An article on the front of the business section of today's New York Times begins, "With a majority of Americans using Verizon Wireless for their cellphone service, it may not seem obvious that almost half of Verizon is owned by a company overseas."

It is not accurate that "a majority of Americans" use Verizon wireless for their cellphone service.

This Venturebeat article from July 2013 puts Verizon Wireless's market share at 30 percent, with 98 million connections, behind AT&T with 107 million.

The Verizon Wireless web site says "As the nation's largest wireless company, we serve 100.1 million retail connections." ATT's annual report says "We increased our total wireless subscriber base to 107 million." If you add in Sprint, T-Mobile, and the various other small fry, there's no way that Verizon serves a majority of cellphone customers, let alone a majority of Americans. Maybe what the Times meant to say is that Verizon wireless serves a plurality of Americans, or that it is slightly beating AT&T these days, but that is not what the sentence in the newspaper says. A correction is warranted.

An article in today's New York Times features a purple satin backpack that the Times advises, without a hint of irony, "comes at a nicely reasonable price," $295.

L.L. Bean has men's backpacks starting at $69, and Campmor has them starting at $19.99. And even if you want a high-fashion backpack rather than a hiking-style one, isn't the decision on whether $295 is a "nicely reasonable" amount to spend on a purple satin backpack a decision that is best left to the Times reader and his or her individual family budget process, rather than some Times reporter who is in the business of encouraging readers to spend more money on a backpack than the average family in some Third World country makes in an entire month?

Why not just say what the price is, and allow Times readers form their own opinions about whether it is reasonable, "nicely reasonable," or totally absurd?

At the New York Sun we had a rule banning the word "still" from headlines or the first paragraphs of news articles. I mean, an article about a police raid on a liquor still probably could have gotten past, but the point of the rule was that the newspaper was supposed to be about new things, not things that were still continuing.

That rule could have been usefully applied by the editors of the New York Times in killing an article that instead, alas, appears in today's paper under the headline "In Obama's High-Level Appointments, the Scales Still Tip Toward Men."

The article is the latest of three covering the issue of gender in President Obama's appointments. The first appeared in January on the Times front page under the headline, "Obama's Remade Inner Circle Has an All-Male Look, So Far." The second also appeared on the Times front page, under the headline, "In Tug of War Over New Fed Leader, Some Gender Undertones." All three Times articles carried the byline of Annie Lowrey and bear the faint but nonetheless distinctive odor of a campaigning agenda.

It would be one thing if Ms. Lowrey could unearth an example of Mr. Obama making sexist remarks about a job applicant, or hiring an unqualified male for a job over a more qualified woman. But the articles don't have any evidence of sexism by Mr. Obama, who appointed two women to the Supreme Court and has named women as secretary of state, national security adviser, commerce secretary, labor secretary, interior secretary, and ambassador to the United Nations. Instead they apply a kind of bean-counting analysis, by which the Obama administration's supposed failure to include women at its highest ranks in exactly the same proportion at which they appear in the general population amounts to some kind of egregious or newsworthy discrimination.

It's strange, too, because while the Times is watching the gender breakdown of President Obama's appointments like a hawk, it has, so far as I can tell, done no similarly aggressive analysis of the appointments to the administration through the lens of race, religion, Vietnam Veteran status, disability, class, sexual orientation, educational attainment, geographic or national origin, or other similar categories beloved by the diversity police. Somehow gender comes in for stricter scrutiny at the Times than the other categories, though for all we know the Obama administration's hiring tendencies in some of the other categories have been even more lopsided.

The latest installment in a Times series about health-care costs focuses on the bags of saline solution used in intravenous drips. "At White Plains Hospital, a patient with private insurance from Aetna was charged $91 for one unit of Hospira IV that cost the hospital 86 cents, according to a hospital spokeswoman, Eliza O'Neill," the Times reports. The newspaper says the same hospital charged another patient who also had private insurance "$546 for six liters of saline that cost the hospital $5.16."

