The reporter on the NYT's Bernie Sanders beat consistently fails to identify her sources as corporate lobbyists

Sydney Ember is a news reporter who covers Bernie Sanders for the New York Times; her coverage is consistently negative (part of the Times's overall pattern of negative reporting on Sanders, including "stealth edits" to make its coverage less positive, to the dismay of the paper's public editor).

Ember's negative reporting on Sanders might be the result of her deep connections to the finance world: she came to the Times after a career as an analyst at the coal-boosting hedge fund Blackrock and she's married to Mike Bechek, son of the former CEO of Bain Capital, where he also worked.

FAIR's Katie Halper has dug deep into Ember's network of go-to sources for quotes on why no one should vote for Sanders, showing that they are drawn from the ranks of the finance and corporate lobbyist world. Ember quotes the likes of:

* Jim Kessler, identified by Ember as "executive vice president for Policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank" (Third Way is a pro-austerity thinktank whose board is overwhelmingly made up of CEOs, bankers and corporate lawyers; it advocates for cuts to Social Security and Medicare and opposes higher taxes for billionaires);

* Otto J. Reich, a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, who was quoted in a piece condemning Sanders for his opposition to Reagan's secret arming of death-squads that brought down Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega with a campaign of rape, torture and murder;

* Jarrod Loadholt, whom Ember calls "a Democratic strategist who has worked on education policy in South Carolina" -- Loadholt is a consumer finance lobbyist who has worked to roll back Dodd/Frank, supporting a bill that would make it easier for banks to practice racial discrimination. Read the rest