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Times Watch for
December 8, 2003
Oh, Mr. Okrent?
The Times new public editor, Daniel Okrent, introduces himself to Times readers in his debut column for the Sunday Week in Review section. After reading it, Times Watch joins blogger Andrew Sullivan and others in extending a genuine (if slightly guarded) welcome.
Okrent puts his political leanings on the line, describing himself as a moderate Democrat: "By upbringing and habit, I'm a registered Democrat, but notably to the right of my fellow Democrats on Manhattan's Upper West Side. When you turn to the paper's designated opinion pages tomorrow, draw a line from The Times's editorials on the left side to William Safire's column over on the right: you could place me just about at the halfway point. But on some issues I veer from the noncommittal middle. I'm an absolutist on free trade and free speech, and a supporter of gay rights and abortion rights who thinks that the late Cardinal John O'Connor was a great man. I believe it's unbecoming for the well off to whine about high taxes, and inconsistent for those who advocate human rights to oppose all American military action. I'd rather spend my weekends exterminating rats in the tunnels below Penn Station than read a book by either Bill O'Reilly or Michael Moore."
Times Watch is heartened by Okrent's candid admission of his political leanings--it would have been too much to expect the liberal Times to appoint a genuine centrist to such a position (though Times Watch doesn't see O'Reilly as the obnoxious right-wing equivalent of Michael Moore). The fact Okrent owns up to his potential blind spots is a sign he realizes he may have to compensate for them when evaluating the paper's coverage on certain issues.
Okrent also gave out encouraging signs in an interview last month with Sridhar Pappu of the New York Observer, showing he had little tolerance for the Times recent history of front-page editorializing: "[Okrent] loathed the paper’s hog-wild treatment of the Augusta National Golf Course, whose refusal to allow women into its membership ranks last year came under a harsh light in The Times--made harsher by Mr. Boyd’s decision to kill off sports columns by Dave Anderson and Harvey Araton that disagreed with the paper’s own editorial-page stance on the issue. Mr. Okrent deemed the campaign a 'humiliation for the newspaper, even before the spiked columns. Just the relentlessness of it--O.K., enough."
The National Debate is hopeful. "Okrent has already begun to reflect a new attitude at The Times by demonstrating a responsiveness to reader's concerns heretofore unknown at 'the paper of record'. For loyal, long-time readers of The Times, the change is as welcome as it was overdue."
One potential difficulty--Okrent's column will appear just once every two weeks (though he says he's write "more often if I think it's necessary"). That's a long lag-time in a deadline-driven profession like journalism. By contrast, Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler writes every week.
For Okrent's intro in full (including Okrent's contact info), click here.
• Augusta National | Golf | Daniel Okrent | Ombudsman
Gingrich as Anti-Medicare Grinch
The Sunday Magazine "Question" section this week features William Novelli, chief executive of AARP, being grilled by Deborah Solomon. She grills Novelli for consorting with known conservative Newt Gingrich: "You wrote the introduction to a book by Newt Gingrich, 'Saving Lives and Saving Money."
Novelli replies: "In my mind he is an innovative thinker. He's got ideas about how to save costs and improve the quality of life."
Solomon insists: "But hasn't he said that he wants to destroy Medicare?"
Novelli responds: "He purportedly said in '95, 'Let Medicare wither on the vine.' But we at AARP have no intention of letting Medicare wither."
Alleging Gingrich is out to destroy Medicare makes Solomon sound like liberal House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who lashed out at AARP's endorsement of the Republican prescription drug plan.
• AARP | Drugs | Newt Gingrich | Medicare
Monday's front-page story by Janny Scott is the latest in the Times series on the Democratic presidential contenders, and it gets off on the wrong foot--or rather, the left foot--right away. The headline reads: "A Centrist, Lieberman Fights For Votes in an Extremist Era."
Scott later calls him "a mild-mannered centrist," while stating "Mr. Lieberman is not easy to pigeonhole. He is progressive on social issues, moderate on fiscal issues, conservative on national security." What's missing from that sentence? The word liberal, which Scott consistently avoids pinning on Lieberman.
Instead, Lieberman is a moderate and centrist: "Pegged a moderate, he prefers 'independent minded.' Abortion rights groups and environmental groups rate him highly. He was active in the civil rights movement and an early opponent of discrimination against gays. In 2002, National Journal rated him one of the most 'socially liberal' senators. But he is also pro-business, pro-growth, pro-trade and pro-defense--all hallmarks of the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist group that nurtured the presidential ambitions of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and now Mr. Lieberman. He has supported limited experiments with school vouchers. He has voted for tax cuts on capital gains and the V-chip, which lets parents block television programs."
Later in the mostly laudatory story, Scott talks of "The roots of Mr. Lieberman's moderation" and of "Mr. Lieberman's moderate inclinations." Though Lieberman is certainly no Dennis Kucinich, he's not the centrist the Times wants people to think (the Times also painted him as a "centrist" in October).
As MRC noted back in 2000 when Lieberman ran as Al Gore's running mate: "He may not be a left-wing liberal, but he’s certainly no centrist either. Just look at the ratings. He’s earned a lifetime 'Liberal Quotient' of 77 from the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) for his votes since 1989....In 1999, Lieberman was assessed 95 percent from ADA while the American Conservative Union (ACU) gave him a zero for that year, making him one of the Senate’s eight most liberal Senators in 1999. His lifetime ACU rating: 19 percent."
For more of the Times long look at Lieberman, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Labeling Bias | Sen. Joseph Lieberman
Something about Italy's pro-war, pro-Bush prime minister gets under Frank Bruni's skin. Last year Bruni wrote a
respectful
book on the candidacy of George W. Bush. But when it comes to the Bush-supporting Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, Bruni
writes like a man with a grudge.
In the "Week Ahead" section of the Sunday Week in Review, Bruni puts Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in his place. Here's Bruni in full: "After more than five months of testing his fellow European leaders' tempers and stoking their outrage, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, heads to Brussels late this week for a summit at which lingering disagreements over a first European constitution are supposed to be resolved. It is the climactic moment of his stormy turn in the presidency of the European Union, which rotates every six months. It also puts a delicate task in the hands of a man better known for his brashness."
• Silvio Berlusconi | Frank Bruni | Italy
The headline to a Sunday Week in Review story by Edward Wong, "Rebels Without a Cause or a Web Site," sounds like a profile of some low-tech protest group operating off the technological grid. But the actual story is, to put it mildly, rather less benign. It's about Iraqi guerilla fighters (including supporters of Saddam Hussein) who are attacking U.S. troops.
For the rest of Wong's story on the Iraqi fighters, click here.
• Headlines | Iraq War | Edward Wong
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org