Fairness and balance
On long-form essays, the New York Times opinion section, and recognizing that there are left-liberals and there are right-liberals
In an enormous essay that weighs in at more than 17,000 words, the sitting "Lexington" columnist at The Economist has offered a highly personal perspective on "When the New York Times lost its way". The author, James Bennet, was not that long ago the opinion editor at the Times, and he expresses considerable alarm over the deterioration of classical liberalism at the most influential newspaper in America.
■ Bennet has a personal grievance on the matter, having been pushed out of his position at the Times over a controversial op-ed piece published on his watch in 2020. But he sees his own experience as a reflection of a bigger cultural concern: "The Times's problem has metastasised from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favour one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether."
■ Even more telling is his observation that, among the paper's contributors, "Even conservatives are liberals' idea of a conservative." We do ourselves no favors at having wrecked the definition of "liberal" early in the 20th Century. The word ought to label those individuals, groups, and ideas that adhere to the classical liberal principles that gave the world concepts like individual liberties and limited government.
■ The convolution of that word into a lazy substitute for "left-of-center" has made it almost impossible to articulate a vital point: A (classical) liberal society can only be sustained through the work of some actors who come from a little to the left, and some who come from a little to the right.
■ It's fairly easy to see how people who crusade for free-speech rights or maximizing practical access to the right to vote are seen as preserving the necessary order of the liberty-based society. But they need corresponding peers who make common cause on the very big picture by promoting a benign sense of patriotism or by building institutions to teach concepts like duty and honor to youth. These "conservative liberals" are essential to the mix.
■ To the alert reader, it's often clear when the Times (and other publications) are engaged in a sort of box-checking behavior -- putting a spotlight on those "liberals' idea of a conservative" in order to appear balanced. What is far less evident is a real commitment to seeing that the project to build and maintain a free and open society takes some dynamic tension between people who arrive at the classically liberal position from a "progressive" starting point and those who come from "conservative" origins.
■ Between those identities, disagreements on policies (which can be frequent) all too often mask a strong consensus about the fundamental rules of debate and behavior, not to mention a basic commitment to maximizing outcomes that are good for the individual most generally. The good-faith nature of their disagreements over policy choices makes the bigger consensus hard to recognize sometimes, but the Times and others need to be alert that it is real.
