Ross Douthat

New York Times right-of-center columnist Ross Douthat diplomatically but thoroughly documented the liberal bias and anti-Trump animus in the mainstream press. Of necessity, he avoided criticizing his own paper, but some of the shrewd points he made in “The Tempting of the Media” on Sunday certainly apply to journalists at his own paper. Douthat summarized “two common views among journalists about…

The New York Times not only interviewed Donald Trump on Tuesday, they came out of the interview and made a 45-minute podcast about it. In that, reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael Barbaro demonstrated their liberal distance from the president-elect, comparing his demeanor at the start of the interview to an "unhappy kid." Haberman also suggested he seemed like a child in dismissing two…

A group of purported Catholic professors wrote an open letter on October 26, 2015 to "the editor of the New York Times" decrying a October 18 op-ed item about the Catholic Church by a conservative writer Ross Douthat. The letter, which was initially signed by 25 academics from Georgetown University, Villanova University, and other schools (the list has grown in subsequent days), claimed that…

Though both Jonathan Chait and Amanda Marcotte approve of same-sex marriage, they differed on Monday in their assessment of the case against it. Chait, of New York magazine, claimed that anti-gay-marriage arguments have been pitiful and consequently were doomed from the get-go. He declared that “preventing gay people from marrying each other serves no coherent purpose. Allowing them to marry…

Discussing the growing immigration crisis on the July 9 edition of At This Hour with Berman and Michaela, CNN commentator Sally Kohn and host Michaela Pereira both jumped to defend President Obama from attacks from both Republicans and Democrats on his response to the flood of children arriving at the southern border. Pereira wondered how people would dare to label the crisis as Obama’s…

So-called reform conservatives such as David Frum, Michael Gerson, and Ramesh Ponnuru often get relatively favorable attention from liberal journalists -- relative, that is, to Tea Party types, which in turn reinforces the Tea Party's belief that the reformers aren't really conservatives.   Two lefty pundits recently examined the state of reform conservatism. Washington Post columnist E.J.…

Common-ground alert: Salon's Alex Pareene doesn't think much of the New York Times's opinion columnists as a group, and neither, presumably, do NewsBusters readers. As for the reasons why, well, let's just say most of Pareene's almost certainly aren't the same as yours.  Pareene blasts Maureen Dowd for "sloppiness, not to mention rote repetition of themes and jokes and incredibly lazy…

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat could hardly be considered a conservative in the mold of, say, a Ted Cruz. Most often he has reflected the "conservativism" of fellow New York Times columnist David Brooks who last summer came out in strong support for the Senate immigration bill. Therefore it was a very pleasant surprise that Douthat broke with his fellow "conservative" columnist by…

NBC’s chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd had some tough words for President Obama on Monday’s Morning Joe. Todd, anchor of MSNBC’s Daily Rundown and a frequent critic of Republicans on network’s programming, scolded the president for running a “leaderless Washington,” and for failing to “rally the world” to a “solution in Syria.” Todd’s critique was in reference to a Saturday op-ed…

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, CNN's Howard Kurtz doubled down on his December column that the media needed "to be leading the conversation" on guns in the wake of Newtown. He even compared the gun debate to the conversations on civil rights and, recently, same-sex marriage. Is gun control the new civil rights movement? Of course, Kurtz claimed objectivity although since Newtown the media…

Kermit Gosnell is the late-term abortion doctor in Philadelphia, on trial for infanticide in the gruesome killing of seven babies. The day after his trial began March 18 (as Tom Blumer noted at Newsbusters) Jon Hurdle at the New York Times opened by telling readers that "In opening statements in court on Monday, prosecutors charged that a doctor who operated a women’s health clinic here killed…

The manufactured controversy over Chick-Fil-A won’t be dying down anytime soon, if media figures get their way. Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy stated that he was “guilty as charged” when it came to supporting the traditional family, and commented on a radio show that “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say: You know, ‘We know better than…

Never exactly reticent in the cause of promoting gay marriage, CNN continued its long tradition of gay advocacy by highlighting dissenters against Church teaching. In a June 20 article on CNN’s Belief Blog titled “Can ‘true Catholics’ support same-sex marriage,” Chris Welch highlighted two Catholics who remained within the Church, yet declared opposition to the Church’s teaching of gay…

Right-leaning New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was thrown into the David Brooks chair on the weekly political roundatable on NPR's All Things Considered Friday. NPR anchor Robert Siegel insisted Rick Perry had a whole set of strange and anti-scientific statements that suggest he's "too far right" to be electable. Notice how NPR just rolls up everything they disagree with and loads it into…