an appeal by the Justice Department, though the court did not rule on the merits.
Deeper into the article, Robertson let on that perhaps those “disappearances” perhaps aren’t as profound as previously assumed by the law's opponents, and Robertson himself.

Whether the critics are correct in arguing that the law has created a “chilling effect,” inducing families to pull their children out of school, is harder to measure than it may seem.

While daily absences by Hispanic students ranged as high as 5,143, or 15 percent of the Hispanic student population, they had dropped to 1,230 the day before the provision was blocked, said a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education (on a normal day, she said, around 1,000 absences can be expected). Statewide data has not been compiled as to how many students have fully withdrawn, though interviews in several districts suggest that number could be in the hundreds.



Laughs Ahoy for NYT's OWS-Comedy Coverage: Sometimes 'You Need a Little Knife in the Gut'

Attempting to humanize the Occupy Wall Street protesters, New York Times Metro reporter Corey Kilgannon laughed off comedic threats of violence in Friday’s  Metro section story on a show hosted by comedian/activist Randy Credico for Occupy Wall Street protesters in Greenwich Village this week, “ Protesters’ Night Out: Jokes, Laughs, and an Anthem on Autoharp.”

Read the excerpt, especially in the wake of the anti-cop violence at Occupy Oakland, then think of how the Times conjured up imaginary threats of violence from much less, like a graphic from Sarah Palin’s political action committee in 2010 showing cross hairs over the districts of some Democrats after the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona.

One comedian derided the group of Occupy Wall Street protesters in the front row as Ivy League nerds. Another ridiculed the “mic-check” format of public speaking favored by protesters since they have been prohibited from using bullhorns. Even their nonviolent protest methods came under fire.

“You need a little knife in the gut once in a while,” joked the comedian Danny Vitale, during a comedy night held for the protesters at the Yippie Museum Café on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village on Wednesday night.

Mr. Vitale said that even the Peace Movement of the 1960s had a need for some muscle, citing the claim that the Hell’s Angels were used as a security force at the 1969 Altamont Speedway Free Festival.

“There have always been some guys on the left who have to be a little strong-arm,” he said.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters based in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan have been nothing if not vocal -- in chants and signs and Twitter posts -- in expressing their discontent with the disparity of wealth in America. But on Wednesday night, it was time to chant down the protesters, at a session that was a mix of a roast and a celebration of the downtown protest.



Times Almost Ignores Anti-Cop Violence at Occupy Oakland

The thrust of the New York Times’ coverage of the violence in Oakland begs the question: When even the left-wing magazine Mother Jones reports of police in Oakland being assaulted with eggs, glass, and vinegar, what is the “objective” Times excuse for virtually ignoring the protester violence?

Yet Jesse McKinley and Malia Wollan’s report from the “Occupy Oakland” protests Friday focused not on the anti-cop violence, but on a military veteran hit in the head by a projectile and the outpouring of sympathy from all the suddenly staunch pro-military people at the Oakland encampment: “ Outrage Over Veteran Injured at ‘Occupy’ Protest.

For supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose diffuse anger has been a defining and sometimes distracting characteristic, the wounding of an Iraq war veteran here has provided a powerful central rallying point.

The veteran, Scott Olsen, 24, was critically injured on Tuesday night when he was hit in the head with a projectile thrown or shot by law enforcement officers combating protesters trying to re-enter a downtown plaza that had been cleared of an encampment earlier in the day. Mr. Olsen, who served two tours of duty in Iraq as a Marine, suffered a fractured skull.

And while Mr. Olsen’s condition has since improved, his injury -- and the oddity of a Marine who faced enemy fire only to be attacked at home -- has prompted an outpouring of sympathy, as well as calls for solidarity among the scores of Occupy encampments around the nation. On Thursday night, camps in several major cities -- including New York, Chicago and Philadelphia -- were expected to participate in a vigil for Mr. Olsen, according to Iraq Veterans Against the War, of which he is a member.

In sharp contrast, James West of Mother Jones concluded his Wednesday dispatch:

As the protesters filtered away, I spoke with a group of tired cops covered in blue and orange paint – and that wasn't all, said one sergeant who wouldn't give his name. He said they'd also been pelted with glass and vinegar, and one officer claimed to have tasted urine in the mix. So how did tonight compare with others he's seen? He laughed and said, "Well, it's not quite a homicide."
Thursday’s National section story from Oakland by Jesse McKinley and Abby Goodnough, “ Some Cities  Begin Cracking Down on ‘Occupy’ Protests,” relegated a vague claim of anti-police violence by protesters to paragraph 18. (The paper did reveal some unflattering details on the protests, such as a spray-painted message that read "Kill Pigs.")

In Oakland, where one protester -- Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran -- was in critical condition at a local hospital after being struck in the head with a projectile during the chaotic street battle on Tuesday, city officials defended their actions, saying the police used tear gas after being pelted with rocks. The police are investigating what happened to Mr. Olsen.


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*****

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

TimesWatch Tracker: Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest


Sunday Front Page: Clarence Thomas Caught in Quiet-Gate Controversy!
News you can use: "The anniversary will probably be observed in silence. A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument."

Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest
The "advocacy group" battling "conservatives" and Justice Clarence Thomas: "...Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes."

Calmes Again Compliments Obama's Budget; Times Bashed Bush's Budgets
Jackie Calmes again suggests Obama's budget for fiscal year 2012 threaded the needle just right between spending cuts and increases, downplaying his lack of leadership on deficit-cutting: "With this year's deficit projected to hit a record, $1.6 trillion, he laid out a path for bringing down annual deficits to more sustainable levels over the rest of the decade."

