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Gaffes

• November 22 -- U.S. Still "Going It Alone In Iraq"
Reporter Neil MacFarquhar delivers an anti-war cliché: "Washington's past determination to go it alone in Iraq…" But as the Times noted the day before: "36 countries have committed troops to support the operation in Iraq at some point."

• November 15 -- This Review Rated G for "Gosh, Where'd That Come From?"
Way too much information….

• November 15 -- Chris Hedges Blows in Again, Predicting a Draft
Anti-war reporter Chris Hedges tells a college audience "We are losing the war in Iraq very badly" and predicts a reinstatement of the draft.

• November 8 -- Bush: Moving Out of Hooverville?
From Eduardo Porter's analysis of new jobs data: "If job growth continues near this pace for the next two months, Mr. Bush will avoid becoming the first occupant of the White House since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net job loss during a four-year term." Has he told fellow reporter Edmund Andrews?

• November 8 -- About That "Stagnant Economy"…
How quickly things can turn around in two days.

• November 8 -- "Poll Tax" for Poor Voters in Ohio?
Adam Liptak finds a racial angle and even "a sort of poll tax" in a story on voting problems in Ohio.

• November 8 -- "Angry Conservatives," Erroneous Names
Carl Hulse's story on Sen. Arlen Specter's controversial abortion statements begins with loaded language: "Angry conservatives flooded Senate phone and fax lines on Friday…." Plus: Who are "The Concerned Women of America"?

• November 8 -- Criminal Negligence of Cause and Effect
Crime reporter Fox Butterfield files "Despite Drop In Crime, An Increase In Inmates," yet another Butterfield story that fails to grasp that putting criminals in prison can actually lead to a drop in crime.

• November 4 -- Nagourney: Bush to Push "Conservative Agenda"
Adam Nagourney weighs the state of politics after Bush's convincing triumph: "[Bush] positioned himself and his party to push through a conservative agenda in Washington over the next four years."

• November 3 -- Kerry Wins! Says Media Types
Frank Bruni blogged the Campaign 2004 coverage and noted some of his media colleagues were predicting a Kerry win early on: "By an extremely significant margin -- OK, five to one -- my news media colleagues, a.k.a. drinking buddies, said their readings of the signs, couple with their instincts, pointed toward a victory for Senator John Kerry."

• November 3 -- Wednesday Morning Quarterbacking NYT's Pro-Dem Hints
Some of the Times' more optimistic pro-Democratic stories didn't pan out.

• November 2 -- Final Pre-Election Cheap Shots from the Times
Frank Rich bizarrely conflates two bogus anti-Bush scandals, while an editorial uses Cheney's trip to Hawaii to accuse Republicans of "questionable ethnic gestures."

• November 1 -- Bush "Bulge" Rumor Takes Hold in "Dark Corners" -- Like the NYT?
Matt Bai laments in the Sunday Magazine: "A rumor that the president somehow cheated in the televised debates -- was that a wire under his jacket? was he listening to Karl Rove on a microscopic earpiece? -- flies across the Internet and takes hold in dark corners of the public imagination." And in the New York Times.

• October 26 -- Times' "Explosive" Scoop: Bombshell or Politically Motivated Dud?
The Times trumpets two front-page stories blaming the Bush administration for letting almost 400 tons of powerful explosives disappear under its nose in Iraq. Grim news -- but is it true? An NBC News report suggests maybe not.

• October 25 -- More Republican "Extremism" from James Traub
James Traub contributes another column on Republican "extremism" to the Sunday Magazine.

• October 22 -- Taking Syria's Side on Quneitra
Neil MacFarquhar advances the Syrian state's official line on the destruction of the city of Quneitra in the Golan Heights: "Syria says the Israelis dynamited the town as they went; Israel's rather unconvincing explanation, given the neatly collapsed symmetry of house after house, is that warfare destroyed the place." But the paper's own reporting suggests differently.

