New at Reason: Ira Stoll on The New York Times' Tax-Loophole Hypocrisy

November 28, 2011

For sheer nasty hypocrisy masquerading as journalism, it’s hard to come up with as foul an example as the 3,000-word attack on Ronald S. Lauder that ran Sunday on the front-page of The New York Times. As of Sunday, according to the Times, Mr. Lauder is the poster boy for “how the wealthy take advantage of the system” through what the Times calls, disapprovingly, “tax avoidance techniques.”

The game the Times and its reporter, David Kocieniewski, are up to is clear at the start of the article, with this false dichotomy: “A handful of billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates have joined Democrats in calling for an elimination of the breaks, saying that the current system adds to the budget deficit, contributes to the widening income gap between the richest and the rest of society, and shifts the tax burden onto small businesses and the middle class. Republicans have resisted, saying the tax increases on the wealthy would harm the economy and cost jobs.

This is just flat out-false, writes Ira Stoll. What's really galling, though, is that in nearly every instance, the “tax avoidance techniques” and other supposed sins for which the Times mauls Mr. Lauder are also engaged in by the family that owns the New York Times. 

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