8 ms·

The most important area to focus on is accuracy. There's a huge prevailence of rumors masquerading as news. Plus, there's an entire political party who's base

by jdlyga 10y ago

The most important area to focus on is accuracy. There's a huge prevailence of rumors masquerading as news. Plus, there's an entire political party who's base has lost faith in the mainstream media. If the NYT starts taking shortcuts, they will fall into a dangerous trap and will lose a lot of readers.

jdlyga 10y ago
*rumors masquerading as news on other sites, not NYT
- SixSigma 10y ago
  The op-ed and opinion pages of the NYT have their fair share of rumor & falsehoods e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-cast-my-electoral-vote-for-donald-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-ca... exposed here http://www.redstate.com/mickeywhite2/2016/12/16/new-york-times-publish-fake-news-faithless-elector/ http://www.redstate.com/mickeywhite2/2016/12/16/new-york-tim... e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/opinion/liberal-zionism-in-the-age-of-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/opinion/liberal-zionism-i... exposed here http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/220635/why-did-the-new-york-times-publish-fake-news-about-trump-zionism-and-alan-dershowitz http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/220635/why-did-the-new-york-... I won't make a big list, and it seems are subjects are somewhat partisan, my comment here is not. What I mean to say is that rumor is equally at home on the NYT website as anywhere else.
  - spyspy 10y ago
    Those are both opinion pieces, not NYT journalism proper.
  - pdabbadabba 10y ago
    Really? Equally? I'd like to see your defense of the claim you're implying, which is that the New York Times publishes mere "rumor and falsehoods" with anything approaching the frequency of Breitbart, Fox News, or even CNN. And while a news outlet surely should have some standards regarding the factual assertions made in the editorials they publish, a few highly debatable distortions is not the same thing as running an entire news outlet largely on misinformation masquerading as news.
    - creaghpatr 10y ago
      In terms of accuracy, you'd walk away from 2016 far less confused about the world reading Breitbart than the NYT. I made a fantastic return betting against The Upshot.
      - orf 10y ago
        > In terms of accuracy, you'd walk away from 2016 far less confused about the world reading Breitbart than the NYT. No, you'd walk away much more angry about all kinds of things, including Hillary's satanic rituals and pizza parlour pedophile ring, but still be very confused. Baring one thing. Who your next president is. And who says that's not due to a lot of very confused people?
        mistermann 10y ago
        Serious question: Do you read Breitbart, do you know this to be true? I mean, I think it's fairly safe to assume it's a bit of a rag, but wondering if that actually goes beyond the typical conservative "slant" and well into knowingly presenting fake news as fact as you seem to be saying.
        dinkumthinkum 10y ago
        Oh yes, I read, and I read what Bannon himself says is the most important part, which are the comments and both go into the pile as, at best, disgusting and ignorant racist drivel and more accurately as smug inane rantings.
        mistermann 10y ago
        Would you have any examples of that? Sorry I don't know much about Breitbart. "Racism" has kind of lost its meaning nowadays.
      - dinkumthinkum 10y ago
        I'm not sure how that's the case. With Breitbart you will end up with a view that, ironically given the parent here, holds there are vast Zionist conspiracies at work on our world. If you mean the election outcome, I'm not sure it was so much a "true prediction" as much as something like a stopped watch being right.
  - stuckagain 10y ago
    What do you think that first "exposed" article concludes? I don't think there is any doubt as to the fact that Christopher Suprun was an electoral college elector from the state of Texas, and that he did not cast his vote for Trump.
    - dinkumthinkum 10y ago
      That's what I got out of it too. I don't think the important issue was whether he was a hero on that day but whether he was, in fact, a faithless elector that viewed electing a belligerent vulgarian as president to be a rather negative thing. Furthermore, what about Trumps oft repeated claims of "losing so many friends on 9/11" and after pressed, decided to not ever mention it again. Perhaps not stolen valor but stolen sympathy nonetheless.
    - SixSigma 10y ago
      I'm not trying to stoke the partisan fires, I'm saying that saying "NYT doesn't publish rumours" is demonstratably false. I acknowledge they are op-ed and opinion pieces. I don't have the wherewithall to do massive in-depth research on the subject.
  - nkassis 10y ago
    I thought it was understood that Op-Eds were written by mostly external contributors with agendas and hence why they should be treated differently than regular articles by the readers. They also printed this letter by Putin: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau... Doesn't mean they endorse the letter and it's content. And it seems like it would be wrong for them to be editing the content.
  - CWuestefeld 10y ago
    Their supposedly-factual section has its share as well. Consider the recent misleading article about economists' feelings about market-based education. Scott Alexander points out what it seems to me can only be a deliberately-engineered effort to mislead: By leaving it at “only a third of economists support vouchers”, the article implies that there is an economic consensus against the policy. Heck, it more than implies it – its title is “Free Market For Education: Economists Generally Don’t Buy It”. But its own source suggests that, of economists who have an opinion, a large majority are pro-voucher. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/30/contra-nyt-on-economists-on-education/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/30/contra-nyt-on-economist...
- nostromo 10y ago
  You don't get much more "fake news" than Jayson Blair or Judith Miller. But I still do appreciate their journalism. Unlike some journalism outfits they do seem to try to get it right.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    2 disgraced journalists from 13 years ago is hardly indicative of a problem with the NYT now.
    - massysett 10y ago
      Apparently much of the memo talks about how much editing a Times story undergoes, a process that certainly existed 13 years ago. If all these editors didn't catch Blair, what value are they adding?
      - ghaff 10y ago
        Editors at newspapers may well ask hard questions about how well sourced an article is--as well as making lots of other changes to improve rigor and readability. But, as in the day-to-day operations of many professions, they tend to assume that the journalists aren't actively lying about things.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    The difference is between organizations that admit when they're wrong by issuing retractions, firing people, etc. and organizations that allow known falsehoods to linger without comment.
marze 10y ago
What do you even mean? NYT has a price sheet for sponsered content/native ads. If you have the funds, you can put any "fake news" you want in the NYT. Much more up front about it than back in the day. All "news" is fake to some degree or another, it is a fantasy to think otherwise.
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  What a load of garbage. If you're talking about what I think you are, you're mentioning those half/full page ads that are marked "advertisement" and have slightly different fonts than the normal news. It's hardly a conspiracy theory to allow Trump to buy reporters.
- brightball 10y ago
  I remember thinking it was odd that for the last year or so I've been getting bombarded with mail and advertising from ZipRecruiter...and then magically they have a major quote in a NYT piece pre-election around the state of the job market.
- dinkumthinkum 10y ago
  What do you mean all news is fake to so degree? That just sounds like Thiel's contrarianism or just an attempt at being provocative, or is it some sort epistemological claim?
- okreallywtf 10y ago
  This is a trend I've noticed: because everything is on a scale then people just feel justified to basically pick whatever they want. Because its impossible to say anything with certainty, everything can be given equal consideration? You can allow for nuance and uncertainty without using faith-based logic for news, science does a pretty good job of it and gives a good framework for best-guess judgements. Just because everything is "fake" to some extent doesn't excuse lazy, confirmation-biased opinions.
dinkumthinkum 10y ago
But that party's base has lost faith in the media precisely because it reported accurately and did not set forth a bunch of propaganda about a return to the utopia of 1950s.
Zooper 10y ago
It's just the one party, is it?

