Who Can Really Say?

The Emperor Has No Clothes

I'm only a few hours late to this party so I think I can still get in. The NY Times' ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, today admits that the Emperor has no clothes. Leading with the headline "Is the New York Times A Liberal Newspaper?" he struggles not with the answer:

Of course it is.

He continues:

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.

Using the Times' coverage of gay marriage as an example, Okrent says:

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.

No clothes indeed.

Posted by Peter at July 25, 2004 12:01 PM