• October 19 -- Classifying Terrorists as "Victims" in Iraq
The Times attempts to quantify the death toll among Iraqis: "A weeklong effort to tally Iraqi casualties shows soldiers, insurgents, politicians, journalists, a judge, a medic and restaurant workers among the victims." Why is the Times calling terrorists trying to kill U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians "victims"?

• October 18 -- Elisabeth Bumiller, Left-Wing Conspiracy-Monger
White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller again treats a left-wing Internet-driven conspiracy theory as news: "The bulge -- the strange rectangular box visible between the president's shoulder blades in the first debate -- has set off so much frenzied speculation on the Internet that it has become what literary critics call an objective correlative, or an object that evokes large emotions and ideas…In the last two weeks, the bulge has taken on a life of its own to become a symbol to Mr. Bush's critics of all that is wrong with his presidency."

• October 14 -- More Misleading on Bush's Tax Cuts
David Rosenbaum uses two pro-Democratic groups to allege Bush misled on taxes during the final presidential debate.

• October 11 -- The NYT: Your Source for Left-Wing Conspiracy Theories
After ignoring a similar rumor on Drudge about John Kerry, the Times helps spread a left-wing rumor that Bush was "wired" for his first debate: "What was that bulge in the back of President Bush's suit jacket at the presidential debate in Miami last week? According to rumors racing across the Internet this week, the rectangular bulge visible between Mr. Bush's shoulder blades was a radio receiver, getting answers from an offstage counselor into a hidden presidential earpiece….Ms. Devenish could not say why the 'rumpling' was rectangular."

• September 20 -- "Tendentious" Fact-Checking at the Times
A "Fact Check" feature on the campaign defends (no surprise) John Kerry. And the online version includes an amusing gaffe never meant for publication.

• September 16 -- Edwards As "Moderate," Plus More Misleading on Cheney
An off-lead story on Kerry's suddenly invisible running mate misleadingly labels Edwards a moderate and repeats a misreading of Dick Cheney's war-on-terror speech.

• September 13 -- Bush to Blame for Beslan Massacre?
Does Bush share responsibility for the killings of schoolchildren in Chechnya?

• September 10 -- "If A Republican Had Said That…."
How would the Times react if Bush told an audience to "beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing"?

• September 10 -- Downplaying Doubts on Dubious Anti-Bush Memos
Yesterday the Times put anti-Bush charges on its front page--charges based on memos suggesting Bush got special treatment during Vietnam. Today the Times files a follow-up story casting grave doubt on the authenticity of those memos--on page A17.

• September 9 -- Taking Cheney Far Out of Context, Again
Katharine Seelye and Ralph Blumenthal treat seriously the new controversy over Bush's Vietnam service--quite a change from how the Times treated the Swift Boat Veterans.

• September 9 -- More Mangling of Cheney's Terror Comments
Adam Nagourney turns media-mangled comments from Dick Cheney on the terror war into a fretful article: "Is it possible for a candidate to go too far, and alienate the very voters he is trying to court?....The remarks were among the more dire offered in a presidential campaign since 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson broadcast a television advertisement, with a mushroom cloud, warning that the election of Barry Goldwater would lead to nuclear war."

• September 7 -- Reviving an Anti-Bush Sr. Urban Legend
Kate Zernike revives an anti-Bush Sr. urban legend, the myth that during the 1992 campaign, George H.W. Bush marveled at a grocery-store scanner as if he'd never seen one before.

• September 1 -- Pining for Clinton-Era Heaven
Edmund Andrews and Robin Toner portray the Clinton years as positively paradisiacal: "Four years ago, when the nation still seemed in an era of boundless prosperity…."

• September 1 -- Context for Kerry Quotes, but None for Bush's "Gaffe"
Elisabeth Bumiller again plays up a Bush "gaffe" to portray Bush on the defensive: But when Bush attacks Kerry in similar fashion, she allows the Kerry campaign to put the quote in context.

• August 27 -- Still Ignoring Kerry's "Christmas In Cambodia"
The Times again couches Swift Boat charges in a dubious light: "The Swift boat veterans, whose most serious charges have been contradicted by official records, some of their own past statements and a number of witnesses, got most of their initial money from Texans supportive of the president." Plus: Kerry in Cambodia, ignored again.

