Opiniatrety

What's the Matter with The Chronicle of Higher Education?

Writing in the AUUP's magazine Academe, Cat Warren argues that The Chronicle of Higher Education has been displaying a right-wing bias:

Especially since 9/11, the Chronicle has allowed itself to become a forum for a small group of conservative think tanks and foundations, as well as an equally small group of conservative faculty pundits. ACTA has become a central feature in the changed landscape at the Chronicle, alongside the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the David Horowitz Freedom Center (Horowitz’s current institutional incarnation), the National Association of Scholars, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Center for Equal Opportunity. Those groups’ studies (being far too tempted to put that last word in quotation marks, I will refrain), to say nothing of their lawsuits and news releases, are automatically considered newsworthy and often are only superficially interrogated; their leaders’ quotations are guaranteed; and their inevitability in any story involving academic freedom, teaching, assessment, curriculum—or even Lawrence Summers—is far too predictable.... The Chronicle is helping a small group at the extreme right of the political spectrum set the news agenda.

I've noticed something similar, though I haven't followed the Chronicle's coverage of the AAUP. Disproportionately when I follow a link to the Chronicle, they're pushing a right-wing viewpoint. There's no excuse for taking David Horowitz seriously.

(Incidentally, when I write "the Chronicle's," should I italicize the "'s"?)