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When Sen. John Kerry lost to George W. Bush in the presidential election of 2004, the press turned its attention to 2008 and Sen. Hillary Clinton as a potential Democratic savior. The junior senator from New York leads national polls among potential Democratic presidential contenders, although she is polarizing among the general electorate.

As both the nation’s most influential newspaper and Mrs. Clinton’s home state broadsheet, the Times has a front-row seat for the run-up to Election 2008. Yet a Times Watch study has discovered that ever since the Hillary-for-president talk heated up in earnest, the newspaper has used its seat more as a cheering section for Clinton than as a dispassionate perch for objective observation.

A reader wishing for a full, balanced picture of Sen. Hillary Clinton won’t get it from the New York Times, which in the 17-month period between Election Day 2004 and April 1, 2006 followed a pattern of mainstreaming Clinton’s liberal policies while throwing roadblocks in front of her potential Republican Senate opponents and playing down her controversial remarks. Such whitewashing from America’s paper of record will serve Clinton well as she prepares for a presidential run.

The American Conservative Union, which tracks the voting records of all congressmen and rates them on their faithfulness to conservative principles, awards Sen. Hillary Clinton a lifetime rating of 9 out of a possible 100.

Yet far from accurately terming Clinton a liberal, the Times has actually insisted that she is in some respects a conservative.

A Lexis search of 641 news stories in the Times from November 3, 2004 to April 1, 2006 found a mere three direct labels of Clinton as liberal by Times reporters (as opposed to descriptions by Republicans or indirect references to, say, Clinton’s liberal base of supporters), or about one in every 214 stories. That’s about one-half of 1%.

In fact, the paper spent as much time specifically dismissing accusations of Clinton’s liberalism as “caricature,” doing so on four occasions.

Santorum Part of “Conservative Ascendancy”
“Mr. Santorum, 47, has been a brash symbol of the conservative ascendancy since his election to the Senate in 1994, leading the charge on issues like the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act and the partial privatization of Social Security -- enraging liberals all the while.”
-- Robin Toner, March 5, 2006.

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has an ACU rating of 88 out of 100, making him about as conservative as Clinton is liberal. Yet Santorum was roughly 15 times more likely than Clinton to be given an ideological label by the Times. There were seven direct descriptions of Santorum as conservative out of 95 stories, or one out of every 14, a shade over 7% of all Santorum stories. (Again, that doesn’t include descriptions of Santorum from Democrats or indirect references to Santorum’s “conservative” supporters.)

Here’s Anne Kornblut from December 4, 2005: “Donna Brazile calls them green room conversions. One of her more recent went something like this: Ms. Brazile, the garrulous Democratic strategist, found herself in the waiting room -- known in the world of television talk shows as the green room -- with Senator Rick Santorum, the conservative Republican from Pennsylvania who campaigned to defeat her candidate, Al Gore, in the 2000 presidential campaign.”

Here’s Patrick Healy on October 14, 2005 on a brouhaha over a news report claiming Santorum had held a fundraiser at a U2 concert: “The original NewsMax article drew attention in part because Mr. Santorum is a conservative Republican facing a tough fight for re-election next year, and he and the politically progressive singer and advocate might not seem a natural fit at first glance.”

A similar contrast over the same period was seen with Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, whose ACU rating is 95 and who was labeled “conservative” by a Times reporter six times in just 82 stories -- a ratio of one out of every 14, or slightly over 7% of all Brownback stories. In other words, Brownback was roughly 15 times as likely to be labeled a “conservative” as Clinton was to be labeled a “liberal.”

The main Hillary-hailer-in-chief for the Times was reporter Raymond Hernandez, who got the mainstreaming strategy rolling in a November 4 , 2004 article after John Kerry’s loss, "For the Moment, Mrs. Clinton Looks Like the Candidate to Beat."

Looking ahead to 2008, political reporter Adam Nagourney also suggested right after the 2004 election on November 7 that Hillary’s liberalism was just a Republican “caricature.” “But Democrats and some Republicans said Mrs. Clinton was open to caricature by Republicans as the type of candidate that this election suggested was so damaging to the Democratic Party: a Northeastern, secular liberal.”

