God knows, it has made its share of mistakes. But the newspaper that was launched 165 years ago today remains an institution whose birthday is worth celebrating.
“The Gray Lady,” as The New York Times is sometimes called, has its faults, not the least of which is its inexcusable failure to run comic strips. (Okay, maybe that’s not the paper’s biggest deficiency, but it’s right up there in my book.)
The Times has been accused of bias over the years, with more validity in some cases than in others. Critics note, for example, that the paper was not sufficiently skeptical of the Bush Administration’s false claims about Iraq prior to the American invasion.
Then, too, there was the case of one Jayson Blair, a reporter whose problem wasn’t one-sided reporting but no-sided reporting. Blair was forced out in 2003 because he plagiarized material and even fabricated news stories.
But it was the Times that helped strengthen the foundation of a free press in a 1964 libel case, New York Times v. Sullivan, in which the U.S. Supreme Court effectively made it difficult for public figures to prove that they were libeled or defamed in news reports.
Seven years later, the Times and The Washington Post published revealing articles based on the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War. Government efforts to block continued publication of the stories worked their way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against the government.
When all is said and done, there is no denying the ultimate proof of the newspaper’s greatness. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes and citations. Weighing the paper's accomplishments and deficiencies, that certainly tilts the scales in its favor.