There is a glancing reference to ObamaCare in a sentence that says, "The Affordable Care Act encourages these developments as it drives toward a reimbursement system that strives to keep people out of hospitals through more coordinated, cost-efficient care paid on the basis of results, not services. But the billing mysteries in the food poisoning case show how easily cost-cutting can turn into cost-shifting." But no congressmen who voted for ObamaCare and no Obama administration officials are put on the spot with the question — "Hey, health care reform passed three years ago. Wasn't it supposed to fix this sort of nonsense? Why is it still happening?"

The New York Sun has an editorial responding to a New York Times editorial about U.S. policy toward Iran.

A front-page story in today's New York Times reports, "The United States first confirmed in April that it believed the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, and Obama administration officials responded by signaling that they would supply the rebels with weapons. But to date, none have arrived, opposition officials said....Adding to the opposition's frustration, two of its officials said that none of the weapons American officials said would be provided by the C.I.A. had yet been delivered."

Well, that's confusing. A front-page Times article on June 21, 2012, appeared under the headline, "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition." It began, "A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria's Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said."

Another front-page Times article, published March 25, 2013, was headlined, "Arms Airlift to Syrian Rebels Expands, With Help From C.I.A." It began, "With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria's opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports."

So which is it? Two earlier Times articles reported that the CIA was "steering" and "funneled" arms to the Syrian opposition via a "secret airlift" of "more than 160 military cargo flights. Now today's Times article reports that "none of the weapons American officials said would be provided by the C.I.A. had yet been delivered."

Maybe there's some semantic explanation for this; perhaps the weapons that haven't been delivered are ones paid for by the CIA rather than merely delivered with assistance of the CIA. Or maybe the weapons that haven't been delivered are additional ones promised after the Syrian government's first confirmed use of chemical weapons. But if that is the case, today's story should have been more clear about the distinction. The way it is written, it sounds like the CIA has not gotten the opposition any weapons at all — "none." And if that is true, it contradicts the earlier reports in the Times that were given front-page play and that have not been the subject of substantial corrections by the Times.

I suppose another possibility is that the Syrian opposition has gotten better at keeping secrets. "Have you been getting weapons from the CIA?" asks the Times reporter. "No, nothing at all from the CIA," said the Syrian rebel with a wink and a grin as he opened the FedEx box with the Langley, Va., return address and extracted a box of ammunition. "It's very frustrating."

For readers insufficiently swayed by the editorial and the Eduardo Porter business section column opposing the proposed merger between US Airways and American, the Times piled on over the weekend with a Joe Nocera column and a James Stewart column (labeled "common sense" by the Times) that reiterated the arguments against the merger. For those keeping score, that's four (4!) opinion pieces in the newspaper critical of the merger in less than a week, repeating mostly the same points.

Lest anyone think that there is a party line on the matter at the Times, however, the news organization published a more balanced piece the other day. Under the headline "Merger's Pros and Cons for Fliers," reporter Emily Brennan wrote:

Would the consumer benefit from the merger of American Airlines and US Airways, or not? It's complicated.

The consumer could see advantages and disadvantages to either outcome of the suit, according to George Hobica, the founder and president of Airfarewatchdog.com.

On the downside, the merger would lead to a consolidation of routes, giving an airline a monopoly over a particular route, which might cause its fare to increase. But, he noted, "That opens doors to another airline to go in there and start charging less."

On the upside, Mr. Hobica said that mergers allow airlines to cut costs by eliminating redundant departments and by being able to invest in new fuel-efficient planes that are more comfortable for consumers.

Without a merger, he said, American and US Airways may not be able to make such improvements to compete with rivals like Delta Air Lines, which merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008, and United Airlines, which merged with Continental in 2010. And a market without competition with Delta and United could hurt the consumer, he said.

