Diagnosing The Times and American Media

Re “Read My Lips: Hire Some Conservatives,” Commentary, May 15: Perhaps if more conservatives in the media showed the same enthusiasm for questioning and investigating President Bush and the Republicans that the supposedly liberal media has had for questioning and investigating Clinton and the Democrats, they might have a useful role in the mainstream media. But as long as they feel their primary duty is to defend and amplify the Republican agenda, their commitment to objectivity will be suspect.

Richard Byard

Studio City

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Andrew Klavan in his article relays the obvious solution for The Times’ declining readership: promote some diversity in your narrow-minded, hard-left news and editorial staff. It will be difficult to stop the decline until you offer some counter besides a conservative cartoonist. The Times has failed at influencing elections and alienated half of its potential market. Think of conservatives as potential customers instead of the enemy.

James V. Earley

Laguna Niguel

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Klavan’s article has my vote for the best commentary of the year. I would bet my last dollar that the simple truths expressed in this short piece had tens of thousands of your readers nodding their heads in agreement. The politically correct and largely nonsensical notions embraced by the left have been eroding our institutions for decades. The most obvious examples of this foolish but dangerous leftward slant can be witnessed daily in the pages of our newspapers and on our campuses.

Let’s get a more intellectually honest debate going by establishing a political balance within the staff of your writers and editors. Political conformity and the absence of intellectual diversity can only lead to a tyranny of mediocrity, which in turn will eventually bring our nation to its knees.

Robert Schmidt

Westminster

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This may be shocking, but some of us are actually looking for facts and information to drive the news that we read and watch. This never occurs to such know-it-all ideologues as Klavan. His solution to the ratings woes of the news media is simply to offer Americans a version of “news” that is spun toward his political ideology (the right one, of course) to counter the (supposedly) leftward spin that now exists.

The problem with the U.S. news media today is not that it is too liberal. The problem is that it is too corporate, too submissive to power and too ratings-driven to the extent that it often fails to present solid facts and information for fear of upsetting people!

If Klavan is indeed representative of what Americans want from their news media, then willful ignorance reigns and our future is dark indeed.

Don Pearce

Redondo Beach

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Re “Note to You Liberal Weenies -- Yes, the Right Really Can Write,” Opinion, May 15: Brian C. Anderson says now is the best time to be a conservative writer because never before has the publishing industry published so many books by conservative authors. Surely Anderson doesn’t equate sheer quantity of publication with quality writing. One need only examine the latest bestseller list to see that the two frequently are mutually exclusive.

To paraphrase a liberal weenie Anderson undoubtedly loves to bash, I say, “It’s the marketplace, stupid.” The publishing industry publishes what will sell, and bestseller status is no mark of fine work.

Yet Anderson cites the following success stories to advance his argument: the “stream of bestsellers” from conservative publishers like Regnery Press (producers of “Unfit for Command” -- the Swift Boat veterans’ diatribe against John Kerry) and Crown Forum’s “Treason,” the polemic written by Ann Coulter, the world’s most thoughtless political commentator.

Yes, the right can write, but if Anderson’s article is any indication, the right has far to go on the road to cognition.

Robert Rowley

Las Cruces, N.M.