[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Just a quick aside. The meme that the WSJ is a “conservative” paper has been soundly trounced by actual observation and in a peer reviewed and ostensibly sound study. It’s actually been shown to be, if I recall correctly, one of if not the MOST liberal papers there is. Seriously.
Has nothing to do with the point made above, I just wanted to point out that while everyone may believe the WSJ is some kind of right wing schill, it is anything but. [/quote]
You raise an interesting point. I’ve had more than a few long conversations on this very topic.
Unless there has been another, more recent study, I believe you are referring to a (UCLA?) paper from 2005 or so. To the surprise of many, the WSJ was found to be more liberal in its news pages–that is an important distinction–than the New York Times.
Two things about that, though. First, its editorial pages were found to be decidedly conservative. And second, Rupert Murdoch has taken over since then. Some former reporters got together about a year after the Murdoch buy and told the NYT that the paper was coming under rightward pressure: Tilting to the Right at Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal - The New York Times
In all, I’d say that the news pages now lean slightly right, and the editorial pages slightly more so. Which is not at all to say that it is an ideological crackpot rag–I think it’s the second best paper in America, just behind the NYT.[/quote]
Yes, that’s exactly what I was talking about. I found it pretty hard to believe, myself, but the study appeared to be sound. And yeah, the point about the editorials leaning (heavily, I thought) conservative while the articles contained a leftward slant was the specific point that jumped out at me. I actually considered including something about that but only had a few minutes to post on a cranky iPhone.
Makes sense the paper would move back toward the right after Murdoch took over.
You don’t find the Times just nauseatingly slanted to the left? I remember you being more to that side of the fence, but the Times seems to me to be just so damned ideologically blinkered that you can’t trust anything they say. Once they get outside the realm of politically charged material, I agree there is no better paper.
We should probably take this to the Hijack Haven thread if we are going to continue it. It’s veering waaay off topic now.
*Edited for clarity.
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Good call on the hijack point, I’d be happy to continue the conversation elsewhere since this is an interesting topic (especially to me…I just graduated from Columbia University’s Grad School of Journalism and I’ve worked with the editorial staffs of both the NYT and the WSJ over the past couple of years).
Just to answer your question, I do find the NYT opinion pages to be too far to the left. I can’t stand most of their columnists. Dowd and especially Friedman are unbearable. Krugman is a one-note song. I do like both Collins and Douthat–liberal and conservative, respectively. David Brooks can turn one vapid semi-observation into an entire column like no other.
The actual editorials–the ones without authors, that come from the ed. staff as a whole–are somewhat better. I agree with most of their criticisms, both of Obama and of the House Republicans (they’ve been hitting both hard lately).
When I praise the Times I am usually referring almost exclusively to the hard news side, which in my view can’t be matched by any other outlet. The Times is really the last paper willing to put significant amounts of time and money into investigations (even the Wash Post’s deep news team, once home to Woodward and Bernstein, has shriveled). When it comes to straight news, I don’t think the NYT can be beat.
