How to Read the Times

In January, The Washington Times ran a lengthy piece on the alleged drug-running and CIA misdoings in Mena, Arkansas. It showcased the full repertoire of right-wing attack journalism. The insinuation and sleazy sources. The ritual acknowledgments that there is no proven link to the president, followed by gleeful recitals of more sordid allegations, as though there were. This kind of reporting comes as no surprise to those respectable Washington insiders who still dismiss the Times as a Moonie rag.

But wait. On the jump page were mug shots of, not Clinton and Webster Hubbell, but Edwin Meese and Oliver North. The Times rumormongers were implicating the Reagan and Bush administrations too!

Another recent front page featured a story on how environmental education is "traumatizing" children, but alongside it ran the lowdown on how Senate Republicans are trying to muzzle Jesse Helms on foreign policy. That's the Times: an aggressive right-wing tilt, but unpredictable, and sometimes willing to air the Republican dirty laundry too.

Quietly, over the last decade, the Times has evolved into a contentious, irreverent city daily. (In most other U.S. cities, the Times would be the meatiest and most substantial paper in town.) The Post still has the big picture and the classy writers. But the Times focuses on people, motives, and inside plays in a kind of high tabloid style that gets closer to the way that Washington really works.

That doesn't mean the Times has totally shed the partisan traits that won it early and deserved contempt. When Dick Armey, the House majority leader, says he's going to fight an increase in the minimum wage, the Times plays it like a main event. Its fawning coverage of Newt Gingrich's inauguration week called to mind Women's Wear Daily at a Hamptons luncheon.

But since then, the Times has taken great delight in giving Newt the needle. There was the item on the speaker's lesbian sister, for example. (She's a Democrat, too!) When Gingrich admonished his fellow Republicans to be more circumspect in dealing with the media, the Times added a droll subhead: "But Colleagues Note Speaker's Own Gaffes."

Generally, over the years the Times has become less protective of Republicans. It has given ample play to Democratic counterpunches -- their attacks on the new majority for refusing to give up  personal use of frequent-flier miles, for example. It has noted the new revolving door from business lobbies to Republican committee staffs, such as the oil and health insurance lobbyists now on Ways and Means. The Times reports the straight poop on the machinations between Gingrich and Bob Dole, and Dole and Phil Gramm, and the tensions within the conservative camp on issues like term limits and official school prayer.

Of course, where Gingrich gets a poke, Clinton gets a bludgeon. Whenever you see Whitewater or Foster in a Times headline, you can be sure that the goons are crawling out of the paper's psyche. You also need to be wary of anything called "News Analysis," which is where the right-wing hacks come out and take their turns. Donald Lambro will reliably convey the staggering insights that liberals are spenders and government is full of waste. The commentary and op-ed pages have the range and wit of Pravda in the Brezhnev years. Paul Craig Roberts will repeat his anti-tax chant. And so forth.

The news pages do have an eye for the conser- vative slant as well. You will be sure to hear about the black regent of the California university system who wants to abolish affirmative action, for example. You'll get the front-page infomercial on the NRA official who wrote a book on the right to bear arms. But you will also get the positive side of social trends, such as home schooling, which the establishment papers tend to hold at arm's length because credentialed experts don't approve.

 Basically the Times is a populist conservative paper rather than a slavishly Republican one. As a Washingtonian whose populist instincts run in a different direction from the Times's, I find it useful to argue with the paper each day; it's a taste of what Republicans have gone through with the Post for years -- and it sharpened their polemical edges. And I'm grateful to have a competing city daily. In an odd way, Washington needs the Times for the same reason that America needs National Public Radio -- to provide diversity and keep the big guys on their toes.

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