Ms. Brennan's article, unlike the earlier ones critical of the merger, was a short blog item that, so far as I can tell, has not yet been published in the print newspaper.

Earlier Smartertimes coverage of the airline merger issue is here.

A Times article about a wedding between Katharine Ann Hagler and Douglas Steven Coppola Jr. reports that after the couple met in February 2007, "they promised to keep in touch. They kept that promise, racking up frequent-flier miles and large phone bills between her San Diego home near Chula Vista and his home in Princeton, where the men's rowing team was based."

"Large phone bills"? This is the modern world we are talking about here. Skype already existed for free Internet-based calling, and your landline or cellphone provider would sell you a plan for unlimited calling for a price that most people wouldn't consider "large." Maybe these guys were so smitten by romance that they neglected to organize their telecommunications in a cost-efficient manner, but without further explanation, the reports of "large phone bills" for domestic long-distance calls raise questions for Times readers about the veracity of the anecdote.

Thanks to reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator J. for sending the tip.

A Michael Powell column in the New York section includes the following passage:

New York cut tens of millions of dollars from the libraries in the past five years — and spent twice as much on the High Line, a park that ignited a luxury real estate price explosion in Chelsea.

New Yorkers do not lack for self-regard. Mr. Robins, born here and living still in Brooklyn, would play to this: "Why do Chicago and Boston keep libraries open 50 hours a week while New York doesn't do five days a week?" Mr. Robins asks. "Let's aspire to 60 hours."

I don't know what city Michael Powell or Harvey Robins are living in, but here is the Brooklyn Public Library web site. The Central Branch, which is convenient to Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Park Slope and is accessible to the rest of the borough by public transportation, is open seven days a week, for a total of 68 hours.

I used to use that library, which is really wonderful in many ways, quite a bit when I lived in New York, so I am grateful for the extended hours. But realistically, we are moving from a world in which people went to the library to consult an encyclopedia or read the newspaper or a magazine into a world where many individuals, even poor individuals, have 24/7 computer or smartphone access to Wikipedia and to a vast array of free information on the Web. The library's Web site is open 24/7, and many resources can be accessed electronically. Again, I am grateful for the extended hours, and I am not arguing for fewer hours. But the notion that it should be a high priority expenditure to extend library hours is not as self-evident, given the technological changes, as the column seems to assume.

An article in Sunday's Times about Boyle Heights, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, reports, "The changes highlight strong class divisions that continue — or are even worsened — among immigrants."

Is there ever a New York Times article in which class divisions, rather than worsening, are disappearing? At a certain point you just have to laugh at the absurdity of it, of the Times depicting just about every situation or story that presents itself as an episode or anecdote in the never-ending class struggle. Is this really how the editors and reporters think the world works?

The consistently sharp Boston 1775 blog has an item that, among other things, has some trenchant criticism of the Times obituary treatment of Pauline Maier, an MIT professor who was a historian of the American Revolution.

The Times business section has a feature on the CEO of Dow Chemical, Andrew Leveris, and his campaign to prevent America from exporting natural gas. "An Australian by birth and citizenship, Mr. Liveris has emerged as the principal opponent of unfettered natural gas exports," the Times says.

Well, that part about Australian citizenship is interesting. And it would be even more interesting had the Times included in its article the coverage from FutureOfCapitalism about the close ties between Mr. Liveris and President Obama. The president invited him to a state dinner at the White House and has appointed him to be a member of the President's Export Council and the U.S.-India CEO Forum.

What's more, Federal Election Commission Records show Mr. Liveris made $146,000 in U.S. federal political campaign contributions, including $40,000 on May 16, 2012 to "Obama Victory Fund 2012" and $40,000 on June 27, 2012 to "Romney Victory Inc." The FEC says, "Foreign nationals are prohibited from making any contributions or expenditures in connection with any election in the U.S. Please note, however, that 'green card' holders (i.e., individuals lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the U.S.) are not considered foreign nationals and, as a result, may contribute."

