Proof That New York Times Reporters Live in a Left-Liberal Cocoon

You are what you eat, and if you're a writer, you are what you read.

I've been saying this for a while: The press claims to be nonpartisan and to only be interested in "good stories," no matter which party they might damage.

They can't really make these claims in the age of Twitter. Because their reading list -- the Twitter accounts they follow daily -- is public information.

You'd think these guys would at least try to "make it look good" by adding in a few of the more credible, less strident twitter accounts of right-leaning writers. But no -- no one bothers even to follow University of Tennessee Law School Professor Glenn Reynolds.

On the other hand, many follow the over-the-top hard-left rantings of Jay Rosen of NYU University, a media critic who frequently declares that the media must drop even the pretense of impartiality and embrace a resolutely left-liberal advocacy position, because there is no "balance" possible between Truth and Lies.

Many others follow the leftwing sites of Gawker.

Note that many of these accounts are used for both personal and professional functions.

If they had separate accounts for their personal reading pleasure, and only chose to follow leftwing writers, I would have less of a point. I would still have one, mind you. But I would only be able to prove that they're stridently leftwing as a personal matter, almost to a man.

However, it's the dual use of these accounts for both public and professional functions that makes these alleged reporters' flat refusal to read anything written by right-leaning writers that damns them as professionals:

Do they not want to know about stories gaining traction on the right? Stories overlooked by the mainstream media? Stories broken by the right leaning media, like MZ Hemingway's scoop that we already have an ebola czar, and she is apparently being deliberately sidelined because of her involvement in a very unhelpful controversy?

The answer is, of course: No.

They don't want to know these things.

And yes, that then proves that they view their jobs as ones of partisan advocacy, not straight reportage of newsworthy stories.

They want the stories Gawker finds interesting, or that Steven Colbert thinks is important, or that Jay Rosen thinks should get more play.

The stories that anyone on the right thinks are being overlooked?

Nope. Not interested. Won't even pretend to be interested.*

Thanks to @rdbrewer4.

* Note there's an easy way to just pretend to have a balanced twitter-follow list; one can nominally follow an account, use software to screen it out so it's never seen. For example, one could, if one wanted to at least pretend, create a balanced list of accounts, but then create a smaller list of left-wing writers, and then only check the tweets from that sub-list.

But they don't even bother with that pretense.

They pretty much want you to know that they only find left-wing writers interesting or worthy.

posted by Ace at 03:26 PM

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