New York Times Editor: Left-Wing Slant Reflects Readership

CNN: So let’s dive right in. The loudest criticism that we often hear about “The New York Times” — I don’t know if it’s the most frequent but it’s certainly the loudest, is that it has a liberal bias. Does it?

MARGARET SULLIVAN, PUBLIC EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, some of my predecessors have taken that head-on. In fact, Daniel Okrent, the first public editor, once wrote a column — and I think the headline said something like “Is ‘The Times’ a Liberal Newspaper?”

And his answer in the lead was, of course it is. And he went on from there. And it got quite a bit of response.

I mean, that is obviously something people feel about The Times, and I think maybe the best way to think about it is that The Times reflects its readership, its community. It’s an urban paper; it’s a New York City paper. I mean that’s a reasonable criticism, I think.

CNN: So it is a yes?

SULLIVAN: It’s a modified “yes,” with a lot of nuance in it.