• August 24 -- "Correcting" Fred Barnes
TV critic Alessandra Stanley tackles coverage of the Swift Boat Vets.

• August 23 -- "Undermining" Swift Vets, Ruing "False Information" on Blogs, Talk Radio
The Times insists that the "most serious contentions" of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "have been undermined by official records and conflicting accounts." Co-author Adam Nagourney frets in a related story about "this era when so much unsubstantiated or even false information can reach the public through so many different forums, be it blogs or talk-show radio."

• August 4 -- Bush Knew of Terror Threat Long Ago?
Adam Nagourney flubs a key fact in an article on the Democratic party's response to terror threats: "…the disclosure that the Bush administration had elevated the alert based on intelligence collected three or four years ago." Nagourney is apparently confusing the age of the terror-related information with the date the Bush administration actually gained the data.

• August 3 -- Burying the Kerry "Bounce"
After a Democratic convention that delivered an anemic "bounce" to Kerry, reporter Adam Nagourney accentuates the positive.

• July 28 -- NYT Abortion Cheerleading: Been There, Done That, Bought the T-Shirt
Public outcry over a notorious abortion-celebrating essay in the Times Sunday magazine results in an embarrassing and revealing Editors' Note.

• July 27 -- Kennedy, Hillary Voting Records: Liberal or Not?
Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy have "so-called liberal" voting records?

• July 27 -- The Myth of Max Cleland
At the Democratic convention in Boston, the Times trumpets former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland as a Republican victim: "And there was Max Cleland, the triple amputee and former Democratic senator from Georgia whose defeat in 2002--by an opponent who ran commercials linking him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden…." Wrong.

• July 15 -- Bill Maher, Groupthink Victim
The "Bill-Maher-Was-Fired-for-Saying-Terrorists-Weren't-Cowards" myth, once again.

• July 7 -- The "Relentlessly Upbeat" John Edwards?
Does this sound like Reagan to you? "We will say no to kids going hungry, to kids who don't have the clothes to keep them warm, and no forever to any American working full-time and living in poverty. Not in our America!"

• July 6 -- Good News for Repubs: Dao Thinks They're Doomed
James Dao carries dire news for Ohio Republicans: "The disarray is so great, Democrats contend, that it could hurt President Bush's ability to win Ohio, a pivotal state for the Republicans." Given Dao's track record, should Republicans be worried?

• July 6 -- The Times Gets Another Military Matter All Wrong
The lead editorial opens: "The Pentagon's decision to press 5,600 honorably discharged soldiers back into service, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the latest example of President Bush's refusal to face the true costs of pre-emptive war." But the Times has it wrong.

• July 6 -- Richard Berke's Turkey of an Anecdote
Washington Editor Richard Berke cites an anti-Bush myth as fact: "There are also the manufactured surprises, like Mr. Bush's cloak-and-dagger Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad, which drew praise even from Democrats. (The public relations bonanza fizzled after the press reported that Mr. Bush had posed with a mouth-watering--but fake--turkey.)"

• June 23 -- Greg Packer Returns!
A Times report on the crowds for Bill Clinton's Manhattan book signing includes quotes from Greg Packer, the media's infamous "man on the street."

• June 4 -- "Ludicrous Visions" of US Troops Showered With Flowers?
An editorial on George Tenet's resignation slams "one of the more ludicrous visions offered by Mr. Rumsfeld's team, like the one of grateful Iraqis showering American soldiers with flowers." Yet the paper's own reporting shows that "ludicrous vision" was absolutely accurate.

• June 1 -- Frank Rich's Pornographic Hypocrisy
Editor Frank Rich contemptuously dismisses conservatives who dare link the prisoner abuse of Abu Ghraib to pornography: "The hypocrisy of those pushing this line knows few bounds." Yet the left-wing essayist Susan Sontag, so admired by Rich, made precisely the same argument in the cover story of the NYT magazine.

