New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan's Sunday column on drone strikes featured an interesting comment about (media?) bias against Republicans from David Rohde, a reporter kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008.
First, Sullivan criticized the Obama administration from the left:
Uh-oh. Has the New York Times hired a new Public Editor that will spend her term criticizing the paper from the left? Less than a week after starting, Margaret Sullivan has already hailed the political wisdom of late left-wing author Gore Vidal while praising a Times "fact-checking" piece that excoriated Republicans. She has also expressed concern on the paper's lack of coverage of liberal fair-pay icon Lilly Ledbetter, while praising a writer for the left-wing online mag Salon. Finally, she discussed a complaint about Times's over-coverage of the latest lousy jobs report, inspired by a former Obama administration economist.
Sullivan, formerly editor for the Buffalo News, last week became the paper's fifth public editor, following Daniel Okrent (who began in October 2003), Byron Calame (May 23, 2005) Clark Hoyt (May 14, 2007), and Arthur Brisbane (August 2010). The Times's public editor position – an in-house newspaper critic who evaluates reader complaints and internal ethical issues – has its roots in the catastrophe of Jayson Blair, who published fake and plagiarized stories in the Times between October 2002 and April 2003.