(FORTUNE Magazine) – A kindred spirit in Albany wrote in the other day, enclosing a clipping from the New York Times and raising the exact same question to which your correspondent would have gravitated had he seen the item earlier. The item was an editors' note. It apologized to Prairiefire, a farm-belt organization that the Times had referred to as a ''left-leaning farm advocacy group.'' The editors, sounding quite contrite, said Prairiefire had objected to the ''left- leaning'' part and added that the group ''should have been characterized instead through specific details of its programs and positions.'' The kindred spirit asked how long he would have to hold his breath before coming to a comparable editors' note about right-wing labels in the Times. Having now spent many hours hovering over Nexis, we have three thoughts about political labeling in the world's arguably greatest newspaper. The first is that it is damn difficult to compose sentences casually characterizing organizations via details of their stated positions. Do you really want the poor Times reporter to pause every time he has to identify Prairiefire and note that it derides the ''free-market approach'' to farm policy, yearns instead for higher price supports and mandatory production controls, and keeps worrying that big business is taking over the country's farms? Let the poor guy say ''left-leaning'' is our vote. Thought No. 2 is that it is entirely in character for the high-minded Times to get a nerves attack after labeling someone a lefty. We asked Nexis how often ''left-leaning'' or ''left-wing'' or ''leftist'' had appeared in the paper this year, and got an answer of 504. Based on a roughly 40% sampling of these references, and not counting the numerous sports-page entries on hockey players positioned at left wing, we note that virtually all the citations allude to foreigners -- typically self-proclaimed radicals like the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru and the Communist-Socialist coalition in Greece. Only a few oddball Americans get leftish labels, and here again they are people explicitly identifying themselves as radicals. Possibly for fear of being seen as McCarthyesque, the Times does not like to describe American political * figures as leftists. We found no such labels attached to members of Congress. Thought No. 3 is that -- just as intuited by the chap in Albany -- the paper's editors seem much less nervous about affixing ''right-wing'' or ''rightist'' labels. (Nexis reports 446 such sightings so far in 1989.) There seem to be a fair number of right-wingers on the Times's American landscape. Unlike the Democratic left wing, the right wing of the Republican Party turns up with some frequency, as in one recent news report about its opposition to the START arms-control talks. We also found several references to violence-prone anti-Semitic groups' being ''right wing.'' But the right-wing reference we paused over longest was in a story about the unexpected success of Lyndon LaRouche supporters in the 1986 Democratic primaries in Ohio. Trying to explain it all, the Times reporter cited one witness who said it was caused partly by ''general right-wing activity in some of these areas.'' The witness was identified as an official of Prairiefire.