Pundit Boxscore for Tuesday 22 July 2003

WSJ VS. NYT: I was really trying to stay out of the debate between Matthew Hoy of Hoystory and Tapped over whether the New York Times or Wall Street Journal is more ideologically lopsided, or the most partisan. Mr. Hoy began by saying of the NYT that "There is not a major newspaper in the country whose collection of columnists are so dominated by one ideology." Tapped responded by naming the WSJ as a counter example, saying that "if you think newspapers should, on principle, give equal time on their op-ed pages, you'd best include the Journal and The Washington Times in your litany of complaint." Mr. Hoy persisted in his assertion (scroll down) that the NYT was more partisan. Finally, Tapped made an important point: "We don't think 'partisan' is a very useful proxy for ideology; you can be both centrist and extremely partisan." Tapped also cited last year's Lying in Ponds results which found the WSJ OpinionJournal columnists as a group more partisan than the NYT.

A few thoughts and clarifications:

1. Lying in Ponds believes that while newspapers are certainly free to be ideologically unbalanced in their choice of columnists, both the NYT and WSJ have stated policies of independent commentary, which I interpret to mean that their columnists should not be excessively partisan, regardless of where they are ideologically. Lying in Ponds has argued for a critical distinction between an ideological-but-not-partisan pundit like Frank Rich and the excessively partisan Paul Krugman.
2. I was reluctant to try to compare the NYT and WSJ because of the fact that I evaluated only the OpinionJournal.com columnists -- Al Hunt's columns are usually available only on the main WSJ website, which requires a paid subscription. Because of that quirk, noted by both Tapped and Mr. Hoy, I can't really compare the full sets of columnists properly. Having said that, I think that both newspapers can be legitimately criticized for partisanship. For the New York Times, Paul Krugman's partisanship is extreme and unmatched by any other pundit at the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post. But I believe that other NYT columnists are unfairly criticized as partisan. Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert and especially Nicholas D. Kristof each had lower partisanship scores last year than Collin Levey, Claudia Rosett, Robert L. Bartley, Daniel Henninger, Pete du Pont, Thomas J. Bray, Dorothy Rabinowitz, and Brendan Miniter from the WSJ.
3. Tapped quoted my year-end statement that the WSJ OpinionJournal had six columnists in the 2002 Top Ten, but that was my mistake. The number fluctuated between five and six all year but it ended up at five. I've now corrected that page -- sorry about that.