Changing times: Troubles at the Times

Liberal media just doesn’t get it. Along the fringes of the news this weekend are numerous reports of layoffs at the New York Times. These aren’t the grunts…these folks are senior staff including the Times Washington editor, its food editor, and the former New York Time Magazine editor. The cuts will number up to 30 top newsroom positions either through buyouts or layoffs.

Newspapers generally have a problem with the modern day information age. Free information is everywhere. Long gone are the days of newspapers publishing “extras” to inform the public of breaking news. All one does today is turn on television or click onto the internet. Anything and everything one needs to know is at our fingertips. On the other hand, that doesn’t negate the need for reporting. There is a place for newspapers in our society. Unfortunately for the elite media mavens, the need is for good reporting.

Historically the New York Times has been the national newspaper of record. Those in the academic community know that it the only newspaper that is considered to be a primary source in research. That’s a big deal. But times, and the Times, have changed. As the children of the sixties reached the pinnacle of power in journalism, so did their liberal bent. Good journalism morphed into gotcha journalism as those eager young reporters tried to emulate Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame…chasing the evil politicians…exposing the evils of the United States…and repeatedly telling us how horrible we are. Their job was not to report the news…it was to form the news and save the country.

Newspapers have always had editorial policies, and contrary to many conservative pundits, those editorial policies have always bled onto the front page of the paper. The issue now is a matter of degree. The New York Times and other liberal newspapers not only printed bias and factually incorrect news, they actually stopped reporting legitimate stories that didn’t fit their ultra liberal points of view sometimes not acknowledging them for weeks until shamed into covering them by other media. Two of recent note are the Fast and Furious gun running story involving the Attorney General and the Benghazi scandal involving just about everyone in the Obama administration. The vetting of the President as to his background and friends in 2008 was non-existent, and continues to be non-existent to this day. That in itself is a scandal.

Maybe they could get away with it twenty years ago, but not today. When Fox News broke onto the scene, a center-right nation flocked to watch news that would otherwise have gone misreported or unreported. All of sudden the uneducated masses of a center right nation could compare and contrast. The Ivory Tower of media dowagers was beginning to crumble.

It was easy to blame the digital age as newspaper sales began to plummet. But the curious thing is that it just wasn’t a “newspaper” issue. Those media outlets that purported to be neutral in their reporting but were really extremely liberal began to suffer. You can’t alienate 50% of the American public and expect to survive. Not only did the Times alienate the center/right population, it insulted it. It not only lost newspaper sales, it is a joke among much of the nation and is now viewed as a liberal whore. And it’s not just the New York Times. Newsweek Magazine is now “digital” owned by Politico and will probably be gone as a separate entity within a year. CNN’s ratings are in the tank. Its operations are being supported by its overseas endeavors. Even NBC's Today show is suffering.  Matt Lauer, another multi million dollar liberal, has been advised to get the ratings up or he is toast.

The result is a fractured media following the British model of liberal/conservative news. Conservative media is thriving at all levels. Media outlets which expressly espouse a liberal point of view aren’t doing quite as well, but are hanging in there. People know what to expect when they open the paper or tune in the radio or television program or log onto the website. Drudge on the right and Politico on the left are two examples. The problem rests with those American media institutions that people trusted to be fair and balanced, no Fox pun intended. Once the trust is lost, there is no turning back.

At the end of the day, news reporting is a business. The New York Times blew it. Its moniker is “All the news that’s fit to print.” To which America has responded: “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining!”