Monday, January 29, 2007

NY Times rally bias

While skimming some headlines today I noticed some bias in the NY Times, that is worth noting (surely FoxNews invented slanted news coverage!).

The underwhelming phrase "thousands . . . rally" caught my attention (here) in the NY Times article about the 34th annual March for Life in D.C. I hate to say it, but I've come to expect downplaying coverage of political events by Liberal journals, but "thousands" was too biased to be believed. As I dug a little, even the Washington Post reported that "tens of thousands" attended. (here)

Next was the phrase "marched . . . to show disapproval," and I like how the writer polished off her intro with a direct (but unnecessary) quote of Bush's comments that included a malapropism. Nice job, Sarah.

Curious, I looked at the Times' treatment of the Anti-Iraq War rally this past Saturday, "tens of thousands" gathered there, we're told. And they weren't "disapprov[ing]"--like the judgmental pro-lifers, they were "opposi[ng]."

A little digging turned up this survey (here) of most of the reporting on the 2007 March for Life--newsflash: there were 20,000 abortion opponents at the spin-off rally in San Francisco.

Here's a shot of the mere "thousands" at the DC rally.

2 comments:

William said...

Yea, I know how it is.

ned said...

Hmmm, no difference between "reporting" and "commentating," William?