Times Watch monitored the last 15 days of the "Caucus," the paper's daily rundown of brief political items, and found that even as the GOP chugged to a big victory, taking over the House and cutting the Democratic majority in the Senate by two-thirds, the "Caucus" was buoyant with Democratic optimism and withering attacks on Republicans, favoring the losing party by a 3-1 ratio.
Between October 19 and Election Day November 2, the Times ran 52 bites in the "Caucus" section of the print edition - generally short summaries of articles posted on the "Caucus" blog at nytimes.com.
Of those 52 items, covering a range of local, state and national political topics, only six were classified as pro-Republican by Times Watch, while 19 favored Democrats (note that stories that reflected badly on Republicans were tabulated as pro-Democrat, and vice versa). The remaining 27 pieces were classified as neutral. In what was a terrible year for the Democrats, shouldn't those numbers have been at least equal, if not completely reversed?
Two "pro-Democratic" briefs from the October 27 edition were typical: A story on the Rand Paul campaign worker who stepped on the head of a left-wing protester at a Paul rally, under the strong headline "Violence Before Debate In Kentucky Senate Race," complete with a thumbnail photo of the foot-on-head shot. Another strong headline featured in a story critical of Alaska Republican candidate Joe Miller for using the computers of co-workers to vote in an online poll: "Records Reveal Lying."
Those stories appeared in the same paper that ignored credible reports of violence by liberals and union members against conservative protesters against Obama-care at congressional town hall meetings.