Jackie Calmes: Behold Obama's Budgetary Brilliance
Reporter Jackie Calmes defends Obama's lack of budgetary leadership as clever strategy: "...President Obama has not opted for the bold, comprehensive approach to reining in the fast-growing federal debt....[reflecting] a White House calculation: that 'now' is too soon for the nation's political system....Plenty of people here in both parties, even deficit hawks among nonpartisan budget analysts, agree with that White House logic."

'Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down' - Will Your Home Survive Global Warming?
Reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal rushes in where scientific consensus fears to tread: "Global warming is most likely responsible, at least in part, for the rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events - like floods, storms and droughts - since warmer surface temperatures tend to produce more violent weather patterns, scientists say."

Deborah Solomon Gives Up 'Q&A' Slot; Showed Blatant Hostility Toward Conservatives
Peter Baker's respectful interview with Donald Rumsfeld in the Times Sunday Magazine makes quite a contrast with Deborah Solomon's aggressive and hostile approach toward conservatives like William F. Buckley and Gov. Bobby Jindal.



Sunday Front Page: Clarence Thomas Caught in Quiet-Gate Controversy!

Besides the drumbeat of criticism of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over his speaking engagements in front of conservative groups, the Times updated another traditional line of Thomas criticism on Sunday’s front page: He doesn’t speak during Supreme Court arguments (as if that would make the Times any less dismissive of his conservative philosophy). The latest iteration of the criticism is headlined “ No Argument: Thomas Keeps 5-Year Silence,” from Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak. And this time, the Times has figures to back up its fascinating premise.

Legal reporter Neil Lewis wrote a story about it for the December 17, 2000 Week in Review. Former Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse devoted her March 11, 2010 column to Thomas’s long silence. Some excerpts from Liptak's front-page contribution to this vital topic:

The anniversary will probably be observed in silence.

A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument.

If he is true to form, Justice Thomas will spend the arguments as he always does: leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes, whispering to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, consulting papers and looking a little irritated and a little bored. He will ask no questions.

In the past 40 years, no other justice has gone an entire term, much less five, without speaking at least once during arguments, according to Timothy R. Johnson, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. Justice Thomas’s epic silence on the bench is just one part of his enigmatic and contradictory persona. He is guarded in public but gregarious in private. He avoids elite universities but speaks frequently to students at regional and religious schools. In those settings, he rarely dwells on legal topics but is happy to discuss a favorite movie, like “Saving Private Ryan.”

Here’s Liptak uncovering Quiet-Gate.

Justice Thomas has given various and shifting reasons for declining to participate in oral arguments, the court’s most public ceremony.

He has said, for instance, that he is self-conscious about the way he speaks. In his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” he wrote that he had been teased about the dialect he grew up speaking in rural Georgia. He never asked questions in college or law school, he wrote, and he was intimidated by some fellow students.

Elsewhere, he has said that he is silent out of simple courtesy.



Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest

The Times went after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas again in Tuesday’s report by Eric Lichtblau, “ Court Is Asked to Clarify Thomas’s Ties to a Retreat.”

Discrepancies in reports about an appearance by Justice Clarence Thomas at a political retreat for wealthy conservatives three years ago have prompted new questions to the Supreme Court from a group that advocates changing campaign finance laws.

When questions were first raised about the retreat last month, a court spokeswoman said Justice Thomas had made a “brief drop-by” at the event in Palm Springs, Calif., in January 2008 and had given a talk.

In his financial disclosure report for that year, however, Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized byCharles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes.

Despite all the free publicity the Times has given to Common Cause’s recent conflict-of-interest complaints against Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, the paper has yet to report on the vulgar and racist remarks about Thomas (“String him up”) made by Common Cause-affiliated protesters and caught on video January 30 outside a resort in which the Koch brothers had organized a conservative meeting. Lichtblau himself even covered the protest, in flattering fashion.

Also note Lichtblau’s labeling disparity: While the Federalist Society is “conservative,” and the Koch brothers “finance conservative causes,” their leftist opponents at Common Cause are twice considered merely an “advocacy group.”

Arn Pearson, a vice president at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the two statements appeared at odds. His group sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Monday asking for “further clarification” as to whether the justice spent four days at the retreat for the entire event or was there only briefly.

....
Common Cause maintains that Justice Thomas should have disqualified himself from last year’s landmark campaign finance ruling in the Citizens United case, partly because of his ties to the Koch brothers.

In a petition filed with the Justice Department last month, the advocacy group said past appearances at the Koch brothers’ retreat by Justice Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, along with the conservative political work of Justice Thomas’s wife, had created a possible perception of bias in hearing the case.

The Citizens United decision, with Justice Thomas’s support, freed corporations to engage in direct political spending with little public disclosure. The Koch brothers have been among the main beneficiaries, political analysts say. 

And which “political analysts” would those be?



Calmes Again Compliments Obama's Budget; Times Bashed Bush's Budgets

Jackie Calmes again made approving noises over Obama’s budget proposal for the fiscal year 2012 on Tuesday's front page: “Obama’s Budget Focuses On Path To Rein In Deficit.” As she did yesterday, Calmes treated the Obama budget as just right in its balance of spending cuts and increases (as opposed to the “Republican plan for immediate deep spending cuts”) and gave him a pass for putting off the tough choices.

With President Obama’s release on Monday of a budget for next year and House action this week on a Republican plan for immediate deep spending cuts, the nation is getting its clearest view since the president took office of the parties’ competing visions of the role of government, the urgency of addressing the deficit and the best path to long-term economic success.

