Well as we all already knew The New York Times violated it's own ad policy when it undercharged MoveOn.org's Petraeus/Betrayus attack ad. It also violated their "Attack Ad" policy.



Questions For Debate:

Can The New York Times continue to portray their paper as a non-biased news source anymore?

Should America's media simply align itself Left - Right - Center and demarcate this somehow? (Blue Stripe - Red stripe - Yellow Stripe on the cover, screen, home page?)

Why? Do citizens need to know whether they are reading "conservative", "independent", or "liberal" point of view because they are not able to decide that for themselves? "I am a liberal so I am NOT buying any papers which have a red stripe!" Certainly the citizenry is smarter than that... Just like right now you are able to identify New York Times as liberal newspaper because Paul Krugman is published there, do you really need a blue stripe to help you with your identification?
So New York Times has liberal leanings ("liberal" in American sense of that word...) - so what?

So what? Well we pretend here in America that Journalists are able to shed their political "stripes" when they don their reporter caps. They can't.

Read a story about Iraq in the New York Post then read the same story in the NYT - it's as if they are reporting on different countries.

If you think that there are lots of people who won't pick up the Wall Street Journal because they think it's a Righty paper or the NYT because it's a Liberal rag - you're crazy.

I say just put it out there - stop pretending you're reporting unbiased news.

Can The New York Times continue to portray their paper as a non-biased news source anymore?
Apparently they think they still can. At least Hoyt thinks they can. In his apology he writes

it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the "liberal media."

and

For me, two values collided here: the right of free speech — even if it's abusive speech — and a strong personal revulsion toward the name-calling and personal attacks that now pass for political dialogue, obscuring rather than illuminating important policy issues. For The Times, there is another value: the protection of its brand as a newspaper that sets a high standard for civility. Were I in Jespersen's shoes, I'd have demanded changes to eliminate "Betray Us," a particularly low blow when aimed at a soldier.

I'm at a loss as to why Hoyt thinks the ad falls under "attacks of a personal nature". Is this the same NYT that stood by the Alabama "attack ad" in the most important libel case in U.S. history? I had no idea a high ranking military officer enjoyed this amount of immunity. Another attack ad against a senator or president wouldn't have generated 4,000 emails from angry people around the country calling the Times traitors. Damn. That's some mighty clout. I gotta get me a chest full of medals.

It's laughable. New ammunition? It's not as if people's impressions were different before the ad. Why is he squirming? What's he scared of?

Should America's media simply align itself Left - Right - Center and demarcate this somehow?
Haven't you asked this question before? No.


This isn't a story. This isn't news. This doesn't have to be fair, accurate, etc. As to whether undercharging MoveOn.org was a mistake? Why not. If the military can lose sight of six nuclear warheads for a few hours and set off alarms in Tehran, the NYT can unintentionally undercharge someone buying ad space.

Who's pretending that? The only outlet I know of is Fox News.

I remember learning how to read a newspaper in high school. Not sure if it was in English or journalism class, but it was there somewhere. Maybe they don't teach this any longer, and I suspect so when some people treat op-ed pieces as if they were straight news reports.

A straight news report uses accurate quotations and answers the standard questions. It's in an inverse pyramid structure and designed to be skimmed. Modifiers are avoided, as that adds color. Save it for op-eds and human interest pieces.

Good reporters do this. Bad ones don't, and by gosh, there really are bad reporters out there! And bad editors. Shoot, what's a person to do?

I say read carefully and develop your own sense of color. Why trust someone else to do it for you?

Questions For Debate:

Can The New York Times continue to portray their paper as a non-biased news source anymore?
Didn’t know that they even try. Their reporting is for the most part so biased that I cannot imaging how they could say
non-biased” with a straight face.

“if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world.

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.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...754c0a9629c8b63

As noted last night by the MRC's Brent Baker, "a Rasmussen Reports poll discovered that, by a margin of 2 to 1, the public recognize a liberal bias over a conservative bias on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, NPR as well as in the New York Times and Washington Post."

Rasmussen's summary of the report, released on Friday, revealed: "Among the print publications in the survey, the New York Times is perceived as being furthest to the left. Forty percent (40%) of Americans believe the Times has a bias in favor of liberals. Just 11% believe it has a conservative bias while 20% believe it reports news without bias."

