A front-page article in today's New York Times about President Bush's budget reports, "Democrats said Mr. Bush's request for large Pentagon spending increases belied his claim to fiscal restraint, and suggested that the military budget was the first place they would look for savings to make sure that the budget did not use Social Security money."

Aha, so now the "Democrats" are attacking President Bush for his "large Pentagon spending increases." A July 11, 2001, Washington Post article on a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee reported "committee members from both parties also complained that Bush's spending plan still would underfund the military." The Post quoted Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, as saying to the military brass at a Senate hearing, "We're not giving you enough." The Post also quoted Senator Max Cleland, a Democrat from Georgia, as saying that the Bush administration budget proposal "grossly underfunds" the military.

If the Times were a little bit sharper and quicker and more willing to ask tough questions of Democrats, it might name these unnamed "Democrats" who are complaining about Mr. Bush's "request for large Pentagon spending increases," and ask them, "Gee, how can you complain about Bush spending too much on the military when Senators Lieberman and Cleland, from your own party, were just last month complaining that Bush was spending too little on the military?" But instead the paper lets the contradiction pass without comment.

Sham Unions: A headline in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "Workers' Rights Are Suffering in China as Manufacturing Goes Capitalist." The article reports, in all apparent seriousness, that "With the collapse of the state industries that once dominated China, tens of millions of the workers who were long portrayed as official masters of the Communist nation have been virtually cast aside. Their official Communist-run trade union federation has often been little more than a bystander as the old companies are dissolved or sold. As private and foreign companies race ahead in newer industrial centers like this one in the southeastern province of Guangdong, a new kind of working class is emerging, one dominated by rural migrants who have no tradition of unions or the security once enjoyed in state enterprises."

The Times says, "A large majority of the new companies have ignored the requirement to unionize or have created puppet bodies, according to Chinese and foreign labor experts."

Worker's rights aren't suffering in China because of China going "Capitalist"; they are suffering because of China remaining communist. The "tradition of unions" the Times refers to is nonexistent -- in communist China there are no free labor unions. There weren't any in the Soviet Union, either. The AFL-CIO long recognized this fact by refusing to have anything to do with these sham state-run unions, recognizing them as organs of the state rather than of the workers. This was the source of the rift between the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which represented the genuine labor unions, and the World Federation of Trade Unions, which represented the sham communist state-controlled unions. The "requirement to unionize" that the Times refers to is worthless in a communist country where the state controls both the union and the factory. Under communism, the workers had -- and still have -- no right to organize free labor unions, which is the essential workers' right. So a headline claiming "Workers' Rights Are Suffering in China as Manufacturing Goes Capitalist" is just nonsensical. So is complaining of "puppet bodies" emerging under capitalism, when the communist, state-dominated "labor union" was itself a puppet.

Ultraconservative: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on Senator Jesse Helms' plans to retire. "Mr. Helms often offended many liberals and moderates with his ultraconservative views on race and homosexuality, making him an enduring bogeyman to the American left," the Times reports. The ultraliberal Times doesn't say what the senator's "views on race" are, or just what defines them as "ultraconservative."

The "Reckonings" column on the op-ed page of today's New York Times makes the following argument against partially privatizing Social Security: "Managing millions of small individual accounts would be very expensive. That last point is important. A forthcoming study by the Congressional Budget Office suggests that as much as 30 percent of the value of private accounts would end up consumed by administrative costs. This compares with costs that are less than 1 percent of benefits in today's Social Security system."

If the government is going to spend 30 percent of the value of private accounts on administrative costs, that's one of the best arguments yet for a full privatization. After all, in the private sector, costs are much lower. The Web site of Vanguard mutual funds reports that "A low-cost index fund might have an expense ratio of 0.3% (or $3 per $1,000 invested). In comparison, the average annual expense ratio of general equity funds is 1.45%, according to Lipper Inc." If the private sector can do this job for 1.45 percent or 0.3 percent, why would it cost the government 30 percent? And if it would really cost the government 30 percent, why let the government do the job instead of handing it over completely to the private sector? The "Reckonings" columnist doesn't ask or answer these questions, instead treating the "30 percent" claim as an argument for preserving the essentials of the current Social Security system.

Anti-Immigrant: The front page of today's New York Times carries an above-the-fold dispatch from Imperial Beach, Calif., that traffics in the worst kind of anti-immigrant stereotypes. The Times passes along unchallenged the claim that "hordes" of immigrants are to blame for "loss of business, destruction of private property and environmental degradation." It quotes one man who claimed immigrants (the Times calls them "trespassers") "had stolen four of his cars, crouched down in his bushes and once hid in a room of his house." To read the Times article, you'd never know that native-born Americans steal cars, destroy private property, and degrade the environment, too. You'd never know that lots of immigrants come to America and obey the laws of the country. The Times article, while fawning all over the supposed successes of the border-enforcement effort known as Operation Gatekeeper, never tells readers how much the operation costs. The operation's features include a Buchananite 47-mile border fence and a doubling of the number of Border Patrol agents, to 2,000, the Times reports. No one in the Times article voices the obvious policy alternative -- rather than building fences to keep immigrants out and enforce restrictive immigration laws, why not welcome more immigrants into America to help build the country? Why should the immigrants who happened to get to America a few decades or centuries ago have the right to slam the door on those who want to join them?

Accused: An Associated Press item picked up as a brief in the New York Times metro section today reports that the Rev. Al Sharpton "accused the Democratic Party of moving to the right." So troubling, apparently, is a move to the right that the press treats it as an accusation rather than a description.

Undercooked: An editorial in today's New York Times about Joseph Ellis reports that his books "are those rare creatures, best-selling works of history." So rare that history books occupied four of the top eight spots on Sunday's New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.