February 1, 2005 brought a Hernandez story on a Clinton speech in which she feinted to the center on abortion and gay marriage.

Hernandez didn't label Hillary as liberal but did twice call her opponents "conservative.” Instead, he emphasized her religiosity and dragged Bill Clinton's affairs into the picture to boost her image.

"That faith, they say, has sustained her throughout a public life that has made her an object of painful scrutiny, particularly during her days in the White House dealing with issues like her husband's infidelity….A churchgoer for years, Mrs. Clinton also joined a prayer group led by Republicans when she took office in the Senate in 2001, her associates and aides note.”

The front page of the February 22, 2005 Metro section featured Hernandez's "Clinton's Popularity Up in State, Even Among Republicans," another positive review (and re-centering) of Clinton.

He began by refuting alleged anti-Clinton myths: "Remember Hillary Rodham Clinton and the conventional wisdom about how polarizing a figure she is? Well, think again. Recent polls have shown that Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, may have turned a corner politically, sharply reducing the number of voters in the state who harbor negative views of her. Pollsters say the change is remarkable for a woman who has long been shadowed by a seemingly implacable group of voters -- commonly referred to as Hillary haters -- who dislike her, no matter what she does, and who pose a potential obstacle to any presidential ambitions she may harbor."

Again, Hernandez suggested those who dared call Clinton liberal were guilty of "caricature": "The result of these comments has been an emerging image of Senator Clinton that is far different from the caricature that Republicans have painted of her: that of a secular liberal whose stances are largely at odds with a public that they say is concerned about the nation's moral direction."

Hernandez continued to hype Hillary in a March 6, 2005 story, "As Clinton Wins G.O.P. Friends, Her Challengers' Task Toughens."

"With her 2006 re-election campaign approaching, New York Republican leaders vow to rally party loyalists in a broad effort to topple Mrs. Clinton, who has long engendered deep antipathy on the right. But as the fund-raiser last year in the heavily Republican town of Corning illustrated, the party may have a bit of a problem on its hands. In the four years since taking office, Mrs. Clinton has managed to cultivate a bipartisan, above-the-fray image that has made her a surprisingly welcome figure in some New York Republican circles, even as she remains exceedingly popular with her liberal base."

Though Hernandez suggested Clinton's main appeal lies to the left, he again refused to label her as liberal, suggesting in his conclusion once again that the label was an exaggeration: "[Republican Rep. Peter] King also said that Mrs. Clinton had been anything but the liberal extremist that her conservative critics accused her of being.”

The front of the July 13, 2005 Metro section featured a huge close-up photo of a serious-looking Clinton, and Hernandez and Patrick Healy's "The Evolution of Hillary Clinton" was similarly respectful. Again, the Times never directly identified Clinton as a liberal -- yet Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was identified as "the conservative majority leader."

They even suggested Hillary was a centrist: “Tellingly, some liberals, who make up the core of her political base, have complained that she has been ceding too much to the right, especially in her support for military action in Iraq. In fact, Mrs. Clinton has defied simple ideological labeling since joining the Senate, ending up in the political center on issues like health care, welfare, abortion, morality and values, and national defense, to name just a few….In many ways, her approach is reminiscent of what her husband once called 'the third way,' the path that exploited the political center.”

The trend was topped off with a big October 2, 2005 profile in the Times Magazine from contributing writer Matt Bai, "Mrs. Triangulation." Taken in by Hillary's centering propaganda, Bai also saw unfavorable views of a liberal Clinton as "caricatures."

Bai cited the "conservative" and "centrist" instincts of a woman who as first lady would have nationalized U.S. health care (a fact Bai failed to mention): "As first lady, it was Clinton's job to placate the party's base, even if that meant obscuring some of her more socially conservative instincts."

Bai also bizarrely suggested Clinton was in some respects a conservative: "She was raised as a Republican and a devout Methodist in suburban Chicago, and these influences, particularly in the turbulence of the 60's, created two philosophical impulses that were commonly linked in that era. The first is an unshakable notion of right and wrong and an almost missionary zeal for imposing it on others, mainly through political action. The second is a strand of moral conservatism that borders on prudishness.”

