October 17, 2004
THE PUBLIC EDITORPolitical Bias at The Times? Two Counterarguments.
By DANIEL OKRENT
ast week, I argued in this space that The Times is not systematically biased in its campaign coverage - a position that necessarily invites rebuttal. I consequently asked two prominent critics of The Times to take a whack at it. Leading off, Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University and the author most recently of "Letters to a Young Activist"; batting second, Bob Kohn, a California lawyer and the author of "Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted." Next week, comments from readers.
FROM THE LEFT
By Todd Gitlin
The Times is not pro-Bush in the way that The Washington Times is pro-Bush, slamming John Kerry with Vietnam falsehoods week after week.
But The Times's decorous approach to the news has often helped President Bush in three significant ways: by equating his gross deceptions with Mr. Kerry's minor lapses; by omitting or burying news of administration activities and their consequences; and by missing the deep pattern of Mr. Bush's prejudices and malfeasances.
First of all, The Times's news columns are loath to call untruth untruth. (Space being short, I will skip over the nice question of when Mr. Bush is knowingly lying, when he is half-lying, when he is clumsily improvising, when he is deluding himself, and when he is asserting what a reasonable person would know to be untrue.) Stenography often substitutes for research. Look at The Times at its most pungent - a rare roundup piece that landed on Page A19, Oct. 8, headlined: "In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts."
The article explains that "the White House has charted new ground with the sweep of its negative campaigning," taking its "attacks to a blistering new level," so that, "several analysts say, Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts."
New level? Pushed the limits? What some Democrats said? The authors, Adam Nagourney and Richard W. Stevenson, offer evidence that President Bush exaggerated and distorted what Mr. Kerry meant by pre-emptive attacks' passing a global test. Then why mince words?
The Times's generosity toward government claims about Al Qaeda-Saddam connections and Iraqi W.M.D. has been amply documented, even, belatedly, in The Times itself. But on other fronts as well, The Times cuts Mr. Bush plenty of slack. One reason is that The Times, like other top media, scants the substance of the candidates' views in favor of their tactics and strategies. But when the president is a serial obfuscator and fabricator - not to say flip-flopper - this inside-dopester coverage works to his advantage.
Consider the disproportion between The Times's attention to Mr. Kerry's Vietnam battles and its inattention to Mr. Bush's business career of failing upward: improving his fortunes while his companies failed. How did he succeed in making big money when his oil company, Harken Energy, nearly collapsed? Too often, as the president himself might say, Mr. Bush can run, and The Times lets him hide.
So can Vice President Dick Cheney. Though Mr. Cheney has denied it, Halliburton, during the years he headed it, did $73 million of business with Saddam Hussein. The Washington Post looked into the story thoroughly. Over the past four years, The Times hasn't once done so in its news pages. Would The Times have let Bill Clinton get away with trading with tyrants? Wouldn't such a story have been at least as newsworthy as the disastrous Whitewater investment that the paper examined endlessly on its front page?
Indeed, The Times frequently buries revelations of administration malfeasance. Coverage of declining environmental standards is spotty, though sometimes extensive. The subject of climate change has made the front page seven times in the past two years; some will think this more than enough, but if the issues are really as grave as most scientists believe, it's the least a serious newspaper ought to do.
Third, The Times leaves dots unconnected. The Republican Party doesn't incidentally or occasionally stoop to please big corporations. It does so systematically. The administration and its Congressional allies regularly permit lobbyists to write the regulations by which they themselves are to be regulated. Last May, The Denver Post reported: "President Bush has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee." But the infrequent Times article citing examples of such fox-henhouse cohabitation in coal, say, does not refer to examples from drug, hospital, utility, oil and gas and other sectors (as did The Post).
It was refreshing, nevertheless, to see The Times last week devoting front page space to the Senate's $136 billion corporate tax cut ("House Passes Corporate Tax Bill Providing $136 Billion in Breaks," Oct. 8). Where are the similar rundowns of who benefits from other government policies? True, an on-again, off-again watchdog is better than no watchdog at all. But Times readers should not have to settle for a watchdog with laryngitis.
FROM THE RIGHT
By Bob Kohn
IS The New York Times systematically biased against President Bush? Of course it is.
I was recently introduced to a radio audience as someone who hates The New York Times. Hate was too strong a word; I love this newspaper, and if you are reading this, you love it, too. To love this paper is to care what happens to it. We want it to be there for us - always - especially every Sunday morning with that cup of coffee, and we hope to hand the experience down to our children, so that they too may be informed and delighted by its pages.
Several weeks ago, Daniel Okrent, this paper's public editor, courageously stated the obvious: of course The New York Times is a liberal newspaper ("Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" July 25). And he wasn't just talking about an editorial page he finds "thoroughly saturated in liberal theology" or the Sunday carvings of Frank Rich, who "slices up" President Bush and friends in the Arts & Leisure section.
More incisively, the public editor demonstrated how The Times - in its purportedly objective news pages - leans left on the social issues, showing by example how The Times presents same-sex marriages in a tone that approaches "cheerleading." Now, turning to politics, the public editor would have us believe there is no systematic bias against either presidential candidate.
This divide-and-conquer approach - separating The Times's advocacy of liberal causes from its campaign coverage - masks the powerful means this paper employs to undermine the Bush campaign.
Same-sex marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, gun control, environmental regulation, capital punishment and faith-based initiatives - are these not issues in the presidential election? Hoist with his own petard, the public editor has already demonstrated how The Times, by advocating its liberal social agenda, systematically slants the news against President Bush.
Now, let's assume that what the public editor asserted here last week is correct - that The Times's campaign coverage, viewed in its entirety, is providing a fair presentation of President Bush's views. What does such fairness mean when the very same news pages are advocating the opposite?
To readers, it means that President Bush is wrong, not only because the editorial page of The Times says he's wrong, but because the president's views fly in the face of what are being presented as objective facts. No technique of bias is more powerful - more useful as a means of influence - than presenting a candidate's unadulterated views through a prism of advocacy passed off as hard news.
And the practice is by no means limited to the social questions. The justification for the Iraq war, now John Kerry's top campaign issue, provides a poignant backdrop for how The Times systematically uses its front page to undercut President Bush's credibility. In fact, the bias against Bush on Iraq has become so acute that two of the paper's own Op-Ed columnists have established a virtual annex to the public editor's office.
When The Times in a banner headline this summer declared ("Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie," June 17) William Safire fired back: "All wrong." While Republicans charged The Times with bias, Safire blamed the Sept. 11 commission. I would have gone along with Safire had the paper's editors corrected the story in a typeface as large as the one they had used to distort it. They haven't. Not even in small type.
When The Times front page recently proclaimed, ("U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90's," Oct. 7) David Brooks, referring to the general media coverage, came unglued: "I have never in my life seen a government report so distorted by partisan passions." Despite Mr. Brooks's efforts, a report that made it "crystal clear" why Saddam Hussein had to go instead became a talking point for Kerry - courtesy of The New York Times.
What kind of newspaper will we leave to our children? If you still don't believe it's the wrong kind, put yourself in my slippers: imagine how your Sunday morning coffee encounters with The Times would sour if the front page of the Arts & Leisure section were turned over to, say, Ann Coulter. Is that the kind of paper you want? That's the paper you have.