Mr. Obama used his budget for the fiscal year 2012 and beyond to make the case for selectively cutting spending while increasing resources in areas like education and clean energy initiatives that hold the potential for long-term payoffs in economic growth. With this year’s deficit projected to hit a record, $1.6 trillion, he laid out a path for bringing down annual deficits to more sustainable levels over the rest of the decade.

Republicans said it was not nearly enough to address chronic fiscal imbalances and reduce the role of the federal government in the economy and society.

Neither party has put forward specific proposals to begin grappling with the most pressing long-term budget problem: the huge costs in the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs as the population ages and medical costs rise, a bill that could overwhelm the government and crimp the economy if not addressed.

“We’re doing things that are the most painful and of least long-term economic value because we’re not willing to do the things that everybody, at least privately, agrees are necessary,” said Vin Weber, a Republican Party strategist and former congressman.

Nonetheless, with his budget, Mr. Obama was pivoting from the emphasis in his first two years on costly efforts to revive the economy. He said his plan would reduce the total projected deficits over the next decade by $1.1 trillion, or about 10 percent.

His budget, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, would cut spending for an array of domestic programs, including community services and environmental protection, and reduce the Pentagon’s previously proposed budget by $78 billion over five years. At the same time, it would make room for spending increases for education, infrastructure, clean energy, innovation, as well as research. 

By contrast, President Bush’s budget proposals for the fiscal years 2005 and 2006, with their own mix of spending priorities, were criticized in the Times both for being “austere” and, conversely, for failing to reign in the “record-high deficit.” Reporters Edmund Andrews and David Rosenbaum insisted of Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget proposal for 2006:

By any measure, the new budget is austere. It calls for deep cuts next year in almost every category of domestic spending outside the mandatory entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are based on laws adopted in previous years.

And in her February 3, 2004 report on Bush’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2005, Elisabeth Bumiller declared it dead on arrival and wondered if Bush could survive the "cuts to popular programs" (left unnamed) in his $2.4 trillion budget:

Mr. Bush's calculation is that voters will care far more about protecting the nation from another terrorist attack than about cuts to popular programs, or, for that matter, the record-high deficit....Like his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush's budget calls for no big new domestic programs and in fact forces him to cut so deeply that even his Republican allies in Congress called it politically impractical and said restorations were inevitable.
Bumiller got that from a budget proposal that actually increased discretionary spending outside of the military and domestic security by 0.5 percent.

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Jackie Calmes: Behold Obama's Budgetary Brilliance

Washington reporter Jackie Calmes evidently approves of Obama’s budget in her Monday morning story before the document’s official release: “ A Cautious Approach Seeking Bipartisan Appeal.”

Calmes has been a big booster of Obama’s stimulus package, insisting that no reputable economist can deny its success.

Calmes gave Obama credit on Monday morning for his “characteristic caution” (a phrase that provides the big-spending president a false patina of moderation), while the print edition text box implied Obama got the mix just right, like Goldilocks: “Analysts agree President Obama’s budget should be bolder, but not yet.”

With the budget he is to unveil Monday, President Obama has not opted for the bold, comprehensive approach to reining in the fast-growing federal debt that his own fiscal commission has said is needed, now.

That decision partly reflects Mr. Obama’s characteristic caution, but also a White House calculation: that “now” is too soon for the nation’s political system. And that boldness could backfire -- wounding not just a president facing re-election next year but also the prospects for bipartisan agreement on the very tax and spending-cut proposals that all sides realize are needed to truly stem the projected red ink in a nation confronting high health care costs and an aging population.

Plenty of people here in both parties, even deficit hawks among nonpartisan budget analysts, agree with that White House logic.

Those fierce “deficit hawks” include liberal Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad.

Calmes played defense for Obama’s lack of budgetary leadership:

With Republicans newly in control of the House and holding a bigger minority in the Senate, these people argue, the party needs time to at least try to push its own ambitious agenda for reducing government with the deepest spending cuts in memory. To compromise too soon would enrage the Republicans’ political base, in particular Tea Party activists who fueled the party’s election gains in November.

And, the reasoning goes, were Mr. Obama to propose a drastic debt-reduction plan as an invitation to Republicans to join him at the bargaining table -- a plan with the kind of far-reaching tax changes and spending cuts for the military, Medicare and Social Security that a bipartisan majority of his fiscal commission recommended in December -- he would most likely get an immediate “no, thanks” from Republican leaders, perhaps poisoning prospects for bipartisan talks for the foreseeable future. In fact, all three House Republican leaders on that commission opposed its majority report. 

The headline in The Hill newspaper online was not as forgiving: “Obama budget falls far short of debt commission savings plan.”



'Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down' - Will Your Home Survive Global Warming?

For the Sunday Week in Review, reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal filed yet another credulous report on the dangers of global warming, finding a unique apocalyptic angle: “ Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down – Most buildings – ice rinks, stadiums and homes – were built with specific weather conditions in mind. Will they survive climate change?

Rosenthal showed an even more cataclysmic outlook in a December 14, 2009 piece on glaciers in the Andes mountain range in South America:

A World Bank report concluded last year that climate change would eliminate many glaciers in the Andes within 20 years, threatening the existence of nearly 100 million people.

From Rosenthal’s Sunday morning jeremiad:

Under the weight of record snows, roofs across the Northeast have been buckling this winter, raining debris on children skating in ice rinks, crushing cows and tractors in farmers’ barns and even flattening a garage full of antique cars. In December, nearly 18 inches of new heavy snow brought down the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, forcing the Vikings to temporarily relocate to Detroit.
Why? Rosenthal knows. She found certainty in an issue that is actually subject to heated scientific debate:

....The litany of extreme weather events has often left local officials scrambling to respond to each new crisis, looking -- by turns pathetic and heroic -- like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, trying to fend off nature’s monumental forces.

