When it comes to capturing the worldview of New Yorkers, it\u2019s hard to top Saul Steinberg\u2019s famous cartoon entitled \u201cA View of the World from Fifth Avenue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
It appeared \u2014 where else? \u2014 on the cover of The New Yorker. The city is in the foreground and, beyond the Hudson River, there is a void dotted with mesas, mountains and hints that Chicago, Texas, Nebraska, Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean exist.<\/p>\n\n
There are no steeples anywhere.<\/p>\n\n
This would have been the perfect cover for a new study by the New York Times hierarchy entitled \u201cPreserving Our Readers\u2019 Trust.\u201d The in-house panel decreed that the newspaper must do a better job covering \u201cunorthodox views,\u201d \u201ccontrarian opinions\u201d and the lives of those \u201cmore radical and more conservative\u201d than journalists inside the Mecca of American journalism.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe should,\u201d it said, \u201cincrease our coverage of religion in America and focus on new ways to give it greater attention. \u2026 We should take pains to create a climate in which staff members feel free to propose or criticize coverage from vantage points that lie outside the perceived newsroom consensus (liberal\/conservative, religious\/secular, urban\/suburban\/rural, elitist\/white collar\/blue collar).\u201d<\/p>\n\n
It might help, noted the report, if Times editors sought out some \u201ctalented journalists who happen to have military experience, who know rural America first hand, who are at home in different faiths.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
This is precisely what the newspaper\u2019s \u201cpublic editor\u201d was describing last year in his column with the infamous headline: \u201cIs the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?\u201d Daniel Okrent\u2019s very first sentence was his answer: \u201cOf course it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Many people criticize the Times for many things, he said, but the \u201cflammable stuff\u201d almost always seems to be linked to faith, family and morality and the most ticked-off people are on the cultural right.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re examining the paper\u2019s coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn\u2019t wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you\u2019re traveling in a strange and forbidding world,\u201d wrote Okrent.<\/p>\n\n
The editorial page is thick with \u201cliberal theology\u201d and many think the news is tainted, too, he said. The coverage of gay marriage \u201capproaches cheerleading.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
In a recent \u201cOn the Media\u201d interview with WNYC, Okrent gracefully tried to retreat a step or two, acknowledging that he gave the \u201cpaper\u2019s enemies\u201d ammunition they could yank out of context. The Times isn\u2019t really liberal, he said, it\u2019s merely liberal on \u201ccertain issues, social issues. \u2026 It is a product of its place and of its people, and I think it\u2019s really important for the paper to recognize that and recognize how it is perceived.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
In other words, the New York Times is only liberal on issues such as sex, salvation, abortion, Hollywood, euthanasia, gay rights, public education, cloning and loads of other issues linked to faith and public life.<\/p>\n\n
That\u2019s all. But that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n\n
Life does look different from the vantage point of Ninth Avenue, and also from Times Square. The self-study panel noted, for example, the urgent need for the newspaper to be careful when it pins \u201cloaded terms\u201d on believers. For example, there are those \u201cfundamentalists\u201d who would rather be known as \u201cChristian conservatives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
One such religious believer is John McCandlish Phillips, who is known these days as a preacher on Manhattan\u2019s upper West Side. But long ago, he was the rare superstar Times reporter with a worn-out Bible next to his newsroom typewriter. Now he is tired of hearing top Times columnists \u2014 stuck in a \u201cvalues voters\u201d funk after the 2004 election \u2014 saying that America has become an oppressive \u201ctheocracy\u201d caught up in a \u201cjihad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The self-study is a remarkable step forward, especially with its blunt talk about religion and the need for accurate, balanced reporting, said Phillips.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cPeople at the Times are sensitive, as they should be, to this criticism because they know it is accurate. \u2026 This document seems to be a call back to the standards that made the Times the foremost engine of news gathering and presentation in the history of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to capturing the worldview of New Yorkers, it\u2019s hard to top Saul Steinberg\u2019s famous cartoon entitled \u201cA View of the World from Fifth Avenue.\u201d It appeared \u2014 where else? \u2014 on the cover of The New Yorker. The city is in the foreground and, beyond the Hudson River, there is a void […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[112,487,539,595,720],"class_list":["post-1333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bias","tag-journalism","tag-mccandlish","tag-new-york-times","tag-religion-news"],"yoast_head":"\n