Politics & Power Quote by Daniel Okrent

The sentence reads like institutional boilerplate, but its real force is almost confessional: the “Op-Ed page” isn’t a side room in the house of news, it’s the foyer where the public decides what kind of place The New York Times is. Okrent, speaking as an editor who knows where reputations are made and lost, is naming an uncomfortable truth inside legacy media: neutrality is less a principle than a choreography, and the Op-Ed page is where the choreography becomes visible.

His key move is the duplication of “perception.” Not truth, not accuracy, not even influence-perception. That word choice quietly admits that a paper’s authority rests on a fragile cultural contract: readers don’t just consume reporting; they infer motives. Then he sharpens the point with “implicit editorial positions,” a phrase that functions like a legal brief against deniability. The most consequential stances aren’t always the unsigned editorials; they’re the patterns embedded in selection.

The subtext is about power disguised as pluralism. “Given the freedom” sounds generous, but it’s a gated freedom. The publisher’s “choice of people” is the thesis. Op-ed pages present themselves as marketplaces of ideas, yet the market is curated, the stalls pre-approved, the range of dissent bounded by what the institution can safely host without destabilizing its brand.

Context matters: Okrent was the Times’ first public editor, a role created after credibility crises to reassure readers the paper could police itself. This line is that reassurance, and also a warning. If you want to understand what an outlet really believes, don’t just read its editorials. Watch whom it hires to argue on its behalf, and whom it never invites into the room.