A War Room for The Times?
By Niall Stanage
It’s true what the right-wing bloggers and bloviators say: The New York Times does indeed resemble a branch of the Democratic Party.
But the newspaper’s conservative critics are utterly wrong about where the resemblance really lies.
The similarities between the newspaper of record and the opposition party have nothing to do with treason, irresponsibility or blaming America first. The main thing the institutions share is a potentially fatal timidity.
The Times, like the Dems, has yet to absorb the age-old aphorism that the best means of defense is attack.
The Times, like the Dems, clings to an anachronistic belief that it should not engage in debates that it deems coarse, vicious or otherwise beneath it.
And in so doing, The Times, like the Dems, leaves the field open for its opponents to hurl any insult and press home any smear, safe in the knowledge that no serious counterattack will be mounted....
(Niall Stanage is a New York-based journalist who was previously editor-in-chief of Ireland’s main current affairs magazine, Magill.)
http://www.observer.com/20060717/20060717_Niall_Stanage_opinions_wiseguys.asp