A dispatch from Nairobi, Kenya about an "infamous Islamist militant" for a "brutal Islamist group" reports that he "was raised in Daphne, Ala., where he was a gifted student and high school class president. He later embraced the ultraconservative form of Islam known as Salafism before ultimately moving to Somalia in 2006 to fight for the Shabab."

The Times has an unfortunate habit of referring to Islamist radicals (along with Zionists such as Sheldon Adelson) as "ultraconservative" rather than by using a less politically charged term such as "strict" or "rigid" or "fundamentalist" or extreme. The message conveyed is that if you take the conservatism of, say, Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley, Jr. to its logical conclusion, you wind up growing a beard and bombing government convoys in Somalia.

This coming Sunday's Times travel section features not one but two articles on travel to Cuba. Neither article carries a Havana dateline, but the Times sure seems eager to cater to those readers who want to spend their vacation in the Communist paradise.

One point of an op-ed article is to represent the op-ed writer's point of view, but even allowing for that, the Times op-ed by Vladimir Putin contending, "We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement," is a bit much. Was that the Russian approach in Chechnya? Afghanistan? Prague? Is that the approach Russia took when it armed Syria? The same can be said for Mr. Putin's newfound insistence that all use of force be ratified by the U.N. Security Council. I realize that modern Russia is not the same as the old Soviet Union, but Mr. Putin himself seems to view his country as the Soviet successor, writing, "We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together."

Maybe Bashar Assad will follow in Mr. Putin's footsteps and write an op-ed for the weekend paper.

A lengthy Times obituary of a left-wing filmmaker reports, "In the 1980s, he wrote essays berating the administration of Ronald Reagan for trying to depose the leftist government in Nicaragua."

"Leftist" is a euphemistic way of putting it. Here is how one Times article back in the 1980s described it: "The Sandinistas, who openly acknowledge their ideological debt to Marxism and who maintain close ties to Communist governments around the world, seem vaguely uncomfortable at having an opposition party that calls itself Communist."

A Times news article headlined "The Rich Get Richer Through the Recovery" reports on an updated study by "the prominent economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty," showing that "The top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country's total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago."

The article does a lousy job of explaining what counts as "income" for the purpose of the study. Does the value of employer-provided health benefits count? The value of subsidized housing? Food stamps? Social Security payments? Is it post-tax income or pre-tax income? Sure, a reader can click through to the actual study and try to figure it out for himself, but these are all relevant points, and the Times article just doesn't deal with them.

And the "prominent" economists line is a laugher. If these guys were as prominent as the Times claims, the Times wouldn't have to tell readers that they are prominent. The description is either true, in which case it's unnecessary, or it's necessary, in which case it's inaccurate.

The front-page Times article on the prospects for Joseph Lhota's mayoral campaign begins with a violation of the Times policy on anonymous sources:

They are startled and unsure how to react. "Terrifying," is how one banker put it. Many in New York's business and financial elite, stung by the abrupt ascent of Bill de Blasio, an unapologetic tax-the-rich liberal, are fixated on a single question: What are we going to do?

The Times doesn't say who this "one banker" is.

The Times policy says: "We will not use anonymous sourcing when sources we can name are readily available." Plenty of people on Wall Street are already on the record denouncing de Blasio and his plan to raise taxes (Bloomberg News had a fine story just the other day), so the anonymity here is unnecessary.

The Times policy further says, "We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack. If pejorative opinions are worth reporting and cannot be specifically attributed, they may be paraphrased or described after thorough discussion between writer and editor. The vivid language of direct quotation confers an unfair advantage on a speaker or writer who hides behind the newspaper, and turns of phrase are valueless to a reader who cannot assess the source." It's certainly a partisan attack and a pejorative opinion to call the ascent of de Blasio "terrifying," and the quote is a great example of that "vivid language' or turn of phrase that the policy says is not allowed.

If the top Times editors don't agree with the paper's written policy on the use of anonymous sources, they should change the policy. Instead the policy stands, but the paper violates it again and again with no apparent consequences for the reporters or editors responsible for the violation.

The Times is pretty excited about the news that a $250 million pledge to Centre College in Kentucky was withdrawn. How excited? So excited that it reports the news twice in today's paper: Once in the national section, in a brief by Tamar Lewin, and then again in the business section, in a full-length article by Peter Lattman.

