The IRS’ admission last week that they have been targeting conservative non-profit organizations for additional screening has been front-page news in many media outlets. The Wall Street Journal has nineteen mentions of the scandal on their website since last Friday (including a post featuring CCP President David Keating’s reaction). Even the Washington Post, by no means a friend to the Tea Party, has over twenty four articles on their website on the scandal (at the time this was written).
The New York Times, on the other hand, has six mentions on their website of the growing scandal. One of the six mentions is an acknowledgement by the NYT’s Public Editor, Margaret Sullivan, of the Grey Lady’s seemingly biased coverage:
…I agree that The Times seemed to play down the story originally, placing it inside the paper and emphasizing the second-day angle of the apology rather than the misconduct itself. In Monday’s paper, the headline, as Mr. Greenfield noted, emphasized the Republicans seizing on the issue rather than the widening problem. A Wall Street Journal front-page headline, by contrast, read, “Wider Problems Found at IRS.”
Many on the right – as noted last week in my blog posts about Benghazi – do not think they can get a fair shake from The Times. This coverage won’t do anything to dispel that belief…
That’s because “many on the right” are correct: if your agenda doesn’t fit in the Time’s narrative, you cannot get a fair shake from the New York Times. Time and time again the Grey Lady has been egregiously wrong on campaign finance issues. It really isn’t much of a surprise how paltry the Times’ coverage is of the IRS story, because it just doesn’t fit into their world view.
Thankfully, at the very least, their Public Editor has chosen to address the issues with their coverage. Given that the full extent of the IRS’ targeting has yet to be revealed, we hope that as new information comes to light, the Times ultimately chooses to pursue journalistic integrity over its currently biased slant. After all, it’s possible that even low-level IRS employees might read the “paper of record.”
For more on this, check out this excellent blog post from Reason’s Matt Welch
