Lying in Ponds

I’ll be off Tuesday morning for a business trip to rainy Albany, NY. I will return late Thursday night, and may not have a chance to evaluate columns until Friday.

New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent walks fearlessly into another minefield by answering the question “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” with “Of course it is.”

Start with the editorial page, so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.

Across the gutter, the Op-Ed page editors do an evenhanded job of representing a range of views in the essays from outsiders they publish - but you need an awfully heavy counterweight to balance a page that also bears the work of seven opinionated columnists, only two of whom could be classified as conservative (and, even then, of the conservative subspecies that supports legalization of gay unions and, in the case of William Safire, opposes some central provisions of the Patriot Act).

Hei Lun at Begging to Differ is impressed:

This, I think, is a big deal. Previously, a few journalists here and there have admitted to a liberal bias in the media, but never have the public voice of one of the oldest and most venerable institutions of the media done as such. What the consequences of this are, though, I have no idea.

Donald Luskin at The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid isn’t at all impressed:

Of course, while Okrent seeks to evade the tough question of “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” — or, more precisely, to answer the question “no” by answering it “yes” in a trivializing manner — his column actually answers the question perfectly. Okrent’s column is, itself, an example of it. I officially declare the Okrent experiment a failure.

UPDATE: Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler says that Daniel Okrent is “too light to tackle such questions“:

HOPELESS: “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” That’s the headline on Okrent’s piece, and he answers quickly: “Of course it is.” But in recent weeks, Okrent has written a long complaint about the paper’s “credulous” coverage of Bush Iraq policy, and he criticized a front-page review of Bill Clinton’s new book–a review which “featured a vocabulary of critical invective that might have knocked the breath out of even a Clinton hater,” he said. Does Okrent know his paper’s 15-year history of trashing all things Clinton and Gore, even on the editorial page he claims to be ultra-liberal? There is no reason to think he does. Okrent’s analysis is lighter-than-air, like much of the Times’ greatest work.

Andrew Cline at Rhetorica adds his usual thoughtful response:

The influence of the NYT on the rest of journalism is often over-stated, but it is a mighty influence all the same. So Okrent’s column will be used by the unthinking and the ideologically-driven as proof positive that the news media have a liberal bias because Okrent claims journalism’s most influential product is a liberal paper. No. The news media have structural biases, and instances of ideological bias are local to a news organization (as Okrent demonstrates), or an editor, or a reporter, or an issue (as Okrent demonstrates), etc. Add to this list: local to a locality, e.g. a big city on the East Coast or a small city in a red state.

Further, Okrent points out that while the NYT may be liberal in its coverage of cultural and social issues (specifically its focus on certain aspects of issues and its headlines), that bias may not hold up in political coverage. He promises to look into this in a future column after he returns from an month-long hiatus.

For me, Okrent’s most damning assertion is about how the NYT appears to those with a different world view, i.e. a view not influenced by a large, eastern metropolitan area. Why should any newspaper, especially one thought to be the paper of record, be an alien beast to any American?

Surely, the editorial pages of a newspaper should argue for a world view that an editorial board believes best reflects the interests of the paper and/or the community. Ideological bias here is a given, and complaining about it is merely silly.

But why should the news and feature articles of any American newspaper appear like an alien beast?

I am not suggesting that it is possible to create journalism inclusive enough to appear familiar to everyone. The word for that isn’t “journalism,” it’s “pabulum.” Instead, I like the direction Okrent is going here: “Taking the New York out of The New York Times would be a really bad idea. But a determination by the editors to be mindful of the weight of its hometown’s presence would not.” I would add this: Be mindful that news situations are ambiguous and complex, and part of what journalism is supposed to do is put events in a useful, understandable context to mitigate some of the ambiguity and complexity. That’s an over-blown, academic way of saying that journalists should get and explain “both sides” of the story.

And that, my friends, is a difficult job.

