What the NYT Public Editor Didn't Say
Denis Boyles offers some disquieting truths behind the 3,000-word, front-page hit New York Times hit piece on John McCain in "What the Public Editor Didn't Say."
Get a grip! The function of the Times is not to print ‘news.’ It’s to provide like-minded readers with a comforting view of the world.
If its purpose is to print “all the news,” then the Times, like all newspapers, is an old-fashioned product made obsolete by advances in technology. Therefore, what constitutes “news” at the Times is not only a moving target, it’s a series of different targets, depending on who the paper wants to take knock off. But that kind of bias surprises no one: The litany of “I-told-you-so” comments that follow every one of these gaffes by the Times is pointless. The Times no longer pretends to offer a chronicle of the day’s events. Its business has changed: It now provides brain cocoa for its dwindling band of readers by offering a daily validation of the assumptions shared by most of them. In doing so, of course, it also alienates more than half its potential market. If that’s a business plan, it’s a bad one (if the spiraling value of NYT stock is any indication — and of course it is). The most recent announcement of newsroom layoffs won’t be the last.
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