Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? (Of course it is.)

NYTimes ^ | July 25, 2004 | DANIEL OKRENT

[Drango]

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

By DANIEL OKRENT

Published: July 25, 2004

F course it is.

The fattest file on my hard drive is jammed with letters from the disappointed, the dismayed and the irate who find in this newspaper a liberal bias that infects not just political coverage but a range of issues from abortion to zoology to the appointment of an admitted Democrat to be its watchdog. (That would be me.) By contrast, readers who attack The Times from the left - and there are plenty - generally confine their complaints to the paper's coverage of electoral politics and foreign policy.

I'll get to the politics-and-policy issues this fall (I want to watch the campaign coverage before I conclude anything), but for now my concern is the flammable stuff that ignites the right. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed.

But if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world.

Start with the editorial page, so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.

Across the gutter, the Op-Ed page editors do an evenhanded job of representing a range of views in the essays from outsiders they publish - but you need an awfully heavy counterweight to balance a page that also bears the work of seven opinionated columnists, only two of whom could be classified as conservative (and, even then, of the conservative subspecies that supports legalization of gay unions and, in the case of William Safire, opposes some central provisions of the Patriot Act).

But opinion pages are opinion pages, and "balanced opinion page" is an oxymoron. So let's move elsewhere. In the Sunday magazine, the culture-wars applause-o-meter chronically points left. On the Arts & Leisure front page every week, columnist Frank Rich slices up President Bush, Mel Gibson, John Ashcroft and other paladins of the right in prose as uncompromising as Paul Krugman's or Maureen Dowd's. The culture pages often feature forms of art, dance or theater that may pass for normal (or at least tolerable) in New York but might be pretty shocking in other places.

Same goes for fashion coverage, particularly in the Sunday magazine, where I've encountered models who look like they're preparing to murder (or be murdered), and others arrayed in a mode you could call dominatrix chic. If you're like Jim Chapman, one of my correspondents who has given up on The Times, you're lost in space. Wrote Chapman, "Whatever happened to poetry that required rhyme and meter, to songs that required lyrics and tunes, to clothing ads that stressed the costume rather than the barely clothed females and slovenly dressed, slack-jawed, unshaven men?"

In the Sunday Styles section, there are gay wedding announcements, of course, but also downtown sex clubs and T-shirts bearing the slogan, "I'm afraid of Americans." The findings of racial-equity reformer Richard Lapchick have been appearing in the sports pages for decades ("Since when is diversity a sport?" one e-mail complainant grumbled). The front page of the Metro section has featured a long piece best described by its subhead, "Cross-Dressers Gladly Pay to Get in Touch with Their Feminine Side." And a creationist will find no comfort in Science Times.

Not that creationists should expect to find comfort in Science Times. Newspapers have the right to decide what's important and what's not. But their editors must also expect that some readers will think: "This does not represent me or my interests. In fact, it represents my enemy." So is it any wonder that the offended or befuddled reader might consider everything else in the paper - including, say, campaign coverage - suspicious as well?

Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. doesn't think this walk through The Times is a tour of liberalism. He prefers to call the paper's viewpoint "urban." He says that the tumultuous, polyglot metropolitan environment The Times occupies means "We're less easily shocked," and that the paper reflects "a value system that recognizes the power of flexibility."

He's right; living in New York makes a lot of people think that way, and a lot of people who think that way find their way to New York (me, for one). The Times has chosen to be an unashamed product of the city whose name it bears, a condition magnified by the been-there-done-that irony afflicting too many journalists. Articles containing the word "postmodern" have appeared in The Times an average of four times a week this year - true fact! - and if that doesn't reflect a Manhattan sensibility, I'm Noam Chomsky.

But it's one thing to make the paper's pages a congenial home for editorial polemicists, conceptual artists, the fashion-forward or other like-minded souls (European papers, aligned with specific political parties, have been doing it for centuries), and quite another to tell only the side of the story your co-religionists wish to hear. I don't think it's intentional when The Times does this. But negligence doesn't have to be intentional.

The gay marriage issue provides a perfect example. Set aside the editorial page, the columnists or the lengthy article in the magazine ("Toward a More Perfect Union," by David J. Garrow, May 9) that compared the lawyers who won the Massachusetts same-sex marriage lawsuit to Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King. That's all fine, especially for those of us who believe that homosexual couples should have precisely the same civil rights as heterosexuals.

But for those who also believe the news pages cannot retain their credibility unless all aspects of an issue are subject to robust examination, it's disappointing to see The Times present the social and cultural aspects of same-sex marriage in a tone that approaches cheerleading. So far this year, front-page headlines have told me that "For Children of Gays, Marriage Brings Joy," (March 19, 2004); that the family of "Two Fathers, With One Happy to Stay at Home," (Jan. 12, 2004) is a new archetype; and that "Gay Couples Seek Unions in God's Eyes," (Jan. 30, 2004). I've learned where gay couples go to celebrate their marriages; I've met gay couples picking out bridal dresses; I've been introduced to couples who have been together for decades and have now sanctified their vows in Canada, couples who have successfully integrated the world of competitive ballroom dancing, couples whose lives are the platonic model of suburban stability.

Every one of these articles was perfectly legitimate. Cumulatively, though, they would make a very effective ad campaign for the gay marriage cause. You wouldn't even need the articles: run the headlines over the invariably sunny pictures of invariably happy people that ran with most of these pieces, and you'd have the makings of a life insurance commercial.

This implicit advocacy is underscored by what hasn't appeared. Apart from one excursion into the legal ramifications of custody battles ("Split Gay Couples Face Custody Hurdles," by Adam Liptak and Pam Belluck, March 24), potentially nettlesome effects of gay marriage have been virtually absent from The Times since the issue exploded last winter.

