6 ms·

It's funny how the next big idea for the news media to get on board with starts at the New York Times and then filters it's way down the food chain through the

It's funny how the next big idea for the news media to get on board with starts at the New York Times and then filters it's way down the food chain through the less influential newspapers, CNN, and other mainstream news outlets, etc. It's sad that nobody is coming up with their own material much any more among the big networks. The agenda is set and it's all just a bunch or mstaphorical retweets. It's like there's some board somewhere that comes up with the next big thing we are going to try and sell to the American people on and they publish it in the NYT and then the whole mainstream dutifully jumps on board and it gets pushed and pushed by all the networks until they give up or they move onto something else. Searching news archives, one could build a nice directed timeline of the genesis and bloom through the media of these regular campaigns.

birken 10y ago
The NYT seemingly has written a well supported and fact checked story explaining how a verifiably false tweet from a person with few followers spread far and wide. What exactly is being pushed on the American people?
- cryoshon 10y ago
  >What exactly is being pushed on the American people?' what about that time the NYT pushed the iraq war or that time they pushed hillary clinton or that time they pushed (insert whatever their paid PR "article" of the second is pushing for)
  - woodruffw 10y ago
    If I remember correctly, the NYT published a written apology for their role in popularizing the invasion of Iraq. Newspapers make mistakes, recognize them, and apologize publicly. That's journalistic ethics. They were also forwards about their editorial support for HRC, having declared her their candidate well before she became the presumptive DNC nominee. You might not like the fact that pro-HRC opinion pieces made their way to the top, but there's no ethical dilemma there either.
    - mythrwy 10y ago
      There's not an ethical dilemma in pushing a candidate but an issue of trust. Lots of people don't trust Hillary. So when a publication goes out it's way to pump her up and writes biased hit pieces on the opposition are people who mistrust Hillary going to trust the publication? The point is, you can't argue why people should trust you rather than the opposition. You have to provide reasons for them to do so. It would be like building an app that wasn't getting positive reception and then trying to argue or shame people into liking it rather than giving people what they want. It plain doesn't work. People want to know what is going on. Tell them to the best of your ability. Don't couch it in spin, don't support sides, don't appear biased. That is how you establish a reputation of trust. It's not a matter of what is legal or ethical in this case at all.
      - birken 10y ago
        Links to the biased hit pieces please?
        honkhonkpants 10y ago
        There aren't any. The Times bent over backwards to stab Clinton in the back at every opportunity, to avoid accusations of bias.
      - woodruffw 10y ago
        I'm sorry, but what hit pieces? The NYT's coverage of Trump hasn't been favorable, but it would be difficult to characterize their exclusives on him as hits. Even their most negative coverage (the $916 million story comes to mind) was, at its core, factual. You could argue that it's indicative of bias for the NYT to break such a story at all, but it's in the public interest to know the financial solvency of their leaders. At the risk of conflating news and opinion, there was no shortage of opinion pieces calling on HRC to release her speeches - also in the public interest. It's difficult to ask the NYT to "establish a reputation of trust" when it already has one, deserved or not. Such a request, to the editors and ethicists of any media outlet, is just a nice way to ask for more favorable (or perhaps less damning) coverage of your candidate of choice.
- narrator 10y ago
  It's not that they aren't factual, it's that they direct the nation's attention. There are millions of newsworthy stories, but only some are published and the NYT seems to be the source of that focus that then leads the whole mainstream media around by the nose.
woodruffw 10y ago
It's called a "scoop". There's nothing particular novel or unusual about the way a story proliferates through media outlets. The nature of online news and media has simply made the process more visible.
rdtsc 10y ago
Good point. It would be good to see a tree (or graph, it's probably cyclic at some point) of exactly how it spreads. The left and the right have those as well (although calling Hillary and Trump supporters "left" and "right" is inaccurate, but that's for another discussion). The "right" had "the protests are started by Soros" and so they saw buses everywhere for a whole week or so. There was another such thing for a "get paid $3.5k to attend an anti-Trump protest" that ended up as a fake CL screen capture. The left first started with "let's hack the electoral college". There was a lot of discussion about that - "what if we convince/force them to vote the other way. Maybe invoke some hidden article from the Constitution..." or some thing like that. That went on for a while. It died down. Then "fake news" started, almost overnight. And it's been fake news since then. Just yesterday here there was some discussion about an oil field in Texas, and it seems they overestimated the cost or used a different metric or some such thing. But people here were calling it "Fake News". I thought it was initially supposed to lizard people controlling the government? Then this story as another example. A major fuck up, everyone got worked about stuff without verifying. The source doesn't seem to have done it on purpose and has since deleted it (but it was too late) of course. Everyone in the chain begin idiots and overreacting. But NYT, CNN, CBS, FOX, NBC have been doing this stuff for years! Especially regurgitating anything coming out of the State Department or other government institutions. They are billion dollar corporation, if anyone can verify stuff it should be them. Would they consider themselves "Fake News"... The problem is they are realizing they are losing the ability to manufacture consent like they could before. That must be terrifying, so they have to respond or do something about it. "Fake News" is their response. To be fair, is a useful PR technique - a label that can be quickly thrown on anything. This makes sense also in the context of how popular Identity Politics became, where flinging labels like "fascist", "racist", "sexist" is done all too easily. Also with Twitter becoming an acceptable political discourse medium, try to argue a complex point in 140 characters. You can't! Instead throw a short label in there and you're done. Wipe hands on pants and refresh to see the results.