• May 17 -- "Mild-Mannered" Tom Daschle?
Carl Hulse covers a speech by "mild-mannered" Sen. Tom Daschle on the "startling meanness" of modern politics (he evidently missed Daschle comparing conservative critics to the Taliban)

• May 12 -- The Ghost of Joe McCarthy
Sharon Waxman covers the controversy over the upcoming environmental disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" in "Global Warming Ignites Tempers, Even in a Movie."

• April 16 -- Iraq Worse Than Vietnam; Budget-Balancing LBJ?
Paul Krugman doesn't think Iraq is Vietnam--in some ways, it's worse. Plus, budget-balancing LBJ?

• April 9 -- The Obesity "Epidemic"
The teaser to a story on lawyers drooling over the upcoming feast of fast-food litigation reads: "With obesity now recognized as an epidemic, a wave of litigation looms." Is overeating actually contagious?

• April 8 -- Send Me No Flowers
In an editorial marking the one-year anniversary of the Iraq war, the Times claimed the "administration…seemed to believe its own talk about American soldiers' being greeted with flowers as an army of liberation." But the Times itself says that they were.

• March 29 -- Still Harassing Katherine Harris
A lead editorial brings up liberal villain Katherine Harris and spreads misleading information on her role in the 2000 presidential election: "Purging voting rolls too aggressively, as Ms. Harris did in 2000, can change the party breakdown of the electorate." But the company that did the purging was hired by the state in 1998, before Harris took office.

• March 22 -- Rich Liberal Triteness
Frank Rich describes “one of the most hysterical outbreaks of Puritanism in recent, even not-so-recent, American history” and administers another beating to “The Passion.”

• March 16 -- Kerry's "Astute" Gaffe
Did Kerry really mean for his attacks on Republicans as "crooked" and "lying" to go public? Kerry aides are pushing the theory, and a Times front-page headline takes the bait: "When Senator John Kerry made offhanded remarks about Republicans this week, some aides say, the comments were not accidental but the move of an astute politician aiming a spotlight on a topic harmful to his opponent."

• March 8 -- Will Rest of Media Pounce on Kerry's "Gay" Gaffe?
David Halbfinger follows Kerry to a black college in Mississippi: "Senator John Kerry showed he could preach from the pulpit one minute and throw political punches the next." But will the rest of the media pounce on the gaffe Halbfinger reports?

• March 1 -- Hope He Didn't Bet on the Oscars
Frank Rich's poor box office insight on "The Passion."

• February 23 -- The Times' Anti-Republican Recycling Policy
Elisabeth Rosenthal does her bit for the environment and Democratic spin, recycling an anti-Bush quote from a self-described Republican she originally used in a story three weeks ago.

• February 23 -- "Loony" to Link Fonda and Kerry?
Frank Rich writes of those who would link Jane Fonda to John Kerry: "[Kerry] appears as a blurred extra sitting several rows behind her in a photo of an antiwar protest held two years before her famous, self-immolating trip to Hanoi. This is guilt by association so loony that even the perpetrators of the Hollywood blacklist might have found it a stretch." But Kerry and Fonda both spoke at the rally.

• January 19 -- The Absent-Minded Italian Professor
Karen Arenson makes much of a professor from Italy "scheduled to teach at New York University this semester [who] has decided not to do so, as a protest against the new American policy of fingerprinting arriving visitors and employees from other countries." But Arenson fails to point out Italians are exempt from fingerprinting.

• January 12 -- Great Minds Think Alike…
…and so do Times economics reporters Louis Uchitelle and Edmund Andrews.

• December 15 -- Dick Cheney's "Pheasantgate"
Elisabeth Bumiller squeezes 800 overwrought words out of vice president Cheney's recent pheasant-hunting jaunt: "A lot of other people noticed the fallen birds: hunters who pursue birds in the wild, the Democratic presidential candidates and the Humane Society of the United States, which likened the shootings to the first day of the Iraq war."

• December 5 -- Not Dead Yet
"An obituary on this page yesterday erroneously reported the death of Katharine Sergava, a dancer and an actress who portrayed the dream-ballet version of Laurey, the heroine, in the original production of 'Oklahoma!'"