The San Francisco Chronicle runs an uninflected article about Congressional testimony from a Stanford scholar making the case that gay marriage in the Netherlands has had a deleterious effect on heterosexual marriage. The Boston Globe explores the potential impact of same-sex marriage on tax revenues, and the paucity of reliable research on child-rearing in gay families. But in The Times, I have learned next to nothing about these issues, nor about partner abuse in the gay community, about any social difficulties that might be encountered by children of gay couples or about divorce rates (or causes, or consequences) among the 7,000 couples legally joined in Vermont since civil union was established there four years ago.

On a topic that has produced one of the defining debates of our time, Times editors have failed to provide the three-dimensional perspective balanced journalism requires. This has not occurred because of management fiat, but because getting outside one's own value system takes a great deal of self-questioning. Six years ago, the ownership of this sophisticated New York institution decided to make it a truly national paper. Today, only 50 percent of The Times's readership resides in metropolitan New York, but the paper's heart, mind and habits remain embedded here. You can take the paper out of the city, but without an effort to take the city and all its attendant provocations, experiments and attitudes out of the paper, readers with a different worldview will find The Times an alien beast.

Taking the New York out of The New York Times would be a really bad idea. But a determination by the editors to be mindful of the weight of its hometown's presence would not.

[Drango]

Im thinking this is already posted, but two searches didne't produce it...

[Thebaddog]

It was, but it's all good to see these weenies whining. What do you think that their conclusion was and always will be? That they are better than those of us from across the Hudson.

[martin_fierro]

	Media Shenanigans/ Schadenfreude
Based on an amused spectator's list Send FReepmail if you want on/off MSP list

[Drango]

some readers will think: "This does not represent me or my interests. In fact, it represents my enemy."

WORD

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

Does a bear................never mind

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Saving place to read later. Thanks for posting.

[Lexington Green]

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

Does a bear................never mind

Is a frog's arse watertight?

Does Pinnochio have a wooden .... ?

Is 'Liberal' just a polite word for 'Communist'?

[alloysteel]

The New York Times is WAY left of liberal. They are a propaganda sheet for failed Socialism.

"All the news that fits" - everything else is discarded.

[teletech]

Is grass green? Is the Pope Polish?

[Tribune7]

The New York Times is not a liberal newspaper. It is a communist newspaper with the agenda of overturning our Constitution and making America into a "people's state" with they and those with whom they are connected as the rulers.

[Congressman Billybob]

Okrent almost gets it, but fails at the end. He says the bias at the Times is not due to "management fiat" but to the "difficulty of getting outside one's own value system." Helloooo. Management HIRED all the reporters and editors who have that shared value system.

It's a simple equation, Daniel "inadequate" Okrent. If management controls the philosophies of the employees, it isn't necessary to tell them how to write the individual stories. They will hew the preferred leftist line of their own accord. And you, sir, will miss the heart of the story you are seeking to cover.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, "The Wussification of America: Fallout from Arnold, John and Sandy"

If you haven't already joined the anti-CFR effort, please click here.

[Vision]

But if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans);

The reason I dislike the NY culture. All attitude, full of themselves, while possessing an amazing lack of character.

Step aside common folk, our betters are expressing themselves.

[thoughtomator]

I was amazed to see this... this is basically, in substance, what I told Mr. Okrent in a series of very annoyed, irritated, and borderline-astonished letters concerning the reporting about Saddam-AQ links. No wonder he's going on vacation, it will take at least a month for the left-loonies at the NY Times to forget this column.

[Charlotte Corday]

Actually, the NYT is probably unbiased, from a New York City perspective.

Any of you ever see that famous cartoon "A New Yorker's View Of The World"? In it, every street in Manhattan was laid out in loving detail. Places across the river were recognizable as Jersey and Pennsylvania.

But once you got farther west, things got more and more indistinct, with "Michigan", and "Iowa" sharing an indeterminate space with "Korea" and "Mars".

Considering only that part of America which is bounded by the East River and the Hudson, I suspect that the Times' POV is in fact right down the middle of the read.

Which is exactly why President Bush has nothing to lose by ignoring it completely.

[Fresh Wind]

The only part of the New York Times-Pravda that isn't leftward biased is the comic page.

[Allegra]

Uh...gee, I wonder which candidate the New York Times is going to endorse for President this fall?

The suspense is killing me.

{YAWN...}

[Grampa Dave]

The $ value per share of the NY Slimes since May has dropped like a rock while during a little mini boom. Most share prices have dropped the last week, but the NY Slimes dove.

Also, their ad $'s reflect a recession instead of an economic boomlet.

[Tamzee]

A stunning admission... not complete, but a start :-)

Okrent admits that their readers are absolutely denied information that can contradict the Democrat Speaking Points when it comes to gay marriage.

He needs to realize and admit that this same stable of purely left journalists pull those tactics with articles pertaining to George Bush, the GOP, National Security, the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, Sandy Berger, etc....

NYT readers are left deliberately misinformed and manipulated on EVERY issue where the left and right disagree.

[The Raven]

When year-after-year, the rich aren't taxed enough, the government isn't big enough, the military and police are never right, you'd think the ideology has and end-point where all is well.

But it doesn't happen.

The downside is the Times leads the resulting group-think. The group think leads to policy, and the funding they use are the wallets of their enemies. In other words, they use force (economic force) through the government to get their way.

What's worse is they haven't been right on much for a long, long time.

[VeritatisSplendor]

That's even funnier when you remember that the NYT doesn't have a comics page.