"In Praise of Daniel Okrent"


An unexpected pat on the back for the outgoing New York Times editor.
Jay Rosen has an unusual view on Daniel Okrent, one I haven't seen in either the major papers or from very many journalists.

"And they could not afford to ignore Okrent because he had successfully tapped his only source of authority. Everything journalists at the Times do they allegedly due in the name of the Times reader. But that is an abstraction, and all too many journalists like it that way. The Reader as a distant god to be served is a way of not dealing with the messy responses of actual readers-- sometimes called "real people" by newsroom inhabitants."

I don't object to advocacy journalism. But I do object to advocacy journalism passing itself off as fair and impartial. Yes, the New York Times is a "liberal" paper. So is the Washington Post , the San Francisco Chronicle , the Chicago Tribune , and the Arizona Republic . That doesn't stop me from reading their websites. I just wish they would be honest about their bias upfront.

I know to some liberals, media bias doesn't matter. Maybe it is because it matches their own and they just think it is mainstream opinion.

Ann Coulter , Rush Limbaugh, and yes even David Horowitz are at least honest in their advocacy. Just because they are conservative, that doesn't automatically make them wrong. Certainly not as much as some of their liberal critics claim. It also doesn't make them automatically right.

Anyway, it was nice to see a major paper admitting it's bias, and it is even nicer to see people recognizing what a big step that was.

Hat tip to Evan Coyne Maloney at Brain Terminal.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - May 13, 2005 at 11:54 PM  Tag


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