New York Times public editor Byron Calame has an interesting, yet flawed, article in today's paper that seeks to sugarcoat a serious problem.

Calame focuses on what motivates reporters in their work:

Being first with new facts or fresh insights.
Pursuing stories that can have impact.
Winning prizes.
Impressing sources.
Figuring out what’s really happening.
Telling stories in a compelling way.
Getting on the front page.

All of these things certainly are part of reporters' motivations. However, Calame starts his article with this gem:

SOME readers are convinced that certain reporters at The New York Times are motivated solely by partisan politics. A New Jersey reader’s March e-mail, for example, described one reporter as a “GOP operative/hack-writer” who “uncritically sounds his party’s theme today in a piece about the 2008 campaign.” But a Florida reader contended in a September e-mail that the anti-Bush political bias of the same Times staffer and a colleague “is in their DNA.”
My reviews of these two stories turned up no bias. More important, however, my stint as The Times’s public editor and my 39 years at a competitor lead me to conclude generally that reporters and editors in the newsrooms of major newspapers are not motivated by a devotion to any political party or cause. It just isn’t in their DNA.

Has Calame already forgotten the kerfuffle over Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse's statements at her alma mater? I've sent Calame an e-mail requesting that he post the two unbiased articles that he references in his lede on his Web Journal so that his readers can decide for themselves. (I'll be pleasantly surprised if he complies.)

While it's true that many reporters would write an expose on their mother if they thought it'd get them on the front page, they don't always apply the same scrutiny or standards to their mother as they would to an outspoken politician of a party they deplore. Calame's suggestion that "devotion to any political party or cause" (aka bias) just isn't in the DNA of reporters is so laughable that it's a wonder that he can write it with a straight face.