Global warming is most likely responsible, at least in part, for the rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events -- like floods, storms and droughts -- since warmer surface temperatures tend to produce more violent weather patterns, scientists say. And the damage these events have caused is a sign that the safety factors that engineers, architects and planners have previously built into structures are becoming inadequate for the changing climate.

After several paragraphs of environmental fearmongering, Rosenthal eventually admitted that no one really knows the future impact of  “climate change.”

Widely varying predictions about climate change make it especially hard for engineers to build for the future -- or for insurers to guard against weather-related losses. Indeed, scientists do not entirely understand the complex ways in which warmer temperatures influence weather.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said 2010 had tied for the warmest year on record in terms of land and sea surface temperatures. At the simplest level, a warmer ocean surface means more evaporation into the atmosphere -- and all that extra water has to come down somewhere, probably accounting for more frequent and severe storms. But it is not easy to predict which places will suffer snow or rain and which will experience drought.



Deborah Solomon Gives Up 'Q&A' Slot; Showed Blatant Hostility Toward Conservatives

Upon first skimming the New York Times Sunday Magazine “Q&A” with Donald Rumsfeld, I steeled myself for reporter Deborah Solomon’s usual hostility. Finding instead neutral questions designed to invite substantive responses from the subject, I rubbed my eyes and checked the byline.

Sure enough, Solomon’s announced retirement as section contributor had come to pass, with reporter Peter Baker taking over interviewing duties (at least this week).

Some of Solomon’s low-light interviews include a hostile one she conducted with conservative icon William F. Buckley, especially compared to the fawning one she gave racially inflammatory Al Sharpton the very next week.

A couple of the questions Solomon asked Buckley for the July 11, 2004 edition of the magazine:

You have made so many offensive comments over the years. Do you regret any of them?

It's not fair to blame the press. Some of your most inflammatory comments have been made in your essays and columns. In the 50's, you famously claimed that whites were culturally superior to African-Americans. 

By contrast, while interviewing Sharpton, Solomon not only ignored Sharpton’s inflammatory history, but invited him to accuse another black personality -- Bill Cosby -- of racism!

I wonder how you feel about Bill Cosby's recent comment that too many African-Americans speak ungrammatical English and fail to rear their children properly. Does that strike you as racist?" It takes chutzpah to ask Sharpton (he of "white interloper" fame) if someone else is using racist language.
And in an interview with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for the August 31, 2008 magazine, she callously asked:

If the Republican Party bills itself as the party of family values, what should we make of the fact that you rejected the name your parents gave you, their political affiliation and their religion?
You can follow Times Watch on Twitter.

TimesWatch Tracker: Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest
*****

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Times Watch Tracker: Times Overexcited About First Daughter Barbara Bush's Support of Gay Marriage

Deborah Solomon Demands of Goldman Sachs Strategist: 'What Is a C.E.O. Contributing to Society?'
To that, Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs replied: "What about the C.E.O. of the New York Times Company?"


Times Overexcited About First Daughter Barbara Bush's Support of Gay Marriage
Reporter Michael Barbaro gets awfully worked up about one of Bush's daughters making a video in support of gay marriage in New York State: "The Bush dynasty is no stranger to generational conflict: father and son differed over deposing Saddam Hussein, raising taxes and the role of the United Nations. Now it is father and daughter who find themselves at odds over a weighty issue."


Times Online Underwhelmed By Ruling Obama-Care Is Unconstitutional
An online headline underplayed the danger a Florida judge's ruling poses to Obama-care: "Ruling Against Health Care Law Evens Scorecard at 2-2."


Huge Keller Cover Story Defends Spilling Diplomatic Secrets From WikiLeaks
The biggest laugh line in Executive Editor Bill Keller's proud defense of his paper's publication of secret diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: "...it is our aim to be impartial in our presentation of the news." Yet he clearly preferred dealing with the Obama White House over that of President George W. Bush.

*****

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Times Watch Tracker: New Civility Only for Republicans, Apparently

Times Watch Tracker:

New Civility Only for Republicans, Apparently
A Sunday editorial chides Republicans for refusing to change the name of an anti-"job-killing" bill. But a Tuesday headline reads: "Where News Is Power, A Fight to Be Well-Armed."

Rick Berke Justifies the Times' Politicized Tucson Coverage
News editor Rick Berke defends the Times politicized coverage of the rampage in Tucson: "After all, a politician was shot in the head while meeting with constituents. That same lawmaker had her office vandalized during an especially rancorous campaign. And after the shooting the sheriff called his state the capital of hatred and bigotry." But the paper's Public Editor disagrees.

Tale of Two Congressmen: 'Conservative' Tom Coburn, But 'Democrat' Chuck Schumer
Labeling disparity: In a story on Congress marking the shootings in Tucson, the Times notes that two senators will be sitting together at Obama's upcoming State of the Union address: Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, and Sen. Charles Schumer, a plain old Democrat from New York.

Shocking: Frank Rich Blames GOP for Pre-Tucson Violence
Columnist Frank Rich weighs in on the Tucson shootings in predictable fashion by blaming the GOP: "Few wanted to see what Giffords saw - that the vandalism and death threats were the latest consequences of a tide of ugly insurrectionism that had been rising since the final weeks of the 2008 campaign and that had threatened to turn violent from the start."
*****

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Meg Whitman's Old Shove More Newsworthy Than Dem. Congressman's Videotaped Attack


TimesWatch  Tracker

Documenting and Exposing the Liberal Political Agenda of the New York Times
Tuesday June 15, 2010 @ 03:58 PM EDT

G.O.P. Meg Whitman's Old Shove More Newsworthy Than Dem. Congressman's Videotaped Assault
Balance? Eight paragraphs for the widely seen clip of Democratic Rep. Bob Etheridge attacking two young filmmakers; 27 paragraphs and prominent placement for an allegation from 2007 about Republican candidate for California governor Meg Whitman.