A brief item in the metro section of today's New York Times reports, "Several car tires in Williamsburg were found slashed early yesterday morning, and a swaskika was painted on the door of a rabbi's home in the neighborhood, police officials said. The tire slashings occurred in sections of Williamsburg that are predominantly Hispanic and Jewish." Never mind the misspelling of the word swastika. The Times places the attack in entirely the wrong Brooklyn neighborhood. At least three other New York dailies -- the New York Post, the Daily News and Newsday -- say the crimes took place in Crown Heights, not Williamsburg. The details in the other papers indicate that they are correct and the Times is in error. The New York Post says the swastika was "in a hallway" of a building at 481 Crown Street, and that the tire slashings were "on Crown and Montgomery streets between Brooklyn and Kingston Avenues." Newsday says that the swastika was found at a "Crown Street apartment building" and that many of the tire slashings took place "along Montgomery Street." The authoritative 1998 book "The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn" places these sites within Crown Heights, which is not even adjacent to Williamsburg.

Late Again: An article on the front page of today's New York Times reports on how Jefferson County, Mississippi, has become a "Lawsuit Mecca." This is a straight rip-off of an article by Mark Ballard that appeared in the National Law Journal on April 27, 2001. There's no plagiarism, but the themes of the stories are almost exactly the same. National Law Journal headline: "Mississippi Becomes a Mecca for Tort Suits." New York Times headline, almost four months later, "Mississippi Gaining as Lawsuit Mecca." The National Law Journal article begins with an anecdote about a frequently sued pharmacy, the Bankston Drug Store on Main Street in Fayette, Miss. The New York Times article reports that "Bankston Drug Store, the county's only pharmacy, in Fayette, is a frequent target." The Times doesn't credit the National Law Journal story.

Caught Dead: A dispatch from Columbus, Ohio, in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a death row prisoner. "The choice is his under Ohio law, but his spirited protest to die by electrocution, the first in 38 years, has galvanized a movement among capital punishment advocates to repeal that choice in the Ohio General Assembly and leave lethal injection as the state's sole means of killing capital criminals." This is worded vaguely, but one plausible interpretation makes it sound like the prisoner is the first in the nation to die by electrocution in 38 years. Maybe he would be the first in 38 years in Ohio. But there have been quite a few electrocutions in the U.S. over the past 38 years. To give just two examples, Florida electrocuted Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis in July 1999, and Georgia used the electric chair to execute Nicholas Lee Ingram in April 1995.

Can't Spell: A graphic that runs with a front-page article in today's New York Times about pollution lawsuits refers to "sulpher dioxide." As the article makes clear, it should be "sulfur dioxide."

Can't Spell: A dispatch from Loma, Montana, in the national section of today's New York Times notes archly that entries in Meriwether Lewis's journal were "often misspelled." The same New York Times article goes on to refer to a new national monument as a "momuent."

An article in the international section of today's New York Times reports on Condoleezza Rice's trip to Russia. "The trip meant that Ms. Rice, and not the secretary of state, was the first top Bush foreign policy official to visit Moscow, whose opposition to a missile shield is a critical obstacle to be navigated," the Times reports, going on at length about how Ms. Rice has outmaneuvered General Powell. A simpler explanation for Ms. Rice's trip to Russia may be that she's a Russia specialist who is fluent in Russian, wrote her doctoral dissertation on Russia, and dealt with Russian issues on the National Security Council during the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush. It's strange for the Times not to mention this. To mention it might have undercut the article's premise about the "surprising" role that Ms. Rice has assumed -- an "ascendancy," the article claims. But it would have been better journalism to deal straight-on with the information that undercut the theory, rather than simply omitting the information as the Times did in this case. Contrary to the Times's claim, it would have been "surprising" if Mr. Bush hadn't sent Ms. Rice to Russia, given her background.

Jew, Jew: A front-page article in today's New York Times remembers the Crown Heights riot. The Times reports that "Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Hasidic scholar from Australia, was fatally stabbed three hours later, caught by a mob racing through the streets shouting, 'Jew, Jew.'"

"Jew, Jew," is a strangely sanitized version of what the mob was shouting. According to the court documents filed by federal prosecutors in the case stemming from the riot, one of the mob shouted, "There's a Jew; get the Jew." According to the memoir of the man who was executive editor of the Times during the riot, Max Frankel, the cry was "Kill the Jews!" How the Times news department turns this into "Jew, Jew," is a puzzlement.

Kamp Kinderland: The City section of today's New York Times carries an affectionate feature on a Stalinist summer camp in Tolland, Massachusetts. It's enough to make one wonder whether the Times coverage of New York City is really devoted to New York City (in which case, why write about a camp in Massachusetts?) -- or whether it is devoted to the advancement of Communism, in which case, the article makes perfect sense.

Missing Wedding: The Sunday Styles section of today's New York Times inexplicably omits one of the most important social events of the weekend, the wedding last night of Ellen Sarah Umansky and David Alexander Gutman. Ms. Umansky is one of the most promising writers of her generation and Dr. Gutman one of the most distinguished young psychiatrists in the city, and it's just a gaping hole in the Times wedding coverage that they missed the news of the marriage.

The business section of the New York Times today turns an interesting but silly Los Angeles magazine article on the editor of Variety, Peter Bart, into a vicious smear.

Let's take it from the top. The Times reports that Mr. Bart "was suspended today because of derogatory comments about blacks, Jews, and gays that were attributed to him in a magazine article." The article also reports that the Los Angeles magazine article says "according to more than a half-dozen people, Mr. Bart uses derogatory terms about other minorities, gays and women at meetings."

The New York Times never reports what exactly the "derogatory comments" were, allowing readers to imagine the worst. Here's what the "derogatory comments" about Jews and blacks consisted of, in the words of the Los Angeles magazine article:

Over several months he will volunteer that he has never once dated a Jewish girl, never attended a seder, and has been inside a synagogue only once, for the bar mitzvah of then-agent Michael Ovitz's son. ("I wanted to see what one was like.") "Listen, I got berated by the vice president in charge of business affairs at Paramount," he says, "because I did not take off Jewish holidays. And I was affronted. I basically told him to mind his own damned business."

