A man who should know says the "Times" is getting better.
Winning the war on liberal bias?
By Bob Kohn
Bob Kohn is the author of "Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted."
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Is the New York Times improving? As 2003 wound to a close, it appeared that liberal bias in front-page news articles in the Times had abated. Was this the result of a change of heart at the Gray Lady, or are we just witnessing the calm before the storm?
During the past couple of years, the following lead sentences were typical of how the front page of the Times went out of its way to spin the news against the Bush administration:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 [2001] – Stung by suggestions that President Bush had hurt himself politically by delaying his return to Washington on Tuesday, the White House asserted today ...
WASHINGTON, June 6 [2002] – Responding to widespread criticism of the government's handling of terrorists threats, President Bush called tonight for ...
WASHINGTON, July 30 [2002] – In a sign of how profoundly the nation's business scandals and volatile stock market have rocked his administration, President Bush signed ...
Yet earlier this week, presented with another opportunity to pre-spin the news with a lead reflecting its political bias against the Bush administration, the Times played it straight ("Special Counsel is Named to Head Inquiry on Leak," Dec. 31, 2003):
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 [2003] – Attorney General John Ashcroft disqualified himself on Tuesday from any involvement in the investigation into whether Bush administration officials illegally disclosed the identity of an undercover CIA officer.
How easy it would have been for the Times to open the lead with "Stung by widespread criticism that has rocked public confidence in his authority as attorney general, John Ashcroft disqualified himself on Tuesday ..." But that's not what happened this time, and similar opportunities for distorting the news have been passed up lately, too.
Consider the following surprise which appeared earlier this week, above-the-fold on the front page of the Times ("Halliburton Contracts in Iraq: The Struggle to Manage Costs," Dec. 29, 2003):
An examination of what has grown into a multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure shows no evidence of profiteering by Halliburton ...
By refuting so prominently on its front page earlier suggestions of wrongdoing by Halliburton – as opposed to omitting or burying the paper's new findings and conclusions – the Times did much to diffuse an issue that the Democrats would have been keen to use against President Bush and Vice President Cheney later this year.
What's going on at the New York Times? Have they begun to pay attention? Could it be that critics of liberal bias, such as the Media Research Center and WorldNetDaily.com, have begun to have an effect on the Times? Have recent books on media bias – such as Coulter's "Slander," Morris' "Off With Their Heads," and my "Journalistic Fraud" – found an audience at the Times? Or has the Times new "public editor" begun making headway against liberal bias in the Times' news pages?
Now, the Times is by no means bias free. But it would be hypocritical of us to expect from the Times the level of perfection that the Times' editorial page seems to expect of the Bush administration. The best we can hope for is an earnest effort by the Times to embrace journalistic objectivity as a goal and, then, the application of some means of enforcing that objective. Because I can't read minds, I don't know about the former, but recent evidence suggests that a real enforcement mechanism may be in place at the Times.
On Dec. 1, Daniel Okrent began work as the New York Times' "public editor," someone responsible for holding the newspaper accountable for the quality of its journalism. At the time, it was not clear whether the public editor would consider combating liberal bias to be part of his job description, but shortly after his appointment, he gave us hope by equating news bias with a form of journalistic "felony" and promising to work with readers to address charges of bias in the Times news pages.
In the past, we observed periods when liberal bias at the Times seemed to become intensified, as it did the weeks leading up to the 2002 mid-term elections. At other times, the bias seemed to subside, as it did in the weeks following the resignation of Howell Raines (and as it's doing now).
The question Times critics face this time is whether the paper has simply gone into another quiet period, when the liberal bias seems to have settled down temporarily, only to re-intensify during the upcoming presidential election cycle. Or, are we witnessing a Times that is truly trying to reform its news pages? (If you're thinking of writing me an e-mail expressing your skepticism on this score, don't bother. I'm with you).
Nevertheless, the New Year has ushered in a measure of hope on many fronts, and we should not be so cynical as to completely deny the possibility of reform at the New York Times. If I didn't think it could happen, I wouldn't be writing this column. Where I come from, optimism is a virtue, and at the beginning of every New Year, it's simply unavoidable.
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