Free Republic

The New York Times has an article today titled, "Inquiry of Democratic Senator Started With Partisan Push." The story by Eric Lipton describes our success in getting media coverage for our original research about Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and his relationship with a major donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen. Lipton then states that to Menendez and his staff our work is "proof that the news media frenzy focusing on his actions to help a Florida eye doctor is at least in part a political smear." The only problem with this story line is that that New York Times approached us shortly...

Peter Barker has written a column for the NY Times in which he compares Barack Obama to George Bush: Obama’s Turn in Bush’s Bind. For Times readers, that’s like comparing Obama to Hitler. It means that the Times is wondering if this White ...uh ... Authentically Black Knight is for real. He starts: Four years into his tenure, the onetime critic of President George W. Bush finds himself cast as a present-day Mr. Bush, justifying the muscular application of force in the defense of the nation while detractors complain that he has sacrificed the country’s core values in the name...

A New York appellate court has ruled that the New York Times's request for a list of gun owners in New York City, under the Freedom of Information Law, violates the state's statute. The ruling overturns in part a lower court's ruling.

The deadline for New York Times newsroom managers to take voluntary buyouts came and went yesterday — without reaching the target of 30 takers. Now, insiders are worried that involuntary cuts — layoffs — will start. Jill Abramson, the executive editor overseeing the process, declined to comment yesterday as the deadline passed but several insiders worried that as few as a dozen raised their hands and volunteered — meaning up to 18 heads must roll.

Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues — as it did in a special feature in October — that the magnitude and nature of the country’s inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. ... There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically...

In Sunday's New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal claimed, as the title of her article put it, "More Guns = More Killing." She based this on evidence that would never be permitted in any other context at the Times: (1) anecdotal observations; and (2) bald assertions of an activist, blandly repeated with absolutely no independent fact-checking by the Times. There is an academic, peer-reviewed, long-term study of the effect of various public policies on public, multiple shootings in all 50 states over a 20-year period...It concluded that the only policy to reduce the incidence of, and casualties from, mass shootings are...

Set aside for now the troubling changes in the Obama administration’s position on whether former Bush officials should be prosecuted for suggesting tough interrogation tactics against terrorists. Set aside the manifest unfairness of prosecuting lawyers merely for doing their job of giving legal advice. Set aside the raft of other reasonable objections to the proposed prosecutions, including a justifiable aversion to witch-hunts. Instead, consider how flagrantly President Barack Obama violated his repeated promises that he would run a transparent and honorable administration. His administration’s selective and highly prejudicial release of only partial information about CIA interrogations clearly was designed to...

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

As Michael Bloomberg begins the last year of his third and final term as New York City mayor, the 70-year-old shows no sign of slowing down. Bloomberg, who founded Bloomberg L.P. in the early 1980s, is considering another big splash in the media business by acquiring The Financial Times, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, USA Today reports that the New York Times itself is a Bloomberg acquisition target, but the New York paper has refrained from reporting that. …

House Republicans said on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, an immediate new round of stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits. The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, was likely to meet strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other entitlements, to...

Is the head of the New York Times a liar/ Friday, November 16, 2012 By William Donohue Mark Thompson, the former BBC chief and current president of the New York Times Company, has said all along that he knew nothing about a spiked BBC exposé on BBC child rapist Jimmy Savile. Most astounding of all, on October 13, he said, “During my time as director general of the BBC, I never heard any allegations” about Jimmy Savile. As I wrote on October 26, “If this is true, it makes him a rare find for the Times: everyone else had at...

While the staff of the New York Times has been absorbed in hurricane and election coverage, it’s also kept a wary eye on a big story brewing in its own headquarters—the imminent arrival of the new CEO, Mark Thompson, the former director-general of the BBC who starts at the paper on November 12. He does not arrive with the full confidence of the Times’ journalists. “People are going to start paying closer attention, and that probably isn’t good for newsroom morale,” says one Timesman, “because there’s now a widely held sense that this guy’s story doesn’t add up.”

By tomorrow night we’ll likely know the name of the next president. But we already know the loser in this election cycle: political reporters. They’ve disgraced themselves. Conservatives have long complained about liberal bias in the media, and with some justification. But it has finally reached the tipping point. Not in our lifetimes have so many in the press dropped the pretense of objectivity in order to help a political candidate. The media are rooting for Barack Obama. They’re not hiding it. Consider Benghazi. An American consulate is destroyed and a US ambassador murdered at a time when the president...

New York Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. on Thursday reiterated the company's support for its incoming chief executive, who has been under scrutiny in England over the BBC's decision to cancel a news story about one of its hosts being accused of sexually abusing children. In a letter to the staff Thursday about the company's financial performance, Sulzberger said he was satisfied that Mark Thompson, who was the BBC's director general until last month, had no role in canceling a planned investigative segment about children's television presenter Jimmy Savile.

The office of former BBC director-general Mark Thompson was formally alerted twice about child abuse accusations concerning Jimmy Savile. In May and again in September, his aides were told of allegations concerning the late television presenter's abuse of minors on BBC premises, but his spokesman has denied the claims were passed on to Mr Thompson. -snip- A YouGov poll for newspaper revealed that 48 percent of respondents believe Mr Thompson, who is to become chief executive of The New York Times next month, has not been honest about the affair. Mr Thompson said in an interview with The Times last...

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story about a new movie, scheduled to air on the National Geographic channel two days before the election, which focuses on the death of Bin Laden. The film chronicles Obama's brave decision to make the only choice he could, and authorize the killing despite the wishes of Vice President Joe Biden. It's called "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden." The film's rights are held by Harvey Weinstein, one of Obama's most ardent supporters, and it features the President prominently. Most of the article is spent discussing how airing the film...

In the days before the first debate in Denver, President Obama held more than a four-point lead in the Real Clear Politics average, and Romney had been left for dead by most of the media. Then the debate came, and overnight Romney seemingly rid himself of the negatives that had been tacked on to him by over $100 million dollars in negative advertising. Now here we are a few weeks later with a dead heat in nationwide polls. As worry built up among Democrats that Romney had tied the race nationally and had clear momentum heading into the final stretch,...

Social justice theories have invaded the medical profession and Dr. Michael Anderson has a unique take. The New York Times highlights today the work of a doctor who considers prescribing Adderall a mark of social justice on behalf of poor students, giving them a leg up in an unequal society. The Times then goes on to cite sources who blame limited school funding and large classrooms for increasing ADHDdiagnoses. “Dr. [Michael] Anderson’s instinct, he said, is that of a ‘social justice thinker’ who is ‘evening the scales a little bit,’” reports Alan Schwarz for the New York Times. “He said...

The New York Times's Sunday Styles section offered some hard-hitting journalism about the toned-up and good-looking First Couple, complete with fabulous photos. Joyce Purnick mock-criticized Michelle Obama for looking so "toned and elegant" in "(Psst: We Feel Bad About Our Arms.)" Text box: "It's time to face the truth: we don't all look like the first lady." I had expected to keep mum about my problem with Michelle Obama until after the election, but my frustration has gotten the better of me. I can contain it no longer. I refer not to her politics, but to her arms-- her bare,...

New York (CNN) -- Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the influential publisher of The New York Times who served from 1963 to 1992, has died at age 86, the newspaper reported Saturday.