Or, as Glenn Reynolds would put it, oh, that liberal media: Michael Kinsley admits what conservatives have been complaining about for years: the vast influence of the New York Times in setting the agenda for news organizations everywhere, a position of “near-universal dependence” that gives the increasingly left-leaning Times power far beyond its own circulation:
[M]uch or even most American news reporting and commentary on national issues derives – uncredited – from the New York Times. . . Even if you don’t read the Times yourself, you get your news from journalists at other media who do. The Times sets the news agenda that everyone else follows. The Washington Post and maybe one or two other papers also play this role, but even as a writer who appears in the Washington Post — a damned fine newspaper run by superb editors who are graced with every kind of brilliance, charm, and physical beauty – I would have to concede that the Times is more influential. . . it is the imprimatur of the Times or the Post that stamps the story as important before sending it back down to other papers – as well as up to the media gods of television.
In fact, I would go so far as to cite both the Times’ longstanding liberal slant and its influence on the national media agenda as Conservative Truth #2 in my continuing series.