The Times article displays a remarkable lack of curiosity about Mr. Liveris's political activities, which, while they may be perfectly legal, would seem to fall within the spirit of the warning made by President Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address: "last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people."

Here's Obama speechifying about how American elections should be decided by "the American people" and not "bankrolled...by foreign entities," and then he goes and takes $40,000 from this Australian who he appoints to the President's Exports Council and the U.S.-India CEO Forum? And the Times runs a long article profiling Mr. Liveris and his lobbying campaign and doesn't mention any of this? Weird.

The Washington Post has a pretty funny article about the effects of yesterday's temporary outage of the New York Times Web site: "panicked mobs stream into street demanding to know the trends...'PAUL KRUGMAN IS THINKING SOMETHING RIGHT NOW AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS!' several people were screaming, blocking traffic. 'I MEAN, I HAVE A PRETTY GOOD GUESS, BUT I CANNOT BE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SURE!'

A New York Times review of an umbrella with a handle that is designed to facilitate smartphone use includes the following passage:

The handle, which is a combination of plastic and rubber, is strong but comfortable. I could easily hold the umbrella over my head while texting in the rain.

But I wish the rest of the umbrella were designed as well as the grip. The Brolly looks as cheap as those $5 umbrellas that vendors start hawking as soon the sky turns gray. I have a feeling the Brolly would not last through a gusty New York storm and would end up among the other twisted creatures of bent spines and torn fabric that are left in trash cans and gutters after a heavy rain.

If the Times is going to go to the trouble of reviewing an umbrella, is it really too much to ask — from a New York-based newspaper with the Times' considerable resources — that the reviewer actually try it out in a gusty New York storm? Instead of trying it out in a gusty storm and finding out, in reality, how the item performs, the reviewer just shares his "feeling" that the umbrella won't last.

What's next, Times auto reviews in which, instead of driving the car, the reviewer just looks at the the car and tells readers his "feeling" about how it will handle on the road? Times restaurant reviews in which instead of actually eating the food, the reviewer just looks at the plate, or at the outside of the restaurant, and shares his "feeling" about how the food will taste?

If the newspaper is going to accuse a product of being flimsy — which, in essence, is what the Times review does — the least that fair journalistic practice calls for is actually to test the product, rather than to just look at it and "have a feeling."

A front-page news article, an editorial, and a business-section column in today's Times all essentially echo the Justice Department line that the proposed merger between American and USAirways must be blocked on antitrust grounds to protect consumers.

This is an unfortunate example of the Times giving just one side of a story. Here are some other sides to the story that are not included in the Times coverage:

Airlines don't just compete against each other. Particularly on shorter routes, they compete against other forms of transportation, including buses, driving, and trains, in a broader market for inter-city transportation. So if the airlines are doing what the Times accuses them of, raising prices because of their monopoly or oligopoly power, people have the option of driving or taking a train or a bus.

Passengers have a choice of airports. The Times editorial says, "At Reagan National, for instance, the combined airline would control 69 percent of all takeoff and landing slots." But passengers in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area don't have to use Reagan; they can fly from Dulles or from Thurgood Marshall/Baltimore Washington International Airport. The editorial says, "The two airlines have more than 1,000 overlapping domestic routes and together control a large majority of the traffic at important airports like Dallas-Fort Worth International and Ronald Reagan National near Washington." Dallas-Fort Worth is the same story as Reagan; passengers can use Love Field and avoid DFW.

New entrants and new models bolster competition. The Times had a fascinating feature the other day on Surf Air, a startup that offers unlimited service between Burbank and San Carlos, Calif., for $1,650 a month and a $500 membership fee. That kind of innovative pricing is not mentioned in the Times merger coverage, which assumes a pretty much static business model for airlines.

Restrictions on foreign investment retard competition. No mention in the Times coverage of the archaic rules that limit foreign ownership and investment in U.S. carriers.