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The top brass of the New York Times asked critics at a UC Berkeley forum this week to reexamine their political leanings before accusing the 150-year-old, landmark newspaper of having a political bias. 

“It’s not necessarily where we sit [where the problem is]… but where you sit,” said Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., speaking alongside executive editor Howell Raines at Zellerbach Hall Monday night. 

In keeping with Berkeley’s familiar politics, audience members charged the Times of cheerleading for President Bush’s war efforts in Iraq and pandering to the interests of Israel. 

“If we were in New York, we would have had this question asked the exact opposite way,” responded Sulzberger, noting hometown critics who claim the paper is pro-Palestinian and others who say the paper smears Bush. 

The significance of the Times and its editorial stance cannot be overstated, suggested forum moderators and journalists Orville Schell and Mark Danner. For more than 1.2 million Americans, the Times is the lens through which the world is seen, they pointed out. 

With 29 foreign bureaus and 10 at home, Raines said the responsibility of distilling a large breadth of news and opinion into black and white was shepherded by an “intellectual contract with readers.” 

Unassuming at well under six feet tall and speaking in a drawl suggestive of his Alabama roots, Raines underscored the paper’s even editorial hand and said “the winds from either side” don’t steer it off course. 

Still, during prolonged dialogue about the Middle East, one audience member criticized the paper for basing reporters at a bureau in Jerusalem and not balancing its perspective by employing a bureau in the largely Palestinian Gaza or West Bank. 

Raines scoffed at the challenge. 

“It’s assumed that where you sit determines what you think,” he said, disagreeing with the assumption. “I don’t think our reporting of Israel is unbalanced.” 

The foremost goal of Times coverage, according to the New York newsmen, is to put out the information needed for honest political debate. 

“That’s our job… to marshal the facts we need,” said Sulzberger, who was named chairman of the New York Times Company in 1997, keeping the company in his family’s control for more than 100 years. 

What Schell called a “curious [corporate] structure” and labeled “feudal,” Sulzberger said was a business model key to the paper’s longtime success. 

“We’re a highly profitable newspaper,” Sulzberger said. And the reason for the profit, he insisted, is “to support doing journalism.” He added that the Times was not unique in being a family-run newspaper. 

The profitability of the paper has allowed the organization to expand its coverage, particularly in foreign affairs, noted Raines. The foreign expansion of the Times has run contradictory to moves at other newspapers, which have recently shrunk international coverage. 

Raines said an important overseas mission of the paper now was to position staff on the borders of Iraq to prepare for coverage in the event of war. He noted the lack of quality news coverage that occurred during the 1991 Gulf War and said he he’d push for “more access to the battlefield” if there is another go-around. 

After discussion of war coverage, members of the Berkeley audience were quick to question the paper’s anti-war coverage. Referencing an Oct. 27 Times’ article that under-reported the number of activists at a Washington peace march, critics accused the paper of downplaying the anti-war movement. 

Raines acknowledged the inaccuracy of the October article and said a follow-up story was written to correct the error. 

“In this business there’s only one thing to do when you’re wrong and that’s get it right as quick as you can,” he said.