As a media watchdog, we believe self-examination by news organizations is always useful, so we welcomed the arrival of The New York Times' recent report, “Preserving Our Readers' Trust.” Because a democracy cannot operate without an independent, critical, and responsible press, it is incumbent on news organizations to continually assess their own performance to see if they are fulfilling their obligations to the public. Nonetheless, we are concerned about some of the ideas expressed in the report, and we take issue with some aspects of the Times' reporting that the report does not address.

Because of its importance to the functioning of our political and social life, the press will always be subject to criticism and critique. It is the press' obligation to take such critiques seriously; doing so requires not only responding to legitimate criticism, but having the fortitude and integrity to reject baseless attacks designed only to serve a partisan agenda.

If tomorrow the Times ran an article on its front page headlined “Bush is Second Coming of Christ,” conservative activists would charge that it proved the paper's liberal bias because it didn't compliment the color of the president's tie. While we do not doubt that many conservatives genuinely believe that the Times, and the press in general, is biased against them, the “liberal bias” charge is above all a political tool they use to obtain coverage more favorable to their goals. All too often, news organizations have reacted to this pressure from the right by attempting to prove them wrong -- not with more objective reporting, but by giving them what they want. “The press responds to critics on the right by bending over backward not to look liberal,” noted former Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser. “The cumulative effect is the opposite: They're tougher on Democrats” [Eric Boehlert, "The Press v. Al Gore," Rolling Stone, 12/6-13/01]. Though this tendency is not acknowledged in the report, it has been evident in the Times' reporting on numerous occasions.

While there is not space here to list every misstep the Times has committed recently, we would like to point out a number of problems, particularly as they relate to the concerns raised in the report. The first is Elisabeth Bumiller's “White House Letter,” about which you have apparently heard from numerous dissatisfied readers but about which the report says nothing. In a recent interview at Salon.com, departing public editor Daniel Okrent said of Bumiller's reporting: “It just drives people who don't like [President Bush] crazy. It would have been the same if there had been a 'White House Letter' about Clinton 10 years ago.” But of course, there was no “White House Letter” offering tender, soft-focus portraits of Bill Clinton. Had there been, conservatives would have been outraged -- and rightly so.

If the White House wants the American people to know what's on the president's iPod or how sweet his communications director is to reporters, it can turn to dozens of less serious news organizations that will happily pass that bit of fluff on to the public. But to waste a Times reporter's time and precious space in the paper on an endless series of People magazine-worthy portraits that read as though they were penned by the White House press office is, frankly, beneath you. This is not to say that every last article about politics in the Times must be serious and high-minded. But the “White House Letter” has been a steady stream of starry-eyed palaver, each installment more sycophantic than the last.

The report mentions the Times' desire to avoid “tendentious” language. This concern is long overdue, but we conclude from the specific examples listed throughout the report that the Times has in mind redressing only the concerns of the right-wing in this regard (for instance, on page 14, the term “religious fundamentalists” is called a “loaded term.” Is it really?) Recently progressives, too, have begun to pay attention to the political effects of language, yet nowhere are these concerns reflected in the report. To take one well-known example, at some point conservatives decided to call tax cuts “tax relief,” a moniker directly implying that all taxes are oppressive and burdensome. Barely a week goes by in which this phrase does not appear in the pages of The New York Times -- used not by a conservative activist or Republican politician, but by a reporter who undoubtedly repeats it without considering its political implications.

We do not believe that you should be intimidated into changing your own language simply because conservative partisans decide to alter the lexicon. In many cases -- such as the administration's farcical renaming of “suicide bombings” to “homicide bombings” -- the Times has wisely resisted this pressure. But the Times has performed less well in soft-pedaling the administration's plans for Social Security as “personal accounts” rather than privatization, and in misattributing the phrase “nuclear option” to Democrats, when in fact the term was originated by Republicans before they thought better of it.

