An alarmist front-page news article in the New York Times claims that Republicans in the House of Representatives "are moving to gut many of President Obama's top priorities with the sharpest spending cuts in a generation and a new push to hold government financing hostage."

One example in the Times article is that "The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been flexing its muscle against hedge fund managers and insider trading schemes, would see financing cut 18 percent from the current level."

Oh, the horror.

What the Times article doesn't say is what the newspaper itself reported back in 2011: "by several measures, the S.E.C. is far from starved for money. Its $1.1 billion budget in 2010 was 15 percent higher than the $960 million it received the year before — and nearly triple its $377 million budget in 2000....Last September, H. David Kotz, the inspector general, reported that a lack of adequate policies led the agency to make lease payments that could have been avoided, including more than $15 million for space in Manhattan that no S.E.C. employees have occupied in the last five years."

In the years since that 2011 report, the SEC's budget has only grown even more: a Reuters dispatch reported that under President Obama's budget, "SEC's budget would rise to $1.566 billion from 2012's budget of $1.321 billion."

The agency is reportedly asking Congress for $1.674 billion for 2014. The historical figures from the SEC's Web site are here.

Today's Times article is an example of at least two journalistic errors. The first is a framing error. Looking at the SEC budget within a one-year frame makes an 18 percent reduction look draconian. Looking at it within a 15-year frame makes it clear that the budget has increased dramatically. The second is a lack of skepticism. There's a story line of "sharpest spending cuts in a generation," but the reporter isn't really skeptical about whether those spending cuts would be particularly sharp.

Frank Bruni devotes his Times op-ed column today to child sex abuse among Orthodox Jews. He writes:

some of the same dynamics that fed the crisis in Catholicism — an aloof patriarchy, an insularity verging on superiority, a disinclination to get secular officials involved — exist elsewhere. And the way they've played out in Orthodox Judaism illustrates anew that religion isn't always the higher ground and safer harbor it purports to be. It can also be a self-preserving haven for wrongdoing.

The column gives no evidence that child sexual abuse is any more common among Orthodox Jews than it is among secular humanists, left-wing Protestants, or Catholics. Nor does it mention one big difference between Orthodox Jews and Catholics, which is that Orthodox Judaism encourages its rabbis to get married and have children, while the Catholic clergy are supposed to be celibate. Plenty of public school teachers engage in inappropriate sexual behavior with students, too, and the Times doesn't use that as a reason to attack government schools the way the Bruni column is framed as an attack on religion overall. When British entertainment celebrities who are not Orthodox Jews or Catholic clergy are accused of such abusive behavior, the Times dismisses the complaints as "minor" and "decades old."

The Bruni column goes on:

Schachter further discouraged police involvement by warning that accused abusers could wind up "in a cell together with a shvartze, in a cell with a Muslim, a black Muslim who wants to kill all the Jews." Shvartze is a harshly derogatory racial term.

Shvartze is Yiddish for black. It's acquired some negative or pejorative connotations, and it's not a word I use or recommend using, but Mr. Bruni's description of it as "a harshly derogatory racial term" isn't necessarily accurate. Yiddish-speaking Jews of a certain age sometimes use this term for black people without intending it to be harshly derogatory.

All in all, it's a strange column.

A Times article about an action by the Securities and Exchange Commission against the hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen reports that earlier this year, Mr. Cohen increased the size of his firm's "compliance department by 25 percent, to about 40 employees. In 2008, by contrast, the firm had just 10 people in its compliance department."

That "just" is a way of sneaking a faintly disapproving opinion into a news article. Ten people sounds like a pretty large compliance department to me. It's not many people compared to 40, but it's large compared to zero, or five. The Times doesn't tell us how large the compliance departments are at other hedge funds with similar numbers of employees or dollars under management. Nor does it say whether there's any evidence of positive correlation between the size of a compliance department and how well a firm complies with the law.

Slate's Matthew Yglesias has some intelligent criticism of Sunday's front-page New York Times article accusing Goldman Sachs of making aluminum products cost more by moving aluminum around within warehouses that Goldman owns: "The story is entirely missing a clear explanation of why this doesn't just lead someone else to open aluminum warehouses and undercut them."

Reuters had a long article two years ago about Goldman's aluminum warehouses. The Reuters work, which tread much similar ground, went entirely unmentioned in the Times story.

The Times obsession with income inequality spills over to the sports section today, which somehow manages to make an article about an appearance by Yankee star Alex Rodriguez at the Yankee's AA minor league affiliate into political-economic commentary. From the story:

his trip to Reading will almost certainly become an afterthought, an asterisk, but while he was here it made for an unusual pairing. Rodriguez, armed with the richest contract in baseball history, found himself plying his trade in one of the poorest cities in the country. Reading has a median household income of $27,416, far below the statewide median of $51,651, according to Census Bureau data.

Actually, it's not such an unusual pairing, because the place where Rodriguez usually plies his trade, Yankee Stadium, is situated in the South Bronx, which is also one of the poorest places in the country as measured by median household income.

