The War in Afghanistan, President Obama and The New York Times

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, I wrote a post about President Obama using some old mineral information to try to garner or maintain support for his strategy for the war in Afghanistan.  In that post I noted that The New York Times ran the optimistic article on the front page above the fold.  Well, this morning I note that The New York Times ran an article on the front page below the fold entitled "Setbacks Cloud Plans to Get Out of Afghanistan".  The online version is here.  There is no particularly new news in this article.  Certainly nothing that wasn't known yesterday when they published the optimistic article. 

So what is the deal?  Is the Obama Administration using The New York Times the way that President George W. Bush did to put its spin on a situation?  Is The New York Times falling into the same bad habit of just reporting what the current Administration tells it?  How can I as a reader know that I am getting factual reporting with as little spin as possible or just a regurgitation of White House spin?

I certainly didn't think that I would have to ask those questions when I supported candidate Obama.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal