In an interview with the student newspaper at Harvard, Daniel Okrent, former public editor of the New York Times, said the editorial board at the NYT suffered from a serious lack of ideological diversity. When I was at the Times - my term there ended four years ago - everybody on the editorial board was a Democrat. I asked Gail Collins, who was then the editorial page editor, “Why don’t you have a greater ideological variety and philosophical variety so you can have richer debate on the page?” And she said, “If I had a couple of conservatives on this page, they’d be unhappy all the time. They’d either have to write something that wasn’t their view, because we decide our view consensually, or they’d never get to write. So, what’s the point?” Now, Gail knows a lot better than I the dynamics of coming to an editorial position, but it would seem to me that, if for no other reason than to challenge the conventional thinking that may - and I stress the may - dominate the conversation on the editorial board, it’d be nice to have somebody else there who might say, “Well, here’s another point of view.”
...more...
When I was at the paper I criticized it pretty strongly for not having ideological diversity or religious diversity on the staff. The same reason we would want racial diversity, to provide different perspectives on the world, would suggest that we want the same thing religiously and ideologically and philosophically. And I was very roundly criticized by some people on the left about that, people who thought it was an outrage that I was suggesting that the Times hire more conservatives. Why is that an outrage? Why is it an outrage to get a more varied view of the world?...
No doubt the same holds true at 95% of the newspapers across the country. And the Democrats who run these newspapers don't care if they routinely offend nearly half their subscriber base.
.
.
.
9 comments:
"No doubt the same holds true at 95% of the newspapers across the country. And the Democrats who run these newspapers don't care if they routinely offend nearly half their subscriber base."
Proof, please. I've worked at a dozen newspapers in the western half of the country, large and small. They all had Republicans on the editorial boards, including, at times, myself. Different publishers exercised varying levels of control, but all read the edits and had the final say on what was published. Not one of them was a Democrat.
Further, I'm decidedly unsurprised that a paper in one of the most Democrat-dominant cities in the country has a Democratic editorial board and editorial policy.
I'd really like an answer to this: Are you equally outraged that there's no liberal diversity in the editorials at the Daily Oklahoman?
Great find!
But in calling out shades of "grey", or at least red, the Times Board appears to be fully laden with the kind of democrats, not of the blue dog, but of the Stalinist variety.
9:20.. name the papers and the publishers that you claim you worked for. All 12 of them. List the dates so your claims can be researched.
Oh... it is not so much the liberal editorials that upsets people with a brain, it is when the liberal policies taint and control the news content, especially when the lying POS's are claiming to be unbiased professional journalists.
Big surprise, huh? People who work in newsrooms see this same blanket bias their entire careers. It's rampant but now is being exposed.
Why managing editors and executive editors can't see the obvious bias in their reporter's stories is beyond unbelievable. How narrow-minded and shallow can they be?
Why managing editors and executive editors can't see the obvious bias in their reporter's stories is beyond unbelievable.
They see it alright. It is what they require.
Anon 1109:
Some people really get testy when their fantasies are challenged.
I assure you my resume is exactly as stated, although I am disinclined to publish it on a comment board.
MIT did a detailed study on newspaper endorsements from 1940-2002, finding that papers were about 10 percent more likely to endorse a Democrat than a Republican. Slight advantage to D's, but not 95 percent or anywhere near it.
A more telling and worrisome finding was that papers endorsed the incumbent 90 percent of the time, be they R or D.
Plus, I notice you didn't answer my question: Are you equally outraged that there's no liberal diversity in the editorials at the Daily Oklahoman?
I know nothing about any papers in Oklahoma... so what.
I do know that you made a statement that you worked for a dozen papers yet refuse to name them. You also claim to be or have been a Republican... bright red Bull Shit flag on the field for that one.
I think you are nothing more than a typical liberal lying troll trying to defend the indefensible. Newspapers and the main stream media are overwhelmingly liberals parading as unbiased journalists.
You can believe whatever you want to believe. You obviously will anyway, regardless of what the available facts may indicate.
I spend five days a week collecting facts and putting them in newspaper stories. Sometimes, those facts bolster Republican positions and sometimes they support Democratic positions.
I find it noteworthy that you seem to think one can't be a journalist or a Republican without buying into your paranoid persecution complex.
Get help.
Post a Comment