Due to the truly groundbreaking article about outsourcing torture, it might be easy to miss a piece in this week's New Yorker, "Fear and Favor" about how everyone, left and right, is mad at the mainstream media (only in print, no online version). In it, New York Times' executive editor Bill Keller recounts a meeting he had during the 2004 campaign with Karl Rove, during which he asks Rove what he thinks of the Time's election coverage. Here's the money quote:
"Your initial reaction, especially in someone as ferocious as Rove, is to drop into a defensive crouch," he [Keller] said. "But I try not to do that. I listened, with a fair measure of skepticism, because a lot of it is calculated. But there was some genuineness to it. He went through a long list of complaints. I do think he was channeling a feeling about the New York Times that's out there in the land, that we should be concerned about, or at least be aware of. [emphasis mine]"
Below the fold, let's count the ways this is a classic example of the demise of effective and objective journalism, shall we?
- What's an executive editor doing on the road, gathering information? Isn't that the job of the reporter? Isn't an editor's job of weighing the information brought to him by reporters tainted when he's playing their role as well?
- Why is an executive editor listening earnestly to a man who, among other atrocities, had no problem lying to the voters of South Carolina about John McCain's black love child? A person who will do that has lost their credibility forever. Just because he's the President's advisor doesn't mean he's won back his integrity.
- Worst of all: how on earth could an executive editor of the "paper of record" let himself fall into the classic trap of false balance? Let's see if I've got this right. Partisan Monster, who, underneath his gentle Porky Pig exterior, will stop at nothing to promote Bush and his agenda, says the Times is biased against Bush. So Editor whose job it is to craft the tenor of the paper, obsessed with balance, starts feeling concern over a "liberal" perception of his paper, a perception no doubt cultivated for decades by Partisan Monster and his legions of corporate propagandists.
What think you? Am I making too much of this?