The Times' Clothes

I like the New York Times. It is usually my main source of awareness about what's going on in the mainstream media. Some say it has a liberal bias, but Colbert pointed out that so does reality. ;-) I am a bit frustrated with the coverage of Bolivian politics it the Times, though. I wouldn't mind it too much if there wasn't any: Bolivia is a tiny country whose politics don't affect DC's very much and whose happenings usually don't reach and much less affect the US or New York. However, Bolivia has been in the NYT several times over the last few months. A few of those articles have been good, but there has also been the infamous sweater article that I am so fond of. If Bolivia is being covered, is there really nothing more important going on than the president wearing a sweater? As if that wasn't enough, today in the Americas section I found this article about the current vicepresident Alvaro Garcia Linera. The article is a little bit informative, but not much more than the more succinct wikipedia article on him. In the NYT there are at least two paragraphs devoted to how Mr. Linera looks, sounds and dresses like. Yet, there are none about the currently ongoing conflict in the mines which have taken 16 lives and the role Mr. Linera is or should be playing in it.

To give a bit of credit where it is due, I should say that I am reading the free online version of the newspaper as I can't justify a subscription for myself. Furthermore, a search for articles about Bolivia does yield an article about the ongoing crisis in the mines. However, this article is not as easily found as the one on Mr. Linera and is approximately half as long. Does anyone else see a problem with this?