Keeping Tabs On The Times

The Monitor frequently has made mention of the website Timeswatch.org, which methodically lays out, weekday after weekday, the lies, distortions, bias and convenient “mistakes” that seem to grace every issue of The New York Times, the one-time paper of record that now features as much opinion-laced journalism as one might find in any given edition of nakedly partisan publications such as The New Republic or The Weekly Standard.This week it seemed only fitting to showcase some of the trenchant analysis of the Tuesday, Aug. 31 issue of the Times – the day after the opening of the Republican National Convention – offered by TimesWatch.org’s Clay Waters:

NYT Springs at “Conservative” Republican Platform – But Took a Dive Over the Democrats – Liberal One: The Republican platform manages to make it into the headline of Adam Nagourney’s lead story Tuesday (“Giuliani Lauds Bush’s Leadership on Terror – G.O.P. Opposes Abortion and Gay Unions”). Yet Nagourney’s story devotes precisely one sentence to the platform. The Times also devotes a full front-page story to the conservative nature of the Republican platform, Robin Toner and David Kirkpatrick’s “Social Conservatives Wield Influence on Platform.”

While the Republican platform is making headlines, by contrast, a Nexis search indicates the Times didn’t devote a single story during the Democratic convention in Boston to the party’s platform, merely mentioning it in passing over the course of several stories. Yet it’s an avowedly liberal document, which became even more liberal in Boston, with the committee dropping its previous support of the death penalty and retaining support for taxpayer funding of abortion, positions out of the political mainstream.”

Party Centrists in Despair: Katharine Seelye’s “Party Centrists Find Places On Stage but Not on Agenda” is the latest Times story on the plight of the embattled Republican moderate:”Republican convention is featuring speeches by some of the party’s centrist stars, but rank-and-file moderates said yesterday that they were unhappy with the direction of a party that is dominated by conserva tives. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, spoke last night at the convention, as did Senator John McCain of Arizona, who, while an opponent of abortion rights, appeals to centrists and independent voters. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California is to speak tonight.

“But while these centrists dominate the lineup, the delegates are mostly conservative, the party’s platform is conservative, and the president and vice president being nominated are mostly conservative. The paradox of moderate and independent speakers serving as the face of a conservative party with a conservative agenda has left some of the party’s centrists in varying states of despair.

“Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, president of a group called the Republican Main Street Partnership, said that the party’s “big tent” had shrunk to a “pup tent.” Many moderates are irked that in the party’s search for independent and undecided voters, it is putting forward moderate candidates but not a moderate agenda, allowing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York Democrat, to deride the scene as a Potemkin convention.”

Soon after relaying those helpful comments from Hillary Clinton, Seelye notes: “But the Log Cabin Republicans, made up of gay men and lesbians, are furious over what they describe as the party’s intoler ance. The group said yesterday that the radical right wing had hijacked the party, with the platform making no accommodation to gay rights or gay marriage.”

Seelye gives coverage to some obscure “moderate” Republican groups….[and] concludes: -But some moderates seemed satisfied. In the Sky Club at the top of the MetLife building, with sweeping views of Manhattan, the Republican Main Street Partnership held a packed cocktail party on Sunday. Representative Christopher Shays, a moderate Connecticut Republican who at tended, said he was happy for voters to see “the full breadth of our party” in the speaker lineup.