The New York Times, Right-Wing Publication

Recently reading the Columbia Journalism Review's analysis of pre-2022 midterm coverage of domestic affairs by the New York Times and Washington Post I was unsurprised (indeed, confirmed in my views) when they quantitatively demonstrated those papers' preference for politics to policy, and the rarity with which anything published in them actually attempted to explain the affairs of the day to the general public.

I was more surprised by the editorial contrast between the Times and its Washington-based counterpart. The Review article found that, if both papers were more prone to attend to the issues that Republicans care most about than those Democratic voters care most about, the Times was significantly more prone to do so than the Post. By the analysts count the Times favored the Republicans' concerns by a margin of over 5 to 1 (37 to 7 pieces, respectively), as against the 4 to 3 margin seen with the Post. It is an astonishing predominance, even in comparison with that other newspaper, that can seem to bespeak the political shift of the newspaper that publishes Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens, Christopher Caldwell (to say nothing of figures like Thomas Friedman).