The NYT is a right wing rag. Agree or disagree?

[cali]

For the record, I don't agree. Sure the NYT is flawed. They were incredibly lax about Judith Miller, but if the NYT has a slant, it's more to the left than to the right. Sure, the OpEd page has David Brooks and John Tierney, but they're hardly in the far right category, and they have Frank Rich, Krugman, Herbert and Dowd, all more liberal than conservative. Yeah, they screwed up by waiting a year to publish the NSA story, but they published it against strong pressure from Bushco, not to mention they broke the Swift story and Casey's remarks about drawing down US troops. Their stories out of Iraq are some of the best and most comprehensive stories out there. The Times is under heavy attack from the right wing, and judging from the comments here at DU, from the left as well.

I stand with the Times against the bush administration.

[Marr]

1. Bias isn't about the editorial page- it's about what's covered and what's

not.

The NYT chose not to report on a story (illegal domestic spying) for an entire year simply because it would make the Bush Administration look bad in an election year. That alone is all the evidence I need to convince me that they have a heavy right wing bias, but there's plenty more than that.

[cali]

5. They got the story and they published it

No one else did. Can you imagine the type of pressure that bushco put on them? Yeah, I think they should have been gutsier and published it sooner, but if not for the Times we never would have known about the NSA story. As for their news coverage, sure it's flawed, but they still have the best coverage of ANY newspaper or news organization in the entire country.

[otherlander]

19. "Pressured"...and if they had simply gone ahead

and published the story anyway, what would have happened? Nothing terrible. It's not as if this were Nazi Germany, where they would have been arrested or killed. I don't consider the NYT to be 'left' or 'right', just corporate. The majority of reporters are, as individuals, somewhat liberal. But at the top, it's corporate interests, not political ones, that decide what gets printed. This is a free media, and there is nothing restricting it but its own greed.

[creeksneakers2]

8. The Times had other motives

The Times uncovers a great deal of classified information and has to walk a line between public disclosure and damaging national security. They take a great deal of heat for coming down on the public disclosure side as often as they do.

[Benfea]

11. Bingo.

[charlyvi]

2. Me too Cali.

They also broke the telephone eavesdroppng story. I think they are trying to come in from the cold, which can't be easy with the bush administration out to lynch them. And the right wingers too.

[Thickasabrick]

3. I agree with you - it's not much but it's the best we got. LA Times

use to be better until they changed owners/management and fired Scheer. They are still better than WAPO.

[Ksec]

4. Honestly, I think its the last bastion of real news

Nobody else gets into a story like they do. (unless its a murder fantasy story they love to cover, cheap and easy)

If everyone is complaining then theyre non biased.

[megatherium]

6. Not right wing -- but intimidated by corporate and

political interests, which leads to mealy-mouthed reporting. Cultural conservatives think NY Times is extremely liberal because of their secular (sympathetic) stance on gay issues, family planning, etc. They do have a moderately pro-corporate stance on business issues (they themselves are a large corporation).

I heard a juicy rumor a couple of years ago. The president of Notre Dame University was caught having sex with a male undergraduate. The president, being an ordained Catholic priest, was quietly gotten rid of. According to my aquaintance, who was faculty at Notre Dame, the NY Times learned of this, but was paid off by the university to not report it. Their price: $10 million. Of course, I have no way of knowing if this is true.

[cali]

7. Of course you don't.

Do you even read the Times? Mealy mouthed reporting? You mean Lichtblau and Burns and Gordon and Wong? Name better reporters from other papers.

[megatherium]

18. Mealy-mouthed meaning they hesistate to offend anyone.

So they tend to give equal time or weight to both sides of issues. But I didn't mean to say that the Times wasn't better than other newspapers -- indeed, they are often excellent. (And I do read them. In fact I paid for TimesSelect.)

[ruggerson]

9. The NY Times tries to get it correct

and, frankly, it's absurd the amount of abuse they get here, just because they understand the difference between advocacy and journalism.