A dispatch from Jerusalem reports: "While the United States and Europe have long said that the 1967 borders, with minor adjustments, should be the basis of a two-state solution, since March the Obama administration has echoed Israel's rejection of preconditions."

I don't think the first part of that sentence is accurate. What's a "minor" adjustment and what is a "major" one isn't entirely clear. The Jerusalem Embassy of 1995, for example, declares as the "policy of the United States" that Jerusalem "should remain an undivided city" and "the capital of the State of Israel." The United States has never said Israel needs to give away the Western Wall or the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Neither of those places were within Israel's borders between 1948 and 1967. That's not a "minor" adjustment.

In an April 2004 letter to Prime Minister Sharon, President Bush specifically disavowed the 1967 borders, writing, "As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

From the Times news article reporting the verdict in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case: "After three weeks of testimony, the six-woman jury rejected the prosecution's contention that Mr. Zimmerman had deliberately pursued Mr. Martin because he assumed the hoodie-clad teenager was a criminal and instigated the fight that led to his death.... The six female jurors entered the quiet, tense courtroom, several looking exhausted, their faces drawn and grim. After the verdict was read, each assented, one by one, quietly, their agreement with the verdict."

This article was turned around on a tight deadline, but even so one wonders whether the fact that the jurors were women is really so important that it deserved to be repeated twice (six-woman...six female jurors) in the first four paragraphs of the story. There's no indication in the rest of the article that the gender of the jurors played any role in their decision to acquit Mr. Zimmerman of the charges, so it's not clear why the two female New York Times reporters who wrote the article mentioned the jurors' gender twice and so prominently.

A Times article about Anthony Weiner and the Jewish vote in the New York mayoral race refers to "the ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclave of Midwood, Brooklyn."

It makes it sound like Midwood is Kiryas Joel, or Bnei Brak. Not so. Di Fara, a non-kosher pizzeria, operates there. Plenty of non-Jews live, shop, and work in the neighborhood. Some Jews who live there are Orthodox but not ultra-Orthodox.

A Times front-page profile of Sean Eldridge, a Democrat who apparently hopes to win a congressional seat in New York's Hudson Valley now held by a Republican, reports: "Mr. Eldridge's supporters note that for all the trappings of wealth he now possesses, Mr. Eldridge grew up in a middle-class community in Ohio, where both of his parents were doctors; they say he has a genuine understanding of people of modest means."

Maybe Mr. Eldridge's parents were both unemployed doctors, or maybe their malpractice premiums were so high they could barely eke out a living in the absence of tort reform. But it's funny to see the flexibility of the Times definition of middle class. If it's for the purpose of describing the family of a gay Democratic potential challenger to a New York Republican congressman, a two-doctor family is middle class. But if it's for the purpose of one of President Obama's proposed tax increases, a two-doctor family isn't middle-class, it's "rich."

According to Mr. Edlridge's 2012 Times wedding announcement, "He is the son of Dr. Sarah Taub of Toledo, Ohio, and Dr. Stephen A. Eldridge of Ann Arbor, Mich. His mother is a family physician at the Milan Family Practice in Milan, Mich. His father is a diagnostic and interventional radiologist in private practice in Toledo." A 2011 Toledo Blade article described Dr. Eldridge as "chairman of the radiology department at St. Luke's Hospital and executive vice president of Consulting Radiologists Corp."

The whole conceit of the Times article is the assumption that rich people somehow can't authentically represent non-rich people in Congress, a view that, while it may be held by the editors of the Times or the reporter who wrote the article, does not appear to be shared by, say, the voters of West Virginia who elect Senator Rockefeller, or various constituents of various Kennedys.

An article in the Times dining section reports:

Camel is the only red-meat entree on the extensive menu, and preparing it for cooking takes six days. To soften the strong taste, it is braised, rather than boiled or roasted, as indigenous cooks do, then served with black truffles and foie gras.

The writer of that passage has failed to communicate intelligibly how indigenous cooks prepare camel. Do they braise it? Or do they boil or roast it? I usually do reasonably well at reading comprehension, but I just can't make out what that sentence is trying to tell me.

An article in the Times dining section takes a slap at farmed salmon:

even if some fish farms are exploring more-sustainable methods, it is well known that aquacultured salmon is an environmental danger and potential health hazard. A quick Internet search will give curious cooks more information on the topic. It's enough to put you off your dinner, and may well make you a wild-salmon convert.

Not an actual health hazard, but a "potential health hazard."

This sort of health journalism is likely to do more harm than help.

The Times applies it inconsistently and hypocritically. For example, opposite the page with the Times article warning of the perils of farmed salmon is a large photo of "berry summer pudding" topped by a scoop of what appears to be vanilla ice cream. The recipe calls for "10 to 12 slices of soft white bread" as well as "Heavy cream or ice cream." That Times article makes not a mention of the "potential health hazard" posed by the sugar in white bread and ice cream or by the cholesterol and saturated fat in ice cream. Elsewhere in the dining section there are pages of wine and cocktail coverage without any mention of the "potential health hazard" posed by alcoholism or drunk driving.