The nice thing about the Times publishing the same news by two different reporters in the same paper is that it makes it possible to check the two articles against each other for accuracy. The brief by Ms. Lewin describes Robert Brockman as "a former president of the college's board of trustees." The article by Mr. Lattman says Mr. Brockman "until recently served as chairman of Centre's board of trustees." So which is it, "president" or "chairman"? Maybe the Times can assign a third reporter or editor to referee the disagreement between Mr. Lewin and Mr. Lattman about Mr. Brockman's former title.

I was originally going to suggest that the Times have meetings or a computer system to prevent the waste of resources (paper, ink, the time of reporters) that occurs when a story is assigned and printed twice. But maybe, instead, the paper should do it more often, as a way of allowing readers to notice discrepancies between the two articles and thereby come to a closer approximation of the truth.

The Lewin brief doesn't appear on the Times Web site, so far as I can tell, but it is on page A15 of the printed paper I got here in Boston.

The national section and the New York section of Sunday's Times both featured articles about gays.

The national section story is about a clothing-optional resort for men. It reports:

These rolling woods of the Ozarks — where a billboard along a major highway proclaims that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, where a "Jesus Saves" sign and other Christian symbols decorate front lawns — seem an unlikely place for gay people to feel comfortable being out and open.

But tucked in the backcountry here is a place where gay men are unabashedly celebratory and self-deprecating about their lives: Cactus Canyon Campground, a 700-acre, clothing optional, all-male hideaway.

In its 15th season, the campground has become so popular that the owners are in the process of tripling its RV capacity, adding more spaces for tents and installing a second pool.

Most surprising, perhaps, is the way local residents generally react to the camp nowadays: with a shrug, or maybe an awkward grin.

The Times reporter seems to be of the opinion that Christian symbols are ordinarily markers for violent anti-gay bigots, and is surprised to find out that the local residents are tolerant. The one with the real bias here is the Times reporter, or the readers he is catering to, who seems to start out with the assumption that rural Christians are hostile to gays. The article does report some past conflict between the resort and its neighbors, but it's certainly possible that a clothing-optional resort located in an urban, secular environment might encounter some similar resistance. Anyway, this is "news" only if you share the biased assumption underlying the article, which is that rural Christians are violent homophobes. What's next, Times articles about how "surprising, perhaps" it is to find out that some other tired stereotypes turn out to be false? The "perhaps" is a clue that it's really not that surprising at all, nor particularly newsworthy.

The same can be said of the Times New York section feature about an 88-year-old man and an 89-year-old man who "have been together for 58 years," and who recall when "we all gravitated to the connection between the two trains" on the moving subway, "and that was sexville." Again, it's not really clear why this is newsworthy, or whether there's any other demographic group that the Times treats to such gauzy, almost advertorial treatment. The Times reports that, "In recent years, a few developers around the country have opened senior communities for gays and lesbians, yet so far none are in New York," without any critical voice asking whether such segregated housing is desirable or even legal.

Leonard Lauder, the New York businessman (the Times describes him as a "philanthropist") teamed with the Avedon Foundation and Larry Gagosian to give 74 images by the photographer Richard Avedon to the Israel Museum, the Times reported. This is the same Leonard Lauder that the Times a few months back claimed had a "single-minded focus" on Cubism. That was inaccurate at the time (as Smartertimes pointed out at the time); the new news is additional evidence that the original Times claim (still uncorrected) of Leonard Lauder's "single-minded focus" was inaccurate.

The Times has been running a series of questions and answers with the New York mayoral candidates that is unintentionally illuminating about the bias of the Times newsroom (not the editorial board, since this seems to be a newsroom project.) Today's three questions "about the economy," for example, includes "What measures would you support to address income inequality?" but no question about economic growth. An earlier installment featured three questions about "public health"; it asked about sugary sodas and birth control in schools, but no question about what, if anything, the candidates would do to try to reduce the number of abortions in New York City.

The bias isn't particularly in how the Times reports on the answers to the questions, but in the framing and choice of the questions themselves.

From a television review by Neil Genzlinger: "Nationwide, flag-waving was sometimes a cousin to intolerance."

John Podhoretz noticed this one.

