Just caught up on some TV viewing thanks to the (sporadic) wonder of TiVo. Bill O’Reilly conducted a fascinating interview on Tuesday night with New York Times columnist David Brooks. I’m attaching the entire transcript below (click on “Read More”). In brief, the conservative Brooks denied unequivocally that there’s a liberal bias at his paper (”[T]hey have an ideology…It’s the craft of reporting”). He backed the Times’ hyper-hyping of the Abu Ghraib story (”It’s defensible”). And he downplayed the paper’s cheerleading for liberal talk radio station Air America:

O’REILLY: They have no audience, and it’s going to fold, soon. How do you justify 12 articles on Air America?

BROOKS: Listen, I doubt all of those articles were positive. I…

O’REILLY: Most of them were. Most of them were. I have got to dispute you on that. Most of them put this thing in a very positive, good- for-the-country light.

BROOKS: Listen, they have their news judgment, you have yours, maybe I have mine. I’m an opinion journalist. You’re basically an opinion journalist. That’s why they don’t pay us to be straight news reporters.

Gak. What a cop-out! I double-checked the Times’ Air America coverage and O’Reilly was dead on. All but three of the Times’ dozen articles on the doomed station cast it as God’s gift to man. It wasn’t just the slant of the articles. It was the length and placement–for example, the 7,569-word, March 21 NYTimes magazine profile of Al Franken on the impending launch of the station; the three days of consecutive coverage on March 31 (1,403-word E1 article on the station’s debut); April 1 (752-word article); and April 2 (755-word column); and the April 14 B3 939-word profile of station co-host Lizz Winsted.

It’s entirely understandable that Brooks wouldn’t want to go on prime-time cable TV to unduly trash his employer. (He was, after all, just trying to sell his book.) But O’Reilly couldn’t even get Brooks to agree on the most egregious cases of the Times’ lefty proclivities.

After O’Reilly gave up gently needling Brooks about the Times’ institutional liberalism, Brooks volunteered this:

BROOKS: Listen, you’re not going — I’m loyal to my people. I’m loyal to my colleagues…

O’REILLY: I know. And I said that. I’m not going to…

BROOKS: … I admire them, I’m honored to be with them.

“I’m loyal to my people?” Whhaaat? What about his presumed conservative principles? Does he feel no need to defend them when they come under incessant attack from his colleagues? Isn’t that why he’s there? Does he really want to spend the rest of his writing life cooking up oatmeal like this (registration required)?

I enjoyed Brooks’ writing when he was at the Weekly Standard, but the guy has clearly contracted incurable swamp fever.

I speak from some experience on this matter, having served a similar role to Brooks’s at the Seattle Times (the New York Times of the Pacific Northwest). I defended the paper when it deserved it. But I pointedly and publicly criticized my colleagues when they engaged in alarmism and selective reporting (registration required). What good is a “house conservative columnist” if he/she exempts the house from conservative criticism? I also think that conservative or contrarian columnists should not cower behind the label “opinion journalist” when they see their own papers and the rest of the mainstream media failing to cover stories–stories which they can and should break (reg. required) themselves in their valuable column space.

As for Brooks, who is very good on the PBS talking head circuit (I subbed for him a few years ago and I was a nervous wreck), more than anything else, I feel sad. Sad that he has bought into the Times’ illusion of inclusion. You see, another major lesson I learned from my experience at the other Times, David, is that no matter what their lips say, “your people” inside the newsroom will never admire you as much as you proclaim to admire them.

THE O’REILLY FACTOR
June 29, 2004 Tuesday

O’REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I’m Bill O’Reilly. In the “Personal Story” segment tonight, as you may know, “The New York Times” and The Factor are not exactly best pals. They see us, well, as not reflective of their values. Let’s put it that way. I see the paper’s poobahs, not the reporters, but the executives, as being secular and promoting a very liberal agenda in its news pages. Joining us now from Washington is one of the two conservative columnists working for that newspaper, David Brooks, who is heavily outnumbered there, and whose new book is called “On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now & Always Have, in the Future Tense.”