Dowd Admits: Democrats Expect Favorable Media
Columnist Maureen Dowd on Obama: "Like many Democrats, he thinks the press is supposed to be on his side."

Crist Wins Over 'Compassionate Conservatives' By Vetoing Pro-Life Bill?
Reporter Damien Cave's dubious claim: "[Crist] said financial and medical measures that make it harder for women to end their pregnancies 'do not change hearts, which is the only true and effective way to ensure that a new life coming into the world is loved.' Compassionate conservatives and parents of all persuasions may be hard pressed to disagree."

*****

Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ or http://kevindayhoffart.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.com/ Kevin Dayhoff Westminster: http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/ or http://www.westgov.net/ = www.kevindayhoff.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoff Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net Explore Carroll: www.explorecarroll.com The Tentacle: www.thetentacle.com

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

TimesWatch: Times Raises Sestak Bribe Allegation, Presses Obama on Hypocrisy

TimesWatch: Times Raises Sestak Bribe Allegation, Presses Obama on Hypocrisy

TimesWatch  Tracker

Documenting and Exposing the Liberal Political Agenda of the New York Times
Tuesday May 25, 2010 @ 05:32 PM EDT

NYT Sees GOP's Special Election Loss as Harbinger for November
The Times continued to use its front-page real estate to trumpet last week's G.O.P.'s loss in a special House election in Pennsylvania as a warning sign for the 2010 elections, even though the seat had been occupied by veteran Democrat Rep. John Murtha and Democrats hold a registration edge in the district of 2-1.

The Times Follows the Aftermath of Climate-Gate in Britain
Reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal's front-page fret: "Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the Rplanet?"

Times Raises Sestak Bribe Allegation, Presses Obama on Hypocrisy
Peter Baker is the first Times reporter to directly address Sestak's allegations of the White House bribing him to drop out of the Democratic primary, and even raises the hypocrisy angle: "Even if the conversations were perfectly legal, as the White House claims, the situation challenges President Obama's efforts to present himself as a reformer who will fix a town of dirty politics. And the refusal to even discuss what was discussed does not advance the White House's well-worn claim to being 'the most transparent' in history."


NYT's Economic Guru Again Hits Reagan for 'Magnifying Income Inequality'
David Leonhardt brags on Obama, who is on a regulatory roll: "Today, he looks more like a liberal answer to Ronald Reagan." He then blames Reagan for fostering income inequality, and praises Obama for fighting it.





NYT Sees GOP's Special Election Loss as Harbinger for November

The Times continued to use its front-page real estate to trumpet last week's G.O.P.'s loss in a special House election in Pennsylvania as a warning sign for the 2010 elections, even though the seat had been occupied by veteran Democrat Rep. John Murtha and Democrats hold a registration edge in the district of 2-1.

On Thursday it was congressional reporter Carl Hulse's “House Victory Lifts Democrats' Hopes for Fall.” On Monday, Hulse (pictured at right) teamed with reporter Jeff Zeleny for another front-page story, flipping the coin from Democratic hopes to Republicans worrying they're going to blow their chance: “Republicans See Big Chance, But Worry About Wasting It.”

Republicans remain confident of making big gains in the fall elections, but as the midterm campaign begins in earnest, they face a series of challenges that could keep the party from fully capitalizing on an electorate clamoring for change in Washington.

There are growing concerns among Republicans about the party’s get-out-the-vote operation and whether it can translate their advantage over Democrats in grass-roots enthusiasm into turnout on Election Day. They are also still trying to get a fix on how to run against President Obama, who, polls suggest, remains relatively well-liked by voters, even as support for his agenda has waned.

....

A series of events last week prompted a re-examination among Republicans of where the party stands less than six months before the midterm elections. In Pennsylvania, a Republican House candidate, Tim Burns, lost a special election by 8 points in a swing district of the sort the party needs to capture to have a shot of regaining the majority. And in a Republican primary for a Senate seat from Kentucky, Rand Paul, a leading emblem of the Tea Party, won a commanding victory.

The story buried a piece of good news for Republicans – they actually picked up a seat in a special election in of all places, blue (state) Hawaii:

Republicans continue to have much in their favor, and over all appear to be in a stronger position than Democrats. They continue to benefit from a widespread sense among voters that government has gotten too expansive, with Mr. Obama’s health care bill as Exhibit A. The economic recovery remains tepid, with unemployment still high.

Republicans raised more money than Democrats last month, a reflection of the optimism about the potential for gains in November among the party’s contributors. And the party did pick up a House seat in Hawaii on Saturday in a special election in a district that is heavily Democratic -- two rival Democrats split their party’s vote -- but Democrats expressed confidence they would win the seat back in November.

While Democrats also face challenges motivating their base this year, the Democratic margin of victory in the House race in Pennsylvania suggests that the party may enjoy organizational capabilities that Republicans do not.

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The Times Follows the Aftermath of Climate-Gate in Britain

Thursday's A1 story from London by environmental reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal was headlined “Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britains.” Who is to blame? "Right-leaning newspapers," for one.

Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

....

Here in Britain, the change has been driven by the news media’s intensive coverage of a series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since November. These include the unauthorized release of e-mail messages from prominent British climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that skeptics cited as evidence that researchers were overstating the evidence for global warming and the discovery of errors in a United Nations climate report.