At one point he tries to explain his discomfort by comparing himself to his longtime assistant, a light-skinned black woman: "She struggles with this, too. She feels she's a black person. But she's about as black as Felix [Bart's Siamese cat]. I feel she is a bit victimized by, again, that need to identify with some subculture that will help you. "You talk to a lot of the better-educated, wealthy black people. You know, they're not very black. The big distinction is between the people they call 'niggers'--who are the ghetto blacks, who can't even speak, can't get a job, and bury themselves in black-itude--and those people who are better looking, better educated, smarter, and who own the world: the black middle class," he says. "A lot of people in Hollywood--let's say if they happen to be Jewish people who come from Brooklyn--they are most comfortable with those people. Which is fine. It just doesn't happen to describe me."

These are clumsily worded overgeneralizations, but there may well be some truth to them. It's not derogatory to blacks or Jews to observe that there are differences between the black middle class and the ghetto poor, and that some Jews are more comfortable with the black middle class than with the ghetto poor.

As for Mr. Bart's supposedly derogatory comments about gays, here's what the Los Angeles article reported: "A gay man says that Bart asked him about his health during a job interview. Another former Variety reporter heard Bart say, 'I'm not hiring any more fags, because they get sick and die.'"

Again, a crude comment, but Mr. Bart's supposed anti-gay prejudice apparently hadn't kept him from hiring gays in the first place -- a fact the Times readers never learn. Also absent from the Times article is this information from the Los Angeles magazine article: "In contrast to the comments people attribute to him--which he denies making--staffers say he has treated ailing gay employees well. During his tenure Variety has begun acknowledging longtime companions in obituaries of gay people. Bart has promoted women and tried, with limited success, to diversify Variety's mostly white staff." It's unfair of the Times to report on Mr. Bart's supposed "derogatory comments" without including this information about his behavior.

The Times article is similarly silly in its discussion of Mr. Bart's supposed journalistic sins. The Times reports that Mr. Bart called his lawyer "a scrupulous New York practitioner" in print without disclosing that it was his lawyer. Well, while disclosure was probably warranted, it's hard to assess the magnitude of this sin without knowing if the lawyer was in fact scrupulous. If all Mr. Bart did was tell his readers the truth about his lawyer, what's to get excited about? If the Times, or Los Angeles magazine, for that matter, has any evidence that the lawyer in question is less than scrupulous, it should come forward with it. In the absence of such evidence, they should leave Mr. Bart alone on this point.

The same reasoning applies to Mr. Bart's "praising in print a film executive" who had bought the movie rights to one of his projects. Again, disclosure was probably warranted. But it's hard to assess the magnitude of this sin without knowing if the executive was in fact worthy of praise. If all Mr. Bart did was praise an executive who deserved praise, what's to get excited about? If the Times, or Los Angeles magazine, for that matter, has any evidence that the executive in question is less that praiseworthy, it should come forward with it. In the absence of such evidence, they should leave Mr. Bart alone on this point.

Mr. Bart's other supposed journalistic sin was to "call his friends and sources 'to vet stories that mentioned them, letting them make adjustments.'" Again, without knowing what the adjustments were, it's hard to say whether this is troubling. This, in part, is what editors do -- vet stories with their sources. If the vetting makes the stories more fair and more accurate, then it is a good practice. If the vetting makes the stories less fair and less accurate, then it is a bad practice. It's unlikely that Mr. Bart went along with every single adjustment that his friends and sources suggested -- more likely, he used his editorial judgment, which is exactly what he is paid to do.

The stunner here is for all his henpecking of Mr. Bart for his supposed lack of disclosure, the writer of the New York Times business section article today fails to disclose that he is married to an entertainment industry executive -- who is regularly covered by Mr. Bart and his publications. Nor does the writer of today's New York Times article disclose that he is mentioned by name in the Los Angeles magazine article and described as a "veteran reporter" -- and that Mr. Bart himself is quoted in the Los Angeles magazine article citing a previous article by this same New York Times reporter as an example of "the nastiness of journalists toward each other."

Smartertimes.com isn't suggesting that either the New York Times writer or Mr. Bart should have to disclose all this stuff always. But it does seem like a pretty brazen act of hypocrisy for the New York Times to write an article about a magazine article accusing Mr. Bart of failing to make enough disclosures -- and then for the New York Times writer to fail to disclose itself that in that very magazine article, Mr. Bart is quoted accusing the same New York Times writer of "nastiness."

Disclosure: In 1994 Peter Bart interviewed the editor of Smartertimes.com for a job at Variety. A pleasant conversation turned into an offer of freelance work that I never ended up pursuing. He didn't make any derogatory comments about anyone, so far as I can recall. We haven't spoken since.

An editorial and a news article in today's New York Times come out for banning the Republican National Committee from taking out ads backing the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey. The editorial calls a decision by New Jersey election officials to allow the spending "disheartening." A news story that is about as opinionated as the editorial claims the ruling "stunned campaign-finance experts" and that it "drew harsh criticism today." Neither the editorial nor the news article mentions the First Amendment to the Constitution, which, combined with the 14th Amendment, makes it clearly unconstitutional to prevent the Republicans, or anyone else, for that matter, from airing political campaign ads. It would be an abridgement of the freedom of speech. This is notwithstanding all the details about express advocacy versus issue advocacy and Buckley v. Valeo and coordination. They are beside the point. As a spokesman for the Republican National Committee points out in the penultimate paragraph of the Times news article, the AFL-CIO and the Sierra Club have every right to advertise, too. In the U.S. Senate race in New York, the Times wanted to ban everyone -- the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, the Sierra Club, the National Rifle Association -- from advertising. That way, the Times' voice and influence, which is unregulated and protected by the same First Amendment that protects the other interest groups -- would be magnified, while the other voices would be silenced. The Times now apparently wants the same rules to apply to the governor's race in New Jersey. While the Times news article claims that campaign-finance "experts" were "stunned," the article doesn't bother checking in with a single free-speech expert, like the ones at the American Civil Liberties Union or like law professors Bradley A. Smith and Joel Gora. They wouldn't be "stunned," because they, unlike the Times and its "experts," understand the Constitution. And the Constitution in this case isn't just an old piece of paper; it actually makes sense. More speech is better. It makes for a healthier debate, a more informed electorate, a more vigorous airing of the issues. It prevents arbitrary line-drawing by government authorities deciding who can speak during an election and who can't. It's just weird that the Times, whose definition of "free speech" extends to required government subsidies for bad art at the Brooklyn Museum, doesn't think that free speech should apply to political parties in elections.