• December 5 -- "Tenacious" Humans Destroying the Planet
A Times editorial uses a scientific study to label humanity a planetary pest with a "tenacious occupation of the globe," responsible for mass extinction of other species.

• December 2 -- An Officially Unofficial Middle East Peace Deal
James Bennet's story on a "peace deal" touted by left-wing Israelis is accompanied by this photo caption: "Palestinian protesters yesterday tried to stop an unidentified delegate from going to Geneva to meet Israeli delegates and sign an official truce." But the treaty is unofficial--neither government is involved.

• December 1 -- Uchitelle's Hard-to-Tell Take on Consumer Spending
It's clear economics reporter Louis Uchitelle thinks Bush's tax cuts will backfire. But Times Watch is still trying to figure out his take on consumer spending.

• November 25 -- "A New Underground Railroad" for Gays to Canada?
Clifford Krauss likens the trek of U.S. gays marrying in Canada to the Underground Railroad for escaping slaves: "Gay Couples Follow a Trail North Blazed by Slaves and War Resisters." A teaser embedded in another story on gay marriage makes the connection explicit: "A New Underground Railroad: Hundreds of Americans, fleeing state laws, are going to Canada to marry." The story opens with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.

• November 20 -- Iraqi Women Suffering Since Hussein Gone
Nicholas Kristof finds more downside to the liberation of Iraq: " A new report by the U.N. Population Fund offers a devastating portrait of the plight of Iraqi women since the war." Yet the current war isn't even mentioned directly in the actual report.

• November 14 -- Jehl Again Buries Details of Demo Memo
Douglas Jehl again discusses the partisan conflict on the Senate Intelligence panel while leaving out how the panel came to be feuding in the first place--a Democratic memo that shows the Democrats plotting to use the Senate hearings for political gain.

• November 5 -- Britney, Weird
Neil Strauss' profile of Britney Spears is a doomed attempt to imbue the flighty pop singer with significance. Describing Spears stomping out of an interview, he writes: "It was a decision that took a degree of independence, confidence and honesty, which are all mature qualities." Huh?

• November 4 -- Krugman Cuts off Nethercutt
Columnist Paul Krugman is the latest to pass along a skewed quote from Republican Rep. George Nethercutt.

• October 28 -- Quagmire on the Times Copy Desk
The ghosts of Vietnam haunt the Times copy desk. Frank Rich's anti-Bush Sunday column is typically over the top, but the accompanying headline goes even farther: "Why Are We Back in Vietnam?" Rich's actual article says: "The war in Iraq is not remotely a Vietnam."

• October 28 -- "Nostalgia" for Baathist Bombs
A story on the struggles of Iraq's new foreign minister is headlined "Iraq's Foreign Ministry Has a New Chief, but Nostalgia for the Past Lingers." That's a rather broad view of nostalgia, given the story's opening: "Somebody planted a bomb outside the office of the new Iraqi foreign minister two weeks ago, set with a timer to go off when he was at his desk."

• October 24 -- "Rumsfeld Draws Republicans' Ire"

• October 17 -- Maureen Dowd's "Shameless" PR Campaign
Ever since Maureen Dowd's May 14 column (when she used an ellipses to reverse the plain meaning of a Bush quote on Al Qaeda), Web-watchers are reading closely between her lines. Is a correction in order again on her latest bit of Bush-bashing?

• October 16 -- The "Reviled" Pope
Frank Bruni reports from Vatican City on the 25th anniversary of the reign of Pope John Paul II--but can't let the anniversary pass without taking potshots on how the "alienating" Pope is "reviled by many" for daring to uphold conservative church doctrine on gay marriage and birth control.

• October 13 -- Cheney Lashes Out
Eric Schmitt's report on a Dick Cheney speech positions the vice president as Bush's heavy, "lashing out" and "ridiculing" critics.

• August 19 -- The Naked News
After working so hard to get U.S. troops into Liberia, the Times oddly buries Tim Weiner’s entertaining story on the Liberia peace deal, devoting much of the front page to a week-old story about a nude hiker.

