Gatekeeper

60 Years of Economics According to the New York Times

Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317259343
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The New York Times is possibly the most influential newspaper in the world. Because of this, it has become the topic of much debate about media bias, with some claiming that it is liberal and others that it is conservative. The Gatekeeper argues that this debate is misleading and that the New York Times can more accurately be characterised as supporting the interests of US corporations, which involves both liberal and conservative positions. Through examining the paper's coverage of key issues, including the 2008-2009 economic crisis, The Gatekeeper reframes the debate about the most venerable institution in US journalism.

CHAPTER 1

THE NEW YORK TIMES

LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE

It will be my earnest aim that the New York Times give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that is permissible in good society, and give it as early if not earlier, than it can be learned through any other reliable medium; to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interest involved; to make of the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.

—Adolph Ochs, Aug. 18, 1896

The New York Times is arguably the most influential newspaper in America (some might say the world) and has been so for decades. It is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the country and one of only a very few papers, including the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post, that can claim a truly national reach. A half century ago a member of the State Department acknowledged the importance of the Times, claiming, “The first thing we do is read the newspaper—the New York Times.”¹ More recently, a 2009 article in Vanity Fair described the Times as “the flagship of serious newspaper journalism in America.”² Its columnists have become public personalities, sought-after figures on the punditry circuit, dispensing wisdom on issues of political and economic import. Times’ staff has won far more Pulitzer Prizes than any other paper. According to media analyst Jack Lule, “more than any other U.S. news medium, the New York Times has become crucial reading for those interested in the news, national politics, and international affairs.… Though not the biggest, it may well be the most significant newspaper in the world.”³

Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. claimed that if the Times has any ideology, it is “urbane,” by which he means big-city and broad-minded. The paper is certainly erudite. It provides an account of the world rich in eloquent prose, sophistication, depth, and, within certain limits, balanced content. The Times’ writing is in the long tradition of the Enlightenment, where reason is the primary basis of authority as opposed to irrationality, superstition, and tyranny. It fosters modernism, discriminating taste, and a cosmopolitan outlook as a result of educated editors and correspondents catering to a civilized, cultivated, and cultured readership. The Times provides its readers with answers from writers who have paid attention to the facts and arguments and who have a professional commitment to providing answers. The Times’ modernism, with its belief in science and social progress, provides its readers with a bulwark against the superstition and intolerance represented by media outlets like Fox News and their viewers. The Times is a place to feel a sense of community with those who are above a media that panders to the lowest common denominator.

During the time period in this study, the Times was the pinnacle of U.S. journalism. Predictably for a newspaper of such importance, it was also the subject of close examination and heated debate. Despite the bold claims by the founder of the Times to provide a forum for all shades of opinion and impartial reporting, the Times, perhaps more than any other news outlet, has faced a barrage of criticism over its perceived bias. Interestingly, the Times finds itself in a bit of crossfire as both the left and right claim that the Times is biased, although, of course, they claim that the bias runs in opposite directions.

From the right, well-known conservative pundits like Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly frequently pillory the Times for its left-leaning views, despite editor Arthur Sulzberger’s repeated insistence that his paper is not liberal.⁴ In an interview with the New York Observer, Coulter claimed, “My only regret with (Oklahoma City bomber) Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”⁵ According to O’Reilly, “Somewhere along the line, the Times got out of the news business and into the nation-building business. Its primary intent is no longer to provide objective information and fair-minded analysis to its readers, but to convince them to support a brave new world in the United States. The power of the Times is being used to promote the formation of a new America, a bright, shining progressive city on a hill of steep government entitlements…. In almost every section the reader is confronted with liberal ideology.”⁶

A website, TimesWatch.com, is dedicated solely to “documenting and exposing the liberal political agenda of the New York Times.” In a more literary vein, in Journalistic Fraud: How the NYT Distorts the News and Why it Can No Longer Be Trusted, Bob Kohn argued that the Times furthers a leftist agenda by presenting ideology as fact. The Cato Institute, whose mission “seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace,” has often featured writers critical of the Times. Alan Reynolds accused the paper of “escalating … rhetoric to authentic class warfare” for pointing out that workers were not doing particularly well in the economic recovery of the early 2000s.⁷ It is important to note that much of the criticism of the Times’ “left-wing” slant is based on the paper’s “cultural” perspective on, for example, women’s and gay rights or the separation of church and state. The Times’ writing in these areas might well reveal a consistent liberal perspective—maddening those opposed to social progress as much as it would be supported by the Times’ urbane readership—but of little concern to corporate America. This book is about that which is central to corporate needs—economic policy.

