How left-leaning is the New York Times news coverage? Even more left-leaning than the newspaper's famously liberal editorials, at least to judge by an article in the national section of today's New York Times about President Bush's nominees to the federal bench. The Times reports in its national section today that, on Mr. Bush's first 11 judicial nominees, "the Democrats, then in the minority, seemed inclined to go along, even though many of the 11 were strong conservatives and seemed to confirm that Mr. Bush was determined to reinforce a rightward tilt in the nation's courts."
Oh, so the Times news department thinks that Mr. Bush's first 11 judicial nominees "seemed to confirm that Mr. Bush was determined to reinforce a rightward tilt in the nation's courts." How far-out is that assessment? Here's what the Times's own editorial page said on May 11: "President's Bush's initial batch of nominations for the nation's Circuit Courts of Appeal has turned out to be more eclectic and conciliatory than most people expected. It contains fewer hard-right legal activists than expected and also includes a number of mainstream conservatives who will be acceptable to Senate Democrats." The Associated Press reported on May 10 that "Democrats appeared content with the choices after Bush withheld the planned nominations of at least four conservatives to avoid Democratic objections, and added Roger Gregory and Barrington Parker - two blacks who had been tapped by former President Clinton."
The Times news article today goes on to quote Senator Schumer as saying, "Now that we're in the majority, I'm sure that the next 11 will not be as conservative." Someone should tell Senator Schumer and the Times news department that, by the reckoning of the Times editorialists and the Democrats as reported by the AP, the first 11 choices weren't all that conservative. Two of them had been nominated by President Clinton.
'Shoddy Journalism': An article in the international section of today's New York Times reports on a speech last night in New York by Ariel Sharon. The Times says the speech was to the "America-Israel Friendship Committee"; in fact, the correct name of the group is the America-Israel Friendship League. Worse, the article takes out of context a comment by a Sharon adviser, Dore Gold. Mr. Gold tells Smartertimes.com that he had been contrasting the Palestinian Arab practice of targeting Israeli civilians to the Israeli practice, before the "cease-fire," of targeting Palestinian Arab terrorist kingpins. The Times instead makes it sound like Mr. Gold was somehow acknowledging or commenting on the public telephone explosion that killed a Palestinian Arab militant on Sunday -- an explosion about which Mr. Gold had declined to comment to the Times. Mr. Gold tells Smartertimes.com that the Times use of his truncated quote is an example of "shoddy journalism."
Absent Fathers: The "Health & Fitness" page in the Science Times section of today's New York Times carries an article under the headline "Love, Anger and Guilt: Coping With a Child's Chronic Illness." The article begins by saying, "When a child is chronically ill, the whole family feels the pain, particularly the parents" -- and then it goes on to tell the stories of five mothers. If the Times wants to write a story about mothers of chronically ill or disabled children, that's fine. But to bill it in the first paragraph as an article about "mothers and fathers" and "brothers and sisters," and then to focus only on the mothers seems like a bait-and-switch.