All right, Mr. Brooks, now I’m going to allow you a luxury we don’t allow many in the No Spin Zone that if I ask you a question about your employer and you don’t want to answer it, we’re fine with it. We don’t want to get you in trouble with New York and the people who pay your salary. And we’re not trying to grill you on that. But I am just amazed that “The New York Times” uses its news pages, not where you live, on the op-ed page, to promote an agenda. And I will cite two things. Forty- seven, I believe that’s the count now, front-page stories about Abu Ghraib, 47. By contrast, “The Chicago Tribune,” no bastion of conservative thought, 28. What’s going on?

DAVID BROOKS: I’m going to be a healer of the breach between Bill O’Reilly and “The New York Times.” Let me tell you what I have learned since going to “The Times.” I have an ideology. My ideology is conservatism. I have a belief system that leads to conclusions. One of the things I have learned coming to the Washington bureau of “The New York Times,” where I know people a lot better, is they have an ideology, too. It’s the craft of reporting. They actually care about it and they think of it as an ideology the way I didn’t realize they did.

But they have a sense of how you should be a reporter and how you should be a fair reporter. And I’m actually struck by how they talk about that. They talk about that with the same passion that I talk about being conservative. So I have actually been sort of heartened since coming to the paper. They do have that sense. Now they may have different news judgments than you of how many pages — how many stories about Abu Ghraib should be on the front page, but I think Abu Ghraib was a big story. It’s defensible.

O’REILLY: It’s defensible, 47 front-page stories? And I have read all of them, and a lot of them were just reiterations of what they had written in the past. And when you challenge and say, you’re using this scandal, and it is a scandal and it is a big story, and we need to know about it, to bludgeon an administration you don’t like and promote the challenger, they have no answer for that. And yes, I guess they can say, well, fine, but 47 to 28, and “The Chicago Trib,” as I pointed out, is no right-wing bastion.

But let’s move along to Air America. Now this is a liberal network, as everybody knows, that has less than 20 stations, 12 articles. And the last article said that they had a substantial audience which is flat-out untrue. They have no audience, and it’s going to fold, soon. How do you justify 12 articles on Air America?

BROOKS: Listen, I doubt all of those articles were positive. I…

O’REILLY: Most of them were. Most of them were. I have got to dispute you on that. Most of them put this thing in a very positive, good- for-the-country light.

BROOKS: Listen, they have their news judgment, you have yours, maybe I have mine. I’m an opinion journalist. You’re basically an opinion journalist. That’s why they don’t pay us to be straight news reporters.

O’REILLY: I know, because doesn’t that — come on. The Factor is the most successful television-radio combination in the country. It has been for the last five years. No articles. Twelve articles, 12 articles…

BROOKS: Well, “The New York Times” is…

O’REILLY: …on something that nobody listens to.

BROOKS: … the most successful newspaper in the country.

O’REILLY: No, but, come on, you know what I’m talking about. Most successful, no articles, nobody listens to it, 12 articles. They are pushing this ideology.

BROOKS: I don’t think so.

O’REILLY: All right.

BROOKS: It’s “The New York Times.” They are the paper of record. You read them.

O’REILLY: I have stated my case as best I can. You don’t think so, I can’t force you to think so. Now are you lonely? Are you a lonely guy? You and Safire are the only conservative columnists. And you have by my count at least a dozen who see things from the left or moderately liberal. Are you a lonely guy?

BROOKS: No, I’m not lonely. They have been nice to me. In fact, they want me to be as conservative as I can be because they want a little diversity of thought. The bottom line is…

O’REILLY: A little diversity.

BROOKS: I’m not going to criticize my colleagues.

O’REILLY: A little diversity, not a lot.

