Rathergate.com has lampooned the media’s blindness to its own foibles on many occasions. America’s newsrooms are dominated by leftism exceeded only by higher education, its stories mock the public from which they have seceded (conservatives, gun owners, evangelicals, etc.), the media makes mistakes time and time again because of said bias, yet day after day after day they scratch their heads and wonder why Americans don’t trust them anymore.

Could The New York Times, a bastion of Manhattan liberals who set the nation’s news agenda, finally be getting it? Heaven forbid!

Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, hardly a conservative by any means, starts his column with the usual MSM whining over why America doesn’t trust or believe its news stories, and why stories of American reporters jailed elicits yawns, if that. He also takes the standard-issue swipe that it is in fact partisan conservatives, not liberal bias, agenda journalism and factual errors that wouldn’t be committed in a junior high PTA newsletter, that are causing the public to distrust the press.

But halfway through the column, Kristof begins to have an epiphany:

I don’t see any easy solutions, but print, radio and television all need to take much bolder steps to reconnect with the public.

More openness, more willingness to run corrections, more ombudsmen, more acknowledgement of our failings - those are the kinds of steps that are already under way and that should be accelerated. It would help if news organizations engaged in more outreach to explain themselves, with anchors or editors walking readers through such minefields as why we choose to call someone a “terrorist,” or how we wield terms like “pro-life” or “pro-choice.”

I question the accuracy of the idea that those steps are “already under way.” Kristof can speak for a handful of media, but the quest for media openness, fairness and transparency is a far cry from a plurality.

But Kristof is only getting warmed up. I admire his guts for saying this in the Times, because I’m sure he got a few evil stares from co-workers who believe journalism’s function is to save the world from the Republican Party:

We also need more diverse newsrooms. When America was struck by race riots in the late 1960’s, major news organizations realized too late that their failure to hire black reporters had impaired their ability to cover America. In the same way, our failure to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today.

I think we’re nuts not to regulate handguns more strictly, but I also think that gun owners have a point when they complain that gun issues often seem to be covered by people who don’t know a 12-gauge from an AR-15.

Let’s let this soak in for a second — someone in the pages of The New York Times said that newsrooms need right-of-center thinkers. Of course, Kristof’s column is window dressing at best and wishful thinking at worst unless Editor Bill Keller and Publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger take him up on it.

If one word can capture the public attitude toward American journalists, I’m afraid it’s “arrogant.” Not surprisingly, I think that charge is grossly unfair. But it’s imperative that we respond to that charge - not by dismissing it, but by working far more diligently to reconnect with the public.

Mr. Kristof, please e-mail this part of your column to Howard “The Corporate Tool” Kurtz at the Washington Post.

Given the Post’s refusal to correct its stories in recent weeks, coupled with the Times’ refusal to disown a Pulitzer Prize penned in the blood of at least 6 million Ukrainians, what is unfair about the public’s charge of arrogance?

Bernard Goldberg’s second book on media bias needed a name. What did he choose that best summarized the MSM’s problems? Arrogance. And the name was so unfair that the book flew off of the shelves.

Unless we can recover the public trust, our protests about reporters’ going to jail will come across as self-serving whining. And we’ll wake up one day to find ourselves on the wrong side of history.

Don’t get me wrong — I applaud Kristof’s new-found grasp on the situation. Had he checked out the blogosphere or listened to a public that has been screaming this for the past 30 years, this revelation may have come sooner.

Mr. Kristof, I pray that your MSM friends do in fact wake up, because the end of your column is overly optimistic. The MSM’s protests over reporters behind bars already does come off as self-serving whining. And the wrong side of history is barreling down on the MSM like a logging truck without brakes.

Elsewhere on the Web, Michelle Malkin is unimpressed with Kristof’s column, noting a possible boo-boo he made that he has yet to address.