When the NY Times becomes part of the Democrat Political Machine...

I get a morning email from National Review's Jim Geraghty on his political musings of the day. This below was his first section today. I thought it did a good job of illustrating an example of what Republicans view as typical with the NY Times (namely that they come off as taking cues to help build the Democrat Party's political narrative)

1. This New York Times Spin Seems Particularly Deep


"Lobbyists" are one of those all-purpose villains who crop up as needed for a particular Democratic narrative; the moniker is now used with such Stretch Armstrong-level elasticity that whenever I hear it used, I'm ready to presume that whoever is invoking it is trying to pull a fast one. One man's organization of concerned citizens is another man's sinister, powerful special interest. The NRA has lobbyists; I like them. The AFL-CIO has lobbyists; I don't like them. Tom Daschle insisted he was not a lobbyist, even though he worked at a law firm that was (surprise) a powerful lobbying firm. As Politico summarized, "In short, Daschle, working with his firm's lobbyists, uses his decades of congressional experience to tell clients how to favorably influence policy."

"Lobby" is a verb, and while the usual connotation is cash-oriented, lobbying is essentially persuasion, the same goal had by grassroots activists, bloggers, media commentators, New York Times editorial writers, talk-radio hosts, and everyone who's ever written a letter to the editor. As much as I don't like the AFL-CIO, I don't spend much time raging against the fact that they have lobbyists working for them. It's nowhere near the injustice that, say, compulsory membership is.

So when the New York Times offers a story on how speaker-in-waiting (maybe) John Boehner is a "G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists," well, a lot of right-of-center bloggers have noted that this is a line of attack more tired than Law and Order writers, trying to find an original way for an ordinary New Yorker to discover a murder victim. ("A jogger in Central Park comes across it as the sun rises over the city!" "We've done that eleven times already.")

At the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney tears the charge apart: "If you read this weekend's New York Times' hit job on would-be Speaker John Boehner and his 'lobbyist friends,' you might think, as the reporter clearly thinks, that John Boehner is cozier with lobbyists than most powerful politicians are. But did you know: Nancy Pelosi has raised almost twice as much money from lobbyists this election as Boehner has? At least 18 House Democrats have raised more lobbyist cash this election than Boehner has. Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid have pocketed more lobbyist cash in the past 18 months than Boehner has raised in the past 6 elections, combined?"

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey is offended but unsurprised: "In this case, the use of the phrase 'especially deep' shows that the Times wanted to make Boehner look as though he was on the extreme outlier of the common practice of fundraising among lobbyists. Whatever one thinks of that practice, it's one of the truly bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill. But in this cycle, the top five recipients are all Democrats, including two in Senate leadership (Reid and Schumer), as well as six of the top ten (3 Republicans and Charlie Crist being the others), and eleven of the top 20 -- and one of the Republicans on that list, Lisa Murkowski, is no longer a Republican candidate. . . . Why did the New York Times decide to focus on John Boehner instead of all the bigger targets in the House and Senate? Quite obviously, they're attempting to run interference for Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi by pushing a distorted, irresponsible, and highly inaccurate picture of Boehner as some sort of lobbyist lackey. It's exactly the kind of political reporting that we've come to expect from the Times: unethical, biased, and sloppy. In their headline, they accuse Boehner of being 'tightly bound' to lobbyists, but clearly it's the New York Times that is 'tightly bound' to this White House and the Democratic Party."

At Newsbusters, Lachlan Markay hones in on that devious word, "seems": "The Times's omissions are all the more shady given the timing of Lipton's piece -- it came mere days after the Democratic attack machine set its sights on Boehner. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs heavily promoted the piece on the White House press office's Twitter feed. This week, the DNC is slated to run a series of television ads targeting Boehner's lobbyist ties. Hypocrisy in the political realm is nothing shocking. Politicians are not 'objective,' and they don't claim to be. But the New York Times seems to be throwing its weight, and its self-proclaimed mantle of non-partisanship behind a political attack ground in total hypocrisy. Perhaps the Gray Lady should adopt a strict policy of reporting what is, not what 'seems' to be. Isn't that the purpose of the news media?"