Are there any responsible adults left at the New York Times?

I’ve been struck yet again by the in-your-face, screw-you bias openly displayed by the New York Times over the past week.  It’s been there for a long time, but I can’t recall it being this open and blatant before.

The newspaper refused to put Ted Cruz’ best-selling book on its Top 20 bestseller list.

When asked about its omission of Cruz’s book, the Times replied cryptically: “We have uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold.” Later, after the paper came under attack for its apparent political bias, it added a more specific charge: “In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”

Ted Cruz, needless to say, fired back at once, challenging the NYT to either prove its claim, or retract it and list his book.  Needless to say, the newspaper did neither.  However, to its embarrassment, others did their own investigating – and commenting.

Amazon has entered the fray, stating publicly that there is “is no evidence of unusual bulk purchase activity in our sales data.” As of last report, A Time for Truth is #13 at Amazon among all books, not just hard cover nonfiction. Other sources that track book sales evidently agree that there is nothing fishy about Cruz’s book’s sales:

As HarperCollins has noted, Cruz’s book “ranked high on other publishing industry bestseller lists including Nielsen Bookscan (#4) … The Wall Street Journal (#4) and Barnes and Noble (#7),” all of which “omit bulk orders books from their rankings.”

So the Times appears to have backed itself into a corner. Will it cave in and start listing A Time for Truth in a manner consistent with the book’s sales? Will it apologize to Cruz and HarperCollins? It is perhaps worth noting that legally, it is just about impossible to defame a politician. But that isn’t true of a publisher. If the Times said that it didn’t list Cruz’s book because its “sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases,” while knowing that this statement was untrue or having no grounds to believe it true, HarperCollins could very well have a cause of action against the Times, should the publisher choose to pursue it.

More at the link.

As if such institutional anti-conservative and anti-libertarian bias weren’t enough, look at how the NYT covered Ellen Pao’s departure as CEO of Reddit.

The New York Times’s initial story on the departure of interim chief executive Ellen Pao from social media community Reddit lacked egregious bias, so the paper went back to insert some … Amid widespread mockery of the second version’s opinionated tone, the paper then published yet a third version pulling back from some of its friskier social justice pronouncements.

You really should look at the NYT’s second edit of the story.  It adds so much bias and opinionated perspective as to be truly sickening.  It might even be funny if it weren’t so serious.

Both incidents are merely the latest chapters in a growing history of bias and partisanship at the ‘Gray Lady’.  The NYT used to be known for its honest, hard-hitting news coverage.  Now, it seems, news is the last thing to worry about in its bias-riddled and opinionated coverage.  Its slogan is clearly no longer “All the News that’s Fit to Print”, but rather, “All the Propaganda that Smears Those Of Whom We Don’t Approve”.

Those who want actual news coverage will clearly be well advised to seek it anywhere but the NYT.

Peter