New York Times (Opinion)

Important Note: AllSides provides a separate media bias rating for the The New York Times news pages.

This page refers to The New York Times opinion page, including op-ed writers and the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board’s bias is weighted, and affects this bias rating by roughly 60%. Not all columnists for the New York Times display a left bias; we rate many individual writers separately (see end of this page). While there are some right-leaning opinion writers at the Times, overall the opinion page and Editorial Board has a strong Left bias. Our media bias rating takes into account both the overall bias of the source’s editorial board and the paper’s individual opinion page writers.

• New York Times Opinion Rated Left in Sept. 2018 Editorial Review
• New York Times Opinion Rated Left in Feb. 2025 Small Group Editorial Review

New York Times Opinion Rated Left in Feb. 2025 Small Group Editorial Review

A panel of reviewers on the left, right, and center rated New York Times Opinion as Left (-3.03) in a Feb. 2025 Small Group Editorial Review. 

Panelists noted that there were some center opinions and that the New York Times does feature some conservative columnists, but the majority of opinions were from the left. The New York Times Editorial Board accounts for over half of the overall rating for the opinion section, which the panelists noted always featured a left perspective. 

The Center panelist noted all the conservative columnists on staff seemed anti-Trump and “There does seem to be a bias in people who write guest essays—former Biden admin officials, but not Trump officials unless they turned against him, serving a left-wing narrative, even if they themselves are conservative.”

The Lean Right panelist said “I have not found any articles that show a perspective from the right, and articles I would consider to be from a Center perspective seem very few and far between.” While the Lean Left panelist said, “opinions from the moderate conservative voices tend not to be one of the top-featured opinions at any given time,” and “the content from the left is often sensational and full of partisan cues, while content from the right has to be very measured and sober to make it into these pages.”

Content reviewed included but was not limited to:

• America Has a Rogue President
• Trump Just Fired 6,700 I.R.S. Workers in the Middle of Tax Season. That’s a Huge Mistake.
• How 12 Americans See Life After Watching a Lot of TikTok
  • The Center and Lean Right reviewers noted this was a center story choice, but the center reviewer added the piece “identifies participants by age, location, race, political affiliation, occupation…putting race so high up and capitalizing black but not white shows bias.”
• What Republicans Can Do to Take Control of DOGE
  • “Frames the whole article around the headline, which implies that DOGE is out of control,” the right reviewer said. The Lean Left reviewer said there was good balance throughout and a genuine attempt to empathize with Republicans. 
• Trump, Again, Chooses Loyalty Over Leadership
  • The Lean Left reviewer said the piece “ascribes malicious intent to Trump without even including his stated goals,” but added “The critiques are not phrased in an ideologically left way.”
• Trump’s Shameful Campaign Against Transgender Americans
• I Teach at Harvard. Store Managers See Me as a Threat.
• What Trump Can Learn From the Last G.O.P. Disaster

New York Times Opinion Rated Left in Sept. 2018 Editorial Review

In Sept. 2018, the AllSides team conducted an extensive Editorial Review of the New York Times Editorial Board. We found the New York Times Editorial Board to be consistently Left. The team could not find even one example of an editorial piece with a Center or Right perspective. Every headline was Left in position, headline, and choice of topic.

Running pieces that declare such perspectives as, "Republicans seem determined to brand themselves the party of sexual harassment and abuse," the New York Times Editorial Board never writes favorably or sympathetically about the Republican Party, its members or ideas. We found The New York Times Editorial Board engages in some sensationalism around issues, contributing to its Far Left stance.

It's important to note that editorials from any news publication take a specific side on issues the board deems important. The New York Times Editorial Board consistently displays a Far Left stance on policies and issues of the day.

• New York Times Endorses Kamala Harris for President, 2024
• New York Times Endorses Joe Biden for President, 2020
• Accusations of New York Times Bias
• Individual Political Biases of New York Times Opinion Writers

New York Times Endorses Kamala Harris for President, 2024

The New York Times Editorial Board endorsed Kamala Harris for president ahead of the 2024 presidential election. The Board called Harris "the only patriotic choice" and praised the candidate for being "a dedicated public servant."

New York Times Endorses Joe Biden for President, 2020

The New York Times Editorial Board endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president during the 2020 election, writing in part, "In the midst of unrelenting chaos, Mr. Biden is offering an anxious, exhausted nation something beyond policy or ideology. His campaign is rooted in steadiness, experience, compassion and decency."

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Accusations of New York Times Bias

In a July 2020, writer Bari Weiss publicly resigned from the New York Times, citing media bias, an internal culture hostile to new or different perspectives, and "constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views." Weiss said she was originally hired to bring to the Times' Opinion page the voices of "first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home."

“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor," Weiss wrote. "As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.”

"My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views," she continued. "They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in."

In June 2020, New York Times Editorial Page Editor James Bennet resigned amid reports of anger inside the company over the publication of an op-ed titled "Send in the Troops" by Sen. Tom Cotton. In it, Cotton advocated for using the military to oppose rioters and "insurrectionists" during the Summer 2020 protests over the death of George Floyd.

In an Editor's Note later attached at the top of the piece, the Times wrote that "the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published" because "the editing process was rushed and flawed," Cotton had made "allegations have not been substantiated and have been widely questioned," and the headline was too "incendiary" for such a "life-and-death" topic.

Cotton accused the paper of bias, saying on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," "The New York Times editorial page editor and owner defended [running the piece] in public statements, but then they totally surrendered to a woke child mob from their own newsroom that apparently gets triggered if they're presented with any opinion contrary to their own, as opposed to telling the woke children in their newsroom this is the workplace, not a social-justice seminar on campus."

Individual Political Biases of New York Times Opinion Writers

Not all NYT Opinion columnists have a Left or Lean Left bias; AllSides rates New York Times Opinion page writers separately. View media bias ratings for individual writers:

• Michelle Alexander
• Charles M. Blow
• David Brooks
• Frank Bruni
• Roger Cohen
• Gail Collins
• Ross Douthat
• Maureen Dowd
• Thomas L. Friedman
• Michelle Goldberg
• Nicholas Kristof
• Paul Krugman
• David Leonhardt
• Bret Stephens