The New York Times: a Selective Neutrality
by Robert Miraldi

Communism, Socialism and all forms of Cooperation are dead!

Capitalism, competition and the free marketplace rule!

So it has been declared. And how do I know these simple but sweeping truths?  The most reliable newspaper in the whole world has told me so.  The New York Times recently made the declaration in an advertising supplement.    Well, the Times sort of declared it.

As it does occasionally, the Times put out a special mid-September supplement, telling readers how wonderful the newspaper is (Don’t get me wrong, it is the best we have, the most important regular reliable source of information about the world and public policy).  The supplement boasted about the paper’s 94 Pulitzer Prizes and its far-flung staff of reporters.

It bragged on its columnists -- the learned Thomas Friedman, the gnatty Maureen Dowd, the social justice minded Bob Herbert and the earnest David Brooks.  Then it got to its business reporting.  And it declared in large letters that the Times “loves capitalism, hates corruption” and “writes accordingly.”

On the next page was a photograph of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Gretchen Morgenson who writes a column about the infirmities of business.  And, the Times declared, her columns help right the ship when it strays off course.  All business and capitalism need are a little watching, a little prodding, a little nudging and they will behave just wonderfully.

So I am thinking of Enron, and how the captains of industry duped shareholders and employees to the tune $100 billion, plundering the life savings and retirement accounts of hundreds of innocents.  And I am thinking of the panoply of scandals that have beset capitalism in recent years – from Martha Stewart to WorldCom  to Adelphia.  Elliot Spitzer is about to be elected governor of New York; he has made his claims to fame by finding the corporate wrongdoers and forcing them to pony up with fines or make major changes in how they operate.

But when a system so regularly shows signs of major corruption and corporate rip-offs that, frankly, have been occurring all the time for over a hundred years, maybe that system is fatally flawed.  Maybe competition breeds the worst in us, not the best, and maybe it is at least worth discussing whether some form of communalism or cooperation can still be forged.

I know this makes me a dinosaur (gee, I am only 56!).  And I know that mostly I am a journalist or a professor of journalism. So maybe I should stick to what I know best: journalism and media studies. Ok, then, here it is:

Journalism is supposed to be this forum where citizens can go to become enlightened.  Of course, entertainment happens on the way to the forum and that is not a bad thing. But the most important function of journalism is still its ability to provide a place where important ideas can be debated, where the public can go to see public policy issues fleshed out.

Smaller issues, so to speak, are constantly in motion: Did the Bushies know that WMD were not in Iraq and send troops there anyway?  Is the war in Iraq devolving into a civil war and is it time to get out?  Will we really protect ourselves best by allowing interrogators the ability to torture suspects? 

I need the New York Times to pit the opposing sides on all those questions against each other, so I can see Rumsfeld square off against his critics.  I want the President to tell McCain why he is wrong on torture policies. And after I hear them argue, I will decide how I feel.  The Times, the bastion of objectivity and neutrality, the newspaper that prides itself on not taking sides, is my neutral arbiter of things big and small.

Or so I thought until I read that advertisement.

The press is never a great forum for debating major questions of social science, such as whether a pure uncoerced communism would be a better way to organize ourselves than capitalism.  And that is certainly a big debate and a big question.  If the Times does not want to tackle that question, I could understand.  But when it declares that capitalism is supreme, it has clearly taken a side in a debate that should not be so clearly over.

I don’t mean to be so shocked. I should not be so naïve.  News is a business, after all.  But the Times is usually so careful on such questions.  If America invades another country, the Times’ neutrality would never allow a headline that declares “We invade…” In fact, objectivity is such a fetish with the Times that its public editor recently wrote two entire columns on the question.

The newspaper’s public editor Byron Calame described how the newspaper is trying to find ways to signal readers that columnists like Friedman and Dowd have more freedom to voice opinion than columnists who just “report” on matters, like Clyde Haberman on the metropolitan pages.  There are facts, observations, and opinion. And the Times wants readers to know that it knows the difference. It is trying such silly things as using certain graphic tricks to signal the sophisticated reader when opinion is dominant over facts.

Calame recently chastised reporter Linda Greenhouse, who has covered the U.S. Supreme Court for many years, because she had the audacity to make a speech at Harvard and express her opinion about the power of the religious right. Greenhouse’s defense was that such a statement would be allowed in her reporting of news.  She must be kidding!  It is more like something I would expect to here from the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way. And Calame spanked her. As he should.  The newspaper takes it responsibilities seriously. We need a reliable channel of information -- and the Times is it.

Which brings me back to the original point: Given its strict standards on objectivity, how can the Times just wily nily declare that capitalism is supreme? Could my friends and colleagues and students who see corporate conspiracies all over be correct: does the demon of corporate ownership rule the beast with an iron fist?

Instead of hailing its love for capitalism, the Times should have simply stated that it “hates corruption” whether from autocratic dictators or money-grubbing capitalists.  Fox News likes to brag, “We report, you decide,” which, of course it does not.  It decides for us. But I expect better from the Times.  I expect that on the question of capitalism’s honor or dishonor, the newspaper will remain neutral.

So, I say to all those conservatives who have railed for years against what they see as liberal media

bias. Do not worry.  Your fiefdom is safe.  The media might bark about the war, and gloat over Foley and the Pages, and tell inside stories of Bush Administration discord, but do not fear: capitalism is safe.  The private accumulation of wealth is still the end-all and be-all of American life.   And the Times is on board and objectivity is overboard.  Bring on those Saks Fifth Avenue advertisements.

(Rob Miraldi teaches journalism at SUNY New Paltz.  His first book in 1991, Muckraking and Objectivity [Greenwood Press], was about journalism’s long march down the path of neutrality.)

(Rob Miraldi has taught journalism at SUNY New Paltz for 25 years.)

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