• August 14 -- Shielding for Saddam
Adam Liptak takes a chronologically challenged look at Americans who went to Iraq as “human shields” and now face fines, alleging: “Several people involved in the effort said that none of the sites were attacked while human shields were present.” Of course they weren’t: These “shields” left Iraq before the war started!

• August 13 -- Slammin’ Alabama
An editorial excoriates Alabama’s chief justice for “demagoguing about the Ten Commandments” and “ignoring the Constitution's mandates on the separation of church and state” (before comparing him to Gov. George Wallace). But there’s no “separation of church and state” mandate in the Constitution.

• August 13 -- Gen. Clark Chides Krugman’s Faulty Quote
Gen. Wesley Clark chides columnist Paul Krugman for inaccurately quoting him regarding a call he received urging him to link 9-11 to Saddam Hussein: “No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.”

• August 11 -- ‘Serious’ Gap in WMD Coverage
The Financial Times ran an op-ed on Iraq’s WMD by Curt Mileikowsky, (former head of Asea's nuclear power division) and Evelyn Sokolowski (former head of the joint analysis group for Sweden's nuclear utilities). The New York Times ran an op-ed on the same subject the same day by…Steve Martin. Yes, that Steve Martin.

• August 8 -- Times Hacks Bob Novak Facts
Douglas Jehl sympathizes with the trials of Joseph Wilson, the instigator of the Bush-uranium-Niger controversy, and accuses columnist Robert Novak of outing his wife as a “covert C.I.A. operative.” Well, Novak didn’t, but Jehl apparently just did.

• August 4 -- The Times’ New Favorite “Republican”
A self-described Republican critical of Bush’s tax cuts, Michael Retzer is so popular with Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller she used his same quote twice in two stories that ran five days apart.

• July 2 -- “Guilty Or Not…”
Did the U.S. deliberately fire a missile into an Iraqi mosque, killing nine? The evidence says no, but some local Hussein fanatics say yes. So a Times headline splits the difference.

• June 26 -- Abortion: Outlawed Or Not?
Describing an “abortion boat” in Poland, reporter Peter Green describes the country’s abortion laws: “Current law allows pregnancies to be terminated only if the mother's life is in danger or if she was raped or if the baby has certain grave genetic defects.” But on Thursday he writes “abortion is outlawed” in Poland.

• June 9 -- The Times’ Raw Journalism
Sarah Lyall’s “Barcelona Journal” is a unique example of hands-on (or clothes-off) journalism, as Lyall apparently joined in a photographer’s “unclad art project.”

• May 27 -- They’re Not the Only Ones, Teach
"Most students who come here have a very hard time reading a 20-page article from The New York Times Magazine.” -- Rutgers writing-program director Kurt Spellmeyer, quoted in the New Jersey section of the May 25 Times.

• May 14 -- Maureen Dowd’s Dishonest Deletion
Columnist Maureen Dowd purposely mangles a quote from President Bush to make him look wrong about the dangers posed by Al Qaeda terrorists—all so she can accuse the administration of “lulling triumphalism” in the war on terror.

• April 24 -- No Gaffes On The Left
While the Times is all over Sen. Rich Santorum’s controversial remarks on gays, the paper never editorialized on the verbal gaffes of recent prominent Democrats, including one senator who used a racial slur on TV and another who likened Al Qaeda to a Middle Eastern charitable organization.

• April 24 -- Those Funny Fatwas
A Times headline on author Salman Rushdie: “There's Something About a Man With a Fatwa.”

• April 10 -- Embarrassed Times Warns White House Against Victory “Hubris”
After the fall of Baghdad, a Times front-page story asserts: “[Vice-President] Cheney and [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld seemed to treat cautionary notes about hubris as so much political politeness.” But at least they have something to gloat about regarding war predictions, unlike the Times.

• April 10 -- “Less Than Zero?”
An amusing error by a Times reporter in Iraq, whose story initially claimed: “The value of the Iraqi dinar has fallen 150 percent since the beginning of the war.” How is that possible?