From an article by the Times restaurant critic, Pete Wells, about tipping: "The restaurant business can be seen as a class struggle between the groomed, pressed, articulate charmers working in the dining room and the blistered, stained and profane grunts in the kitchen."

The same article refers to "the French Laundry in Healdsburg, Calif." I have not been to the French Laundry, but I have been to Healdsburg, and the French Laundry wasn't there; it is in Yountville, which is in Napa County, not Sonoma County, where Healdsburg is.

Even the New York Times, in an editorial, comes out for asking New York City municipal employees to contribute more toward the cost of their health care: "At least Anthony Weiner says he wants union members to pay a little toward their health care premiums (most of them now pay nothing, an untenable policy)."

It would be great to see a series of full-length editorials devoted to this point, but even this aside is a good place to start.

"Syria Vote Sets Up Foreign Policy Clash Within the G.O.P." is the headline over a story getting big play on the Times home page. It depicts Republicans as divided into a libertarian/isolationist wing and a traditionalist/hawk/interventionist wing; Rand Paul and Justin Amash versus John McCain and Mike Rogers.

Fair enough, I suppose, but where's the top-of -the-home-page coverage of the foreign policy clash within the Democratic Party? President Clinton's labor secretary, Robert Reich, opposes action against Syria, calls President Obama's logic "dubious" and accuses him of favoring "brute force." A Democratic Congressman from Florida, Alan Grayson, said, "There is nobody in my district who is so concerned about the well-being of people in Syria that they would prefer to see us spend billions of dollars on a missile attack against Syria than to spend exactly the same amount of money on schools or roads or health care...Nobody wants this except the military-industrial complex." Another Democrat in Congress, Charles Rangel, told MSNBC, "There's no evidence that what's happening in Syria is a threat to our national security," and he said that if a vote were held now to authorize military force, he would oppose it.

The Times article on the Republicans trots out all the usual journalistic hype: "fierce internal debates...divisions...have flared...those intermittent spats could pale in comparison with the fight over whether to attack Syria." Where are the flaring divisions, spats, and fights among the Democrats? They are there, but for some reason the Times doesn't seem to consider them worth a story.

From a front-page New York Times article about American plans to launch a military attack on Syria:

Mr. Obama's rationale for a strike creates a parallel dilemma to the one that President George W. Bush confronted 10 years ago, when he decided to enter into a far broader war with nearly 150,000 American troops in Iraq without seeking an authorizing resolution in the United Nations. The Obama administration says that case differs sharply from its objectives in Syria.

In Iraq Mr. Bush was explicitly seeking regime change. In this case, White House officials argue, Mr. Obama is trying to enforce an international ban on chemical weapons and seeking to prevent their use in Syria, or against American allies.

This is attributed — "The Obama administration says," "White House officials argue" — but it's a false distinction nonetheless to say that "Mr. Bush was explicitly seeking regime change" in contrast to Mr. Obama. As context, the Times might have recalled Mr. Obama's August 2011 statement:

The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.

Maybe the difference between Bush and Obama is that Mr. Bush actually caused a regime change while Mr. Obama called for one two years ago and, instead of acting to cause the regime change, has instead stood by and allowed tens of thousands of innocent Syrian civilians to be slaughtered, some of them with chemical weapons, by the very dictator he called on to step aside. But the difference isn't that one of the two presidents was explicitly seeking regime change and the other was not. The difference is that one of them did something about it while the other announced the goal and then did little to accomplish it.

It may be that what the Times is attempting to communicate is that Mr. Bush's Iraq war was designed to unseat Saddam, while Mr. Obama's Syria action is designed to leave Bashar Assad in power — what "one U.S. official" described to the L.A. Times (as noticed by Jeffrey Goldberg) as an action "just muscular enough not to get mocked." If that is so, it would be nice to see some coverage in the Times of why Mr. Obama, if he is going to bother with military action against Syria at all, has decided to stop short of enforcing his August 2011 statement. Has he changed his mind on whether the time has come for President Assad to step aside? Or was the time two years ago, but not now? If the point is that Mr. Assad's use of chemical weapons makes Mr. Obama look foolish, doesn't his endurance in office two years after Mr. Obama said it was time for him to step aside also make Mr. Obama look foolish? And if the military action is the punishment for making Mr. Obama look foolish, why is it warranted in one case but not in the other?