New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is none too happy with Richard Posner's recent review of several books on the media, calling the essay "tendentious and cynical." The catch? The Posner review appeared in Keller's own paper — as does Keller's letter to the editor.
Was Posner's review so bad? Readers can judge for themselves. Here is the review essay, titled "Bad News," and here is Keller's letter, along with reponses from Bill Moyers and Eric Alterman, among others.
UPDATE: Powerline's Big Trunk comments here. Of note, Keller complains that Posner discounts the ability of "conscientious reporters and editors" to set aside their personal beliefs to produce fair and honest journalism. Yet it was not so long ago that Keller himself observed that "even sophisticated readers of The New York Times sometimes find it hard to distinguish between news coverage and commentary in our pages."
UPDATE: Dan Drezner has more thoughts here. [Link should be working now.]
What a bizarre criticism.
Posner wrote a review of books; book reviews are opinion pieces. When did it become inappropriate for an opinion piece to favor a particular point of view? Don't columnists published on the editorial pages of the NYT write articles that favor their particular point of view? Isn't that what everyone expects them to do?
Why would an experienced publisher of a large newspaper suggest there is something improper Posner expressing a point of view in an opinion piece?
So what does Posner think about the media? He finds truth in both sides of the partisan spin!
moyers cited a littany of issues "covered" by the msm and the importance of each to the social fabric of the nation. and yet each of the issues he cited was reported and covered exhaustively from a left/liberal point of view and glancingly if at all from the any other perspectives. Hmmm.
and i almost choked on my baskin-robbins when i read alterman's laughable and absurd claim that conservatives "dominate commercial tv."
Um....ok. example, please. just 1.
Perhaps Keller is on-target with one point – Posner seems to betray a rather low opinion of the news-consuming public. More accurately, I think, it is the distributed knowledge and spontaneous self-organization of that very public that is disturbing the status-quo of centralized opinion making.
I assume that Posner would say that, in the aggregate, these things are factored in. If a newspaper's reporters showed themselves to be unable to deal with complicated issues, constantly lagging behind the others in "discovering" stories, unconcerned about ethical standards, ignorant of their readers' demands, trashed by their peers, and puppets of their advertisers, then the newspaper wouldn't last long.
In the aggregate, they're just rational actors like everyone else. Sometimes the truth hurts. All Keller's opinion amounts to is him saying "ouch"
And it's certainly not only allegience to the media that would motivate disagreement with Judge Posner; it's entirely possible to despise the mainstream press and still think Posner's being ridiculous. Indeed, I think it's probably the only responsible conclusion.
Talk about hubris? If they want to make the world better, they should run for office. As reporters, they report, i.e., they tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about their beat.
In this way, those who are tasked with running the world will be armed with the facts and figures they need to make the right decisions.
Exactly what is the right/conservative point of view on troops being "sent to war with inadequate armor, while billions are spent on exotic and expensive Pentagon weapons that don't work"? On conflicts of interest? On the evisceration of the Freedom of Information Act? (Judicial Watch has some thoughts on that topic.) On offshore tax havens? On overpricing at Halliburton and chicanery on K Street?
If you check the opinion-mongers, anyway, the right/conservative perspective is to try to ignore wrongdoing in the government (which is found in full measure no matter which party is in power) when your guy won the last election.