Bill Keller: New York Times Is 'Socially Liberal'

Former New York Times editor Bill Keller sat down for an interview at the LBJ Library last week and discussed the Times' editorial stance when covering hotly contested social issues. In a forthright admission, Keller openly described the paper as "socially liberal."

Keller, who stepped down as Executive Editor of the New York Times and was replaced by the Times' managing director Jill Abramson in June 2011, rejoined the paper as a senior writer and Op-Ed columnist. Keller is responsible for adding the Public Editor position to the New York Times staff. He recalled a famous 2004 column by Daniel Okrent, the first man to hold the title. The column had a simple answer to whether or not the Times is liberal: "of course." Okrent's more nuanced take was that the Times reflects its New York base, and thus takes a more cosmopolitan and liberal view of some divisive social and cultural issues.

Keller essentially agreed with this. He said, "we are liberal in the sense that we are open-minded, tolerant, urban. Our wedding page includes — and did even before New York had a gay marriage law — included gay unions. So we’re liberal in that sense. Socially liberal." He also said that the paper "treats evolution as a fact."

Keller's comments contrast somewhat with those of Abramson. When she officially assumed the Executive Editor position in early September, dismissed the Times' liberal label. “Journalists in the newsroom play it straight,” she told The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz.

She reiterated this point when speaking with Times' public editor, Arthur S. Brisbane. When asked if she will oblige with "legendary Times executive editor A. M. Rosenthal" who "felt the need to steer The Times to the right to compensate for the leftward political leanings of some staff," she pointed to the general political leanings of New York that might impact reporters' perspectives, rather than reporters personal political leanings.

"I sometimes try not only to remind myself but my colleagues that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of America. And I am pretty scrupulous about when we apply our investigative firepower to politicians that we not do it in a way that favors one way of thinking or one party over the other," Abramson replied.

Keller has been vocal in his opinion of other news organizations, and criticized Fox News for making political discourse in America "polarizied."

RELATED VIDEO:

Comments

[StewartIIIHP]

05:11 PM on 10/12/2011

NewsBusters| NYT's Bill Keller: Sure the Times Is Liberal, if by Liberal You Mean Cool
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2011/10/12/nyts-bill-keller-sure-times-liberal-if-liberal-you-mean-cool

[bhuddaDoc]

12:26 PM on 10/12/2011

Truer words could not be said. Liberal=open-minded and tolerant. Those are two words that ideally would describe Americans, but as we know, the opposite is also true. Conservative=close-minded and intolerant of others.

[senator11]

09:57 PM on 10/11/2011

Hey Bill....plummeting readership and plummeting profits during your reign at the NYT - great job.

[hogman]

09:02 PM on 10/11/2011

It isn't the first time the NYT had admitted to being liberal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html

[PhDcommonsense]

06:46 PM on 10/11/2011

Open-mindedness has become a bad word as described by the FAR Right Wing and most of the Conservative Movement.

They now only believe in PLEDGES to an unelected person to call of their shots so they can walk, talk and move in LOCKSTED on every issue, even if was once a Republican idea and a good one.

[1reasonedtruth]

01:03 PM on 10/11/2011

Bill, we all already knew that your paper was a left-wing rag.

[thephuqqer]

01:23 PM on 10/11/2011

.............................as opposed to a right-wing spewer of hate?

[Steve1976]

11:39 AM on 10/11/2011

With a political agenda the New York Times has no objectivity; therefore no credibility.

[SgtLucifer]

09:24 AM on 10/11/2011

better to be "liberal" than to be a "right-winger". evolution is a fact.

[okiedemocrat]

08:29 AM on 10/11/2011

NYT: America's best paper, bar none.

[Gudrun]

10:35 AM on 10/11/2011

They helped to sell the Iraq war to the American people. I can't take them very seriously.

[xhawk2]

08:17 AM on 10/11/2011

The New York Times is unfit to line a birdcage. And the same liberals who accuse Fox of lying defend the newspaper that hired Jayson Blair.

[okiedemocrat]

08:36 AM on 10/11/2011

How often do you read NYT?

[xhawk2]

09:07 AM on 10/11/2011

Does anyone even read the New York Times anymore.

[Stephen Thorpe]

06:58 AM on 10/11/2011

The word liberal has been demonized. Thomas Jefferson would be a liberal. On lots of levels.

[General Public]

05:47 AM on 10/11/2011

That would be accurate... they might be liberal on some issues, but they are only liberal on social issues such as gay rights, abortion, gun control, the environment, separation of church and state, multiculturalism, evolution, global warming, etc. On financial issues or foreign policy, they can hardly be considered liberal at all. They are against Occupy Wall Street and in favor OF Wall Street, and they helped cheerlead the run-up to the War in Iraq, although after the invasion and occupation of Iraq turned sour, they quickly changed their tune and pretended like they hadn't previously advocated invading Iraq. They are quite disdainful of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and generally supportive of both the corporate establishment and the military-industrial complex. The only issues on which they are liberal - that is, those few social issues - are quite frankly issues where no educated, thinking person with critical thinking skills would ever be conservative. Of course that is all well and good, because social conservatism is a morally bankrupt indefensible ideology of bigotry based on faith and rejection of reason whereas social liberalism is simply common sense, logic, and reason, but the New York Times' pro-establishment views on financial issues and foreign policy are what REALLY need to be challenged. Their knee-jerk opposition to Occupy Wall Street is typical of their upper-class, establishment mentality, as they don't like anyone who isn't one of THEM challenging the status quo, and they don't like radical changes to anything.

[RLaitres]

06:30 AM on 10/11/2011

This is an excellent post and quite accurate in its assessment of much of today's media, in almost every form. It points out what few will admit and/or recognize, that all too frequently our personal and/or parochial interests tend to override our judgment on broader and more significant issues. That is essentially what we are seeing in the Tea Party movement where, while many of them verbally criticize Wall St. for its excesses (something which cannot be denied), when comes the time to effectively regulate them, they become the biggest obstructionist on the issue. That is because, fundamentally, they share the same core value of "materialsism" which led to the excesses in the first place.

[yogini4]

03:20 AM on 10/11/2011

"Socially liberal". Hmm. I guess that's why they are nearly totally ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement.

[ebranson]

03:43 AM on 10/11/2011

That's what the "socially" is about. The Times is as pro-big status quo business as the Journal.

[ecrichert12]

08:42 AM on 10/11/2011

Hi I'm Paul Krugman, have we met?

[RLaitres]

06:44 AM on 10/11/2011

Currently, the OWS movement is essentially a reaction to economic conditions and not a social one. The linkage has not yet been made that economics affects social conditions as well. When that becomes clear to the demonstrators (as well as to many others), one may very well see a deepening, broadening and escalation of the movement.

[giftsthatpurr]

02:52 AM on 10/11/2011

There was an audible gasp from TPs when Keller said the paper "treats evolution as fact."

[robrtl]

02:44 AM on 10/11/2011

the times is as open minded as attilla the hun

[General Public]

05:58 AM on 10/11/2011

As a direct descendent of Attila the Hun (all people of Hungarian ancestry are descended from him and he is considered the founder of Hungary), I would encourage you to rethink your views of the great man who led his people, the Huns, out of Mongolia and led them in an invasion of Europe, where they eventually they settled down (later on the Huns became known as the Magyars) and formed the nation of Hungary (note that the English name of the country begins with "Hun", precisely because of the origins of the Hungarian people as Huns). Attila the Hun's blood still flows in my veins, and I don't like to hear my great ancestor badmouthed.