Out of My Mind

Once upon a time, The New York Times was whatcha may call the house organ of the Establishment. Some time in the 60s or so it decided to become a truly first-rate paper -- actually investigate and report accurately and, more important truthfully. This was sometime after James Reston's water carrying for the JFK administration by being a good soldier and sitting on the then-incipient Bay of Pigs fiasco-to-be. As he later noted, if he did the right thing -- as a true journalist -- and blew the whistle, as it were, the invasion would not have happened as well as other gratuitously nasty other stuff. Count one major disservice by the water carrier.

Then sometime thereafter, the golden age of journalism at the Times began, the biggest stories (as I recollect) Vietnam (eventually and intermittently) and Watergate.

And all of a sudden the incipient radical right-wingers started deriding the paper as "liberal," for partisan reasons conflating objective with biased -- this during the heyday of the National Review.

And that meme, of the "liberal" Times, continues to this second.

So, as few others are doing, let's look at a few major examples of a "liberal" paper at work:

Wen Ho Lee.

Whitewater.

Weapons of mass destruction.

Election 2004, wherein the primary correspondent covering the incumbent was a hagiographer while the correspondent covering the challenger was, well, let's say overly, often gratuitously critical. Very fair, very balanced. The Times has yet to this day justified this issue. (I wrote the then-Public Editor a few times. He said that he was going to address the issue after the election -- you know, when it was well after the fact. He did eventually address it but not in any clear, meaningful. I should say he did essentially addressed the subject but did not address it with even a fraction of the depth it warranted.)

And, of course, defending a reporter (who the editors cannot control or whose work they cannot verify) jailed for refusing to identify an apparatchik using her to deliberately -- and willingly, gladly -- disseminate lies.