This post was updated on Dec. 28, 2023.

In the early 1990s, when I was 22 or 23, I was a dedicated reader of The New York Times, so much so one morning when my family’s copy was not delivered, I drove in and around my hometown of Walnut Creek, California, in vain search of one.

I was not naïve enough to believe the Times was The Paper of Record. Yet I believed it was an authoritative news source. My attitude wasn’t misplaced. The paper employed first-rate reporters like Michael Kelly, Dave Anderson, Seymour Hersh, R.W. “Johnny” Apple, Gerald Boyd, Maureen Dowd, and many others.

Even today, the Times strives to be impartial and fair. Hence its famous moniker “All the News That’s Fit to Print” and the unofficial slogan “Without Fear or Favor.” Those are not just advertising slogans. One editor described the publication as a “business wrapped inside a church.”

All the news that’s fit to print?

Thirty years ago, no ex-Times man would have denounced the paper by name for violating its journalistic principles. Yet former Times editor James Bennet did just that in a 16,000-word essay for 1843, a magazine of The Economist company. He accused the paper of being nothing less than illiberal:

The Times’s problem has metastasized from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether. All the empathy and humility in the world will not mean much against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without an invaluable quality that Sulzberger did not emphasize—courage.

… (D)oing the work right today demands a particular kind of courage: not just the devil-may-care courage to choose a profession on the brink of the abyss; not just the bulldog courage to endlessly pick yourself up and embrace the ever-evolving technology; but also, in an era when polarization and social media viciously enforce rigid orthodoxies, the moral and intellectual courage to take the other side seriously and to report truths and ideas that your own side demonizes for fear they will harm its cause.

(That might sound harsh. Yet he could have been tougher. After the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the Times announced it would pay for the out-of-state travel expenses to hire someone to abort their unborn child or -children).

Mr. Bennet is hardly a live wire or hothead. He was a loyal Times reporter and editor for nearly twenty years. (As if his Establishment credentials were not good enough, his brother, Michael, is a Democratic senator from Colorado, while his late father, Douglas J. Bennet, Jr., was an assistant secretary of State in the Carter administration). What infuriated Mr. Bennet were the circumstances behind his forced resignation as editorial page editor in June 2020.

Who’s calling the shots at the Times?

 The short explanation is progressive Times reporters demanded his ouster after the op-ed page published a controversial conservative article at the height of racial- and ideological protests and riots in the country.

The long explanation can be broken down into five parts.

First, the Times published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, that urged President Trump to call up federal troops to deter rioters and looters in cities after Minneapolis’ George Floyd died while in police custody. The article urged President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to bypass local- and state officials too skittish to send in troops of their own.

Second, the junior senator’s op-ed infuriated Times staff, who said the article would endanger “all black people, including Times staff members.”

Third, Mr. Bennet admitted he had not read Senator Cotton’s op-ed. Mr. Bennet explained he told both the op-ed editor, James Dao, and his deputy to alert him if any pieces were “particularly sensitive.” Neither did so.

Fourth, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger asked Mr. Bennet to resign because the article made contestable claims, such as that “police have borne the brunt of the violence” as opposed to protesters and looters.

Fifth, after 1843 published the article, Mr. Sulzberger decried Mr. Bennet’s essay as a “false narrative.”

A firing offense?

 As the Times‘ own Ross Douthat noted, Senator Cotton’s article deserved criticism for questionable assertions such as calling up federal troops regardless of whether state governors asked them to be called up; it did not deserve Mr. Bennet’s scalp. His forced resignation was the latest example of the Times’ embrace of left-liberal progressivism.

.The Times uses terms such as “patriarchy,” “racism,” and “queer” far more in 2018 than in 1970.

The Times, as well as CNN and The Washington Post, were far more likely to use two-word phrases associated with Democratic lawmakers from 2009 to 2022 than with Republicans. The articles were graded in twelve categories. The discrepancy was especially pronounced in language related to race, school shootings, and the environment.

The Times is hardly the only publication that has moved to the right or left in the last seven or eight years. FOX News host Sean Hannity walked on stage with President Trump at a campaign rally in November 2018. When then-CBS News Anchor Dan Rather was the star fundraiser for the Texas Democratic party in 2001, he apologized. Former Fox News Anchor Tucker Carlson used to be a center-right reporter for The Weekly Standard, the old redoubt of neo-conservatives (and for which I freelanced for). Now he’s the unofficial spokesman for nationalist populism despite his elite background.

The media’s shift is the result of the Internet. Instead of news that challenges readers, newspapers and magazines seek to comfort them and confirm their opinions “(News you choose”).

To regain its credibility, the Times, it seems to me, can take one of two steps.

Option #1: Recommit to its old creed.

The industry’s economics have changed. They’re no longer advertising-based. They’re subscription based. To practice traditional news journalism, reporters must risk annoying, aggravating, and discomfiting their subscribers.

This is difficult. Mr. Bennet implies the Times courted (progressive) readers after financial struggles because of the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008. Yet the Wall Street Journal also faced a rebellion from its reporters in the Spring of 2020 and its editors stared them down. Mr. Bennet recommends the Times follow this path, and he is right to do so.

Liberalism, which is to say the idea that one should pursue truth before justice, is a surer and more popular foundation for news outlets than progressivism, which believes it possesses the truth already. Can it be any coincidence that the media and universities have come under increasing attack as they become more ideological?

Option #2: Practice opinion journalism honestly.

Mr. Bennet does not consider this option. He should have. The Times could adopt new mottos. Instead of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” and “Without Fear or Favor,” the paper could declare it publishes “All the Progressive News That’s Fit to Print” and “With Favor But Without Fear.”

Times reporters could be upfront about their progressive bias, much like journalists for magazines such as The New Republic, The Nation, and National Review do.

This path has much to recommend it. It would be intellectually honest. It would be interesting. And it would attract progressives who doubt the paper’s ideological bona fides.

Yet it’s hard to see the Times adopting either strategy to close its credibility gap. The paper’s current path, for all the criticism directed its way, is sustainable. The Times gets the best of both worlds. By extolling neutrality, independence, and dispassion, the publication caters to the broad public and its longtime mission. By practicing partisanship and ideological clarity, the Times caters to its progressive readers and reporters. It’s a win-win!

Maybe vigorous new management will take over and return the Times to its pre-Internet glory days. Don’t hold your breath, though. In a polarized age, credibility takes a backseat to ideology.

What does everybody else think?

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