The New York Times’ former reputation as the nation’s objective newspaper of record was always a façade that covered up a persistent liberal bias that skewed its coverage of both politics and the world. But during the eight years that Bill Keller served as executive editor, the Times accelerated its descent into the partisan and hyper-liberal biased reporting and unbalanced opinion pages that we now take for granted as the paper’s calling card. Keller’s liberal prejudices were never a secret while he was the paper’s editor and in his current guise as a weekly opinion columnist, the last veil has dropped. But even now, he can’t seem to give up the pose of being the professional journalist who is too busy getting the story right to inject his politics into the copy.
This is the principal conceit of his latest column in which he commits the unpardonable sin of trying to shoot a fish in a barrel and missing. By taking aim at Rupert Murdoch — the easiest target in the world this week — Keller only manages to call more attention to his own partisanship and hypocrisy. His point is that Murdoch’s creation Fox News and its conservative bias is “America’s poison,” and claims that for all of its flaws, the mainstream media is still far more fair and balanced than the network that uses that phrase to describe itself. But the idea that Fox is any more biased than the Times, let alone NBC, CNN or NPR — the examples he cites of other more objective outlets — is absurd.
The only evidence he gives for what he considers the obvious superiority of the non-Fox liberal media is that the Times Sunday Magazine once published an even-handed profile of Rush Limbaugh by Zev Chafets. He says such a fair-minded piece about Nancy Pelosi would never have run on Fox. He also thinks it is terrible that Fox News head Roger Ailes didn’t cooperate with a liberal trying to write his biography and that it takes a dim view of employees who leak material in order to embarrass the company.
The problem with this argument is that the Chafets profile is merely the exception that proves the rule at the Times. While there are occasional instances of fairness, they merely highlight the paper’s typical unfairness to anyone or any group that it opposes. The comparison is also ridiculous because most of Fox’s programming is the moral equivalent to the Times’ editorial and op-ed pages. There the analogy between the two is almost exact. Liberal voices are a distinct minority on Fox but no more so than genuine conservatives at the Times.
If anything, a comparison of the airtime that Fox devotes to straight news coverage to the Times’ news pages is actually quite flattering to the former. While Fox’s news hounds may not be perfectly objective one wonders if they have ever committed any journalistic sin so blatant as the Times’ decision just this past Friday to run a front page news feature on racism directed at President Obama in Ohio whose only possible point was to try to rally liberals around the incumbent lest hate triumph. Nor can I recall Fox’s news operation ever doing anything as despicable or lacking in ethics as Keller’s decision to publish a major expose of John McCain’s personal life at the height of the 2008 presidential campaign that lacked any proof of the wrongdoing the piece insinuated.
Even after all these years, Keller and other liberals still don’t understand why Fox is popular. Along with conservative talk radio, it was created to balance the obvious bias of a mainstream media that pretended it had no bias. Audiences despise the pretense and appreciate Fox’s straightforward point of view. That’s why, as I wrote this past week, CNN, whose dishonesty about its liberal bias is as obvious as that of the Times, is the loser in the cable rating wars.
No one should fault Keller for his liberalism. It is his pretense of fairness that is galling. His claims about Fox’s faults can be just as easily directed at the Times. The real poison at the heart of American journalism isn’t Fox, it’s the mainstream media’s false front of objectivity.
And yet are we not a better place now that the claims of objectivity are at most tivial . Recall that media objectivity is a byproduct of mass consumerism where advertisers need a medium which is not hostile to any segment of their target market : R's and D's both by soap ( Recall also that the Sundat NYT magazine was once called , with more than a little truth , the Girdle Gazette ). But now that 'objectivity ' is dead , we can return to those halcyon days when newspapers were the loud and strident voice of partisanship .Now all we need is the return of the duel where a good Federalist can cut down a Republican cur on the field of honour .
If you are referring to Burr-Hamilton, I think it was the Federalist (Hamilton) who was shot by the Democratic-Republican (Burr).
Back to the past! Yellow journalism here we ARE.
