THE NEW YORK TIMES MORPHED INTO THE CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: In defense of RealClearPolitics.

Dear heavens! Rightward and aggressively pro-Trump? Cockburn almost fainted when he read those words — so he can only imagine the effect they had on the Times’s more delicate subscribers. What else?

RealClear became one of the most prominent platforms for elevating unverified and reckless stories about the President’s political opponents, through a mix of its own content and articles from across conservative media.

Elevating unverified and reckless stories? Goodness! Don’t they know that’s the New York Times‘s job? What the reporter Jeremy Peters seems to be describing here is aggregation — RealClear posts stories from outlets of different political persuasions. Today, for instance, you can find links to Vox, the Atlantic and Politico, as well as the Washington ExaminerAmerican Greatness and the Wall Street Journal. In the olden times, hacks such as Cockburn used to call this ‘editorial mix’.

Diversity of opinion is a fairly alien concept to the Times, a newspaper that has published approximately one Trump supporter for each year of his presidency.

New York Timespeople can’t handle diversity of opinion within their own newspaper, so no wonder they find it such a repellent concept when they encounter elsewhere.