[cali]

10. Thanks.

Thanks for putting it so well. I'm frankly disturbed that with the NYT under attack by the RW and bushco, all many DUers see fit to do is pile on from the opposite side.

[Warpy]

12. I find them fully corporatized

and anti labor. Other than that, they're just peachy, save for the occasional reporter they bust for wriging fiction.

[salin]

13. NYT has had a long term identity crisis

bounces all over the place.

[Terran1212]

14. Like all of the US Corporate media, they're pro-business slant

Pro-business can mean being "liberal" about social issues and whatnot, but you'll rarely see an editorial claiming Bush is a war criminal or that we need single payer universal healthcare.

It's a left-wing liberal boogeyman newsie according to the Right, but they tend to demonize anything outside their tiny intellectual spectrum.

[cali]

16. Actually, there have been editorials

backing universal healthcare. As far as calling bushco a war criminal in an editorial, they've come closer than any other major paper. And their purview is hardly the narrow intellectual spectrum you claim it is. Do you actually read it?

[Terran1212]

17. I don't read it regularly paper-edition

When I travel; I read it online often.

As far as I'm concerned any "universal healthcare" pushes avoid single-payer, so they're mostly Clinton-style giveaways to the drug companies.

[mdmc]

15. nyt is mainstream

imho

[Downtown Hound]

20. Their editorial page is mostly liberal

Their actual news coverage is a little more difficult to pin down. Basically they seem to follow the current trend in media of presenting an issue through a very pro-corporate, mainstream lens. They may attempt to get both sides of an issue, but in my opinion, journalism really shouldn't be a search for balance but a quest for truth. The New York Times has been somewhat lax in that department lately, but not all of their coverage has been bad. The Miller fiasco really damaged their reputation with me though, and they have yet to fully repent for it in my opinion. A half-assed apology stuck somewhere on page 4 that no one ever reads doesn't cut it, not when there are tens of thousands dead and our nation's credibility almost perpetually ruined.

[fujiyama]

21. Its editorial page

is not the problem, and only those completely ignorant will claim its editiorial section is RW. If you want a RW editorial section check out the WSJ.

The problem is accountability. They have little. They have a reputation as being a trusted source they have built and when you have instances of shoddy "journalism" like Jason Blair and Judith Miller, you start losing credibility. They defended her to the very end and even then never really apologized for her behavior - and if they did, they blamed it on her personally, rather than realizing that she was symptomatic of the entire media's shameful and disgusting behavior after 9/11.

Also, the NYT is not above other papers in regards to trashy stories. They led the way on WhiteWater, Monicagate, and Wen Ho Lee. While the paper had to report on these stories as they were major, they did so with just as much relish and enjoyment as their RW counterparts, especially on Wen Ho Lee.

They have some great journalists and ocassionally do a great job like with the NSA spying scandal, but there too they were a day late and were likely intimidated into not publishing it during the election season. The sad thing is - as bad of a state its in - it's still the best out there - much better than the WaPo for example.

So, no they don't impress me. It's a sad stat of journalism in the US. Witness the outcry over Colbert's speech at the correspondent's dinner. That's the same crowd that gives us our news. I don't respect most of them. I view them with as much contempt as those in power.

[applegrove]

22. I think they like the enlightenment. They like good information. Less

of a slant more just good articles and opnion. They are liberal.. like the whole world is liberal. Remember.. liberal won the cold war, WWII, and every democracy in the world save Cuba - is liberal.

[mogster]

23. It's both lib and conservative

Like every other paper that cares about news quality and balance. The problem is when events are getting radicalized, the two 'ways' of seeing the world get too far apart, thus making the world flat in one article and round in the next. It does affect the overall credibility. But in general, I'd say NYT is one of the media not too compromised in the NWO paradigm.
I know it is a main source of US news to European journalists, alongside the WaPo, and is considered/labelled 'liberal' by them.