If you'd like to know exactly why conservatives/Republicans have such a low regard for the reporting at the NY Times - to say nothing of the editorial pages and their collection of left wing flotsam - have a look at these two stories over the last two days.
First up, Eric Lichtblau reports on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-business group that, being pro-business, tends to favor the more pro-business Republicans over the NY Times favored party.
Chamber of Commerce Accused of Tax Fraud
WASHINGTON — With a war chest rivaling that of the Republican Party itself, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
has emerged in the last year as perhaps the Obama administration’s
most-well-financed rival on signature policy debates like health care
and financial regulation.
Critics on the left have long complained about the chamber’s outsize
influence. But now they are taking on the business association directly,
charging in a complaint filed Friday with the Internal Revenue Service that it violated tax codes by laundering millions of dollars meant for
charitable work from a group with ties to the insurance giant A.I.G.
The complaint was brought by a group called U.S. Chamber Watch,
which was created four months ago — with the strong financial backing
of labor unions — to scrutinize the Chamber of Commerce’s growing
influence and provide a counterbalance.
But chamber officials said they had complied with all tax laws and dismissed the complaint as a political ploy.
The whole thing is most certainly not worth reading. I've highlighted the key sentence above. What people will scan, however, is the headline, which is really the whole point of publishing this story "CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ACCUSED OF TAX FRAUD!!!" The headline is designed - with neither evidence, nor official confirmation of any problem whatsoever - to discredit a strong opponent of Obama policy initiatives in the court of public opinion. And the only reason there is a complaint at all is because far left Obama policy supporters, primarily labor unions - set up a non-profit group to specifically attack the Chamber of Commerce.
And who are the attorneys for U.S. Chamber Watch that are involved here? A notorious race-hustler plaintiff's attorney who extracts greenmail from his targets by demonizing them in the court of public opinion rather than winning in court. And the other is an attorney who "specializes in serving:
- Nonprofit organizations working to make the world better by advocating for social, economic and environmental justice
- Political committees and others working for the election of progressive candidates
- Individuals who are battling discrimination and other unfair practices in the workplace
- Citizen groups fighting for increased safety and security of the nation’s nuclear power resources"
among other things. In other words, the lawsuit is a political stunt 7 weeks before the midterm elections. Just as with the late former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who was charged as he was running for re-election with corruption, convicted eight days before the election, lost a close race, and then had the conviction overturned eight days later due to "gross prosecutorial misconduct," the point is to tar the opponent with "the appearance of impropriety" at the right moment politically. Don't fall for it.
The second story, by another Eric (Lipton), carries a headline designed to influence negatively, but again no substance to the article. It involves Mr. Obama's new target, announced in a speech in Ohio this past week.
A G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists
[...}
Mr. Boehner, who declined to be interviewed for this article, and his
lobbyist allies ridicule such criticism as politically motivated by
desperate Democrats. His actions, they say, simply reflect the
pro-business, antiregulatory philosophy that he has espoused for more
than three decades, dating back to when Mr. Boehner, the son of a tavern
owner, ran a small plastics company in Ohio. And fielding requests from
lobbyists is nothing unusual, he says
Apparently the NY Times stylebook calls for any accusation by the political opponents of Republicans to be taken at face value, and the story written to varnish the target by innuendo and unsubstantiated charge in as detrimental a way as is manageable. I'll let professional journalist Byron York deflate this meme.
Boehner
spokesman Michael Steel says he received a fact-checking email from
Times reporter Eric Lipton Friday evening asking if Boehner did in fact
oppose the cap on greenhouse gases, the tax change for hedge fund
executives, the debit card fee cap, and increased fees on oil and gas
companies. "Yes, that is correct," Steel responded to Lipton, adding "I
can tell you why, if you care." Steel says he received no further
notes from Lipton.
Steel says Boehner has long held those positions and does not hold them as a result of lobbying.
Hours after the email exchange, the Times story was published online,
with the statement from the lobbyist that he had "won" Boehner's
backing on those matters. After Boehner's aides complained, the
paragraph was changed to read, emphasis added:
One lobbyist in the club -- after lauding each staff member in Mr.
Boehner’s office that he routinely calls to ask for help -- ticked off
the list of recent issues for which he had sought the
lawmaker’s backing: combating fee increases for the oil industry,
fighting a proposed cap on debit card fees, protecting tax breaks for
hedge fund executives and opposing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Boehner’s office said these were positions he already agreed with.
The statement that a lobbyist "won" Boehner's backing was changed to
one in which a lobbyist "sought" Boehner's backing. That's a rather
critical change. The Times also added Boehner's defense that these were
long-held positions.
To call Boehner's aides angry at the account would be an
understatement. "They were offered the opportunity to find out if this
was true, and they chose to rely instead on the word of an anonymous
lobbyist," says spokesman Michael Steel. "They intentionally refused to
get the information to prove that this allegation was false."
So in two stories the Times breaks no news, as news is commonly understood to be, merely reprinting accusations as the mouthpiece of liberal/Democratic attacks. With no proof or independent verification of a single negative in either story. None whatsoever.
That's why Republicans/conservatives/thinking independents no longer read the NY Times looking for news. This is extraordinarily shoddy work, and that's why the NY Times is in trouble.
9/13/10 1430: And, lo and behold, the NY Times could easily have dug up a little quantitative data had they wanted to reinforce their attack on congressfolk beholden to lobbyists. Problem is, there would have been collateral damage.
In this case, the use of the phrase “especially deep” shows that the
Times wanted to make Boehner look as though he was on the extreme
outlier of the common practice of fundraising among lobbysists.
Whatever one thinks of that practice, it’s one of the truly bipartisan
efforts on Capitol Hill. But in this cycle, the top five recipients are
all Democrats, including two in Senate leadership (Reid and Schumer)...