New York Times editor admits paper should be more 'discerning' on labeling liberals

A New York Times editor acknowledged during an interview on Thursday that the paper applied political labels to analysts and professors inconsistently after a law professor challenged the newspaper's decision to identify him as a conservative.

Patrick Healy, the assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust at the Times, said during the "Sound Off" podcast that law professor Josh Blackman reached out after he was labeled a "conservative" in Times reporting twice within 24 hours.

"Josh, you reached out after the Times twice described you as a, quote, conservative, end quote, law professor. And you said the conservative label was accurate, but that The Times applies labels like conservative and liberal inconsistently to law professors and analysts, and that a scholars view should speak for itself," Healy said.

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Blackman described the issue as a longstanding grievance with all major media outlets and said he was quoted twice as a "conservative law professor" in New York Times articles in February.

"I just thought that was strange. So I went through the Westlaw archives and just sort of searched for 'liberal' law professors and 'conservative' law professors in the New York Times database, and it was far more likely that youre identifying a conservative than a liberal. And those numbers are stacked because liberals are quoted even more often. So the numbers even have a greater disparity," he said during the conversation with Healy.

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"And this sort of reinforces, I think, a perception that both the academy and, frankly, the media views a liberal position as a neutral position. And the conservative position is the other, the outlier. And thats why you have to have this sort of nomenclature, this sort of adjective to describe it," Blackman said.

He said he wrote a letter to the editor in February and the Times didn't publish it, but added that he appreciated Healy reaching out to him about it.

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Healy went on to acknowledge the validity of Blackman's critique: "I think theres real truth to your critique and its something we need to do a better job on." 

"It can come off like The Times treats liberals as normal and conservatives as unique and worthy of labeling," Healy said. "In the legal academy, there are a lot of liberals, but that doesnt justify it. I think we need to be more discerning about it."

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Fox News Digital reached out to the New York Times for comment.

Blackman argued that the label should reflect a professor's involvement in an issue rather than thei