NY Times stands by Ted Cruz decision

The New York Times is standing by its decision to omit Sen Ted Cruz's (R-TX) new memoir from its best-seller list on the grounds that sales were driven by "strategic bulk purchases," despite the fact that both HarperCollins and Amazon say there is no evidence for that argument. "The notion that we would manipulate the best-seller list to exclude books for political reasons is simply ludicrous. Conservative authors have routinely ranked high on our lists -- Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, most recently Ann Coulter, just for a few examples," said Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy.

"We have also ranked policy books and memoirs in the past by Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, among many others." "I can't speak to the statements by Amazon or Harper Collins -- though obviously publishers are always trying to get their authors on our list -- but we are confident in our conclusion about the sales patterns for the [Sen] Cruz book for the week in question." Murphy continued, "Our system is designed to detect anomalies and patterns that are typical of attempts to manipulate the rankings," Murphy said. "We've been doing this for a long time and we apply our standards consistently, across the board. The goal is to give Times readers our best assessment of what books are broadly popular at any given time."