BROOKS: They are my colleagues. I’m honored to be part of them.

O’REILLY: A little. All right. You wrote a great column on Michael Moore earlier this week, and you didn’t attack him personally. You just pointed out what he said, all right, in his last few years, all the incendiary things that he said and irresponsible things, and you listed them very methodically, and that column has been widely quoted. I read the letters to the editor today. And the people complaining about that column don’t dispute what you said, but they do dispute that “The Times” allows you to say it. What is that?

BROOKS: No, they dispute — listen, a lot of the readers, if you look at the letters column, and the letters editor has said this, a lot of the readers are liberal. I don’t doubt that. And if you look at my e-mail, it’s like walking into a wall of hatred.

O’REILLY: Is it really?

BROOKS: Yes…

O’REILLY: Well, that just makes my point.

BROOKS: … hundreds every day.

O’REILLY: That just makes my point.

BROOKS: But that’s the readers, that’s not the reporters.

O’REILLY: Well, why do you think they’re reading your newspaper, Mr. Brooks? Wise up, man.

BROOKS: Because they live in New York. It’s called “The New York Times.” New York is a liberal place.

O’REILLY: Yes, OK. Look, I know the land of Oz extends into the District down there. All right, let’s talk about your book…

BROOKS: Listen, you’re not going — I’m loyal to my people. I’m loyal to my colleagues…

O’REILLY: I know. And I said that. I’m not going to…

BROOKS: … I admire them, I’m honored to be with them.

O’REILLY: And I said that. I’m not going to try to do that. I like your book. And I want you to define what the theme of the book is. Go ahead.

BROOKS: This theme is about suburbia. And first, because suburbia has gone berserk, you have got these progressive suburbs that defy all the stereotypes with the sandal stores because progressives have a thing for toe exhibitionism. You have got more Republican places where people are so calm and corporate they make Dick Cheney look bi-polar. I wanted to look at suburbia as it really is where everybody else is looking down upon people at suburbia and say, these people are pretty good. And I’m trying to defend the way Americans actually live every day of their lives, not just the ideal…

O’REILLY: But you did point out over and over again in the pages that I have read that there is a superficiality that has really enveloped most of us in suburbia. I live there.

BROOKS: Yes — no, I live there, too. No, I say a lot of people around the world see us as the blonde bimbo of the Earth. If you look at the novels and all the articles written about suburbia, nobody is happy there. We’re all shallow materialists. But the theme of my book is that the way we live every day is connected to the root spiritual quest that America has always been distinguished by, and that we are not the superficial blonde bimbos of the Earth. If you look a little deeper, we take material things like barbecue grills, and I talk about guys going into Home Depot doing the special manly walk American men do in the presence of large amounts of lumber, sort of a manly waddle. And I say that this kind of stuff, and it’s kind of silly, I make a lot of jokes, but it’s connected to something deep and basically admirable.

O’REILLY: All right, now, there was one chapter where you use the F- word to headline the chapter. That, I don’t think you thought, was admirable, in the sexual area.

BROOKS: Right. I have two sections on child-rearing. And I happen to think child-rearing in our country is out of control. And one of the ways is we turn our kids into the junior workaholics of America. And they are so busy when they get to college that they don’t have time or interest in romance, in real relationships. Instead they hook up, just these casual sexual affairs at parties. And this is the way I think there are downsides. One of the admirable things about us is we work really hard, we move a lot, we have got incredible amounts of energy. But the downside is sometimes we give short shrift to everything else. And child-rearing, poetry, passion, those are some of the things we give short shrift to.

O’REILLY: All right. Mr. Brooks, a pleasure to have you on. You’re welcome anytime. Say hello to your bosses for me.

BROOKS: I will give my friends your best regards.

O’REILLY: OK. And thanks again.

In a moment, the mayor of Baltimore makes an outrageous comment about President Bush. We will play it for you. Coming right back.

LOAD-DATE: June 30, 2004