The Times (led by Hillary-beat reporter Raymond Hernandez) was always eager to find rabid “Clinton-haters” assaulting the defenseless Mrs. Clinton.

In a February 9, 2005 story tucked away in the Metro Section, Hernandez and Ian Urbina reported on a fundraising scandal involving Hillary Clinton, "Clinton Benefit Has a Lesson: Double-Check That Donor List."

The headline suggested the skew of the story, which dispersed the blame away from Clinton (David Rosen, Clinton’s finance director, was later acquitted). As a result, the story came off as more of a cautionary tale for politicians in general than about an actual political scandal involving Clinton.

The story's text box suggested nasty Clinton haters were to blame: "A tangled tale of a slick operator, the first couple and dogged Clinton haters." There was also a prominent photo of Bill Clinton kissing Hillary.

Hernandez and Urbina argued: "The case offers a bizarre and tangled tale of how [fundraiser Peter] Paul, a smooth operator with myriad connections and a troubled past, got so close to America's first couple in a political culture dominated by money. It also shows the continuing effort of a longtime nemesis of the Clintons, Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, to make legal trouble for the couple." Further into the story, they labeled Judicial Watch “a conservative legal group that has dogged the Clintons for years and has been representing Mr. Paul.”

"Conservatives Promoting Anti-Clinton Book" reads the headline to Hernandez’s article from June 17, 2005 on a critically lambasted biography of Clinton, "The Truth About Hillary," by former Times Magazine editor Edward Klein.

But the real news, ignored by Hernandez, was how many conservatives acted against their immediate political interests by shunning Klein's book. Yet Hernandez ignored that actual story in favor of setting up a vast right-wing anti-Hillary conspiracy: "Republican and conservative activists are behind a vigorous campaign to promote a controversial new biography about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, with some even suggesting that the book will help dash any presidential aspirations she might have.”

Hernandez unfolded the conspiracy: "…the financing for a conservative Web site that is promoting the book comes partly from Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime foe of the Clintons who tapped his fortune in the 1990's to finance a project at The American Spectator magazine to dig up damaging information about the couple….'It has all the feel of a ginned-up right-wing effort to smear anybody who is seen by the right as politically threatening,' said David Brock, a former right-wing journalist who has become a critic of conservatives."

Mickey Kaus at Slate eviscerated the Times’ story: "Hernandez breathlessly reveals that 'Republican and conservative activists are behind a vigorous campaign to promote a controversial new biography about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.' Apparently it's advertised on a Web site that once got some money from Richard Mellon Scaife! The real story -- too subtle for a paper that has to dispatch a correspondent to cover conservatives the way they'd send a foreign correspondent to India -- is that the right-wing reception of the new Hillary book has been wary and remarkably hostile."

When someone hears that a controversial husband and financial scandals are issues in the New York Senate race, one is naturally reminded of Bill Clinton and Whitewater. But that’s not what the Times had in mind. Showing that its feminism only goes so far, the Times knocked two of Clinton’s potential female Republican opponents for her Senate seat in 2006.

While the paper ignored Clinton’s past ethical controversies, it brought out the big guns against Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the first female Republican challenger for Clinton’s U.S. Senate seat.

The Times helped clear the field for Clinton’s 2006 Senate reelection by laying into Pirro, even delving into controversies involving Pirro’s husband. That took a bit of nerve, given Bill Clinton’s ethics and extramarital affairs.

In an August 13, 2005 article, reporter Lisa Foderaro uses the presence of the candidate’s husband at a speech to squeeze out several paragraphs about the alleged burden he would be on his wife's candidacy.

The headline read "Candidate Pirro Stands by Her Man…Literally," while the text box asserted: "A husband convicted of tax fraud gets no mention from his wife."

Reporter Raymond Hernandez filed "In Contrast to a Republican Rival for the Senate, Clinton Has Her Man Stand by Her” on September 3, 2005.

