Our Ignorance is their Power
(Thanks to Radley Balko for pointing to this.)
Ed Driscoll asserts that one of the top 10 blogging moments of 2004 was:
I don't see how this even remotely qualifies at the New York Times announcing that it is liberal. Let's establish some guidelines. If a publication is to announce that it is liberal, surely, we can agree that this means that it has to come from someone in an official capacity to set editorial content, i.e. the editor-in-chief, the publisher. Now let's review what actually happened. The Ombudsman (or Public Editor) of the New York Times declared that the New York Times is liberal. To quote from the paper's description of this position, "Daniel Okrent is the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own." So the more proper conclusion to reach is that "Daniel Okrent declared the New York Times to be liberal." This is about as fascinating a conclusion as "Ed Driscoll declared the New York Times to be liberal," which I am sure he has done many a time.
But let's not stop there. Let's add some context to the declaration of liberalism. Surely such a mind-boggling declaration merits more than a sentence or two? Fortunately, all of the Public Editor's columns are available on-line, including the particular one in question. Okrent sees many liberal tendencies in the paper, including the obvious politically liberal tendencies on the editorial and op-ed pages (which is to be expected given that they are "opinion" pages) and the reportage that passes by unremarkedly upon subjects and matters that many non "urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all" people might easily find objectionable. Okrent concludes that the Times is a product of New York, with the inherently liberal tendencies this entails. He sees some bias in the reporting on the gay-marriage issue, for instance, which is a wholly legitimate point. But his article is far from the ringing declaration of (political) liberalism that Driscoll makes it out to be. It may be a significant moment, if only because a representative of a value system critiqued itself and found itself wanting, something Driscoll appears unable to do.
Finally, there's a few different uses of the word liberal being thrown around here. Driscoll is clearly referring to political liberalism, that term which the right-wing has so successfull sullied (so much so that Bill Clinton now calls himself a "progressive"). Okrent is referring to a broader value system of "urbanism" or "liberalism" in the sense of openness to a wide variety of experiences and cultures that can manifest itself in a way similar to political liberalism. Is there any mention of this pretty important nuance in Driscoll. Nope.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, "Our Ignorance is their Power." That is exactly what makes people like Driscoll successful. He trades on people's ignorance of a)the role of the Ombudsman at a newspaper and b)the specific context in which an apparently revelatory statement was made to create a climate in which something becomes established fact. It's the path to success for the right-wing.
(Oh, and I don't buy the fact that the New York Times solely determines television coverage. I see the process working both ways and there being many more inputs besides the Times. So even if the Times was completely politically liberal it does not necessarily follow that the entire mainstream media is liberal.)
Ed Driscoll asserts that one of the top 10 blogging moments of 2004 was:
The New York Times Announces It's Liberal: On Sunday, July 25th, Daniel Okrent, the Ombudsman of the New York Times wrote an op-ed titled, "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?", to which he replied in the next sentence, "Of course it is".
It's surprising that Okrent's admission announcement hasn't reverberated as strongly as RatherGate has. As Bernard Goldberg wrote in Arrogance, the Times' reporting influences not just what is reported in other papers, but what stories air on TV as well. Many, many TV news stories begin as Times articles, which networks simply hand to their reporters and say, "craft a story out of this". The Times admitting they're biased is the rest of media admitting they're biased as well. Although these days, that's a topic they're less and less reticent to discuss.
I don't see how this even remotely qualifies at the New York Times announcing that it is liberal. Let's establish some guidelines. If a publication is to announce that it is liberal, surely, we can agree that this means that it has to come from someone in an official capacity to set editorial content, i.e. the editor-in-chief, the publisher. Now let's review what actually happened. The Ombudsman (or Public Editor) of the New York Times declared that the New York Times is liberal. To quote from the paper's description of this position, "Daniel Okrent is the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own." So the more proper conclusion to reach is that "Daniel Okrent declared the New York Times to be liberal." This is about as fascinating a conclusion as "Ed Driscoll declared the New York Times to be liberal," which I am sure he has done many a time.
But let's not stop there. Let's add some context to the declaration of liberalism. Surely such a mind-boggling declaration merits more than a sentence or two? Fortunately, all of the Public Editor's columns are available on-line, including the particular one in question. Okrent sees many liberal tendencies in the paper, including the obvious politically liberal tendencies on the editorial and op-ed pages (which is to be expected given that they are "opinion" pages) and the reportage that passes by unremarkedly upon subjects and matters that many non "urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all" people might easily find objectionable. Okrent concludes that the Times is a product of New York, with the inherently liberal tendencies this entails. He sees some bias in the reporting on the gay-marriage issue, for instance, which is a wholly legitimate point. But his article is far from the ringing declaration of (political) liberalism that Driscoll makes it out to be. It may be a significant moment, if only because a representative of a value system critiqued itself and found itself wanting, something Driscoll appears unable to do.
Finally, there's a few different uses of the word liberal being thrown around here. Driscoll is clearly referring to political liberalism, that term which the right-wing has so successfull sullied (so much so that Bill Clinton now calls himself a "progressive"). Okrent is referring to a broader value system of "urbanism" or "liberalism" in the sense of openness to a wide variety of experiences and cultures that can manifest itself in a way similar to political liberalism. Is there any mention of this pretty important nuance in Driscoll. Nope.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, "Our Ignorance is their Power." That is exactly what makes people like Driscoll successful. He trades on people's ignorance of a)the role of the Ombudsman at a newspaper and b)the specific context in which an apparently revelatory statement was made to create a climate in which something becomes established fact. It's the path to success for the right-wing.
(Oh, and I don't buy the fact that the New York Times solely determines television coverage. I see the process working both ways and there being many more inputs besides the Times. So even if the Times was completely politically liberal it does not necessarily follow that the entire mainstream media is liberal.)
posted by Jesse Zink at 8:43 PM Permalink
|
<< Home