Two independent reviews later found no evidence that the East Anglia researchers had actively distorted climate data, but heavy press coverage had already left an impression that the scientists had schemed to repress data. Then there was the unusually cold winter in Northern Europe and the United States, which may have reinforced a perception that the Earth was not warming. (Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a United States agency, show that globally, this winter was the fifth warmest in history.)

Rosenthal detailed the push-back by believers in the theory of global warming as a man-made and harmful phenomenon, then pinned an ideological label on other news organs more open to debate on the issue than the New York Times:

It is unclear whether such actions are enough to win back a segment of the public that has eagerly consumed a series of revelations that were published prominently in right-leaning newspapers like The Times of London and The Telegraph and then repeated around the world.

In January, for example, The Times chastised the United Nations climate panel for an errant and unsupported projection that glaciers in the Himalayas could disappear by 2035. The United Nations ultimately apologized for including the estimate, which was mentioned in passing within a 3,000-page report in 2007.

The Times has never identified itself in a news story as a "left-leaning newspaper."

And this scary speech suppression of German newspapers didn't overly concern Rosenthal:

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, successfully demanded in February that some German newspapers remove misleading articles from their Web sites. But such reports have become so common that he “wouldn’t bother” to pursue most cases now, he added.

The Times would be in little danger of such censorship -- its coverage of the global warming (led until this year by Andrew Revkin) has been sufficiently alarmist for the climate change pushers.

In December 2009, Rosenthal saw utter catastrophe in the alleged “disappearance” of glaciers from the Andes mountain range over Bolivia:

A World Bank report concluded last year that climate change would eliminate many glaciers in the Andes within 20 years, threatening the existence of nearly 100 million people.

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Times Raises Sestak Bribe Allegation, Presses Obama on Hypocrisy

The Times at last devoted a story to the Sestak controversy in Tuesday's “White House Answer on Sestak Raises More Questions” by Peter Baker. Sestak, who beat sitting Senator Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, has long claimed the White House offered him a job to quit the race and let Specter run unopposed as a Democrat.

For three months, the White House has refused to say whether it offered a job to Representative Joe Sestak to get him to drop his challenge to Senator Arlen Specter in a Pennsylvania Democratic primary, as Mr. Sestak has asserted.

But the White House wants everyone who suspects that something untoward, or even illegal, might have happened to rest easy: though it still will not reveal what happened, the White House is reassuring skeptics that it has examined its own actions and decided it did nothing wrong. Whatever it was that it did.

The surprisingly cynical text box: “No principles were harmed in making this election, the White House says.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “trust us” response from the White House has not exactly put the matter to rest. With Mr. Sestak’s victory over Mr. Specter in last week’s primary, the questions have returned with intensity, only to remain unanswered. Mr. Gibbs deflected questions 13 times at a White House briefing last week just two days after the primary. Mr. Sestak, a retired admiral, has reaffirmed his assertion without providing any details, like who exactly offered what job.

Baker raised the hypocrisy point:

Even if the conversations were perfectly legal, as the White House claims, the situation challenges President Obama’s efforts to present himself as a reformer who will fix a town of dirty politics. And the refusal to even discuss what was discussed does not advance the White House’s well-worn claim to being “the most transparent” in history.

When Mr. Gibbs was pressed on the matter Thursday, he resolutely referred to his original statement exonerating the White House and refused to elaborate.

....

Ron Kaufman, who had the same job under the first President George Bush, said it would not be surprising for a White House to use political appointments to accomplish a political goal. “Tell me a White House that didn’t do this, back to George Washington,” Mr. Kaufman said. “But here’s the difference -- the times have changed and the ethics have changed and the scrutiny has changed. This is the kind of thing people across America are mad about.”

Moreover, he said, Mr. Obama’s own rhetoric raised the bar: “When you get out there and say, ‘We’re going to do things totally different, we’re above all this and we’re going to be totally transparent,’ they cause their own problem because they’re not being transparent.”




NYT's Economic Guru Again Hits Reagan for 'Magnifying Income Inequality'

In his “Economic Scene” column on Saturday, “A Progressive Agenda To Remake Washington,” David Leonhardt, the paper's resident economics thinker, pushed his single-minded focus on fighting the liberal white whale of “income inequality.”

Leonhardt again blamed President Ronald Reagan for “magnifying income inequality” and praised Obama for trying to ameliorate it (and has it both ways a bit by calling Obama “a liberal answer to Ronald Reagan”). Liberal nostrums to the contrary, income inequality in itself is not a universally negative trait, especially for growing economies, but Leonhardt doesn't factor those clashing ideas into his thinking.

Leonhardt bragged that after the passage of both health care and financial "reform," Obama is on a bit of a regulatory roll:

...the turnabout since Jan. 20 -- the first anniversary of Mr. Obama’s inauguration and the day after Scott Brown, a Republican, won a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts -- has been remarkable. Then, commentators pronounced the Obama presidency nearly dead. Today, he looks more like a liberal answer to Ronald Reagan.

....

Mr. Obama has been trying to reverse the Reagan thrust in some important ways. Although the Reagan administration did not shrink the size of the federal government, it changed the ways that Washington collected and spent its money, by reducing taxes on the affluent, cutting some social programs and increasing military spending.

These policies ended up magnifying income inequality, which was already rising for other reasons. Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled. Every major piece of the Obama agenda is meant, in part, to push back against inequality. Government may grow, but the bigger change will be how the government is spending its money.