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton brought her husband along to the New York State Fair on Friday, drawing a sharp contrast with her likeliest Republican rival in next year's Senate race, who has mostly kept her scandal-plagued husband out of public view since announcing her candidacy."

"Republicans have said that any attempts by Democrats to make an issue of Mr. Pirro's troubles would ultimately backfire, given the personal problems Mr. Clinton has gone through. But Democratic allies of Mrs. Clinton scoff at that, noting that Mr. Clinton is a popular figure in heavily Democratic New York and proved to be an asset in 2000 when he campaigned for her."

Instead, Hernandez reveled in sleazy details about Pirro's husband: "Mr. Pirro, an influential Republican lobbyist, served 11 months in federal prison for his conviction on tax fraud in 2000. He also fathered a child in an extramarital relationship in the 1980's, a matter that has recently drawn heavy scrutiny."

An October 23, 2005 story by Hernandez was headlined "No Gaffe by Pirro Passes Unnoticed, the Clinton Campaign Ensures." But the Hillary-friendly contingent at the Times should also give itself credit -- no Pirro "gaffe" went without embarrassing coverage in the Times.

Even after Pirro dropped out of the Senate race in December, the Times didn’t let up on her flawed campaign, kicking it when it was dead on February 2, 2006, with Patrick Healy’s “Pirro Discounts Old Gaffes and Issues To Focus on Attorney General Race.”

“A disastrous campaign for the United States Senate? Oh, that. Old news. Hillary who? Oh, her. Old news. A tax felon for a husband? Oh, him. Old news. Friends turned foes? Oh, them. Old news. After a season of political setbacks that would doom many candidates, Jeanine F. Pirro is back in action, striking a what-me-worry pose when asked about potential issues as she starts her new campaign for state attorney general.”

When K.T. McFarland announced her Clinton challenge in March, the Times didn’t give her any chance at all. Check out the paper’s dismissive headline of March 3, 2006, which seethes with a sense of Republican flop-sweat: “Clinton Challenger Pulled From Reagan-Era Hat.”

Reporter Patrick Healy didn’t even mention McFarland’s name until the fifth paragraph.

“It was supposed to be a marquee Republican campaign of the 2006 elections -- a fusillade-style effort to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, which, even if it did not succeed, would excite donors nationally, raise millions for the party and perhaps weaken “Instead, to the chagrin of Republicans in New York and Washington, the party has not recovered from the December implosion of Jeanine F. Pirro's campaign against Mrs. Clinton. Republicans have been desperate for a credible challenger, while party leaders in Washington have tried to fill the vacuum by attacking Mrs. Clinton as ‘angry’ and ‘brittle’ -- criticism they wish was coming from the campaign trail in New York.”

Of course, Pirro’s “implosion” was at least partially provided by the Times.

Healy refused to acknowledge Clinton’s liberalism: “At the same time, both she and her advisers said the Senate battle provided a crucial chance before the presidential election to test Mrs. Clinton and expose what they see as her liberal voting record.”

Then it was on to a Hillary homage: “No matter who the challenger is, Mrs. Clinton is in formidable shape as a senator with high approval ratings, a widely respected record, and celebrity status in a Democratic-leaning state after eight years as the first lady.”

On March 23, 2006, Raymond Hernandez struck another pro-Hillary blow, questioning McFarland’s resume in “Questions Arise About Resume Of Challenger To Clinton.”

“When Kathleen Troia McFarland stepped forward as a Republican challenger to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was a relatively obscure figure with two intriguing claims to fame: She had worked on President Ronald Reagan's ‘Star Wars’ speech and had been the highest-ranking woman at the Reagan Pentagon. But interviews with former Reagan administration officials and a review of documents show her claims were not entirely accurate. Though she helped write the ‘Star Wars’ speech, its most famous passage -- the one that announced the anti-ballistic missile program -- was actually written by the president himself and his top national security advisers, according to two senior advisers to Mr. Reagan and a review of the literature and news articles of the period.

The story includes a paragraph that should sound ironic notes among Republicans: “In many ways, Ms. McFarland's assertions are typical of the résumé polishing of many politicians at election time. But her campaign has sought to use her military-related experiences -- in the Pentagon and on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- as cornerstones of her qualifications for the Senate.”

