Top 10 lowlights of the New York Times 2005

#10 The Anti-PBS "Putsch"
Floating the idea of cutting taxpayer funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was an easy way to send the Times editorial page into an ideological frenzy in 2005.

Most galling, the Times employed the historically freighted term word "putsch" (as in Hitler's 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch) to describe conservatives who would dare to consider cutting taxpayer funding of "public broadcasting": "Defenders of public broadcasting now must guard against still another conservative putsch -- a Congressional move to cut financing for the corporation's $400 million budget of vital aid for local stations. This time, the 'balance' zealots may resort to irony by citing the very chaos wrought by Mr. Tomlinson."
#9 Changing a Soldier's Story: A False "Surprise" Call-Up to Iraq

A July 6 op-ed by Army reserve officer Phillip Carter was accompanied online by an embarrassing editor's note apologizing for putting words in Carter's mouth -- changes that made his Bush-critical column much more slanted.

In a correction that Times Watch couldn't find in the hard copy of the paper, only online, the Times blushed: "The Op-Ed page in some copies of Wednesday's newspaper carried an incorrect version of the below article about military recruitment. The article also briefly appeared on NYTimes.com before it was removed. The writer, an Army reserve officer, did not say, 'Imagine my surprise the other day when I received orders to report to Fort Campbell, Ky., next Sunday,' nor did he characterize his recent call-up to active duty as the precursor to a 'surprise tour of Iraq.' That language was added by an editor and was to have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production error, it was not. The Times regrets the error."
#8 Judith Miller -- From 1st Amendment Hero To Pentagon Suck-Up
#7 Loony Labeling

What do former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, National Review magazine, and the re-emerging neo-Nazi movement in Germany have in common? According to the New York Times, they are all "far right."

"Pataki Takes His Lumps, From the (Far) Right"
-- The "jump page" headline to a Michael Cooper story on conservative disaffection with New York Gov. George Pataki (which cited, among other Pataki critics, the magazine National Review), February 12.

"You could call a fight for the hearts and minds of the far right in New Jersey -- a state that voted convincingly for John Kerry last November -- something of a Pyrrhic victory."
-- New Jersey reporter Josh Benson on former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler's battle for the Republican nomination for New Jersey governor, March 13.

So if National Review and Bret Schundler are "far right," what adjective does the Times use to characterize neo-Nazis? The same one, it turns out.

"Germany's Far Right Tries to Put On a Normal Face."
-- Headline to a March 14 report by Richard Bernstein about neo-Nazis in Germany.
#6 Ignoring Air America
The local New York Sun reported August 1 on the emerging scandal at the left-wing radio company Air America
After two weeks of no story, even some liberal outlets took notice of the paper's silence.

The August 12 Times finally acknowledged the financial scandal in a story buried on page 3 of the Metro section that didn't even make the paper's national edition.

Not that the headline or subhead of the story actually mentioned "Air America." Instead it read: "Bronx Boys Club's Finances Investigated -- Officials Look Into Loans Made to a Liberal Radio Network." The words "Air America" presumably couldn't fit into that 15-word space.
By contrast, when the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh announced his addition to prescription painkillers on his October 10, 2003 radio show, it made the front page of the New York Times the very next day, and the paper followed up with several stories referencing Limbaugh's addiction.
#5 Hillary's No Liberal!
The Times followed a pattern of centering Hillary Clinton politically, perhaps for a run for the presidency in 2008. Far from accurately terming Clinton a liberal, the Times bizarrely insisted several times that she was a "social conservative."
#4 Diminishing a Marine's Memory

In an October 26 story by James Dao on the "grim mark" of the 2000th fatality among U.S. troops in Iraq, he quoted the last letter home of Cpl. Jeffrey Starr, a Marine killed in Iraq on Memorial Day.

The story printed a portion of the letter that fit into the paper's agenda, reducing Starr to a man just waiting to die: "Sifting through Cpl. Starr's laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the Marine's girlfriend. 'I kind of predicted this,' Cpl. Starr wrote of his own death. 'A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances.'"

But Dao left off a vital part of a quote from the Marine -- a portion that showed how committed the Marine was to the cause of freedom in Iraq. Here's the full context of that quote showing how Starr felt about his death:

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."

As the New York Post wrote: "There is saintliness in a soldier's prospective acceptance of an honorable death in combat. To diminish such a deed, especially in service of a political agenda, approaches sacrilege. So it was with the manner in which The New York Times last week noted the death of Cpl. Jeffrey Starr, USMC, of Snohomish, Wash., who was killed in Ramadi on April 30 during his third tour of duty in Iraq."
#3 Relaying Reckless Leftist Charges Against Pro-U.S. Bloggers in Iraq
#2 Loving Cindy Sheehan
1# All Wet on Katrina
As the massive natural disaster (if not as massive as first assumed by the media) of Hurricane Katrina unfolded on the Gulf Coast in early September, the Times knew just where to lay the blame for the havoc and destruction. Despite ample evidence of congressional, state, and local failures, the Times never suggested blame lay anywhere but with President George W. Bush.

You can go and read more at the link
People who can think will just laugh at how slanted and obviously liberal the NYT is...
Those who are mental midgets will find ways to argue the integrity of the NYT