A good neo-liberal, Leonhardt at least noted that many victories of the Reagan Revolution still stand today:

For all these differences, though, there are also ways that Mr. Obama and today’s Democrats have accepted, and are even furthering, the Reagan project. They are not trying to raise tax rates on the affluent to anywhere near their pre-1981 levels. Their health bill tried created new private insurance markets, not expand Medicare.

Most striking, the administration is trying to improve public education by introducing more market competition. To win stimulus funds, about 20 states have changed their rules to allow more charter schools or to evaluate teachers in new ways. On Thursday, Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. of Colorado signed a bill that would reward teachers who received strong evaluations and deny tenure to some who did poorly.

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Thursday, May 06, 2010

TimesWatch: Will Closed-Minded Country Music Let Lesbian Chely Wright In?


TimesWatch  Tracker

Documenting and Exposing the Liberal Political Agenda of the New York Times
Thursday May 06, 2010 @ 03:28 PM EDT

Will Closed-Minded Country Music Let Lesbian Chely Wright In?

Times' music writer Jon Caramanica also details the 2003 battle between the vulgarly anti-war Dixie Chick Natalie Maines and "reliable jingoist" Toby Keith.

ABC Touts Columnist Tom Friedman Seeing Gulf Oil Spill as 'Opportunity'

GMA's hosts and producers know what to expect when they have columnist Thomas Friedman on: Requests for yet more taxes on the American public.

Clifford Ignores Liberal Slant as Culprit in Newsweek's Decline
Stephanie Clifford's front-page piece on the money-losing Newsweek doesn't mention the mag's liberal opinionizing. But she was quick to snidely spot a right-wing slant at Reader's Digest.

NYT Editorial Page: First Amendment Protects Violent Video Games, Not Political Speech
The Times favors free expression in video games: "The Constitution, however, does not require speech to be ideal for it to be protected." But not in speech on issues of the day: "Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy."




Will Closed-Minded Country Music Let Lesbian Chely Wright In?

On the Thursday Arts page, music writer Jon Caramanica profiled a trio of country music's prodigal daughters, focusing first on relatively obscure country singer Chely Wright, who is raising the publicity profile for her comeback album by coming out as a lesbian.

The headline frames the country music community as reactionary and intolerant, an idea not supported by anything in Caramanica's text: “A Singer Comes Out; Now Will Nashville Let Her Back In?

By the time the country singer Chely Wright appeared on “Today” Wednesday morning, the secret was out. This minor star of the 1990s and early 2000s was coming out as a lesbian. During her early years in Nashville, “I knew that I needed to hide this to achieve my dreams,” she told the host Natalie Morales.

After noting that Wright's had only one major hit -- back in 1999 -- Caramanica gave the genre some backhanded praise as not as homophobic as it could be:

Rather, Ms. Wright’s high-profile declaration casts a spotlight on the world of country music, which has historically had little room for differences. Ms. Wright’s dissent from the genre’s talking points -- often conservative and religious, though rarely blatantly homophobic -- arrived in tandem with the release of her memoir, “Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer” (Pantheon), and a new album, “Lifted Off the Ground” (Painted Red/Vanguard). But the impact of her story is really more powerful on country music’s monolithic image than on her own image.

Then Caramanica turned to the debut album from the Court Yard Hounds, a project by two out of three members of the once-famous country threesome The Dixie Chicks (absent anti-war singer/songwriter Natalie Maines).

Caramanica did locate a “reliable jingoist," singling out country star and Iraq War supporter Toby Keith, well-known for his criticism of Maines and his passionate 9-11 song, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).”

Ms. Wright’s album arrived on the same day as the self-titled debut album (on Columbia) by Court Yard Hounds, the project by the two-thirds of the Dixie Chicks -- Emily Robison and Martie Maguire -- who didn’t announce, at a 2003 concert in London, “We’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.” (That was Natalie Maines, the group’s main agitator, who doesn’t appear on this album.)

From a financial perspective that sentence cost the Dixie Chicks dearly: once multiplatinum county radio darlings, they’ve been on an extended hiatus and have all but disappeared from many playlists. They entered into a war of words with Toby Keith, a reliable jingoist and pot stirrer, that only ossified their reputations as antitraditionalists. Now Ms. Robison and Ms. Maguire are in an unusual position: exceedingly famous artists attempting to pass for a new act, free of negative associations.

Maines attacked Keith by wearing a T-shirt slogan ("F.U.T.K.") that was an acronym for a vulgarity aimed at Keith.

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ABC Touts Columnist Tom Friedman Seeing Gulf Oil Spill as 'Opportunity'

ABC's Good Morning America on Thursday again brought on Thomas Friedman to lobby for taxes on carbon and oil. Talking to host George Stephanopoulos, the New York Times columnist urged Barack Obama to "use" the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico and push "a bill through the Senate."

Friedman discussed America getting off oil and argued, "Well, ultimately, it's going to require a price on carbon that will stimulate innovation in clean power technologies." He delicately mentioned forcing changes on businesses and taxpayers and touted that other countries "are putting in place, basically, these kind of carbon rules and taxes that give a very clear signal to business, where to invest."

Other than the occasional right-leaning point made by Bill O'Reilly, GMA's hosts don't often bring on conservative guests to promote lower taxes and less government regulation. Yet, Friedman is a favorite of the ABC program.

The columnist appeared on the September 8, 2008 GMA to make almost the exact same argument he made on Thursday. Talking to host Diane Sawyer, Friedman hyped, "But, you know, there's really no effective plan to make us energy independent without what I call a price signal, without either a carbon tax or a gasoline tax that's really going to shape the market in a different way."

Speaking of the then-presidential candidates, he enthused, "I'm looking for them to tell the truth, which is everywhere in the world, gasoline is taxed except us. You know, gasoline in Denmark is $10 a gallon."

