THE NEW YORK TIMES FIRES ITS PUBLIC EDITOR FOR RESISTING THE RESISTANCE: Liz Spayd “did her best to be even-handed in the eleven months she held the job,” Kyle Smith writes at NRO. “The angry Left could not forgive this:”

She noted, for instance, in an elementary insight, that a false statement, even one uttered by a person you hate, even a president you hate, is not automatically a “lie.” If you don’t know your false statement is false, it isn’t a lie, and journalists aren’t mind-readers. In a column entitled “Why Readers See the Times as Liberal,” she noted that many a liberal and centrist acolyte of the Times told her that they were seeking other outlets for balance. “A paper whose journalism appeals to only half the country has a dangerously severed public mission,” she said. That such a statement is now considered “controversial” does not reflect well on the media.

Of course, one reason why readers see the Times as “liberal” (read: leftist) is that its first Public Editor told them just that in 2004.