Ace, you don't understand...It's the way they surround a story.

At least now we know what they are surrounding it with.

The siren is good, but for news this big, shouldn't you be pulling out all the stops? Tawny Kitaen on the Jaguar, Gene Frenkle, Kim Richards, etc?

It took a while for this to sink in.

By God, we've won! They've admitted bias! That's all we've ever really asked of them...to admit that the objectivity wasn't real, that it was just for marketing..and they just did it!

Yay!

Um, now what do we do?

This was my favorite part of your excerpt of Ms. Seelye's report:

As examples, the report cited limiting anonymous sources, reducing factual errors...etc.

Um, yeah. It's probably a good idea to limit the number of smears and lies uttered by people who don't want to be called on their bullshit (and yes, I know not all anonymous sources are peddling lies, but it's an amazing coincidence how often these sources are used to hurt Republicans). As for the second example, I think it's probably a fantastic idea for the "Paper of Record" to avoid, you know, making shit up.

Look, out here in Kalifornia, (KSSR, old style) we have counties with more Leftists than Massachusets.

It seems a "clearer distinction between news and opinion" might dangerously swell the welfare rolls, but then it could save a lot of trees. More for me.

I thought that if you were holding the rope at a tug-of-war you had already chosen sides.

Funny, I just finished an article on Pravda yesterday.

They will rue the day they took down Gannon.

Whither Gannon? (dabs at corner of eye)

"No, of course I'm not crying over the loss of The Gannon!!"

A few years ago Yale did a study which found that incompetent people don't know that they are incompetent. Well, kudos to the liberally biased folks at the Times for their sense of self-discovery and awareness!

There's a word here I just can't get out of my head; Disinformation. "The surest way to lie is to look them right in the face and tell the exact truth"

Let's just follow the development of this with an attentive and steely eye.

Remember, even Paranoids have real enemies.

Alterman will ignore this for 4 days before he rants.

But it will be worth the wait.

Heh. Well, color me skeptical, but I'll believe THEY believe they're biased when the folks at the Times get off their fat liberal rumps and actually MAKE THE CHANGES this article is advocating. And I don't just mean making changes to their "choice of language," but wholly changing their choice of meaning.

Do you really think that, IF the Times starts hiring more diverse reporters that they'll be CALLED "reporters?" My tail. They'll be labeled "conservative" or given some such title so their credibility can automatically be called into question...and the pigs who've been giving us biased reporting for the last umpteen years will still be known as the real journalists.

I suspect the Times is losing readers and this article was written to placate those who see it for what it is, has been...and will continue to be, just with fancier footwork. It's an attempt to fix its damaged image, and unless the Times fires every single hack it employs and replaces them with folks who report the news without trying to "change the world," then this article isn't worth the newspaper it's printed on.

Later,
bbeck

Bingo, Ms. Beck. It's the problem with any kind of tokenism. Sure, you can play the bass, but the other guys are the real musicians.

nevertheless written from the viewpoint of bias. Notice how those who oppose gay marriage are not granted any sort of intellectual or philosophical objection to the practice -- no, "The Credibility Group" can only allow that we are overcome by emotionalism, that the paper has failed to recognize "how disturbing" the issue is to us.

Excellent point ACE! Though I've seen more years of this kind of shit than I'd like to admit, I am still stunned by the complete and total divorce from reality in the Liberal mind. So I say the Liberal Serenity Prayer: God,

Grant me the serenity to accept the Liberals I cannot get rid of,

the courage to get rid of those that I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Yes, I agree with bbeck. This won't last. We've not "won." This is merely a confession.

Winning requires a cultural change of which I disbelieve the NY Times and the mainstream news media capable. Remember, it just isn't the NY Times - it is the entire institution of self-selected liberals going to J-school to "fix Amerikkka," professionally polished with the proper worldview and credential, then sent to MSM organizations from "sea-to-shining-sea."

No, to win, we need to destroy the cultural mindset established, nurtured and promoted at the J-schools and all of the MSM outlets.

We can only do that by using the market to kill them.

If they lose readers and viewers, they'll lose advertisers and revenue; eventually they'll go out of business. Conversely, the news organizations that actually make an effort to accurately and fairly report the news need to succeed and thrive. J-schools, to remain viable, will alter the curriculum to conform to the new reality of the market.

Or so we can hope.

Otherwise, we're still losing. And none of us should think any differently.

"unless the Times fires every single hack it employs"

Starting with the Sulzbergers - the one constant factor in the nyt for the last 100 years, and the employers and defenders of Walter Duranty (don't revoke his Pulitzer) to this day.

So it WON'T happen. They may get a little cleverer, but 70+ years of complicity in genocide is not going to disappear overnight. And that's the real problem with the nyt - not its dishonest because denied bias, but because it has since at least Walter Duranty repeatedly lied about, covered minimally, ignored, actiuvely supported (abortion) mass murder. It may do great restuarant reviews etc., but when the chips are down, it has always gotten an 'F'.

