Well, this is maddening: outgoing New York Times public editor (ombudsman) Arthur S. Brisbane wrote Sunday, in his final column for the paper, that he believes that the venerable organization treats marriage equality more like a cause than a news subject:
“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.
As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage [sic] seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.”
I’m not sure how to interpret Brisbane’s remarks. Just what exactly does he mean by “overloved?” The New York Times reports frequently and objectively on the struggle for LGBT civil rights not because it “overloves” that topic, but because it’s a major, compelling, ongoing story playing out in states, communities, families, religious congregations, legislative chambers, courtrooms, and individual people’s lives all across the country. The NYT would be derelict in its journalistic duty not to cover issues related to LGBT rights, including marriage equality, extensively. Sure, the paper’s editorial board has published columns supporting marriage equality, but as the Advocate points out, other major national newspapers like the Los Angeles Times have done so as well. The New York Times, like every other major newspaper, has strict ethical guidelines in place to ensure that its editorial and news departments are kept totally separate. Furthermore, as I said above, this is a civil rights issue. Quite simply, there are not two morally equivalent, equally legitimate “sides” to civil rights issues, including the freedom to marry. And finally, the editorial page of the New York Times has long served as a call to our national conscience where civil rights are concerned. It supported the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, and its post-Brown coverage served as a model for newspapers across the country. The Chicago Defender, a Chicago-based weekly newspaper founded by and for African Americans, said of the NYT:
“No driving force has been more consistent and insistent in beating the tom-tom for the rights of this black minority than the New York Times.“
If this were 1954 and not 2012, would Brisbane be characterizing the New York Times‘ progressive editorial advocacy for and coverage of the struggle for African American civil rights as “overloved and undermanaged?” I shudder to think.
Condemning bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination, as the editorial page of the New York Times does on the issue of marriage equality, is never wrong. Reinforcing a false equivalency between oppressed minority groups working for their constitutionally-guaranteed civil rights and the people seeking to perpetuate oppression by denying them those rights and stripping them away — as many media outlets do — is very wrong. Brisbane would be wise to learn the difference.
His idea of “balance” is probably to have every article contain mandatory comments from NOM, FRC, AFA or other anti-gay groups. As can be seen all too often in many bad articles.
Sounds to me like just another bigot having a temper tantrum because his “side” is not being favored.
Apparently, Brisbane’s idea of “fair and balanced” would be Fox News.
Marriage equality is a fact in NY, not a cause.
The NYTimes did not come out for support of gay marriage in an editorial until just two or three years ago. They did that editorial for love on February 13th of that year. They reserved the 14th for other purposes. Perhaps it’s that sort of sly attitude, not quite visible, perhaps not quite even knowingly done, that’s being referred to. For truly, if one wanted to support our long quest for loving marriage with some gusto and glee, then Valentine’s Day should have been used, and not the 13th, which is an unlucky number, to some. Perhaps this is what the Ombudsman means — the support seems so real and genuine, but there’s something a day or two off.
He wants the NYT to return to the era of Abe Rosenthal who had a reign of terror over NYT employees that came to an end when his favorite, the deeply closted Jeff Achmlz , collapsed from a grand mal seizure on the copyroom floor. Schmalz had AIDS and died a year later.
In Mr. Brisbane’s defense, his commentary was on the way social media is changing the NY Times. He noted that part of that transformation is “a kind of Times Nation has formed around the paper’s political-cultural worldview, an audience unbound by geography (as distinct from the old days of print) and one that self-selects in digital space.” With the digital advancements, it’s easier to find people who think just like us and believe the same things we do.
Mr. Brisbane then said that the success of that transformation carries risks and continued, “A just-released Pew Research Center survey found that The Times’s “believability rating” had dropped drastically among Republicans compared with Democrats, and was an almost-perfect mirror opposite of Fox News’s rating. Can that be good?”
His point being that it’s really not a good thing when a news organization is seen as a partisan shill rather than an objective provider of the news. The power of such a venerable news organization as the NY Times rests upon its public perception. When the public loses faith in its objectivity, then the paper loses its power as a source of well-researched and well-written news information.
While Mr. Brisbane cited same-sex marriage as one issue, he also cited the Occupy movement as another example and has written about bias in political reporting as well. To see this article as an attack on same-sex marriage is to miss the whole point of the article. What good will articles on marriage equality and op/ed pieces supporting equal rights be if the average person sees them as nothing more than left wing propaganda?
This is the man who posted the question on his NYT blog “should reporters be correcting misstatements of fact in their reports?” and was amazed at the blow-back. It was obvious from his follow-up that he didn’t get it.
So I should worry about his sour grapes now that he’s leaving?
In a word the man has “Integrity”. As soon as the NYT runs out of assets to sell (last sale their remaining interest in MLB team) they won’t be around to mold the brain dead who buy into their bologna.
ranchov04:
And what paper do you read? We’d love to know.