The lead of The New York Times’s story about financial troubles at The Irish Times pays tribute to that paper as a “guide” to Hibernians doubtless bewildered by “the economic and cultural booms of the last decade.” Brian Lavery, the article’s author, could tell this by the “nonpartisan and unbiased approach” with which “The Times pushed issues to the fore with a progressive, literate, pro-European voice.” It’s a small example, I admit, but as perfect in its way as you will find of the way in which the subject of “bias” is understood, not only at The New York Times but also in most of the mainstream media in the United States. Just as, in the European context, “nonpartisan and unbiased” means practically the same in the eyes of Mr. Lavery and The New York Times as “progressive, literate, pro-European,” so in the United States the same words imply the constellation of attitudes and opinions that go under the name (when they must be named at all) of “progressive.”

It is the settled ambition of the “progressive” forces in the developed and English-speaking countries of the world to transcend what they regard as the parochialism of national and local identities. That is one reason why being “pro-European,” for example, is the same thing to both Timeses as being unbiased. National or ethnic or religious or patriotic or other forms of feeling that do not aspire to the universal— theseare what is meant by