It's bad enough NY Times lets editorialists like Paul Krugman rant hypocritically about Republicans being against science, or that Frank (Ain't That) Rich and Moron (oh sorry, Maureen) Dowd have free reign to write their own nonsensical screeds. But the bigger problem is that their news writers also inhabit a fact-deficient leftist bubble.
Mona Charen has an article out today aptly called "Don't Confuse Us With Facts; We're The New York Times". She writes in part:
An Aug. 31, 2011, story by Al Baker covers a federal judge's ruling that a case challenging the New York Police Department's, NYPD, "stop and frisk" policy can go forward. But the story is so one-sided that it practically topples over as you're reading it.
The suit was brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, CCR, a leftist outfit that sued Reagan over Grenada and El Salvador, represented performance artist Karen Finley in a suit against the National Endowment for the Arts, represented a Palestinian "immigrant activist," and so forth. The New York Times naturally omits this history. The suit alleges that the NYPD's policy is based "not on reasonable suspicion of individuals but on racial profiling."
The judge (who sounds like she might have done a stint at the CCR during some time in her career), declined to dismiss the case, saying, "This case presents an issue of great public concern. Writ large, that issue is the disproportionate number of African-Americans and Latinos who become entangled in our criminal justice system, as compared to Caucasians." Note the passive voice. Like flies in a spider's web, they become "entangled" in the criminal justice system.
The New York Times' story then duly repeats statistics offered by the CCR's Assistant Legal Director, Christopher Dunn. "In 2010, city officers made more street stops — 601,055 — than in any previous 12-month period." Proving what exactly? The story editorializes: "As a practical matter, the stops display a measurable racial disparity: black and Hispanic people generally represent more than 85 percent of those stopped by the police, though their combined populations make up a small share of the city's racial composition." ...
With the exception of the glancing reference to Kelly's explanation, The New York Times never provides the most relevant statistics regarding minorities and violent crime, which concern not the percentage of blacks or Hispanics in the population, but the percentage of those who commit violent crimes. City Journal's Heather MacDonald supplied them:
"Blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009 (though they were only 55 percent of all stops and only 23 percent of the city's population). Blacks committed 80 percent of all shootings in the first half of 2009. Together, blacks and Hispanics committed 98 percent of all shootings. Blacks committed nearly 70 percent of all robberies. Whites, by contrast, committed 5 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009, though they are 35 percent of the city's population (and were 10 percent of all stops). They committed 1.8 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies."
So I guess the CCR and its stenographers at the NYT are right: There is a disproportionate amount of blacks and Hispanics being stopped than Caucasians -- Too many whites are being stopped and too few blacks and Hispanics are.
But as liberals whose brains have been smashed in by the PC hammer, they get the facts bass-ackwards.
Kind of how they get it completely bass-ackwards with the tax burden in this country. While the NY Times propagates the Democrat lie that "the rich" pay disproportionately too little income tax at the expense of "the poor", the inconvenient truth is the complete opposite.
And also kind of how they completely get the whole "Islamophobia" thing 180 degrees wrong. While the NY Times propagates the Democrat lie that Muslims in America are experiencing disproportionately high instances of hate crimes, the inconvenient truth is that -- even though virtually every terrorist act in the past decade has been committed or attempted by Muslims -- they have a disproportionately low percentage of bias crimes. It is, rather, American Jews who suffer a proportionately high level of hate crimes, which, in fact, are committed quite regularly by American Muslims. Go figure!)
Notice a trend? If you do, and you happen to be a NY Times subscriber, I would suggest demanding your money back. If only journalistic malpractice was an actionable offense ...
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