Wasted: A headline in the international section of today's New York Times says, "Brunei Prince's Spree That Wasted $15 Billion." According to the news article, the money was used to buy things like "crystal chandeliers," "gold-trimmed Jacuzzis," "fine china" and "grand pianos." Funny the way the article asserting the prince "wasted" his money on grand pianos appears just above an advertisement in the Times from Steinway & Sons, which reads, "If you've dreamed of owning one of the world's finest pianos, don't miss this extraordinary two-day event." Indeed, many of the products the prince "wasted" his money on are advertised each day in the pages of the New York Times. Presumably, the prince derived some enjoyment from his spending. You could say the prince "wasted" the money, or you could say he consumed it, or spent it, or enjoyed it. The Times may be right, and the prince should have donated the entire $15 billion to the Times neediest cases fund, lived in a basement studio apartment and taken the subway to work. But asserting that the money was "wasted" is an odd judgment for the Times, of all papers, to make in a headline over a news story. The same article refers to "the London jeweler Aspreys." While the jeweler may be known informally as Aspreys, the official name is Asprey & Garrard.

Race Neutral: The metro section of today's New York Times carries a jailhouse interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton. The article says Rev. Sharpton "would no longer insist" that mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer endorse "a black candidate for city comptroller" and Norman Siegel, the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, for public advocate. The Times never explains why the race of the comptroller candidate is worth mentioning but Mr. Siegel's race isn't. Rev. Sharpton is on record, for what little it is worth, denying that race had been a factor in the endorsements that he had been insisting on. It looks like the Times is trying to make an issue of the race of the comptroller candidate.

Best of the Rest: Notable New York Times critiques recently published elsewhere: Robert Satloff in the New Republic on the Times's Israel coverage; Mickey Kaus in Slate on the Times's welfare reform coverage and tendency to waddle in "late again"; and O'Dwyer's PR Daily on how a recent Times op-ed on asthma neglected to disclose its author's ties to a drug company.

The Circuits section of today's New York Times carries a front-page article that is a friendly profile of a Web site dedicated to proving the innocence of the Soviet spy Alger Hiss. Today's Times article waddles in almost five months after Slate broke the story in its March 22, 2001 edition. The Times reports that "Bucking the trend of scholarship on the Hiss case in the 1990's -- a growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent -- the new site . . . rises to his defense." Well, the site is hardly "new" if Slate was writing about it in March. More seriously, the Times formulation is absurd. It's as if they wrote, "Bucking the trend of scholarship on geography in the 1990's -- a growing consensus that the earth is, indeed, most likely round -- the new site argues that the planet is flat." KGB documents located by the historian Allen Weinstein, as well as the decoded, intercepted Soviet intelligence messages known as the Venona papers, establish Hiss beyond a shadow of a doubt as a Soviet spy. Even Slate's Timothy Noah, hardly a right-wing lunatic, reports that the money for the Hiss-defense Web site "came from a foundation affiliated with the Nation magazine, which is pretty much the last general-interest magazine in America that remains committed to the idea of Hiss' innocence." The Times article doesn't mention the site's funding from the Nation-affiliated foundation. Maybe the Times is pretty much the last general-interest newspaper in America that remains committed to the idea of Hiss's innocence.

Growing Fear: A dispatch from Washington in the international section of today's New York Times reports on the comments of an Egyptian diplomat who is urging President Bush to crack down on Israel. "Mr. Baz's comments underscored a growing fear among some Arab leaders that the failure of the Bush administration to become involved would severely diminish American influence in the Middle East," the Times says. If the New York Times really believes that Arab leaders or Mr. Baz give a fig about the diminution of American influence in the Middle East, it is laboring under a misimpression. American influence in the Middle East is a threat to every single Arab regime in the Middle East, because American values -- freedom, democracy -- run counter to the values of every one of those Arab regimes. If these Arabs are so concerned about preserving American influence, why were they almost uniformly allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? Why do their government-controlled newspapers to this day constantly transmit the vilest anti-American messages? If anything, an American diplomatic intervention against Israel now would have the effect of diminishing American influence, because it would demonstrate that the Bush administration can be pushed around by terrorists like Yasser Arafat and by dictatorial regimes like the one Mr. Baz represents.

'Guiliani': A dispatch from Seattle in the national section of today's New York Times misspells the last name of the mayor of New York.

A corporate spokeswoman for the New York Times sends the following letter in response to yesterday's Smartertimes, which noted the discrepancies between the New York Times's account of its interview with the Butcher of Beijing, Jiang Zemin, and the account of the interview in People's Daily, the Communist Party organ:

"Today's Smartertimes.com says that President Jiang Zemin's comments reported in The People's Daily did not appear in The Times. However, the remarks are part of the written Q&A we posted on our Web site. The printed newspaper disclosed their existence and referred readers to the site. Following is the URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/international/asia/09CND-ZTEX.html?searchpv=day05&pagewanted=print

Please let me know if you have any questions."

Clicking through on the URL discloses the following sentence: "As a condition for granting The New York Times an interview with Jiang Zemin, the president and Communist Party leader of China, the Chinese government required that the newspaper submit written questions. Following are the questions submitted by The Times and the president's written responses as translated by a translator provided by the Chinese government."