birken 10y ago

The NYT seemingly has written a well supported and fact checked story explaining how a verifiably false tweet from a person with few followers spread far and wide. What exactly is being pushed on the American people?

cryoshon 10y ago
>What exactly is being pushed on the American people?' what about that time the NYT pushed the iraq war or that time they pushed hillary clinton or that time they pushed (insert whatever their paid PR "article" of the second is pushing for)
- woodruffw 10y ago
  If I remember correctly, the NYT published a written apology for their role in popularizing the invasion of Iraq. Newspapers make mistakes, recognize them, and apologize publicly. That's journalistic ethics. They were also forwards about their editorial support for HRC, having declared her their candidate well before she became the presumptive DNC nominee. You might not like the fact that pro-HRC opinion pieces made their way to the top, but there's no ethical dilemma there either.
  - mythrwy 10y ago
    There's not an ethical dilemma in pushing a candidate but an issue of trust. Lots of people don't trust Hillary. So when a publication goes out it's way to pump her up and writes biased hit pieces on the opposition are people who mistrust Hillary going to trust the publication? The point is, you can't argue why people should trust you rather than the opposition. You have to provide reasons for them to do so. It would be like building an app that wasn't getting positive reception and then trying to argue or shame people into liking it rather than giving people what they want. It plain doesn't work. People want to know what is going on. Tell them to the best of your ability. Don't couch it in spin, don't support sides, don't appear biased. That is how you establish a reputation of trust. It's not a matter of what is legal or ethical in this case at all.
    - birken 10y ago
      Links to the biased hit pieces please?
      - honkhonkpants 10y ago
        There aren't any. The Times bent over backwards to stab Clinton in the back at every opportunity, to avoid accusations of bias.
    - woodruffw 10y ago
      I'm sorry, but what hit pieces? The NYT's coverage of Trump hasn't been favorable, but it would be difficult to characterize their exclusives on him as hits. Even their most negative coverage (the $916 million story comes to mind) was, at its core, factual. You could argue that it's indicative of bias for the NYT to break such a story at all, but it's in the public interest to know the financial solvency of their leaders. At the risk of conflating news and opinion, there was no shortage of opinion pieces calling on HRC to release her speeches - also in the public interest. It's difficult to ask the NYT to "establish a reputation of trust" when it already has one, deserved or not. Such a request, to the editors and ethicists of any media outlet, is just a nice way to ask for more favorable (or perhaps less damning) coverage of your candidate of choice.
narrator 10y ago
It's not that they aren't factual, it's that they direct the nation's attention. There are millions of newsworthy stories, but only some are published and the NYT seems to be the source of that focus that then leads the whole mainstream media around by the nose.

woodruffw 10y ago

It's called a "scoop". There's nothing particular novel or unusual about the way a story proliferates through media outlets. The nature of online news and media has simply made the process more visible.

rdtsc 10y ago

Good point. It would be good to see a tree (or graph, it's probably cyclic at some point) of exactly how it spreads. The left and the right have those as well (although calling Hillary and Trump supporters "left" and "right" is inaccurate, but that's for another discussion). The "right" had "the protests are started by Soros" and so they saw buses everywhere for a whole week or so. There was another such thing for a "get paid $3.5k to attend an anti-Trump protest" that ended up as a fake CL screen capture. The left first started with "let's hack the electoral college". There was a lot of discussion about that - "what if we convince/force them to vote the other way. Maybe invoke some hidden article from the Constitution..." or some thing like that. That went on for a while. It died down. Then "fake news" started, almost overnight. And it's been fake news since then. Just yesterday here there was some discussion about an oil field in Texas, and it seems they overestimated the cost or used a different metric or some such thing. But people here were calling it "Fake News". I thought it was initially supposed to lizard people controlling the government? Then this story as another example. A major fuck up, everyone got worked about stuff without verifying. The source doesn't seem to have done it on purpose and has since deleted it (but it was too late) of course. Everyone in the chain begin idiots and overreacting. But NYT, CNN, CBS, FOX, NBC have been doing this stuff for years! Especially regurgitating anything coming out of the State Department or other government institutions. They are billion dollar corporation, if anyone can verify stuff it should be them. Would they consider themselves "Fake News"... The problem is they are realizing they are losing the ability to manufacture consent like they could before. That must be terrifying, so they have to respond or do something about it. "Fake News" is their response. To be fair, is a useful PR technique - a label that can be quickly thrown on anything. This makes sense also in the context of how popular Identity Politics became, where flinging labels like "fascist", "racist", "sexist" is done all too easily. Also with Twitter becoming an acceptable political discourse medium, try to argue a complex point in 140 characters. You can't! Instead throw a short label in there and you're done. Wipe hands on pants and refresh to see the results.