The politics of the New York Times

From the final column of Arthur S. Brisbane, the New York Times‘ outgoing public editor:

I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.

As GetReligion, where I found this at, notes "It is to the New York Times’ credit that it publishes critiques such as this." That's one of the reasons why I tend to like that paper even if I don't always agree with its views - although it's annoying enough at times to be one of the primary reasons that I haven't bothered to actually subscribe.

I'd argue that some the NYT's political leanings should be fairly obvious given the slew of war-of-women articles the paper has run when the New York Time own polling data shows women as a whole support seems supportive of many of the policies that supposedly constitute war on them. (They did publish that polling data but as basically nothing more than a graph).

The whole GetReligion piece, which includes details of some of the reactions to this article, is really worth the read BTW. As their piece notes, the following rebuttal from the NYT's executive editor Jill Abramson really seems to prove Brisbane's point:

In our newsroom we are always conscious that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of the country or world. I disagree with Mr. Brisbane's sweeping conclusions