After a column yesterday which included ten negative Republican references (although 30 references went the other way), Ann Coulter has slipped just enough to trail Paul Krugman by a fraction of a point in the Lying in Ponds partisanship rankings. In typical partisan fashion, her main criticism of Republicans was that they are “taking advice from Democrats”. Still, Ms. Coulter has criticized Republicans more in the first half of this year than in all of last year, making her score slightly less extreme.

I’ve had Bob Somerby’s The Daily Howler on my blogroll from the beginning. I’ve always admired some of his work, but have also sometimes criticized him, partly for what I considered an obvious partisan (Democratic) bias. I don’t read the site consistently so perhaps I should have already realized this, but Mr. Somberby’s lengthy and detailed attack on the credibility of Joe Wilson has completely convinced me that my earlier suspicion of his partisanship was incorrect:

Democrats should be quite upset with their blowhard hero, Joe Wilson. Those “rebuttals” he’s been sending out are largely overblown, misleading junk, like so much of his past year’s work. Sorry, but Wilson’s wife did play some role in his selection for the trip (not that there’s anything wrong with it). And Wilson did keep saying that Cheney must have been briefed, a thundering judgment he now says was wrong. The Committee did judge that most analysts felt his report strengthened the case about Iraq’s pursuit of uranium. And did he make bogus statements to Pincus? We don’t know, and probably never will. In his TV interviews, Blitzer and Zahn were too inept to ask him the relevant questions. For the record, Wilson’s explanations seem mighty shaky compared the account of this matter in the unanimous report.

What did Wilson learn from his trip to Niger? Actually, he learned fairly little, as the Committee report notes. He judged that it would be hard to complete a uranium transaction in Niger, but Bush never said that Iraq bought uranium — he only said Iraq sought it. Wilson now tells us that he never claimed to have debunked that claim! And Bush referred to British intelligence, whose contents Wilson couldn’t review. Simply put, Wilson never had any way of knowing whether Iraq sought uranium in Africa. (Don’t even ask about the Congo and Somalia.) And now, at last, after one solid year, he finally says what we said all along: He had no way to debunk this allegation. Last week, Lord Butler said Bush’s claim was “well-founded.” And Wilson has no way of knowing if that judgment is correct. He never knew if Bush’s claim was true or false, despite all his loudmouth posturing.

But along the way, Wilson’s loud, dramatic overstatements distracted Dems from stronger pursuits. Bush’s 16-word statement was always a relatively weak example of the Admin’s pre-war embellishment. Yes, Bush’s statement was poorly founded; he had to rely on British intelligence because our own intel was inconclusive. But other examples of dissembling were much more clear; Admin officials often said things in the run-up to war that were, as a matter of fact, baldly wrong. No matter! Loudmouth Wilson kept banging the drums, leading us down that Niger road. Now, he’s being called the latest liberal liar, and the charge is close enough to true so that, in part, it’s going to stick. Lord Butler said Bush’s claim was well-founded — and Wilson admits he can’t debunk it! Given those facts, many American are going to wonder why Bush was trashed for those 16 words. This was always a weak side road, with Wilson the piper who led Dems down it. He continued his bull-roar in his letters last week — and readers heaped praise on his work.

Mr. Somerby is a strong critic of President Bush, so his willingness to directly attack another Bush critic on such a partisan, highly-charged issue clearly demonstrates his integrity and independence, which makes his own anti-Bush arguments far more forceful. For an extreme constrast, see Joe Conason’s column on the Wilson affair.

After over 3000 miles of driving to
Illinois and Colorado and back and one major car problem, we’re happy
to be back in North Carolina. I’ve caught up with the evaluation of
columns, but there has been very little movement in the rankings while
I was gone. My
guess is that partisan punditry tends to be accentuated in a
presidential election year. Nuance has not been plentiful as
columnists have taken aim at the opposing ticket. Particularly noticeable
is that some individual
columnists have been far more partisan than in previous years (e.g. Charles Krauthammer and E.J. Dionne).

But like the sun rising in
the east, Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman keep churning out one
extremely one-sided column after the other, seemingly impervious to
the ebb and flow of the political scene. The ultimate test of their
partisanship would be to see whether their
approach changes if the White House changes parties.