As for the disclosure the Times spokeswoman refers to in the printed newspaper, here's what it consisted of: "On the Web: Questions from The Times and Jiang Zemin's responses are available at the New York Times on the Web: www.nytimes.com" A news article in the Times also refers in passing to "a written answer."

Well, it's progress that the Times has now disclosed, through its spokeswoman in an e-mail to Smartertimes, what the paper had not disclosed to its readers who rely on the printed newspaper: That "as a condition for granting The New York Times an interview with Jiang Zemin, the president and Communist Party leader of China, the Chinese government required that the newspaper submit written questions."

The readers of the Times may have gotten a different impression from the Times news article, which reported that the interview "was initially suggested by Chinese diplomats." The impression left there is of the Chinese angling for an interview with the New York Times. The impression left by the notion of "a condition" of written questions submitted in advance, however, is more of the Times editors treating the Butcher of Beijing the way that a Conde Nast celebrity-wrangler deals with a publicist for a hard-to-get Hollywood celebrity. (Times: We'd really like an interview. Chinese Diplomat: Well, we want a guaranteed cover , we want the questions submitted in advance and in writing, we want the photographs to be by Richard Avedon, and you can't ask him about anorexia or the break-up with Brad Pitt.)

It turns out that at least two of the questions the Times submitted in advance and in writing -- on arms sales to Taiwan and on U.S. missile defense -- were also asked in person. And it turns out that the answers to the written questions contain some newsworthy comments that didn't make it into the article or excerpts printed in the Times newspaper. For instance, Mr. Jiang says that without strong political leadership, Communist China would "fall apart like a heap of loose sand." Mr. Jiang also claims that he has "no knowledge" of the case of an elderly Chinese physician who warned villagers about the dangers of AIDS spread through blood donations and was then threatened by provincial authorities.

Any questions, the Times spokeswoman asks? Here are a few (submitted in writing, the way the Times deals with Mr. Jiang):

1. According to the Times web site, "A condition for granting The New York Times an interview with Jiang Zemin" was that the newspaper submit written questions. What were the other conditions? Was the personal appearance of the Times Company chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at the interview a condition? Was the lack of a same-day response to Mr. Jiang's comments by spokesmen for Taiwan or for human rights groups a condition?

2. Why did the Times consider it worth devoting space in the print edition to photos of frolicking beachgoers at the resort where the interview took place, and to Mr. Jiang's comment that he considers the New York Times "a very good paper," but not to the Chinese government's conditions for granting the interview or to Mr. Jiang's comments about AIDS and about the "heap of loose sand"? Or to the comments on Taiwan and press freedom that were reported in the People's Daily? If something had to be relegated to the Web site, why not the beach photos and the Times self-congratulation, rather than the substantive answers from Mr. Jiang?

3. Will the Times submit written questions in advance as a condition for being granted an interview with any news source that asks for such treatment? Or does the Times have different rules for brutal Communist dictators than it does for everybody else?

Republican-Backed: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports, "Before passage of a Republican-backed law five years ago, only an immigration judge could order the deportation of someone who arrived without valid travel documents. Now, and immigration officer can exercise that power, called expedited removal, on the spot, a move intended to cut down on fraud." The Times description of this as a "Republican-backed law" is a classic example of the newspaper's tendency in news articles to blame everything bad on Republicans. Here's how USA Today described that immigration law back in 1996: "White House and congressional negotiators carved out an agreement on immigration after three days of nonstop talks. It goes before the Senate today as part of a spending bill to fund the government for the fiscal year beginning Tuesday. The bill passed the House late Saturday on a 370-37 vote. After Senate approval, it goes to President Clinton. He is certain to sign it because, besides the spending bill, the package gives him nearly everything he wanted on immigration. But it represents a retreat for GOP congressional leaders and presidential candidate Bob Dole. The immigration bill attacks illegal immigration by doubling the Border Patrol to 10,000 agents, making it easier to deport illegal immigrants, and allowing states to deny them driver's licenses. But it also attacks legal immigration by making it more difficult for low-income people to sponsor immigrants.. . . Clinton hailed the final package, saying it attacks illegal immigration 'without hurting innocent children or punishing legal immigrants.'" The immigration law changes were the outgrowth of the recommendations of a commission headed by another Democrat, Barbara Jordan, a former Congresswoman from Texas. Given the role of Jordan and of Mr. Clinton, it seems like a real stretch for the Times to describe this change to the immigration law simply as "Republican-backed."

Lost in Virginia: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times mentions "the National Right to Work Committee, a conservative advocacy group in Washington." In fact, the group is based not in Washington but about 15 miles away in Springfield, Virginia.

Interfaith Weddings: An obituary in today's New York Times reports, "Although both Conservative and Reform rabbis perform conversion ceremonies, only Reform rabbis generally are willing to perform interfaith weddings." This sentence, in an obituary of a Reform rabbi, strikes a wrong note. Why mention Conservative practice without also noting that Orthodox and Reconstructionist rabbis perform conversions? Some Reconstructionist rabbis are also willing to perform interfaith weddings. The Times view of the Jewish religious spectrum seems strangely constrained.

The Friday, August 10, 2001, issue of Smartertimes.com commented on the New York Times's interview with the Butcher of Beijing, Jiang Zemin. "If you ask my view of The New York Times, my answer is it is a very good paper," Mr. Jiang said then.

Well, yesterday, the Chinese Communist Party organ known as the People's Daily published its own account of Mr. Jiang's interview with the New York Times. "Jiang Zemin Meets U.S. Guests," was the cutline under the photo of Mr. Jiang and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. on the People's Daily Web site. And the People's Daily account of the interview is significantly different than the account and transcript that appeared in the New York Times.

The People's Daily, for instance, reported that Mr. Jiang said, "Any attempt to split Taiwan from China will never get anywhere. China is bound to achieve complete reunification. . .People living on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are Chinese. Blood is thicker than water."