However, 25% of liberals see a liberal bias at the New York Times while only 17% see a conservative bias. This makes the New York Times the only media outlet that liberals are more likely to see as having a liberal bias than a conservative bias."



Should America's media simply align itself Left - Right - Center and demarcate this somehow? (Blue Stripe - Red stripe - Yellow Stripe on the cover, screen, home page?)


Free speech is just that. They can lean any way they please (and do) IMO but just don’t expect that people won’t notice.

Looks like an apologist for poor journalism. That's a shame, but what passes for journalists today. They are taught that they can change the world, not report on it. They're no longer journalists, but activists. This is the high standard that liberals aspire to, and that's why they don't mind not reading the truth.

Can The New York Times continue to portray their paper as a non-biased news source anymore?

Should America's media simply align itself Left - Right - Center and demarcate this somehow? (Blue Stripe - Red stripe - Yellow Stripe on the cover, screen, home page?)


"Why Do i gotta be Yellow? Why can't I choose my own color?"

"No! no way, cause then we get everyone fighting over a few colors. Everyone wants to be Black."

"No You're gonna be Yellow"

"Well Centrists are supposed to be a mix of the two so how about Purple"


"Cause Purple is covering another term that's why!"
You're going to be Yellow!"


Labeling by color? Really?
Who exactly is so simpleminded they cannot make up their own minds about what they think is right that they have to be protected from opposing thought by color coding?
Are they so weak minded they might be taken in by a smooth talker and somehow be brainwashed into voting for the wrong party? Just how strongly held were their views then anyways?

Has America jumped the shark yet?



Yeah and the faux conservative journalists are somehow better at presenting the truth.

Left/Right what does either know about independent thought? Doesn't matter if its cnn or faux I always get reminded of that little toy monkey that claps the cymbals.

Have we learned nothing? Perhaps historically the NYT had a liberal or at least a Democratic tilt. However, recently it has behaved, as most of the other major media has, to parrot the corporate line. Has everyone forgotten that before the war reporter, Judith Miller, wrote a series of sensational stories about Iraqi WMDs based on accounts of Iraqi exiles who were made available to her by administration contacts. These NYT accounts were then used by the VP and other officials to confirm their claims based on the same sources while Miller and other NYT reporters used the administration officials to confirm the facts in their articles. At the time the country was fairly evenly divided with most "liberals" and progressives vehemently opposed to the invasion. Here is one Mea Culpa written by the NYT Ombudsman and published in May of 2004 that covers part of the activities of the Time's staff that made them complicit in the propaganda campaign that led to this "worst mistake in American foreign policy history" (as Republican Senator Hagel has deemed the Iraq invasion).



I know of no major American Newspaper I would call liberal. Some have more journalistic professionalism than others and I am sure some ideologues confuse following the facts to be liberal bias.

Ya right. Surely the NYT was printing data from the available Intel from all sources and was not “wrong” in doing so. And no doubt their left oriented “base” pounded the crap out of them for it then and later even though to this day no one had hard proof Saddam did not have the WMD in 2002 or that he destroyed a thing on his own.

This Mea Culpa is an apology for letting anything but the liberal or far left view on this issue hit the street.

In recent news NYT is now in trouble about the huge discount given to MoveOn. It seems the Justice Dept is looking at it as an illegal “campaign contribution”. Apparently MO will now pay the full price – just to be safe. May not save them from some quality court time though.


In addition the NTY will retract much of what was said in the Pertaus attack as since many of the Times own reporters said their reports and statements were misquoted in this piece.

No paper is “all” liberal or conservative but surely the preponderance of stories, reports and editorials printed in the NYT lean that way.

Just found this gem on Best Of The Web on WSJ.com.



From the NYT article:



There's some tongue in the cheek BTW.

"Should America's media simply align itself Left - Right - Center and demarcate this somehow? (Blue Stripe - Red stripe - Yellow Stripe on the cover, screen, home page?)" (Sorry, haven't figured out how to Quote things yet)

Answer: God, no. And I'm hoping that question is facetious. If not, then I'll give you my reasoning. If the newspapers were to decide to label themselves as Conservative, Liberal, etc., then all you're going to get is people reading the papers which they think will reinforce their beliefs, kind of like the people who read Ann Coulter's lies---I mean, books---instead of using critical thinking from different sources to form a valid opinion. Sure, you could argue that people do that already, but I still think that it's debatable whether or not certain newspapers are specifically left or right. Are you really going to use the MoveOn example as proof positive that the New York Times is absolutely liberal?

