Want Evidence of Media Bias? Look No Further Posted Sep 20th 2007 6:07AM by Dinesh D'Souza Imagine if the New York Times gave half-price ad space to the National Right to Life Committee or the National Rifle Association. It would never happen, of course, but if it did, you can envision the left-wing clamor. Liberal groups would be demanding that the Times extend to them the same discounts. Yet there has been no general outcry over the revelation that the New York Times gave a full page of ad space in the front section to the liberal activist group Moveon.org for a mere $65,000. That's about one-third of the Times' listed rate for a full-page ad. When blogger Jake Tapper asked the newspaper to account for this favorable treatment, Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis went into gobbledygook mode, saying that the Times has multiple rates which depend on multiple factors and in any case the paper has a policy against saying what any particular group has been charged. This has all the coherence of a typical New York Times editorial. Certainly if the Times were to offer a package discount to its regular advertisers (say 30 percent off if you buy five ads, or five ads for the price of four) then differential pricing makes sense. But none of this applies to Moveon.org, which was buying a one-time ad for a distinct political purpose. And what was that purpose? To accuse General David Petraeus of being General Betray Us. Someone at Moveon.org obviously thought this an extremely witty play on words. Moveon.org went on to accuse Petraeus of cooking the books and manipulating the facts to back up Bush's surge and his Iraq policy more generally. Did Moveon.org uncover any evidence that Petraeus was guilty of rigging the data? No, but apparently Moveon.org has no qualms about making unsubstantiated accusations. Clearly the editors of the New York Times wanted to help Moveon.org in its goal of smearing General Petraeus, so that their own ongoing campaign against Bush's policies could be given a boost. Now I don't care if the editorial writers of the Times blast Bush on the opinion page. That's their prerogative. What is shameful here is that a newspaper that pretends to be the paper of record--"all the news that fits"--has been using its front page and its news pages to wage a war against the war. Even this is not enough: the Times also sees fit to charge one advertising rate to left-wing groups and another to everyone else. Isn't this a clear example of how biased some media outlets like the New York Times are? Dinesh D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Hapaboy; I wish Sam Zell would buy the Times, probably would help, if that was permitted with his Chicago paper purchase. Interesting ,Investors business Daily notes media bias like the ones you mentioned for quite some time, in the Times
Dinesh D'Souza = wingnut. Hapaboy & murray t turtle = dittoheads. If you had any respect for the truth, you would have researched this right-wing non-story before repeating it. The fact of the matter is that The New York Times gave Rudy Giuliani the same discount rate to publish his ad that MoveOn.org org got for theirs. Here, take this paper towel and wipe that egg off your faces.