March 26, 2007

LA Times Non-Scandal: The Self-Destructive Standards of MSM

As has been widely discussed (see Patterico, Mickey Kaus, and others), there were noteworthy events at the LA TIMES this past weekend. I'll quote John Podhoretz for a summary:

Evidently the paper's senior leadership thought it would be a good idea to get "guest editors" to put out its Sunday opinion section. So the editorial-page editor secured the services of Brian Grazer. It happens that Grazer is an Academy-Award winning producer and one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, despite his really bad haircut.

Grazer would seem to fit the bill perfectly. Only it turns out he engages a PR firm that employs the editorial-page editor's girlfriend. And so the screams of "CONFLICT OF INTEREST! CONFLICT OF INTEREST!" rang out all over Southern California.

This is absurd. Beyond absurd.

The TIMES decided not to publish the section, and Andres Martinez, the editorial page editor, resigned.

Here's what I want to add. Last week I posted that "If MSM held itself to the standards it applies to others, it would dismantle itself."  These events at the LA Times are a perfect example.

The TIMES ostensibly is trying to hold itself up to the same standards it uses on everybody else,  and the result was serious damage to the paper. Per David Carr in the NY TIMES:

Reporting on the contretemps at The Los Angeles Times last week brings to mind a scene in which you come upon a sinking vessel and see people scrambling everywhere. And then you realize they are not looking for buckets, but guns.

At The Times last week, editors took aim at other editors, writers sprayed shots at their own newspaper, and the publisher drew a bead on his own foot.

From Kaus:

...the Times has lost a lively opinion editor, Andres Martinez, who's radically improved his pages and who apparently disclosed everything to his bosses. No doubt the paper's future editorial commentary will avoid creating this, or any other kind, of controversy. ...

The damage to the paper was needless. As quoted above, Podhoretz calls it "Beyond absurd." Per Patterico, "This nonsense about Andres Martinez isn’t a scandal."

Conservatives often feel that the standards MSM applies to others are unreasonable; that, in applying these standards, MSM does needless, undeserved, damage; and that these standards are ultimately suicidal in the sense that they do harm to our nation.  In this case, when an MSM paper applies such standards to itself, it is evident just how needlessly harmful, and how directly suicidal, they are.

Conclusion: events this past weekend at the LA TIMES underline the need for MSM to find a way to build, rather than to destroy, that on which it reports.