You Set Your Agenda, I'll Set Mine

NRO's Stephen Spruiell is less surprised than one of his readers at Time magazine's explicit hope to "set the agenda," something that comes up because they're changing their publication date. Stephen says Time "does not try to pass itself off as purely neutral, like most newspapers do."

Try to pass itself off is well put, as he knows. Here's an old New York Review of Books article by Michael Massing about the alleged failures of the mainstream press before the invasion of Iraq:

Two days later, [Walter] Pincus, together with Dana Milbank, the Post's White House correspondent, was back with an even more critical story. "As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week," it began, "it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged—and in some cases disproved —by the United Nations, European governments and even US intelligence reports." That story appeared on page A13.

The placement of these stories was no accident, Pincus says. "The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think," he told me. "They're like writing a memo to the White House." But the Post's editors, he said, "went through a whole phase in which they didn't put things on the front page that would make a difference."

I was never much interested in newspapers writing memos to the White House, as riveting as that might be. But at least this provides a glimpse into how many reporters see themselves as political actors--when they're not passing themselves off as purely neutral.