Daniel Okrent, the Times’ ombudsman, pens the most amazing article I think I have ever seen in the NYT. The title and lede are all you need: “Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.”

I will quote from it at length, but first, here is why it is important: (1) it’s true; (2) up to this moment, 7/25/04, the elite media have maintained the fiction that they are non-partisan; (3) since the Times sets the agenda for the rest of the elite media, they now have permission to admit where they stand and how they see the world.

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?
By DANIEL OKRENT

Published: July 25, 2004

OF course it is.

[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…

[M]y 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….

The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans)….

Start with the editorial page, so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology….

[S]even 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).

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.….

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 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.”

Okrent hilariously and shrewdly shows that the selection of stories and their angle is unmistakably liberal, and that this perspective is not confined to hard news. He continues:

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.

Okay, so Pinch is not exactly on the same page as Okrent, but Okrent cleverly segues Sulzberger’s preference for “urban” into liberalism as the “Manhattan sensibility.” One remains free to observe that the poor fellows at the New York Post do not share the Manhattan sensibility, but that’s because they don’t live at the Dakota.

The most important part of Okrent’s article is his proof-case, gay marriage. He argues that the Times’ treatment of gay marriage is evidence of poor, ideology-driven, journalism. He notes that while the San Francisco Chronicle the Boston Globe have each explored darker issues, the Times has largely confined itself to cheerleading in a series of pieces:

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.

I think this is brilliant writing. Okrent portrays the Times editors as Victorians, who have stooped, not simply to shoddy journalism, but to something far worse: the vulgarity of commerce.

(You will recall, months ago, that piece by Howell Raines in the Guardian, in which he refers to capitalism as a fraud and a shell game. Okrent taps into this strange elitism of Times writers and editors — pretty well educated people who have chosen a profession in which they cannot possibly hope to get rich, and despise the Lexus dealers and plumbing-supply house owners who want to get rich and do.)

So the question arises: will this startling, fact-laden, admission by ombudsman Okrent have any legs, within the Times or without? I have no idea. Judging from the past, the Times institutionally and its staff will want to gainsay Okrent’s charges. They are quite threatening, if up until now you have considered yourself non-partisan. But maybe some Times staffers will get up on their hind legs and say: “yes, we’re liberal, but we’re right, and we’re fair in what we report.” That would be a start.

As for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc., who usually take their leadership from the Times, will we see similar admissions from them? Perhaps, in time, but their first reaction will be to refer to the bottom of the piece:

The public editor is the readers’ representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own….

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2004 at 8:45 am and is filed under General, New Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.