NYT: 'Voters in California Appear to Approve Pension Cuts'

Nice use of a weasel word by the Gray Lady.

I know this will sound shocking to some of our more sensitive readers, but the editors at the New York Times –– whose union writers are dealing (badly) with a pension crisis of their own — appear to be injecting a little bias into a story that doesn’t fit their worldview:

Voters in California Appear to Approve Pension Cuts

By IAN LOVETT
June 6, 2012

LOS ANGELES — As Wisconsin residents voted on Tuesday not to recall Gov. Scott Walker — who has become an enemy of labor unions nationwide — two California cities dealt blows of their own to organized labor.

In both San Diego and San Jose, voters appeared to overwhelmingly approve ballot initiatives designed to help balance ailing municipal budgets by cutting retirement benefits for city workers.

Around 70 percent of San Jose voters favored the pension reform measure, with almost 80 percent of precincts reporting. In San Diego, 67 percent had supported a similar pension reform measure, with more than 65 percent of precincts reporting…

Steve Gilbert of the Sweetness & Light blog responds, “Everyone else also says the vote was overwhelming. So what does this article have a headline that says they only ‘appear’ to have approved the pension cuts?” He then goes on to quote an AP version of the news that’s appears to be sans the “appears” rejoinder.

Believe it or not, it could be worse though — when I read the story at Sweetness & Light, I instantly flashed back to this infamous moment from 2000, when Dan Rather and his writers were faced with news that they couldn’t handle. Courage, Dan!

Found via Kate of Small Dead Animals, who writes, “Denial Ain’t Just A Paper In New York City.” Presumably the Times will write these pension cuts off to “the dance of the low-sloping foreheads,” those bitterly clinging Jerry Brown voters in radical conservative California, right?