Scaring people away from farmed salmon is especially irresponsible considering that, given the cost, for a lot of people the alternative to farmed salmon may not be wild salmon but some other food that is potentially even less healthy, like red meat, or berry summer pudding covered with ice cream.

If the Times really wants to warn readers of a health hazard, the responsible thing to do would be to consult some peer-reviewed scientific studies or reputable nutritional authorities. Telling readers to do "a quick Internet search" is a default; the Internet is full of unreliable and alarmist information about all sorts of things, driven by all sorts of political agendas. The Times is supposed to help readers sort through that, not just send the readers out to do so on their own.

I try to be reasonably careful about these matters, and I eat a lot of fish, and I've concluded that a small portion of farmed salmon once or three times a month is an acceptable health risk for me. The fish oil may even have health benefits.

The Times online headline declares "Wild Salmon Is Worth The Price." The print headline is dialed back to "Away from the Farm and Into the Wild," suggesting that maybe some editor thought that the decision on whether wild salmon is worth the price should be left to the reader and the reader's family budget, rather than the dictate of some Times food writer who presumably has the benefit of declaring his wild salmon as a business expense.

A Times editorial on Eliot Spitzer's entry into the race for New York City comptroller complains, "he will also use his money and name recognition to suck all attention from the other candidates, especially the capable Manhattan borough president, Scott Stringer, who deserves better treatment."

While bemoaning this "suck all attention" phenomenon editorially, the Times is also participating in it fully; today's paper features a news article with a photograph, the editorial, a metro section column, and an op-ed page column, all about Mr. Spitzer. If the Times doesn't want Mr. Spitzer to suck all the attention away from anyone else, it sure isn't doing much to prevent it from happening. There's no coverage in today's paper, for example, of who in the Republican Party might be be planning to run for city comptroller.

A New York Times article about a possible U.S. Senate run by Liz Cheney incudes this passage: "Ms. Cheney, the mother of five school-age children, has become ubiquitous, appearing many times in communities over 300 miles from home."

This struck me as faintly disapproving verging on sexist, as if the Times reporter was saying, "shouldn't she be home with her children?" I can't recall a similar formulation being used by the Times to describe campaigning by a male politician with school-age children.

Similarly, the article says, "Ms. Cheney, a State Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush, is a pugnacious partisan and has called President Obama 'the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office.'"

Is there such a thing as a non-pugnacious partisan? The Times obituary of congressman Henry Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat, described him as "pugnacious and partisan." The "pugnacious partisan" phrase also cropped up in a 1960 Times profile of a Democrat who chaired the House agriculture committee, Harold Dunbar Cooley. But Republican readers and even thoughtful independents will likely wonder whether if Ms. Cheney were a Democrat the Times would be describing her as a "pugnacious partisan" or just as "principled."

If the Times is going to describe Ms. Cheney as a pugnacious partisan, it would be nice to have some evidence other than merely the description of Mr. Obama as "the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office." Does the Times have an alternative candidate for that distinction? Perhaps one could make a case for Jefferson, in the Gordon Wood sense of radical. Either Roosevelt? Woodrow Wilson?

One day's New York Times has two articles in which Times writers use what may be fake names to refer to people they know.

A review by Jon Caramanica of a men's clothing store reports, "I brought my friend (we'll call him Laird) on this expedition." Is the friend's name actually Laird? If so, why not just write, "I brought my friend Laird on this expedition"? And if the friend is not named Laird, why go to the trouble of making up a fictional name for him? Why not just use his real name, or leave him out of the story altogether, or not name him at all?

A second article is about a book by a writer for the Times, Katie Hafner. The Times reports, "Brilliant and funny, Helen, as her daughter calls her to protect her privacy, had also been a divorced alcoholic who lost custody of Ms. Hafner and her older sister." Is Helen her real name, and the last name is just left out to protect her privacy? Or is Helen a made-up first name, and the Times just dancing around that point? The explanation — "to protect her privacy" — is pretty humorous. Or at least, not much skepticism is applied to the explanation. One might have written, "Helen, as her daughter calls her to make herself feel better about cashing in on her divorced alcoholic mother by writing a book invading her privacy." If Ms. Hafner were really that interested in protecting her mother's privacy, perhaps she might not have chosen to have written a book about her at all.

in both of the cases, a clearer explanation from the Times of whether, and why, it is using made-up names in news articles would be an improvement, especially because the ordinary, baseline expectation by readers of Times articles is that the things in them be not made up, but rather true or real.

The vaguely Marxist tone of the Times has a way of infecting even coverage of non-political topics. A review of a men's clothing store refers to a jacket that "had a glamour prole look, All that was missing was a Little Red Book peeking out of the side pocket."