The confession is cynical and mordantly amusing. The Times really thinks its “transparency” will support the myth that the paper isn’t a partisan spin and propaganda organ for the Democratic Party. Well, it might be right. The Times is part of a long-running effort to make Americans stupid.
Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston and a frequent contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy, complained to the Times after he was described twice as a “conservative law professor” earlier this yera. He didn’t object to the conservative description, which is accurate, but that in the Times, a conservative expert or analyst is labelled as such but those quoted from the Left are just “professors.”
Blackman reviewed a New York Times database and found that the Times would routinely brand a conservative but rarely label a progressive, thus representing conservatives as “the other” while left-biased analysts and experts were just good old reliable, trustworthy authorities.
Or, as the freaks chant in “Freaks”: “One of us, one of us! We accept them, one of us!”
Patrick Healy, the Times’s assistant managing editor for trust and standards, acknowledged that Blackman had a valid point. “It can come off like The Times treats liberals as normal and conservatives as unique and worthy of labeling,” Healy told Blackman.
Oh, it “can come off” that way, can it? How big of Healy to concede that. It can come off that way because that’s how the Times reporters, pundits and editors think, how its readers think, and what the paper wants as many members of the public to think as well. All the better to elect those Democrats! [Here is another example of Healy’s weaseldom. Also here, in Item #7]
Healy said the Times needed to be more “discerning” about its labels going forward. Right. Its current practice helps observant readers like Blackman realize just how biased and manipulative the New York Times is. Can’t have that! Healy’s sort-of apology is a perfect Level 10 sinister and unethical apology on the EA Apology Scale:
10. An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.
It’s not a laughing matter.
I wonder what the average or mean age of the NYT writers is. Must be below thirty. I think most newspapers let all the adults go and only spend enough money to hire kids. I bet the editors are even in their thirties and live and Park Slope.