NY Times fails to mention KEY fact in Dem corruption case

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Back in July of last year, New York Times public editor Liz Spayd penned an essay “Why Readers See The Times As Liberal.”

After providing excerpts from a few critical emails blasting the Times for their left-wing bias, she writes that “emails like these stream into this office every day. A perception that the Times is biased prompts some of the most frequent complaints from readers. Only they arrive so frequently, and have for so long, that the objections no longer land with much heft. Like the tiresome bore at a party, I went around asking several journalists in the newsroom about these claims that the Times sways to the left. Mostly I was met with a roll of the eyes. All sides hate us, they said. We’re tough on everyone. That’s nothing new here.”

Tough on everyone? Hysterical. During President Trump’s first 100 days in office, 87 percent of the Times’ coverage was negative, compared to 13 percent positive. While Ms. Spayd’s essay pre-dates that statistic, certainly she can’t believe that such slanted coverage from the Times (against Republicans) is something that originated with the Trump administration.

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So strong is the bias that, when they do report something negative about someone on their side of the political aisle, they conveniently “forget” to include their party affiliation.

As the Daily Caller noted,

The New York Times published an almost 1300-word news story on Monday night about Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial, without ever mentioning Menendez’s party affiliation.

Both in print and on social media, the NYT failed to inform its readers that Sen. Menendez is a Democrat.

“For the first time in 36 years, a sitting United States Senator is facing a federal bribery trial,” read a NYT tweet promoting the story, which was titled: “Menendez Trial Set to Begin With Tensions High and Washington Watching.”

The NYT wasn’t without opportunities to inform its readers which party Menendez belonged to: the paper referred to Menendez 29 times in the story, without once ever mentioning that Menendez is a Democrat.

The paper referred to him as “The senator,” “Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey,” and “Mr. Menendez, a senior senator,” before referring to him as “Mr. Menendez” or “the senator” for the rest of the story. Only after a barrage of online criticism did the NYT note that Menendez is a Democrat, adding in the identifier in the fourth paragraph.

Not often does the Times speak of a senator without mentioning the party to which they belong, but the story’s author, Nick Corasanti, tried to blame the “error” on a lack of oversight on his part.

Well good on them for making the correction - sorta.

As of this writing, there’s no correction in the print or online versions of the article noting that the party affiliation of Menendez was absent from the original article.

And thus, here’s Exhibit #22043957 on why people think the New York Times has a liberal bias.

[Note: This post was written by Matt Palumbo. He is a co-author of the new book A Paradoxical Alliance: Islam and the Left, and can be found on Twitter @MattPalumbo12]

 

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