As a conservative, surprisingly I used to watch MSNBC and "Hardball" with Chris Matthews was my favorite show. But the tide turned when the channel turned hard left after Bush'a election and 9-11. I turned to Fox news more and more because the channel gave the conservative point of view, which was lacking in every other cable and MSM news show. When MSM refuses, by sins of omission mostly, to give us the truth about BHO then I say that is a despicable afront to every American who is entitled to know the truth. I wish all channels would give the news in an unbiased manner. The NYT needs to treat the American voter as adults, not children.
Er….MSNBC isn't the mainstream media, it's a cable TV show that tends to lean left but not exclusively so. Fox News is simply a mouthpiece for the the Republican party.
Pardon… but did you just write that MSNBC 'tends' to lean left? nMaybe you can give us an example of a hard hitting piece on Obama that MSNBC landed? Or a time when Racheal Maddow took her Democratic party to task for leaning too far left? nOr… heck, anyone at MSNBC suggesting that the current administration had 'gone too far' in any of its politics? nNo? nYeah… I didn't think so….
You are delusional, if you don't think Schultz, O'donnell, Maddow, Sharpton, Tingles etc are not ULTRA LEFT, you don't know your directions.
Really, tends to lean left. Let me ask you about the network that "tends to lean left." In one of their not so left leaning moments, has anyone on MSNBC ever had a serious discussion of the Fast and Furious operation? Is there a single anchor on any of their shows that might not have voted for Obama?
I have been often right with my predictions—but it turns out that I was way too optimistic regarding the decline of the influence of the MSM. It is still very capable of driving the narrative. My mistake was believing financial self interest would make the difference. We are watching the majority of industry leaders ignore the bottom line.
I think its unfair to drag Fox News down to the level of that cheap propaganda rag, the NYT. The NYT is more on par with something like Newsmax, or WND but even conservative journalists can't see it because they suffer from retinal burn from staring too long at the erstwhile glory of the NYT. n nThe Left is at war with reality, that is inherent to their position, so why are we surprised when their deviations are manifest in their letters? n nIt's convenient to want to give them the benefit of the doubt, and they are adept at engaging others in the "who's morally superior" pretense creating the illusion of civic responsibility. But no, they tend to be deeply confused and generally immature people and need the leadership of responsible adults. n n
Poll after poll shows the country is center-right regarding values, so from that perspective Fox is more 'main-stream' than most. What we need however is not just what we want to hear, we need the Truth, even when we don't like the sound of it. With so much money and power at stake, the truth is a constant casualty. We could start by telling the truth about how the Left's incessant search for Utopia has killed over 100 million people, impoverished many more, and is again at the heart of the impending collapse of most of the governments around the world. Instead they ask us to judge them on their intentions (they mean well), not the actual outcomes. Thanks to indoctrination (not education) far too many still believe in this fatal fantasy.
Fox is popular & Keller's not. But that's been the story of Bill's life
I just want to endorse the point that MSNBC is way more shrill, ideological and smugly self righteous than anything else on cable news. Quite a few years ago, I used to watch a fair bit of MSNBC but for a while now, I can't say exactly when, I began to find it insufferably unwatchable, the sheer self righteousness both unbearable and enraging. The one exception is Chris Hayes, who is smart, fair and engaging from his Social Demoratic perspective.
The MSM doesn't have a clue as to what objectivity is. They are so steeped in their liberal belief and agenda that they are blind to their own bias. It's difficult to understand how they can have any self respect and be so clueless as to ratings and newspaper declining subscriptions. They offend at least half of their audience. DUH! n nI remember when a cafe opened nearby in the early 90's. They had TV's mounted on the walls for all to see and initially had CNN tuned in all day. They had so many complaints about CNN and requests to switch to Fox that they changed the channel. Fox isn't perfect but it far exceeds any other outlet in fairness and balance.
I too used to watch msnbc….hardball was great and cut the crap on both sides…but now I really try to watch maddow because whe is a very intelligent broadcaster…but her smarminess and loathe of anything conservative kills her intellectual conversation. The other 3 are just pure and utter hacks and not worth wasting time…..on the thee hand I watch oreilly and can't get through hannity as he is a partisan hack. The woman on CNN at 8 is actually pretty good but piers and cooper are below average and more interested in themselves than anything newsworthy. So much airtime so little to watch.
Your pathetic attempt to simulate an intellectual with your not-so erudite and misguided comment says all you need to know about devoted readers and true believers of the NYTimes.