- Joseph Pulitzer
The New York Times flat out blew their coverage of the mayor's race. Check out these screen shots from election night as the Times scrambles to recover from a combination of bad polling data and over zealously biased reporting:
At 9:54, the NY Times reports that Bloomberg has "decisively defeated" Thompson:
At 9:58 pm, they remove "decisively" and downgrade to simply, "defeated:"
At 10:15 the "win" becomes "projected to win," and the defeat is now "based on early returns and exit polls":
At 10:54 pm, the mayor now "appears to prevail," and the headline and story are bumped down a section:
The New York Times has been in Bloomberg's pocket since he first looked at extending term limits in August 2008, so it isn't surprising that they were a little over anxious to call the election for him so quickly in '09. They essentially called it for Bloomberg in September 2008 when they backed his scheme for a third term (interestingly, when a mayor they were not quite as fond of--Giuliani--wanted to extend term limits during other challenging times--9/11, their editorial page came out firmly against extending his term).
Check out the impartial web page for the Times' endorsement of Bloomberg:
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