More classic journalism such as what you presented in the NY Times tries to maintain strong objectivity and present facts only. It allows the reader to reason through facts and draw their own conclusion. In the case you presented the issue of Bush's actions would be a sidebar or analysis separate from the article. Or you would find it as an op-ed piece.
More current journalism that we all see takes a definite point of view and uses the facts to make that point and at times in a provocative or sensational manner in order to capture attention. With the Internet and blogging, journalism has shifted to this form, but most classically trained journalists are unaccustomed to this.
So the only issue I have is that both are forms of "real" journalism. The latter is what is used more and more being spearheaded by bloggers.
The McClatchy journalist is providing a full picture (the backdrop of US human rights abuses is relevant in this regard), and presenting both sides of the issue (the Amnesty International quote).
If Brezhnev were to have given a similar speech to the UN at about the time of the invasion of Afghanistan and those Soviet cluster mines in the form of toys were being strewn accross the Afghan countryside like was happening back then, I somewhat doubt the NY Times would have deadpanned the treatment of this speech in this way. They would not have limited their commentary to just the speech - I'm rather certain a reference to that invasion would have crept into the article. And further, I rather doubt they'd rely solely on Kremlin officials to provide color on the speech itself - they more than likely would have asked US State for a statement and ignored those Soviet apparatchiks entirely.
Assuming, of course, that they actually covered the speech in the first place.
Nope, that NY Times article is yellow through and through. Note the way they set up the Kyl-Lieberman amendment at the end. What does this have to do with human rights in Burma and Zimbabwe? The ideoloogical bias is obvious, and the stenography, which they would not have engaged in if, say, they were recounting Hugo Chavez' brilliant sulphur speech, is flagrant. Good journalism is not just presenting selected facts, as the process of selecting those facts provides the basis for a very extreme slant, as this Times article demonstrates.
Unfortunately, they suck like this on such a regular basis it gets tiring to even care. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