Certainly, GMA's hosts and producers know what to expect when they have Tom Friedman on: Requests for yet more taxes on the American public.

A partial transcript of the May 6 segment, which aired at 7:08am EDT, follows:


HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to turn to the oil spill. Fascinating column yesterday, where you said, "The oil spill was what the sub-prime mortgages were to the markets, both a wake-up call and an opportunity." You said it could be President Obama's most important leadership test.

FRIEDMAN: Yeah. I really think this is an opportunity. The President has really got to decide how am I going to deal with this spill? Does he really just want to end the oil spill? Of course he wants to do that. Or does he actually want to give birth to a new energy system that will end our addiction to oil. I for one am hoping and urging that he'll do the latter, that he'll use this as a way of pushing a bill through the Senate, that will begin to finally to end our addiction to oil. So, over time, you know, we're not going to find ourselves dependent on these kind of dangerous technologies, that inevitably lead to these kinds of accidents.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And to pick up on your previous point, that could involve some pain, higher oil and gas prices.

FRIEDMAN: Well, ultimately, it's going to require a price on carbon that will stimulate innovation in clean power technologies. Now, really, if you look out at the American business communities today, American business leaders understand that, really, every country in the world, Europe, Japan, China, are putting in place, basically, these kind of carbon rules and taxes that give a very clear signal to business, where to invest. We're the only major country in the world, not doing that. And I think it's a real -- it's a real disadvantage. I mean, China's getting ready to clean our clock. How do you say clean your clock in Mandarin, in the next great global industry, which will be clean technology.

Friedman is the second Times columnist to suggest the oil spill had a good side; in her Wednesday online "conversation" with fellow columnist David Brooks, Gail Collins said one possible "bright spot" of the spill would be a renewed American focus on environmental issues.

-- Scott Whitlock is a news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Times Watch on Twitter.




Clifford Ignores Liberal Slant as Culprit in Newsweek's Decline

News that the Washington Post Co. would sell its struggling weekly magazine Newsweek made Thursday's front page in a story by Stephanie Clifford: “As Newsweek Goes on Block, An Era Fades.”

Clifford attempted to explain the decline of the magazine in general terms (“the American conversation has become harder to sum up in a single cover”). One point unaddressed by Clifford: Newsweek's purposeful shift toward liberal opinion over news-gathering. (Read MRC's Brent Baker on how the Weekly Standard dubbed “Newsweek” “Obamaweek” in July 2008.) By contrast, in 2009 Clifford had no problem finding a shift to the right at another struggling magazine, Reader's Digest.

Clifford wrote:

For generations, Time and Newsweek fought to define the national news agenda every Monday on the newsstand. Before the Internet, before cable news, before People magazine, what the newsweeklies put on their covers mattered.

As the American conversation has become harder to sum up in a single cover, that era seems to be ending. The Washington Post Company announced Wednesday that it would sell Newsweek, raising questions about the future of the newsweekly, first published 77 years ago.

There's some labeling disparity here, as Clifford finds Time magazine to have historically “a conservative stance,” while Newsweek was merely “more youth oriented” (as opposed to having “a liberal stance”).

Newsweek under The Post became a political counterweight to the Republicanism of Time under Henry Luce. While Time took a conservative stance on the Vietnam War and American culture, Newsweek ran more youth oriented covers on the war, civil rights and pop culture stars like the Beatles (though “musically they are a near disaster,” the magazine said).
....

Newsweek’s circulation was 3.14 million in the first half of 2000. By the second half of 2009, that dropped to 1.97 million. Time’s circulation declined from 4.07 million to 3.33 million in the same period. U.S. News & World Report, the also-ran newsweekly, abandoned its weekly publication schedule in 2008 to become monthly.

Meanwhile, The Economist, which offered British-accented reports on business and economic news, and The Week, an unabashedly middle-brow summary of the weekly news that began publishing in the United States in 2001, were on the rise.

Interestingly, both “The Week,” and “The Economist” have political profiles to the right of Newsweek.

Clifford hinted at the triumph of opinion over news at the increasingly ill-named Newsweek, but didn't specify from which perspective those opinions were hailing:

Both Time and Newsweek were aggressively redesigned. Time, in 2007, changed its publication date from Monday to Friday and added more analysis. Newsweek, in 2009, more or less ceased original reporting about the week’s events, and instead ran essays from columnists like Fareed Zakaria and opinionated analyses.

By contrast, Clifford had no trouble finding a conservative slant at another struggling magazine, Reader's Digest, in a snide June 19, 2009 story initially headlined “Reader's Digest Moves Right of Middle America.”




NYT Editorial Page: First Amendment Protects Violent Video Games, Not Political Speech

Today's Times makes its editorial priorities clear: It values free speech for violent video games, but not on the issues of the day. Thursday's editorial, “Video Games and Free Speech,” was launched by news the Supreme Court would review a California law that makes it illegal to sell violent video games to minors:

But video games are a form of free expression. Many have elaborate plots and characters, often drawn from fiction or history. The California law is a content-based restriction, something that is presumed invalid under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has made it clear that minors have First Amendment rights....California lawmakers may have been right when they decided that video games in which players kill and maim are not the most socially beneficial form of expression. The Constitution, however, does not require speech to be ideal for it to be protected.

Too bad the Times doesn't hold the First Amendment in such high regard when it comes to truly important speech: political speech on issues of the day, the most vital kind there is in a democracy.

A January 22 editorial termed the Supreme Court's victory for expanding free speech, in the form of loosening restrictions on companies spending money on political campaigns, “The Court's Blow to Democracy." The text was no less hysterical:

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

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