A New York Times editor has acknowledged that the paper applies political labels to law professors and analysts inconsistently, following a challenge from a legal scholar who was twice described as a conservative in the newspaper's reporting within a 24-hour span. Patrick Healy, the assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust, made the admission during an appearance on the "Sound Off" podcast.
Healy said law professor Josh Blackman reached out to the paper after the labels appeared. Blackman told him that the conservative label was accurate, but that the Times uses terms like conservative and liberal unevenly when describing legal scholars and analysts, and that a scholar's views should speak for themselves. Healy said the critique had merit. "I think there's real truth to your critique and it's something we need to do a better job on," he said. He added that the paper's approach can make it appear that liberals are treated as the norm while conservatives are singled out for labeling. "In the legal academy, there are a lot of liberals, but that doesn't justify it. I think we need to be more discerning about it," Healy said.
Blackman said he was quoted twice as a "conservative law professor" in Times articles in February. He said he searched the Westlaw archives and the Times database for references to liberal and conservative law professors and found that the paper was far more likely to attach the conservative label than the liberal one. He argued that the imbalance was significant because liberal scholars are quoted more often overall, so the disparity was even larger than the raw counts suggested. Blackman also said he wrote a letter to the editor in February that the Times did not publish, though he said he appreciated Healy's outreach.
Blackman argued that a label should describe a professor's connection to an issue rather than their political affiliation. He pointed to reporting that noted when a professor had filed briefs supporting or opposing a particular administration's position, saying such details are a useful data point because they show a person has a stake in the matter. Broad labels, by contrast, tell readers little, and he said they can imply that a scholar's views should be discounted because of political identity. If the goal is to build trust and standards, he said, the focus should be on the potential source of a conflict or bias rather than how a person identifies politically.
Curtis Houck, managing editor of NewsBusters, responded in a statement to Fox News Digital that while acknowledging a problem is a first step, follow-through is what matters, and he questioned whether the Times would make concrete commitments. Fox News Digital reached out to the New York Times for comment. The Wall Street Journal's assistant editor for the editorial page, James Freeman, praised the Times in a Monday piece for acknowledging the criticism.