I’m an election official in my precinct, so I’ll be spending the entire day tomorrow working our North Carolina primary election (delayed two months by a redistricting court battle). I’m usually dead tired after we close the polls, so I’ll probably have to catch up on columns on Wednesday.

While I was on vacation, I missed a Spinsanity piece in which Brendan Nyhan criticized columnist Joe Conason for distorting a statement made by President Bush in a couple of letters to Congress:

As we previously pointed out, these statements have been distorted by several journalists in the debate over the administration’s pre-war claims about connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Conason is the latest member of the media to alter or shorten the quotes in a way that makes it appear that Bush premised war with Iraq on a direct allegation of a connection to 9/11, rather than the more vague rhetorical connections the administration generally made.

Mr. Conason later corrected the quotation in his column but didn’t explain the change.

Here are summaries of the first six months of this year for the five pundits with the highest partisanship scores. The top four are the same, in the same order, as last year’s finish.

• 1. Ann Coulter: Last year’s partisan champion and still on top, despite a crossover column in which she criticized an actual Republican, Arlen Specter. Her 41-to-1 ratio of negative to positive Democratic references may be a record (and the Democratic party isn’t even in power!). It is true that she hasn’t actually hoped for the death of her political opponents yet.
• 2. Paul Krugman: His NYT columns continue to defy belief — 434 entries and counting without a single substantive crossover column. Over time I’ve come to appreciate his partisan artistry — he first criticized John Kerry (only implicitly, not directly of course) for not “getting it” when compared to Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, but since has seamlessly switched to glowing praise of Mr. Kerry without accounting for his previous position.
• 3. Robert Scheer: A couple of things distinguish Mr. Scheer from the two titans of partisanship preceding him. First, he can actually offer mixed praise for a Republican once in a great while. Second, he spends hardly any time praising his own party.
• 4. Molly Ivins: A drearily consistent partisan. A special treat is her subtle touch (”How fascism starts“, “The day the Constitution died“).
• 5. Joe Conason: New to the roster this year; he could be a title contender. Even more favorable toward Democrats than Paul Krugman.

Congratulations to Robert Cox at The National Debate for a successful year of blogging!

In 2002 and 2003, I posted lengthy reviews of each member of the Lying in Ponds Top Ten halfway through the year. Following is the first batch of five much shorter summaries.

• 6. Charles Krauthammer: Far more partisan than previous years; what does it mean? Has a shameful history of manipulating quotes and attributing mental illness to Al Gore.
• 7. Mona Charen: Somewhat more partisan than last year.
• 8. Harold Meyerson: New on the roster this year. Biggest Kerry cheerleader so far, biggest Reagan detractor. Could be a serious contender.
• 9. Linda Chavez: More partisan than last year.
• 10. Brendan Miniter: More partisan than last year — the election effect?

Catherine Seipp’s monthly Maureen Dowd summary contrasts her performance with that of NYT guest columnist Barbara Ehrenreich:

This past month really wasn’t a particularly inane one for Dowd, all things considered; she just looks sillier than usual now that Ehrenreich, a fellow traveler who actually knows where she’s going, is on the same page. Her recent efforts have been noteworthy, though, for the way her old Clinton-bashing has been transformed into Clinton-defending — now that Dowd considers the former President so much better than our current one.

“I didn’t appreciate the ’60s in high school,” Dowd began her July 4 column. She didn’t appreciate Bill Clinton when he was president either, but it seems that now she does. The column gives Clinton and his book-tour critiques of the current Administration a pass but adds: “Once they returned to power, the Bush II team, dripping with contempt for Bill Clinton and oozing with ‘we know best’ cockiness, thought they could use the sacking of Saddam to change the way Americans saw themselves…” (I guess the contempt Dowd had for Clinton in the ’90s was the nice kind that didn’t drip or ooze.)

The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy profile of New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent and his experiences so far — here’s an AP link to the story at the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. Robert Cox’s campaign for a columnist corrections policy is discussed in the article; check out his take on it.