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Race Issues

• January 16 -- Affirming the NAACP
Lynette Clemetson pens a sympathetic look at the career of Elaine Jones, retiring president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. While portraying Jones as a fighter against anti-civil rights conservatives, she leaves out unflattering details about Jones' record.

• December 9 -- Al Sharpton, "Civil Rights Leader"
"Civil rights leader" Al Sharpton wins a lawsuit. Reporter Thomas Lueck ignores the infamous Tawana Brawley hoax that resulted in Sharpton himself being successfully sued for accusing a prosecutor of rape.

• December 5 -- Where's the Fire? Ignoring Al Sharpton's Inflammatory Past
Michael Slackman's respectful profile of Al Sharpton ignores incendiary examples of Sharpton's hate-mongering past.

• October 20 -- Brownout on Fact-Checking
Neil Lewis asserts Bush nominee Judge Janice Rogers Brown "would be the first black woman to sit on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia." That probably comes as a surprise to Judith Rogers, a black judge who currently sits on the court.

• September 26 -- The New Civil Rights Movement?
Steven Greenhouse gushes over a bus tour for illegal immigrants “inspired by the 1961 freedom rides that sought to integrate buses in the South.”

• August 18 -- Too Poor To Loot?
Martin Gottlieb ponders the lack of looting in blacked-out Manhattan: “From the streets of poorer neighborhoods, even those like Harlem, which are now home to touchstones of prosperity like Old Navy and Starbucks, other reasons are offered for the peace. Among them are an overwhelming, debilitating poverty that has outlasted a near decade of prosperity, and [former NYC mayor] Giuliani's extraordinarily successful campaign to cut welfare rolls.”

• July 31 -- Will ‘Siegal’ Soothe Times Egos?
The Times releases the Siegal Report, an account of its failures in the wake of the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg controversies. It includes a note from panel member and far-left activist Roger Wilkins, defending the paper’s “aggressive” diversity quest and bashing America: “The Times newsroom is an American place and is thus touched--as are virtually all American places--by our culture, including some remnants of hostility to minorities and women.”

• July 7 -- "WORLD ENDS, WOMEN & MINORITIES HARDEST HIT."
Daniel Altman’s gloomy article on economic prospects seems to suggest the Bush administration is bad for black jobseekers.

• July 7 -- Democracy Can Wait --We’ve Got Taxes to Raise
A Saturday editorial doesn’t let the expansion of voting rights get in the way of supporting a tax hike.

• June 30 -- Bill Keller Stands Up For Discrimination
Columnist Bill Keller, Howell Raines’ possible successor, sounds downright Rainesian on race issues. Keller’s Sunday op-ed lauds discrimination and calls Clarence Thomas “a black jurist of questionable distinction.”

• June 24 -- Old Liberal Labeling Habits Die Hard
Meet Sen. Ted Kennedy, “Democrat of Massachusetts”
Neil Lewis’s Supreme Court story uses the term “conservative” 12 times and calls Sen. Orrin Hatch a “leading conservative,” while ultra-liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy is simply a “Democrat of Massachusetts.”

• June 24 -- Embracing “Diversity”
Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court’s “forceful endorsement of the role of racial diversity on campus in achieving a more equal society.”

• May 27 -- “Willie Horton” Republicans Rough Up “Softball” Democrats
In Adam Clymer’s view, Republicans win by using “everything from Willie Horton's image to the suggestion that Senator Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, was unconcerned about national security.” Meanwhile, Democrats “lack the killer instinct that it takes to sell blunt, demagogic messages.”

• May 19 -- “Pinch” Flinches From Owning Up to Blair Facts
The Times zealous diversity quest didn’t start with Howell Raines: Publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger was on the bandwagon long before. Will Sulzberger now take responsibility for management’s coddling of Blair?

• May 16 -- Better Late Than Never
The Times lets the author of the diversity-critical “Coloring the News” have his say—two years after the book’s publication.

• May 15 -- A Tale of Two Plagiarists: Raines Scraped Mike Barnicle, But Sheltered Blair
“Public respect for newspapering is wounded when rules that would be enforced with doctrinal ferocity among the mass of journalists are lightened for a star who has great value to the paper.”—Howell Raines, lecturing the Boston Globe on plagiarizing columnist Mike Barnicle in 1998

• May 14 -- Howell Raines’ Theatre of the Absurd
Times staffers will pack a Manhattan movie house today for the latest installment of the “Blair Watch Project”—top management will take questions from seething Times news staff. Do journalists now see that the media’s diversity quest is damaging reporters’ reputations?

• May 13 -- Credibility Chasm on 43rd Street
Not even the liberal media trust the Times anymore: Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen comments on how the Jayson Blair plagiarism fiasco has damaged the Times credibility. 

• May 13 -- No Friends to the Left for the Times?
Even left-wing outlets are taking on the Times—and making conservative arguments to do so.

• May 12 -- The Times Jayson Blair Apology: Is It Enough?
“Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception” blares the front page of Sunday’s New York Times, introducing a 7,200 word examination of the paper’s chain of failures in the case of reporter Jayson Blair, who resigned from the paper after his plagiarism came to light two weeks ago. 

• May 22 -- Q&A with WILLIAM MCGOWAN
Author of “COLORING THE NEWS,” a 2001 book (newly in paperback) which made many direct criticisms of how the quest for “diversity” was corrupting Times reporting. Times Watch talked by phone with Mr. McGowan.

• May 15 -- Raines Comes Clean—But Soils Times Reputation
At a testy staff meeting, Times executive editor (and self-professed guilty white liberal) Howell Raines admits he gave reporter Jayson Blair “one chance too many” because he was black.

• May 9 -- Raines: Diversity “More Important” Than Better Journalism
Howell Raines praised the hiring of future plagiarist reporter Jayson Blair: “This campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.”

• May 8 -- Saddam-A-Bama?
Sports columnist William Rhoden thinks America’s world reputation will suffer if the U. of Alabama doesn’t hire a black football coach, comparing it to the war in Iraq.

• April 4 -- Utah: Conservative, Religious, and (Naturally) Bigoted
Nick Madigan’s story on white supremacists in Utah takes some cheap shots: “Traditionally conservative, independent and avowedly religious, many Utahans have long tolerated what some people elsewhere consider to be extreme points of view.”

• March 13 -- Times Reporter Reprieves Self From Fact-Checking
Peter Kilborn's piece on the last-minute stay of execution for convicted murderer Delma Banks' summarized the prosecution's evidence against him but also dropped an apparent bombshell: A key witness had "recanted much of his testimony." Exactly what did this witness recant? The Times didn't say, but as the Washington Post revealed, it had nothing to do with the murder evidence.

• March 10 -- Bob Herbert's Unlikely "Innocent"
Times columnist Bob Herbert took up the cause of yet another death row "innocent," arguing that Delma Banks, "a man with no prior criminal record, is most likely innocent of the charge that put him on death row." Never mind that, as the Washington Post reported, Banks "unwittingly led police to the .25-caliber pistol used to kill 16-year-old Wayne Whitehead."