I think all newspapers are probably a mix of both. Al Franken says, in "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them", that journalists might be viewed as more liberal simply because they don't openly condemn gays, probably due to the fact that they know a few gay people and therefore aren't afraid of them. But overall, I think people who try to write with an open mind end up being called liberal simply because of the fact that they are NOT openly condemning of so-called "evils", like abortion and homosexuality. The reason they are not openly condemning? Because they're trying to be UNBIASED.

To sum it up: No, the media should not assign labels to itself. It would be helpful to no one, and would only increase the already huge divide that makes us all unable to work together and compromise.

The NYT's moto use to be and presumably still is, "All the news that's fit to print." How then does one account for situations like this one that careful readers observe more and more.

(See UFPPC reprint of several articles).

Perhaps it is the influence of powerful supporters of the Israel government which amounts to an endorsement of Likud and other right wing Israeli factions that makes the traditional liberal/conservative dichotomy meaningless when issues involving the Middle East are discussed (or not discussed).

American Jews are heavily Democrat, liberal and strongly support Israel. Do you really expect the liberal NYT to attack Israel in any way.

And do we get all the reports from IAEA? Iran says that the IAEA has no issues with Iran – nothing could be further from the truth – although it is not widely reported.

I would hope (but no longer expect) that papers of public record like the NYT and Washington Post would cover all the news as factually as they can and give them the prominence that is justified by their significants. What they do in their editorials can be as biased as they like.

The American Jewish community is split on Middle Eastern issues. However, those who support AIPAC and other organizations that contribute substantial amounts to political campaigns tend to line up behind whatever the current policy of Israeli government and exercise undue influence on American policies and opinion makers including the NYT.



Please be specific and detail some of the issues. Of course Iran has not stopped its enrichment program nor is it require to under the NPT.

And where do you get this info from? Right wing comic books or something? Don't you also believe Saddam's WMD are in Syria or something?

Glad we agree. Papers tend to pander to what they perceive is their “audience” the NYT is perhaps a little more top heavy with liberal ideologues.




Where have you been CR??

There is no dispute on this fact and never has been.

“Since 1968 Jews have voted about 70%-80% Democratic, surging to 87% for Democratic House candidates in 2006.[3] After the 2006 elections there were 13 Jews in the Senate (up from 11) and 30 in the House (up from 24).[4]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews



Could be – but I firmly believe (you can write this down if you like) that Saddam did not destroy them all in 1991. Someday I will be proved right.

For those still wondering about the answer the first debate question, a rather interesting comment about this whole saga in a recent New York Times article should shed some further light. The reporter (not an opinion columnist, mind you) said that "House and Senate Republicans maneuvered some Democrats into voting to condemn an advertisement by MoveOn.org in The New York Times last month that referred to Gen. David H. Petraeus as 'General Betray Us.'"

Now is this objective reporting? It's one thing to have an opinion that that's how it happened, but by no means can that be considered simple objective fact. Aren't journalists taught not to waste space with unnecessary words, and just deliver the facts?

Umm... I hate to tell you, but Jewish People do vote for Democrats, or at least did in the last election.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3325529,00.html

I'm not really sure why you lambast such a statement... wait, yeah I do. YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH (insert Jack Nicholson voice from a Few Good Men)

Can The New York Times continue to portray their paper as a non-biased news source anymore?

I don't see why not. In the media landscape, the NYT doesn't exist in a vaccuum. As a source for news it is superior to many others. that's why I'm a subscriber.

I have no idea why this is suddenly a story. The paper has run attack ads before. There was this one:


($45,000 in 1990 is approximately $65,000 today)

and there was also this one:


note the price, paid for an ad which ran the very the next day.

It appears that Mr. Hoyt caved to public pressure.

Should America's media simply align itself Left - Right - Center and demarcate this somehow? (Blue Stripe - Red stripe - Yellow Stripe on the cover, screen, home page?)

why? everyone already does that, and many believe whatever it is that they want to, anyway.

Exactly and this is why over 60% of Americans detect a liberal bias in the news – because it is clearly there.

What is disgusting is the people who say “faux news” implying that FOX is biased while pretending that there is anything “unbiased” about the NYT -