By David K. Shipler
The New York Times violated a worthy
tradition today by publishing an editorial on its front page, above the fold, in
a space previously reserved for facts and analysis, not opinion. It was a
mistake, and I’ll bet I’m not the only former or current reporter for the paper
who hopes it doesn’t happen again.
The Times has been one of the last
American news organizations to maintain a high wall between news and editorial.
This is a peculiarly American practice, unusual even among other democracies. But
it has been badly eroded by Fox News especially, which taints much of its
reporting with politics. MSNBC, some radio broadcasters, and smaller newspapers
have also allowed news coverage to be corrupted by partisan perspectives, while
The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and some others still cling to what we denizens
of the newsroom used to call, in decades past, “the separation of church and
state.”
Reporters were
so zealous about this firewall that the newsroom would rumble with murmurs of discontent
when a certain editorial writer, who opined on urban affairs, descended periodically
from his exalted perch on the tenth floor of the old Times building to the
third-floor newsroom to find out from me and other writers what was actually
going on in the street. We talked to him but were careful not to listen to him
and to pay no attention to whatever he wrote on the topics we covered.
