The liberal New York Times has used the news pages to push its liberal agenda, attack conservatives, and conceal information that is damaging to liberals. They have done this under the fake pretense of being an “objective” outlet, acting like they are neutral umpires when, in fact, they are like referees in professional wrestling that tilt the playing field to their favored politicians and causes.
But the New York Times and its media writer David Carr, who does an otherwise good job covering non-political aspects of the media world, seem to have a problem when a publisher of a newspaper pushes a conservative agenda.
Even more incredibly, The New York Times seems shocked that the conservative publisher would be, unlike them, open about his political beliefs and agenda.
In an article titled, “U-T San Diego Open About Its Pro-Business Motives,” the writer profiles Douglas Manchester, who bought San Diego’s daily newspaper, The U-T San Diego.
The New York Times notes the publisher is “anti-big government, anti-tax and anti-gay marriage,” as if those are bad things. It quotes Manchester saying, “We make no apologies … We are very consistent — pro-conservative, pro-business, pro-military — and we are trying to make a newspaper that gets people excited about this city and its future.”
The New York Times writer is perplexed that, unlike his organization, Manchester is transparent about his conservative biases.
The oddest part? Mr. Manchester and the chief executive, John T. Lynch, who also owns part of the paper, are completely open about their motives.
Carr also cites a sportswriter The U-T fired and leads the reader to believe the sportswriter was fired for writing a critical column about a stadium development project the publisher was pushing even though others have said he may have been let go because he was not on board with The U-T‘s multimedia initiatives. Carr also cites liberal critics who point out The U-T may have done investigative news stories (with the facts being completely accurate) about organizations that may have had interests counter to the publisher’s.
Carr writes that “in San Diego, there’s a strong weekly, The San Diego Reader, and a great news Web site, Voice of San Diego,” but then concludes that The U-T, due to its “brawn and ubiquity, is “the only game in town” and seems determined to “not just influence the conversation, but control it.”
Coming from The New York Times, this is like the pot calling the kettle black since that is exactly what the The New York Times has always sought to do itself. With the advent of new media, mainstream outlets like The New York Times, though, are continuing to lose its relevance.
“Many of us grew up in towns where the daily paper was in bed with civic leaders, but the shared interest was generally expressed on the editorial page,” Carr writes. “Occasionally, appropriate lines of inquiry would be suspiciously ignored in coverage, but the news pages were just that, news.”
The media, in general, has had a liberal bias at the local and national level. In fact, as more information comes to light, Americans are discovering how liberal those who delivered them their news in an “unbiased” manner — like Walter Cronkite — really were.
And The New York Times has traditionally been one of the media’s worst offenders.
As Newsbusters noted, when the previous publisher — the father of the current publisher — of the New York Times was asked as a kid, “If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese solder, which would you like to get shot?,” he answered, “I would want to see the American get shot … it’s the other guy’s country.”
The current publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger, has followed in his father’s footsteps, rejecting an advertisement that was against radical Islam in his paper but publishing an anti-Catholic advertisement this year that read, “It’s Time To Quit The Catholic Church.”
Other liberals, such as Warren Buffet, also buy newspapers. In fact, Buffett, whose crony capitalistic dealings with the Obama administration have led many to wonder about his agenda, continued his spree of buying newspapers by buying a Texas newspaper today. Buffett now owns 88 newspapers.
It is safe to assume that none of those newspapers would do anything that would undermine any of Buffett’s importing holdings. But when a publisher like Buffett is a liberal, The New York Times never cares.