If the Times eventually fades or, in its nightmare scenario, is acquired by conservative mogul Rupert Murdoch, do conservatives really think the journalistic functions and bedrock liberal assumptions that define the paper would disappear? Those functions and values are already dispersing across the blogosphere, which is busy erecting its own liberal establishment.
This new establishment, however, is not very Timesian. How much institutional restraint would The Huffington Post bring to a scoop that embarrasses a Republican president? How sympathetic is Talking Points Memo to the notion that procedures derived from Chinese and Korean torture are technically something other than torture? How many liberal websites are eager to publish and promote conservative columnists like David Brooks or Ross Douthat in a spirit of open debate?
The depletion of the Times would represent a challenge to the Right for other reasons, as well. For all their complaints, even the most far-right conservative websites routinely embrace the Times as a source of truth—so long as it’s a truth they like. When conservative pundits blast Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel for corruption or lampoon former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer for his sexual escapades, the facts they use come straight from the Times. In September 2008, the McCain campaign attacked the Times as “a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign.” In response, the Obama campaign released dozens of examples of McCain relying on Times reporting for the factual basis of his attacks against Obama.
As The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb has noted, conservative sites tend to be short on reporting. The liberal sites TPM, Huffpost and Emptywheel have all broken news; others, including Andrew Sullivan, have been crucial to the advance of big stories.
If conservatives were to look up from hammering nails in the Times’ coffin, they might notice that there is a growing web-based journalism infrastructure preparing to supplant their bête noir. It’s an infrastructure that is not only more liberal than the Times but also less inhibited by the paper’s habits of deference to power and concern for open debate and fair play. Having evolved in the era of Bush and Cheney, WMD and torture, much of the new establishment considers the contemporary GOP irredeemable. And unlike the Times, it refuses to treat conservative charges of liberal press bias as anything but a canard.
The more damage the Times sustains, the faster this new infrastructure rises to replace it. Maybe the next conservative protest outside the paper’s headquarters will be singing a different tune: “Resuscitate the Times.”
Thursday 28 May 2009
Will GOP regret attacks on The Times? ☀
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