In his 15 months as public editor, Hoyt has raised the question
of liberal bias several times, only to pass over or dismiss it:
• September 23, 2007: Hoyt acknowledged that the Times’s
discounting of ad space for a scurrilous MoveOn.org ad “gave fresh
ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a
bastion of the ‘liberal media,’” but offered no argument as to why
this “bashing” is unjustified.
• February 24, 2008: After the Times published unsubstantiated
rumors that John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, Hoyt opined
that McCain “may benefit, at least in the short run, from a
conservative backlash against the ‘liberal’ New York Times,” but
again offered no opinion on whether that backlash would be
warranted.
• April 13, 2008: “Though readers like [Ellen] Shire [who had
written a letter criticizing columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank
Rich]—and I hear from many of them—may suspect that the views on
the opinion pages infect the news coverage, I see no evidence of
that.”
Back in 2004, Hoyt predecessor Daniel Okrent raised the question
of whether the Times is a liberal newspaper and answered, “Of
course it is.” Maybe Okrent was wrong and Hoyt is right, but the
latter has produced a lot less substantiation for his opinion than
the Enquirer does for its stories.
James Taranto, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s
editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for
OpinionJournal.com.
ruth| 4.13.10 @ 5:33AM
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