End the Charade

Conservatives often claim that the “mainstream media” is filled with biased liberals while the number of conservative journalists can be counted on one hand. This logic also mandates that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and so on, are merely functioning as an extended arm of the Democratic Party and their liberal/progressive agenda. Liberals, on the other hand, seem to ridicule conservatives for holding these views and happily pick up the today’s issue of the NYT to find out what’s going in the world.

Of course, there’s probably a very good reason why liberals appreciate reading the New York times as much as they do: they agree with most of what’s being written on the pages of the NYT. So when Arthur Brisbane wrote his farewell column in the NYT it didn’t come as a shock to conservatives. Here’s what Brisbane wrote:

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

That the New York Times is a cesspit of political progressivism is not really the reason why I believe so many conservatives view the paper with disdain. Rather, the main problem that most people seem to have with the NYT, and other outlets like it, is the length to which they will go in order to deny that they have any political bias. It might surprise Jill Abramson, the executive editor who rode out to combat Brisbane’s claims, to learn that the journalists at the New York Times are humans, and that having preferences is a fairly human phenomenon.

So please, end the charade and stand up for your progressive/liberal culture once and for all. It would increase my respect for you, even though I still won’t agree with most of your political positions.