From the left, numerous writers argue that the Times may be more liberal than some other media outlets, but that as a part of the “mainstream” media, it will inevitably contain a conservative bias. As the title of his book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush suggests, Eric Boehlert claims that the mainstream media gave the Bush-Cheney presidential ticket a remarkably easy ride. According to Boehlert, during Bush’s first term, the Times was guilty of deliberately killing stories that would have embarrassed the Bush administration and presenting other issues so that they placed the administration in a favorable light.⁸

Perhaps the most famous media critic on the left, Noam Chomsky, argues that as a privately owned corporation, dependent on advertising revenue, the Times has little choice but to have a pro-business bias. This is true in its stance on foreign policy in areas like Vietnam and Nicaragua and also in domestic economic issues like taxes on business.⁹ Chomsky argued that the “so-called liberal” Times offered complete support for the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Times’ articles that were not directly supportive of NAFTA belittled opponents’ ideas, including “tremendous labor-bashing.”¹⁰ Similarly, in the late 1970s the Times took a “mildly supportive” stance on a tax bill that was opposed by New York businesses. Attributing a small decline in advertising and stock values to its position on the tax bill, the Times “shifted its entire editorial staff,” purging it of liberals including John Oakes.¹¹

Authors from one ideological perspective are convinced that the Times is pushing a dangerously liberal, left-wing agenda on its readers, while authors of the opposite stripe claim that it is conservative. Is it possible that both claims are correct? What we are attempting to do in this book is to disentangle the myth from the fact that surrounds so much of the debate on the Times.

The Media and Political Economy

Capitalism runs on profits. Maximizing profits is not a matter of morals or ethics for firms, but a condition of survival. The “circuit of capital” demands that businesses first must be concerned with acquiring the least expensive inputs. Second, they must make use of these inputs in a production process that ensures a competitive price in the marketplace. Next they must be able to market these products in order to be able to sell them. Lower-cost capitalists will drive higher-cost capitalists from the market by reducing prices and having more profits to invest for the next round of production and sales. The firm that is able to introduce techniques that lower unit labor costs has profits available to invest in new techniques, which enables it to successfully compete with rivals. Being pushed from below (workers), while being squeezed from the sides (other capitalists) is what drives the system to ever-greater increases in productivity and lower-cost commodities. Without competitive profits, research and development, investment, and advertising all become impossible and the fate of the firm is sealed.

Samuel Bowles, David Gordon, and Thomas Weisskopf once wrote that profits are the spoils of a three-front war that firms must continuously wage with their workforce, the government, and other companies (especially those from other countries).¹² The conflict with their workers is over containing wages while at the same time convincing them to increase production as much as possible. The struggle with the government is over the extent to which the state will impact a firm’s bottom line by altering its costs through such things as regulations, taxes, subsidies, or its revenues, through government purchases, for example. This places the firm in conflict with a wide variety of citizens who expect the government to undertake various profit-constraining activities, from those who pressure the state to implement environmental protection; to those who think that the government has a responsibility to provide for the collective good with respect to health, education, and welfare; to those who want to contain the exploitation and rent-seeking activities on which profits are based. The third and final front is a battle with other firms to reduce any input costs and increase revenues from product sales. On this front, firms may have an important ally in their national governments, which attempt to tilt the rules of the international economy in favor of their own firms. This can be done by changing trade rules, altering exchange rates, or using military force.

Corporate profitability, indeed the very survival of the enterprise, depends to a great extent on factors that lie well outside the internal working of any one firm. Firms’ profits depend on government decisions on fiscal and monetary policy, regulations, infrastructure, education, research, foreign policy, and the legal system. In an extreme case, the government could decide that the very structure of private ownership could be done away with, through nationalization, for example. So the amount of profit, in fact the very opportunity to make profit, depends on the good will of the government. In a democratic society, this means the opinions of the voting public become crucial.

The court of public opinion largely reaches its verdict with the expert guidance of the media. After all, it is through the media that people obtain much of their information on what is going on in the economic world. From the standpoint of corporate profitability, it would, therefore, be highly desirable if the media largely contained information that would sway the public toward policies that were generally business friendly.

Yet right-wing critics accuse the media, in general, and the Times particularly, of everything from Marxism to liberal bias. If these critics are correct, then the media is not playing a role in assisting corporate profitability. Indeed, the media would be actively harming the ability of companies to make money. While accusing the privately owned media of Marxism is the stuff of undisciplined hysteria, it is possible that news may contain a strong liberal presence for reasons that have nothing to do with the right-wing claim that the media is inundated with liberal, bleeding-heart journalists and owners, eager to foist their anti-business agenda on the American public. First, some liberal policies (defined as a crucial role for the state in correcting for those occasions in which markets fail) may actually increase corporate profitability, as is the case with state spending on research and development or education. Second, liberal policies that may, at first glance, appear to run counter to the short-term interests of corporate America may be necessary to maintain the long-term profitability of the economic system. For example, a liberal policy to provide government oversight of the accounting industry might constrain the short-term profitability of companies like Enron, but it might also be necessary to protect the profits of the broader corporate sector. Finally, liberal policy can also support the long-term interest of business when the results of conservative economic policy are sufficiently disastrous that they compromise the public’s willingness to support the economic system on which business depends. For instance, if conservative policy resulted in environmental damage, as it did with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, that was so devastating to the population that they began to question the economic system that produced these results, liberal policy, even if it were to dampen business profits through pollution taxes or environmental regulations, would be in the long-run interests of the corporate world, since it maintains the legitimacy of the entire system.

This is not to say that all liberal policy at all times is profit enhancing. Some conservative policies, at some times, will be more advantageous for profitability than liberal alternatives. The hallmark of conservative economic theory is that firms should not be constrained by the state in their pursuit of profit. While many take this to ...