Those words don't appear in either the Times excerpts from the interview, the Times news article about the interview, or the Times op-ed page column about the interview.

Similarly, the People's Daily paraphrases Mr. Jiang as offering a defense of the lack of freedom of the press in Communist China: "The media supervision is an important part of people's supervision, he said. Chinese media have played an important role in supervising governmental officials. Many newspapers, TV stations, radio and other media have columns or programs devoted specifically to the anti-graft issue and have in fact exposed quite a lot of problems, he said." This, too, doesn't appear in the New York Times.

Smartertimes.com learned of these discrepancies by way of an e-mail from a reader directing us to an article in the Inquirer, a British technology news site. There are at least two possible explanations for the discrepancies. The first is that the Times account is accurate and the People's Daily account has been edited for domestic consumption -- in other words, Mr. Jiang is intentionally sending one message to the West and a different, more bellicose and defensive message, to his own people. If that is what happened, then the New York Times might want to let its readers in on this fact so that they are not misled about Mr. Jiang's true position. The other possible explanation is that the People's Daily account is accurate and the Times account omitted, because of space constraints or news judgment, some of the remarks Mr. Jiang made in the interview. The transcript that appeared in the Times and on its Web site is labeled as "excerpts," so it's certainly possible that some of the comments that appeared in the People's Daily account were trimmed from the Times account. Still, it's telling if what happened was that some of the comments that would make Mr. Jiang look silly to a Western readership were trimmed, while the Times emphasized Mr. Jiang's "Optimism on Relations With the U.S." Whatever's going on -- a failure of the Times to report the revised People's Daily account or an odd edit of the original interview -- it's enough to give readers a sense of why Mr. Jiang views the Times as "a very good paper."

A dispatch from Jerusalem in the international section of today's New York Times begins, "The struggle over shuttered Palestinian offices in Jerusalem intensified today when another Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a group of Israelis, this time at a cafe outside Haifa." This suggests that the suicide bomber was participating in the "struggle over shuttered Palestinian offices in Jerusalem." But the suicide bomber, now dead, didn't say anything of the sort, and the linkage suggested by the Times is sheer speculation. These suicide bombers have been attacking Israel since long before the Israelis shuttered any Palestinian offices in Jerusalem; the struggle the bombers are involved in is not to reopen offices but to kill Jews and eliminate Israel.

Can't Spell: An article in the business section of today's New York Times profiles the editor Robert Gottlieb. "As his reputation flourished, Mr. Gottlieb began to indulge his more idiosynchratic interests," the Times reports. That's an idiosyncratic way of spelling idiosyncratic; the dictionaries here at Smartertimes.com headquarters omit the "h."

Late Again: The "E-Commerce Report" column in the business section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "The fallen dot-coms are not yet cold, but some dealers are already selling their detritus as memorabilia." This is old news to readers of the Washington Post, which reported the same trend in its business section on August 9, 2001, under the headline, "Dot-Com Relics Scoot On; Buyers Misty-Eyed for Kozmo, Webvan and Other Flops." It's also old news to readers of the Wall Street Journal, which had a similar story on July 13, 2001. It's lame enough for the Times to waddle in a month late on this story without crediting the papers that got there beforehand. What's really lame, though, is that the Times even recycles a character. The Wall Street Journal article reported, "Rick Broadhead, an Internet analyst, collects Internet paraphernalia like old signs and gear with logos; he bought an eToys certificate for his collection." Today's New York Times story, published a month later, reports, "Mr. Broadhead, a consultant and author of e-commerce books, has spent about $1,000 this year on items like a sign from the receiving dock of an eToys warehouse, a Garden.com stock certificate and martini glasses bearing the Furniture.com insignia."

An item in the City section of today's New York Times reports, "Unlike Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, which have long had a strong presence in the city, in the young and growing Mexican-American population, leadership is up for grabs." Leave aside the grammatical problem with this sentence. Who, according to the Times, is the undisputed leader of the city's Dominicans or Puerto Ricans? The article doesn't say, probably because the assertion is faulty. One sure way to patronize minorities is to depict them as sheep marching faithfully behind undisputed and unelected leaders.

Wrong Date: An article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times begins, "Thirteen months after the momentous Oslo agreement on a phased process toward peace was signed in Washington on Oct. 19, 1994, a suicide bomber blew up a bus in Tel Aviv." This is written so that it sounds as if the Washington signing was October 19, 1994. In fact, the signing was September 13, 1993; October 1994 was the date of the bombing, not the signing.

Not a Genius: An item in the City section of today's New York Times refers to the "Genius IV version" of the game Trivial Pursuit. The correct name of the game is "Genus," not "Genius."

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on President Bush's decision-making process on the stem cell issue. "This included a talk in the East Room in July when Mr. Bush was running the Race for the Cure with Dr. Richard Klausner, the director of the National Cancer Institute," the Times reports. This is mistaken on at least two counts. For one thing, the Race for the Cure event in the White House East Room took place Friday, June 1 -- not, as the Times claims, "in July." For another thing, Mr. Bush wasn't "running" the race. He wasn't even running in the race. As a Washington Post report on the event put it, "President Bush told the women he was with them in spirit, but not in the race. 'I wish I was running,' he told the crowd." This is getting to be typical of the Times accuracy level -- The president says in June "I wish I was running"; the Times reports that he "was running" and places the event in July.

Need Some Consulting: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on the activities of Bill Clinton. "Top executives at companies like McKenzie Consulting, Citibank, PepsiCo and United Airlines are Indian-Americans, and they are working closely with Mr. Clinton to raise money," the Times reports. The consulting company that the Times is almost certainly referring to is McKinsey & Company -- not "McKenzie Consulting."

The same article reports, "On another front, Mr. Clinton has developed a plan with City Year, a corporate-financed national service program for young people, to create the Clinton Democracy Fellows." It's misleading to call City Year "corporate-financed." The group's most recent annual report shows that of its $25 million in operating revenues, $10.1 million came from government grants, the largest of which was an $8.5 million federal grant from the Corporation for National Service, which administers the AmeriCorps program. By comparison, $7.4 million of the group's revenues came from corporate contributions.