But when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth challenged John Kerry’s “military-related experiences” in Vietnam (which at times seemed to be the sole “cornerstone” of his presidential run) the Times didn’t investigate the charges but instead rushed to Kerry’s defense time and again, declaring the Swift Boat Veterans’ allegations “unsubstantiated” no less than 20 times in campaign coverage.

Sen. Clinton has compared President Bush to MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman and claimed that GOP plans to stop illegal immigrants would criminalize Jesus himself. Yet even her most inflammatory remarks were either ignored or quickly brushed aside by the Times.

Perhaps Clinton’s most notorious remark came on Martin Luther King Day 2006, when she stood in front of a black church audience to claim Republicans were running Congress like a “plantation.” But Hillary-beat reporter Raymond Hernandez found no worries for the senator in his January 17, 2006 article, “At King Event, Mrs. Clinton Denounces G.O.P. Leadership.”

“Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking yesterday at a ceremony honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation where dissent is not tolerated. Her comments, made before a predominantly black audience at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, drew a harsh response from national Republicans, but black leaders came to her defense.”

A headline in the liberal New York Daily News, by contrast, suggested Hillary had goofed: “A Blunder for Clinton?”

Two days afterward, after talk radio and bloggers had dissected Clinton’s statement, the Times devoted a large front-page story to her.

Did Ray Hernandez use the inflammatory quote as a jumping-off point for an investigation to unmask the liberal agenda behind Clinton’s careful centrist public persona? Or to round up past controversial statements from Clinton?

Not quite. In fact, the “plantation” controversy was disposed of in a single sentence in “Senator Clinton Makes Her Run While Tiptoeing Around 2008.” The White House response was dealt with in a slanted pro-Hillary article the same day, also from Hernandez, buried on page B-5 of the Metro section.

This is what Hernandez’s front-page story has to say about the “plantation” remark: “And she has sharpened the tone of her attacks on Republicans, causing a stir on Monday, for example, by saying that the House of Representatives was run like a ‘plantation’ -- a comment that drew a rebuke from the White House the next day. While such behavior is to be expected for anyone preparing to seek the presidency in 2008, Mrs. Clinton is in an altogether different situation from other prominent Democrats who have been openly gearing up for national campaigns by establishing exploratory committees and visiting crucial primary states.”

Hernandez only quoted one word of the speech (“plantation”), but a fuller reading of her remark demonstrates how it was both offensive to Republicans and patronizing to her black audience: “When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation -- and you know what I am talking about."

Instead, Hernandez dwelled on Clinton’s fundraising prowess in the service of other Democratic candidates: “By and large, Mrs. Clinton's visits around the country have drawn the kind of reaction one would expect with a person of her immense celebrity and political stature.”
On January 22, 2006, Hernandez again reduced the outcry over the “plantation” comment to a run-of-the-mill political skirmish -- one that actually placed the senator in a favorable light.

Hernandez positioned the White House as piling on poor Hillary, even though it was Clinton’s “plantation” remark that instigated the criticism. “And if that were not enough, the White House's chief spokesman criticized Mrs. Clinton, as did Laura Bush. ‘I think it's a ridiculous comment,’ Mrs. Bush told reporters on Wednesday, two days after Mrs. Clinton made the remarks. ‘It's a ridiculous comment -- that's what I think.’”

Hernandez reassured Hillary supporters: “Some of Mrs. Clinton's closest allies do not think that the Republican assault is entirely bad for her. The attacks may help energize her network of financial supporters at a time when she faces no serious opposition in her re-election bid this year in New York. But perhaps more important, the Republican attacks are already leading Democrats to rally around her, at a time when the senator is facing criticism from pockets on the left on several issues, chiefly her support for the war in Iraq. ‘If a person is defined by their friends and their enemies, she has all the right enemies,’ said one Democrat who is close to Mrs. Clinton.”

Among Hillary’s friends that she can count on -- the staff of America’s most influential newspaper.

For an interview with a TimesWatch Spokesman, please contact Tim Scheiderer at (703) 683-5004.