The New York Times' public editor Dan Okrent addressed this a decade ago; the question has been asked and answered and may not be really worth debating again, I

The New York Times' public editor Dan Okrent addressed this a decade ago; the question has been asked and answered and may not be really worth debating again, I suspect. Some excerpts from that self-critique: "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is. ... These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-... "if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world... "On a topic that has produced one of the defining debates of our time, Times editors have failed to provide the three-dimensional perspective balanced journalism requires. This has not occurred because of management fiat, but because getting outside one's own value system takes a great deal of self-questioning... The NYT is a remarkable institution capable of arguably the best news reporting on the planet when it collectively sets its mind to a task. It will cover the difficult local topics like NYC homelessness and public school failures that are a poorer fit for the Post or WSJ. I have friends who work there; my editor before I left to found recent.io is now a NYT editor. But the above critique was true when written in 2004 and is even more true today.