For those of old enough to remember, probably the most famous and funniest example of media bias came in a famous comment attributed to the esteemed New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael. Responding to the landslide election of Richard Nixon over George McGovern, she is quoted as saying, "How can that be? No one I know voted for Nixon."

Subsequently, various friends tried to bail her out, saying Ms. Kael wouldn't/couldn't have said something so stupid. Maybe. Fred Shapiro of the American Dialect Society, said the following quote appeared in a New York Times article that ran December 28, 1972.

Speaking to a Modern Language Association conference, the Times quotes Kael saying, "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them."

I leave it to you which version is more damning.

Having the Times as the source (rather than the Wall Street Journal, as various Kael defenders have insisted) makes the latest twist in the Linda Greenhouse saga even more delicious. Greenhouse, for those who don't know, has covered the Supreme Court for the Times for forever and a day.

It is impossible to miss Ms. Greenhouse's biases, including her pro-abortion tilt, but there are present and former members of the Times who insist (a) she isn't and (b) even if she is her private opinions never make their way into her stories.

This takes on added significance in light of NPR's David Folkenflik's September 20 story about a luncheon speech Greenhouse gave last June. Her remarks were delivered "before about 800 people at Harvard University after receiving the Radcliffe Institute Medal," according to an October 8 column by Byron Calame, the Times' "Public Editor."

The NPR story quoted "several opinions Ms. Greenhouse expressed in the speech," wrote Calame, after which "a wider audience, including top Times editors, became aware of her comments." (If you're interested, my first comments on this matter appear at www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/September06/nv092806.html)

Most of the inflammatory remarks are outside our purview. They bear the same stamp, I would guess, as Ms. Kael's famous 1972 remarks. In Greenhouse's "rather special world" they are probably as uncontroversial and as universally held as contempt for pro-lifers.

The particular reference to us goes as follows. Greenhouse asserted that under President Bush there had been a "sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism. To say that these last few years have been dispiriting is an understatement."

What to say?

Well, here's what Greenhouse had to say, according to Calame. "Ms. Greenhouse told me she considers her remarks at Harvard to be 'statements of fact' -- not opinion -- that would be allowed to appear in a Times news article. She said The Times has not suggested that she avoid writing stories on any of the topics on which she commented in June. 'Any such limits would be completely preposterous,' she said."

Were this not someone who is treated with kid gloves by her colleagues, who already had gotten off scot-free after participating in a 1989 pro-abortion march, who is regularly feted and celebrated as the best Supreme Court reporter around, you might think this was stupendously arrogant. Come to think of it, whether or not her buddies think she's the greatest thing since sliced bread, you still would say her attitude is stupendously arrogant.

Calame writes, "The reaction of The Times has been muted so far, however. [Times' Executive Editor] Mr. [Bill] Keller acknowledged in his e-mail to me that he has talked to Ms. Greenhouse about her remarks, but would not disclose what he said or whether her role would change."

He then spends much of the rest of his very long column assuring his readers that Keller shares his concern that the objectivity of the Times could be jeopardized by such blatant shows of partisanship. I'm obviously not privy to their email exchanges, but it comes across more to me like Keller is making all the right noises even though he is not the least bit upset by his star reporter's tantrum.

By contrast, Calame systematically touches all the bases. For example, he writes, "[A]s the influential Supreme Court reporter for The Times, a beat that touches nearly all areas of public policy, Ms. Greenhouse has an overriding obligation to avoid publicly expressing these kinds of personal opinions."

Even more forcefully, Calame adds, "During the current term, allowing her to cover court developments that involve the topics on which she voiced opinions in June risks giving the paper's critics fresh opportunities to snipe at its public policy coverage."

But, alas, in the most revealing comment in his column, Calame adds, "This appears, however, to be a risk that Times editors are willing to take." Indeed!

Former Public Editor Daniel Okrent, who, when he assumed the post, told readers he was "pro-choice," had a different take in an interview he gave to Newsweek. Okrent's whole position can be summarized in two sentences.

Nobody ever said to him they "perceived any ideological bias in [Greenhouse's] work." Okrent insisted that in the gazillion emails that he received during his stint he "never received a single complaint [about her]." Talk about living in "a rather special world."

Amusingly, Okrent uses Greenhouse's misstep to argue for the right of reporters to make even more mistakes routinely. Utterly convinced that Greenhouse's journalistic objectivity was and is purer than Caesar's wife, Okrent argued in an email to Calame that Greenhouse's over-the-top remarks at Radcliff "should spur a 're-examination' of the need for a limit on the kinds of personal opinions that news staffers express in public." (The guidelines say that reporters "should avoid expressing views that go beyond what they would be allowed to say in the paper.")

In case you don't follow the logic, Okrent's point is that if Greenhouse can hold such "strong opinions" (as he puts it so charitably) and not have this "affect[] her journalism or how it's perceived," then, heck, this ought to serve as a "test case" on the newspaper's guideline.

If that weren't enough, the Times' guidelines deserve scrutiny, Okrent maintains, because it "makes it difficult for journalists to be citizens" and "pretend" that they don't have opinions.

Near the end, Calame has this important admonition.

"The guideline's broadest value comes from serving as a formal reminder for Times journalists of their need to be disciplined about personal opinions. Public perceptions of bias, which can be sparked by some nuance in carefully edited articles, are likely to be triggered even more easily by expressions of personal opinion outside the news columns. The merest perception of bias in a reporter's personal views can plant seeds of doubt that may grow in a reader's mind to become a major concern about the credibility of the paper."

But his warning rolled off Greenhouse like water off a duck's back. And understandably so.

When you can march with other reporters for "abortion rights" without being disciplined; pen a biography of Roe v. Wade author Harry Blackmun that treats him as a secular saint; and win a Pulitzer Prize to boot, what else would you expect her to say except, "Any such limits would be completely preposterous."

If you have any questions or comments, please write Dave Andrusko at dandrusko@nrlc.org.

Part 2