Child or a Choice: A dispatch from Jerusalem on the front page of today's New York Times reports on a terrorist bombing that killed, among others, Judith Greenbaum. "Now, she was being buried here with the unborn child she carried," the Times reports. Funny how the Times refers to a fetus as an "unborn child" in its coverage of terrorist bombings, but not in its coverage of the policy battles over abortion.

Toyota spends millions of dollars a year on advertising in the New York Times. How does the Times Company respond? By parroting lies that smear the company's reputation. An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports that "last spring. . . Toyota broadcast a series of television commercials that were deemed insensitive to blacks. One commercial showed a close-up of a black man's smile, with a gold Toyota sports utility vehicle carved in a tooth."

The Times article goes on to report that Toyota "had defended its television ads." And the Times article quotes the Rev. Jesse Jackson claiming that Toyota was "'embarrassed' by the television advertising campaign."

But as a Toyota press release available on the Web makes clear, the issue doesn't involve "a series of television commercials." The gold-tooth ad to which the Times refers wasn't a "commercial" but, as Toyota puts it, "a promotional postcard available for free in racks located in nightspots, fitness centers, coffee houses and other locations frequented by the young and style-conscious." Another ad to which some blacks objected was a 1998 print ad that was placed in Jet, a black-owned magazine.

The only television commercial that has been questioned, the Toyota release makes clear, "was for an athletic shoe retailer and is in no way connected to Toyota, nor does it contain a Toyota vehicle."

It's amazing how many facts the Times manages to get wrong here. Not only were there no "television commercials," but there was no "series" of them and they weren't "broadcast" by Toyota. And how could Toyota have been "embarrassed" by a television campaign that didn't exist?

The Rev. Jesse Jackson managed to extract $8 billion from Toyota by threatening a boycott. Maybe if Toyota threatens to pull some of its advertising from the Times, the automaker can manage to extract a correction from the newspaper.

Product Endorsement: "If you ask my view of The New York Times, my answer is it is a very good paper." -- Butcher of Beijing Jiang Zemin, in an interview with the New York Times published in today's paper. The Times, while editorially supporting a soft line toward the Chinese Communists, has actually done some distinguished reporting on Communist Chinese espionage against America and on Communist China's human rights abuses. But today's issue of the Times passes along Mr. Jiang's party line without a word of reaction from the free Chinese on Taiwan or from spokesmen for human rights groups. The "interview" includes softball questions like "What more changes do you expect to see in China in the next five years?" A reader could start to understand why Mr. Jiang views the Times as "a very good paper."

Back to the Future: A weather story on the front page of today's New York Times reports that the temperature yesterday "broke the record for the date, 100 degrees set in 1949, back when people played canasta and men bought two-pants suits." Well, it may be news to the New York Times, but people still play canasta and you can still buy a suit with two pairs of pants.

'Moderate' Arabs: A dispatch from Washington in the international section of today's New York Times refers to "friendly moderate Arab states where restive populations are angered by Israel's policy of killing certain Palestinians it regards as terrorists." In this camp the Times places Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. How "moderate" are these countries that the Times claims are "moderate"? Well, as the Middle East Media Research Institute has documented, the Saudi ambassador in London, Ghazi Al-Quseibi, wrote recently in Al-Hayat calling for a repetition of the Arab attack on Israel that took place on Yom Kippur of 1973. "I warn you that entirely ruling out the option of war from the agenda, is the surest guarantee for the continuation of Israel's superiority," he wrote. Saudi Arabia is so "moderate" that, according to the most recent U.S. State Department human rights report on Saudi Arabia, "Freedom of religion does not exist. Islam is the official religion and all citizens must be Muslims. The Government prohibits the public practice of other religions." And, according to the same State Department report, in Saudi Arabia, "Women legally may not drive motor vehicles and are restricted in their use of public facilities when men are present. Women must enter city buses by separate rear entrances and sit in specially designated sections. . . .Women are not admitted to a hospital for medical treatment without the consent of a male relative." This, by the Times's definition, apparently, is "moderate."

As for Egypt, it's so "moderate" and "friendly," that, as Senator McConnell wrote in the Washington Post last month, "Egypt's government-backed press vilifies America and Israel. In one newspaper, a cartoon shows Uncle Sam handing sacks of money to a bearded Jew, who in turn is throwing missiles at an Arab. Another depicts former prime minister Ehud Barak as Adolf Hitler, standing atop the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem with Arab blood dripping from his clenched fists. Readers of this paper may recall a May 1 advertisement in which an Egyptian newspaper is quoted: 'Thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory, who, on behalf of the Palestinians, revenged in advance against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him for his revenge on them was not enough.'"

Most laughable is the Times claim that "restive populations are angered by Israel's policy of killing certain Palestinians it regards as terrorists." It seems never to have occurred to the Times that the Arab populations are angered not because of Israel's policy, but because of the miserable and repressive nature of their own regimes, which spread anti-Israel propaganda as a way of deflecting their people's anger. As for Jordan, the Black September uprising of 1970 shows that the native population there was (and still is) restive and angry not because of Israel's policies but because of the PLO's.

An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on Senator Hillary Clinton's opposition to President Bush's nominee to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Mary Sheila Gall. "Senator Clinton said the fact that Consumers Union, the typically apolitical organization that publishes Consumer Reports, opposed Miss Gall's nomination figured in her opposition to the nomination," the Times says.

