As NewsBusters previously reported, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan admitted Sunday that her paper has a liberal bias.
In an interview with the New Republic Tuesday, editor Jill Abramson disagreed saying, "I actually don’t think it does":
MICHAEL KINSLEY, NEW REPUBLIC: Well, Jill, leaving you out of it, would you say someone from Mars coming to read The New York Times for a month would recognize any ideological preference?
JILL ABRAMSON, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, on the editorial and opinion pages they would.
MK: No, no, on the news pages.
JA: Um, I think that they would recognize a sort of cosmopolitan outlook that reflects that, even as we become international, we’re a New York–based news institution. I can see how the intensity of coverage on certain issues may to some people seem to reflect a liberal point of view. But I actually don’t think it does. And I’ve been a very close New York Times reader going back to when I began to read, and I don’t see it as profoundly different now. I think a lot about something: Abe Rosenthal was once asked what he wanted on his headstone, and he said he wanted it just to say, “He kept the paper straight.” And I think about that a lot. You can verify that in news meetings I sometimes say, “This is skewed too far to the left,” or “The mix of stories seems overweeningly appealing to a reader with a certain set of sensibilities and it shouldn’t.”
MK: Well, I’ll say what it looks like to me as a reader. I would say that The New York Times has a sort of Upper-West-Side sensibility, and the politics that go with it, which is fine with me. I also think that has become somewhat more true in the past year and half or so. And you think that’s just wrong.
JA: No, I can’t—it’s your perception, so I can’t say it’s wrong.
MK: Well, sure you can.
JA: OK.
Honestly, you really do have to be from Mars to not know the Times has a liberal bias.
Although the book claimed men are from Mars, so Abramson must therefore be from Venus.
(HT Mediaite)
