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It's been a fashionable myth on the right that the New York Times' collapsing stock price and financial troubles stem from the paper's "liberalism," for which there is precious little evidence. A possibility not considered is that, by bending over backwards to accommodate the right, it has sacrificed its credibility, annoyed its largely liberal audience, and insulted the intelligence of its overwhelmingly liberal home town. The Times' "solution" for its troubles, similar to Deborah Howell's prescription for the Washington Post, is to further toss its reputation in the crapper by hiring such discredited nincompoops as William Kristol to "balance" the supposed liberalism (!) of Tom Friedman et al.
While in ordinary times, there might be some argument in favor of a politically balanced op-ed page, in the Bush era each and every policy, whether military, scientific, social, or economic, is demonstrably misguided and has proven predictably disastrous, and worse, was sold to the public by intentionally misleading means. These policies, and the tactics that sold them, deserve no advocates in a responsible media, and yet here they are, wasting airtime and page space everywhere one cares to look.
The presence of unreconstructed corporatist neocons like Friedman, or a catty, deranged gossip columnist like Maureen Dowd passing themselves off as "liberals" in the New York Times is immeasurably more damaging to public discourse, and democracy itself, than that of a clumsy, obvious righty martinet like William Kristol, because it moves the range of dialogue further and further to the right, even as it drowns out more sensible, reality-based viewpoints.
One wonders what would happen if the New York Times were to toss these overpaid, credibility-destroying gasbags out the door, using only their own archives as evidence of misconduct, and spent the paper's dwindling resources more wisely.
I suppose we'll never know.
