It's a free country, and perhaps the Times has decided it wants its reporters to explain the world in this partisan tendentious way. This is the tradition in Europe, where newspapers and their staffs are understood to be right (Le Figaro) or left (Le Monde), and it was once true of American papers too. If the Times wants to return to those days, its editors would do better to come out and admit their bias. The confusion--for readers and especially for impressionable young reporters like Jayson Blair--comes when a newspaper preaches one standard of fairness and objectivity but practices another.