Another Comment on the NYT's Admission

The most interesting thing about the NYT's rather public admission of what we all already knew (as Joe Gandleman noted, "DUH!"), it is the very willingness to make the admission. The mainstream press (by that I mean the broadcast networks, NPR, CNN, WaPo, the NYT, the LAT, and the major news weeklies) see themselves as just that, "mainstream". They present themselves, and seem to think of themselves as the moderate, "normal" media, and then there is that obviously partisan, right-wing media (i.e., Fox News, the WSJ, WaTi and most talk radio). In short: the press that favors the right is "partisan" or "not mainstream" (and therefore inferior) while The Mainstream Press was to be seen as the real journalists (and centrist, moderates, and all of that). I have always found that position to be disingenuous, to say the least (and, largely, based on self-delusion). It certainly is false--both in terms of the categorization and the degree to which one side or the other provides acceptable reportage.

As such, it is healthy for elements of The Mainstream Press to simply come clean and view themselves realistically.