When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.  And when politics hands the New York Times a news story that reflects poorly on the Democrats, make three attempts to spin the story so the narrative makes it appear that Republicans are at least equally at fault.  That's how the New York Times blasted to Hell and beyond any semblance of objective reporting about Republican efforts to deal with the economic fallout from the coronavirus.

On Monday, the big political news was that, after Democrats and Republicans had reached a bipartisan agreement on an aid bill for American workers and businesses hurt by coronavirus shutdowns, the Democrats walked away from the bill at the eleventh hour, refusing even to engage in more negotiation.  In place of the negotiated agreement, Nancy Pelosi introduced her 1,100-plus-page bill, which seeks to enact all sorts of policies advancing unions, the Green New Deal, and social justice sensibilities.

Because it still pretends to be an actual newspaper, the New York Times felt obligated to report on the story.  The Times' problem was how to spin the story — especially the all-important headline, which is what everyone sees, while only a smaller number bother to read down into an article for the details.

When the news first broke, the Times, for some unfathomable reason, opted for honesty:

Looking at the stark reality of the headline, which accurately states what happened, someone at the Times realized that the headline would hurt Democrats.  Within a short time, the Times had reconfigured the headline to explain that the Democrats were only trying to help the little people:

Hmmm.  Maybe that's not such a good headline, either.  People need their employers to stay viable, so perhaps a vague allusion to "worker protections" wouldn't be enough to cleanse Democrats of the stain that comes with letting politics interfere with people's dire needs.

The obvious thing to do — the thing the Times' editors were kicking themselves for not doing in the first place — was to make the blame bipartisan.  And that's how the Times generated its final version of the headline:

At this point, the word you're looking for to describe the New York Times is probably "disgusting."  "Dishonest" works, too.  So does "despicable."

This unsavory episode isn't the first time the Times has cycled through multiple headlines.  Its last headline scramble was in August 2019, when it realized that honest reporting about Trump made him look good.

As you may recall, over one weekend, there were two mass shootings, one in El Paso and one in Dayton.  In reporting on Trump's statement about the events, the Times originally wrote as its headline, "Trump urges unity vs. racism."  This was completely accurate, for Trump had said:

We are a loving nation, and our children are entitled to grow up in a just, peaceful, and loving society. Together, we lock arms to shoulder the grief, we ask God in Heaven to ease the anguish of those who suffer, and we vow to act with urgent resolve.

[snip]

In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.

What the Times hadn't anticipated was that the Trump-haters would not countenance the truth.  Because they were locked into the "fine people" hoax, they were incapable of recognizing that Trump has not been racist in word or deed.  The Times, therefore, settled on a new headline that balanced honesty while feeding chum to its readers.  The next headline read, "Assailing hate but not guns."

Sunday's headline orgy, though, which saw the Times cycle through three different versions to protect the Democrats, is some kind of record.  President Trump understood perfectly what was happening:

The New York Times changed headlines 3 times in order to satisfy the Radical Left. What should have been a good story got “worse & worse”, until the headline alone made it very unfair. Fake & Corrupt News that is very dangerous for our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020

The latest sordid episode in the Times' increasingly sordid history is a helpful reminder that, when you read the New York Times, you're not getting "all the news that's fit to print."  Instead, you're getting "all the spin that helps the Democrat Party."  It's not news; it's propaganda.