The right-wing blogosphere is aflame with discussion of the “news” that the NYT has rejected an op-ed by John McCain, which his campaign submitted in response to Obama’s 7/14/08 op-ed. This is clear proof, “conservative” commentators crow, that the NYT is horribly biased against McCain in particular and Republicans in general. I’m not really interested in whether the NYT is biased against McCain and Republicans. I tend to see the mainstream media’s biases in very different terms, but I am willing to grant the NYT’s so-called “bias against conservatives” for the sake of argument.
What I find more interesting is the tacit contradiction in the “conservative” backlash against the Times.
I believe that the NYT should run the McCain op-ed–however unpersuasive it is–because I also believe that the major mainstream media have an obligation to serve the public, an obligation to inform us of the policies of our presidential candidates (major and minor), an obligation to give these candidates direct opportunities to publicly stake out their positions. However, if you are a “conservative” who believes in the pristine infallible virtue of American “free enterprise”–who argues for the moral superiority of unregulated markets and promotes the nigh-miraculous homeostatic balance of unrestrained capitalism–then you must necessarily also believe that the NYT has no obligation to serve the public. None at all.
As a free-market “conservative,” you must believe that the New York Times Company (a publicly-traded corporation) has a right to publish pretty much anything it wants in its nineteen newspapers and that consumers and advertisers will “vote with their wallets” by buying or not buying, supporting or not supporting these papers. On what basis, then, can you complain about the NYT’s “bias”? On what basis are its editors obligated to be “balanced” or “fair”? If you make your enraged argument by exploiting the public’s latent sense that newspapers have an obligation to be evenhanded, then you are making your argument by reinforcing an anti-market logic, a nakedly contradictory move. The most consistent answer you can give is that the NYT indeed has no obligation to do anything (beyond its legal obligation to earn money for its shareholders) and that you are therefore merely trying to damage its reputation as the “newspaper of record.” A truly weak argument on which to base your furious “conservative” rage, if you ask me.