Because We Agree With Them

A perfect distillation of "we must obey critics on the Right, and get VERY VERY MAD AT CRITICS ON THE LEFT."

In regard to the debate on how to cover race, some staffers inside The Times agreed wholeheartedly with Baquet's approach. "Using that language is a turn off to some readers," one said. "And there are a lot of people that think The Times is too liberal, and when you start throwing words like that around, people will accuse us of editorializing."

I spent too many years buying this argument but it doesn't make any sense. Journalists who say these things aren't scared of conservatives. They agree with them. Left wing criticism makes them mad because they don't agree with left wing critics. It's that simple. They aren't worried that they're "editorializing" the other way.