THOSE PROFESSING SURPRISE at the public collapse of credibility at the New York Times haven’t been paying attention to Mickey Kaus or Andrew Sullivan. They haven’t been reading the descent into fevers of Paul Krugman or the bitter stridency of Maureen Dowd. The deep sickness a
t the Times had many symptoms. Believers in the “mission” of the paper just chose to ignore those symptoms. The very same symptoms are evident at the Los Angeles Times. The ideology of the newsroom is reflexively left. The reporters, as a group, are anti-Israel, anti-Evangelical, anti-free enterprise, and virulently anti-Bush. The editorial page boasts regular contributors Robert Scheer, Arianna Huffington, and John Balzar, reliable voices of the left, though lately Balzar has retreated into the pose of hand-wringer about the direction of society.

The columnists who deal regularly with politics outside of the editorial pages come in two varieties: left and farther-left. There is more diversity at a militia meeting than at a party of Los Angeles Times columnists. What happens when a newspaper becomes an echo chamber? Obvious errors and over-the-top biases go undetected. That’s what happened in New York. It is happening in Los Angeles as well.