Calling Consumers Union "typically apolitical" is like calling the weather in Antarctica "typically scorching." It's just absurd on its face. A quick check of the Consumers Union Web site discloses a slew of press releases that take positions on bills before Congress and other political issues. To mark President Bush's first 100 days in office, for instance, Consumers Union issued a press release that said, "We are seriously concerned about the President's decisions on several issues of great importance to consumers, including energy policy, health care, financial services, and telecommunications. Many of the Bush Administration's actions in these areas have favored business interests at the expense of consumers." Another press release was headlined, "Cheney Energy Task Force Leaves Consumers in Dark." Consumers Union lobbies Congress intensively like any other interest group. Maybe the Times thinks Consumers Union is "typically apolitical" because the Times agrees with most of Consumers Union's positions. But when the Times calls Consumers Union "typically apolitical," or lets Mrs. Clinton get away with doing so unchallenged, the newspaper is just being typically political.

Levy's Apologists: The editorial writers at the New York Times, who are emerging as the chief apologists and excuse-makers for the failures of New York City's public school system, offer their explanation today for the $2.8 billion overrun in the $7 billion school construction budget. "Part of the problem is the fact that the Board of Education is required to estimate what a school will cost five years in advance, even before plans are drawn up and a site is acquired. This is virtually impossible given the volatility of building costs," the Times reports. It's a "problem" and "virtually impossible" to estimate building costs five years out? What sort of dream world are the Times editorialists living in? Take a major construction project in the private sector -- say, the construction of a new headquarters building for the New York Times. A press release from the New York Times Company in October, 2000, announced the hiring of architects for the building. "Occupancy would occur in 2005," the Times Company press release said. Looks like "five years in advance." Does the Times expect its readers to believe that architects competed for that job and the Times Company moved ahead with site acquisition and negotiation of tax breaks without any internal estimates of what the building would cost?

The editorial notes that "no one in private industry has to do such a mammoth job while constrained by public-sector pay scales, civil service restrictions and state and city contracting regulations." It sounds for a second as if the editorial is headed in what would seem like the direction that would logically follow -- reduce the restrictions and regulations and privatize the construction. But no -- the Times doesn't want to change the constraints. It suggests instead "using less expensive materials -- a choice that will mean more maintenance costs down the line." If the constraints were changed, the Times editorialists would have less convenient excuses for the cost overruns.

Unreformed on Welfare: A dispatch from Ontario in the international section of today's New York Times reports on an effort to test welfare recipients for illiteracy and drug and alcohol addiction. "There is no evidence that people on welfare have a higher incidence of those problems than other people," the Times claims. "No evidence"? Again, what kind of dream world is the Times living in? In Michigan, a pilot program found that "just over 10% of the applicants for cash assistance tested positive [for drugs] as opposed to the approximately 1% of the state employee job applicants who test positive each year." And a 1994 study by the Columbia University Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that "27 percent of welfare mothers abuse or are addicted to alcohol and drugs, compared to 9 percent of mothers not receiving welfare."

Today's New York Times carries a front-page article under the headline, "Outcry Grows Over Police Use of Force in Genoa." That's old news to readers of the Wall Street Journal, which on Monday ran its own front-page article about the outrage -- focusing on the same incident, a police raid at the Armando Diaz school complex. Monday's Wall Street Journal article reported, "A visit to the school several hours after the raid showed pools of blood on the floor and walls and several teeth strewn around." Today's New York Times reported, "Television crews arriving on the scene later filmed pools of blood and teeth knocked out during the raid."

Today's Times article, while waddling in two days after the Wall Street Journal, does provide some new details about Americans involved in the Genoa clashes. But the Times struggles to put the best face on the protesters. The article initially refers, for instance, to a student from New Jersey "who was arrested with an Austrian theater group as it was leaving Genoa." It's only in a sidebar, and much later in the same front-page story, that the "theater group" is identified as a "protest group." The sidebar reports that the student was studying whether there was common ground between Quakers and "more radical groups promoting social activism in Europe." "Social activism" is a rather vague and generous way to describe what radical European groups are promoting.

Injustice: A report in the business section of today's New York Times about the Microsoft antitrust case says, "The Justice Department has asked the courts to move quickly to complete the case so that any remedy imposed would have relevance to the fast-changing computer software industry. Today it issued a terse response to the appeal, saying that the case should be thrown out because of Judge Jackson's conduct."

This can easily be read as saying the Justice Department says the Microsoft case should be thrown out. That would be front-page news if it were true. But it's not true. It's not the Justice Department's response but Microsoft's appeal that says the case should be thrown out. But given the clumsy way the Times writes it, a reader could easily get the wrong idea.

Reckonings: The "Reckonings" column on the op-ed page of today's New York Times refers to the "bipartisan" commission on Social Security reform, putting "bipartisan" in snide quotation marks. The 16-member commission named by President Bush included eight Democrats and eight Republicans. There is a Republican co-chairman and a Democratic co-chairman. President Clinton, the most recent Democrat to hold the White House, himself suggested a plan to privatize partially the American retirement system. There's no good reason for the columnist to question the bipartisan nature of the effort. The column goes on to refer to the "ultra-conservative Cato Institute." If the ultra-liberal columnist bothered to check, he might realize that Cato is libertarian, not ultra-conservative.

Order: The twisted illogic of Indykism is on view in full force in today's New York Times. On the op-ed page, the former ambassador to Israel brags that Yasser Arafat is "very much in control of the nine security organizations he established to maintain order in the West Bank and Gaza." This is laughable. Mr. Arafat didn't establish those nine security organizations to maintain "order" -- if he wanted order, he would have established a constitutional system with checks and balances and the rule of law. He established the nine security organizations to maintain personal dictatorial control. If Mr. Arafat cared about "order," he wouldn't be countenancing terrorist attacks against Israelis. The Times's own editorial, today, meanwhile, adopts a defeatist view: "On the Palestinian side, there is no democratic politics and little realistic possibility of a peaceful change of power," the Times writes. On that basis, the newspaper urges "a renewed Israeli willingness to recognize that for now," Mr. Arafat is "the only realistic Palestinian negotiating partner." Is there any blood-soaked two-bit dictator, one wonders, that the Times editorialists wouldn't advocate negotiating with?