Best would be for the nyt to CLOSE ITS DOORS.

I'm with bbeck. Nothing they 'try' to change will work. They can commission studies from here til eternity, but their arrogance and their dyed-in-the-wool leftism will kill all reforms in the cradle.

lauraw and bbeck, agreed - they don't want to change. They don't believe they have to change. And their target demographic agrees.

But I think they have noticed that their influence over national policy is now seriously threatened (because we can all, you know, read), and they want to defuse that threat by making gestures that "appear" to be more fair and broad-minded.

Heh...

bbeck said, "My tail"

And lauraw said, "wool"

Heh...

Duranty rec'vd a Pulitzer for the coverup of the Ukrainian Holocaust and Gareth Jones was the assassinated reporter who refuted Duranty's coverage as the millions were being killed.

TO THIS DAY, THE nytimes REFUSES TO DISCUSS A RETRACTION TO THE VILLIFYING SLUR PRINTED BY THE times IN RESPONSE!

http://www.garethjones.org/letters.htm

'All the News that is Print to Fit"

This is an impressive admission, and those of us who have been apoplectic about the media for decades should stop and savor it. But I don't believe the current generation of journalists *can* change. They've made it through the entirety of their education and professional lives without being exposed to variety of opinion. They can't fix the bias because they don't know what it is or how deep it runs, so they're left tinkering with the labels they use to describe the opposition.

For the Times, a balanced article on global warming would be one in which a Democrat and a Republican are each asked what he would do to reduce CO2 emissions. They may have heard that there are people who question whether CO2 controls are helpful, or whether global warming is man-made or even whether the climate is getting warmer at all, but those people are clearly mad, madder and maddest. Surely no-one expects the Times to report points of view that are dangerously insane?

I'll believe it when they hire Jonah Goldberg.

Look, it may not be the end, or even the beginning of the end, but this is at least the end of the beginning.

CBS refused to admit that bias motivated their mistakes in Rathergate. They are suffering for it. I think the NYT sees the handwriting on the wall--that their omniscience and beneficience are under scrutiny and are no longer universally accepted.

Of course this doesn't go far enough. And of course some skepticism is in order to make sure they actually act on this admission. But it ought to be welcomed and encouraged. And listen, hundreds of small-town papers and mid-market TV stations who take their cues from the Times on everything are now going to start asking themselves the same questions.

For AtMay above who thinks the NYT should close its doors, well, that's not a good outcome. I want a good, functioning media out there. The Times can deliver some really good worldwide reporting and I would like to see it doing so, free of sanctimony and bias. Or at the very least, to keep admitting that it's skewing way left and let the world calibrate accordingly.

Did you see that line about having to issue 3200 corrections in the past year? That's almost 9 a day!

Thanks for the great post ACE, I just sent the TIMES report to some Liberals I know who don't think the media is biased noting the sections you quoted. And you really are right about the tone of the whole piece, it is so full of platitudes I never would've had the time of inclination to wade through it all.

So when do they fire their whole staff -- after all, that is the problem, isn't it.

I doubt we have won anything, just more smoke. Probably saw the subscription data from the LATimes, and thought they would try this malarky.

Until the staff goes, nothing is changing.

Newspapers have totally lost their usefulness, the new news is two-way not one-way. That's the real change the Internet has brought, it has leveled the field.

A RSS feed of Yahoo is worth all the newspapers in the country -- you get the same bias, so why pay for it.

One Liberal answered that yes, the TIMES is biased but so is the WSJ and everyone else. Though that isn't completely true, even if it were, I can't remember the WSJ claiming that they were neutral or above it all in that snooty, imperious way the NYT has insisted it is for deacades! In fact, the conservative press that I know of is very proud to be conservative and says so without making any pretense about it. But just like Liberal politicians, the MSM can't tell us who they really are because the majority doesn't agree with them and they know it. So they hide behind the fig-leaf pretense that they're "objective" and "unbiased" or lose readership, or so they think. But people have seen through it for a long time, and they were fooling no one and finally are beginning to understand it.

That bit about "failing to convey how disturbing the issue is" smacks of that pat-on-the-head that precedes the creation of a new victim class. "Ooo - we must understand the feeeeelings of those wacky religious nuts."

"reducing factual errors and making a clearer distinction between news and opinion" -- wow. Now that's radical thinking. Are we actually supposta buy that "editors and reporters" at the NYT have "little awareness of the power of labels"?!? Either these guys are distinctly unqualified to be writing for a high school paper or this is the biggest NYT hose-job to date.

pfaf

Best commentary I have read on this move by the Times, bar none.

This post needs the Evil Dead III "Who's next, who wants some" WAV attached.

While a step in the right direction, they still seem to be in a bit of denial. Its more about we just didn't realize such words had this meaning. Yeah right.

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