We were interested to see that when you defined the “perceived newsroom consensus” you were trying to break out of, you cited “liberal/conservative, religious/secular, urban/suburban/rural, elitist/white collar/blue collar.” The last category in particular suggests that there are three types of Americans: blue collar, white collar, and elitists. If some at the Times believe this, then they have internalized a conservative criticism based not in fact but in a long-term political strategy. Knowing that the key to winning electoral victories lies in expanding their support beyond their base of the wealthy, conservatives have worked to brand progressives and the policies they advocate as “elitist,” often in the most Orwellian ways. This strategy is also directed at the news media, and it has become critical to the conservative project to pretend to be oppressed underdogs at a time when their power is nearly absolute. We hope you will contemplate the reasons for and the consequences of your accepting this sort of self-caricature.

This is not to say that the Times' stated intention of “diversifying our vantage point” is not an excellent one, but the Times should do so not out of fear but out of a genuine desire to report on the full scope of American social and political life. In making its case, the Times report perpetuates some of the crudest stereotypes of liberals that the right wing has advanced. For example, on page 14, you appear to suggest that liberals have some unspecified trouble writing about the military, religion, and “the middle of the country.”

Your desire to expand coverage of religion is certainly a worthy endeavor, but we hope you won't fall back on the mistaken dichotomy propagated by the right, evident in too much of religion coverage today, that conservatives are religious and liberals are not. This misconception ignores the tens of millions of religious moderates and progressives, glosses over the substantial divisions within religious denominations, and allows people like James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, and Lou Sheldon -- extremist radicals, both politically and theologically -- to pose as mainstream religious figures.

As the Times' editors must understand, your paper occupies a unique place in American journalism, with an ability to set the news agenda and the larger political agenda that is unparalleled among news organizations, even those with vastly larger audiences. This power confers upon you a particular obligation to act responsibly and uphold the highest standards of your profession. We applaud you for looking to “find ways to present more contrarian and unexpected viewpoints in our news pages.” We hope that your concern that the paper's perceived liberal viewpoint on its editorial pages not undermine the credibility of its news coverage will not translate into hiring conservative ideologues to report the news, which would serve neither the organization nor Times readers. Your call for diverse viewpoints is laudable, but, as you know, not all debates have two equally valid “sides,” and readers should be able to rely on the Times to make those critical distinctions.

This is especially important now, at a time when the current administration has, for all intents and purposes, declared open war on the very idea of an independent press. The administration's conservative allies have simultaneously endeavored to impose a post-modern ideology of doctrinaire relativism on the media, so that all news is seen as ideological and there is no common set of facts on which we can all agree. In this context, the “he said-she said” trap into which the Times and other news organizations so regularly fall becomes particularly pernicious.

On page 13, we learn that the Times apparently takes “great care” in the editing of stories on subjects characterized as “emotional.” Among those listed are abortion, gun control, the death penalty and gay marriage -- all so-called social issues on which you appear to conclude that the paper lapses at times into liberal advocacy. May we suggest that subjects like “war” and “national elections” are “emotional” also? And that “great care” ought to be taken when handling them as well?

When the Jayson Blair scandal broke, the Times reacted in extraordinary fashion: the paper's two top editors lost their jobs, and the paper published a 7,100-word, front-page self-flagellation detailing the events leading up to the scandal. This was all well and good, but it led many to wonder why some of the paper's other notable failings in recent years led neither to a similarly tortured apology nor any attempt to hold those responsible accountable. We refer specifically to the run-up to the Iraq war, in which a litany of false claims made by the administration was accepted and passed on without question; the savaging of Al Gore in the Times' news pages during the 2000 election; and the paper's misreporting of Bill and Hillary Clinton's involvement in the Whitewater land deal. In the Iraq case, the Times did publish an article admitting mistakes (buried on the inside pages), but there is little evidence that much has changed as a result -- nor, while you find time to scold yourselves for “cheerleading” on gay marriage, is there even a mention of it in this 15-page report.

There are many more issues, both specific and general, that we could raise about the Times' recent coverage. But as you seek to improve your coverage, we strongly urge you not to make responses to conservative attacks the guideposts of the changes you hope to make. Rest assured that no matter how unimpeachable the Times' coverage becomes, conservatives will continue to allege that you have a sinister liberal agenda you are foisting on an unsuspecting public. They will always make this charge, regardless of whether they have any evidence to support it, because doing so serves their political purposes. The measure of your success as a newspaper will not be found in kowtowing to their complaints, but in serving the truth and the public that so desperately needs it.