by jdlyga 10y ago

jdlyga 10y ago

*rumors masquerading as news on other sites, not NYT

SixSigma 10y ago
The op-ed and opinion pages of the NYT have their fair share of rumor & falsehoods e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-cast-my-electoral-vote-for-donald-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-ca... exposed here http://www.redstate.com/mickeywhite2/2016/12/16/new-york-times-publish-fake-news-faithless-elector/ http://www.redstate.com/mickeywhite2/2016/12/16/new-york-tim... e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/opinion/liberal-zionism-in-the-age-of-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/opinion/liberal-zionism-i... exposed here http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/220635/why-did-the-new-york-times-publish-fake-news-about-trump-zionism-and-alan-dershowitz http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/220635/why-did-the-new-york-... I won't make a big list, and it seems are subjects are somewhat partisan, my comment here is not. What I mean to say is that rumor is equally at home on the NYT website as anywhere else.
- spyspy 10y ago
  Those are both opinion pieces, not NYT journalism proper.
- pdabbadabba 10y ago
  Really? Equally? I'd like to see your defense of the claim you're implying, which is that the New York Times publishes mere "rumor and falsehoods" with anything approaching the frequency of Breitbart, Fox News, or even CNN. And while a news outlet surely should have some standards regarding the factual assertions made in the editorials they publish, a few highly debatable distortions is not the same thing as running an entire news outlet largely on misinformation masquerading as news.
  - creaghpatr 10y ago
    In terms of accuracy, you'd walk away from 2016 far less confused about the world reading Breitbart than the NYT. I made a fantastic return betting against The Upshot.
    - orf 10y ago
      > In terms of accuracy, you'd walk away from 2016 far less confused about the world reading Breitbart than the NYT. No, you'd walk away much more angry about all kinds of things, including Hillary's satanic rituals and pizza parlour pedophile ring, but still be very confused. Baring one thing. Who your next president is. And who says that's not due to a lot of very confused people?
      - mistermann 10y ago
        Serious question: Do you read Breitbart, do you know this to be true? I mean, I think it's fairly safe to assume it's a bit of a rag, but wondering if that actually goes beyond the typical conservative "slant" and well into knowingly presenting fake news as fact as you seem to be saying.
        dinkumthinkum 10y ago
        Oh yes, I read, and I read what Bannon himself says is the most important part, which are the comments and both go into the pile as, at best, disgusting and ignorant racist drivel and more accurately as smug inane rantings.
        mistermann 10y ago
        Would you have any examples of that? Sorry I don't know much about Breitbart. "Racism" has kind of lost its meaning nowadays.
    - dinkumthinkum 10y ago
      I'm not sure how that's the case. With Breitbart you will end up with a view that, ironically given the parent here, holds there are vast Zionist conspiracies at work on our world. If you mean the election outcome, I'm not sure it was so much a "true prediction" as much as something like a stopped watch being right.
- stuckagain 10y ago
  What do you think that first "exposed" article concludes? I don't think there is any doubt as to the fact that Christopher Suprun was an electoral college elector from the state of Texas, and that he did not cast his vote for Trump.
  - dinkumthinkum 10y ago
    That's what I got out of it too. I don't think the important issue was whether he was a hero on that day but whether he was, in fact, a faithless elector that viewed electing a belligerent vulgarian as president to be a rather negative thing. Furthermore, what about Trumps oft repeated claims of "losing so many friends on 9/11" and after pressed, decided to not ever mention it again. Perhaps not stolen valor but stolen sympathy nonetheless.
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    I'm not trying to stoke the partisan fires, I'm saying that saying "NYT doesn't publish rumours" is demonstratably false. I acknowledge they are op-ed and opinion pieces. I don't have the wherewithall to do massive in-depth research on the subject.
- nkassis 10y ago
  I thought it was understood that Op-Eds were written by mostly external contributors with agendas and hence why they should be treated differently than regular articles by the readers. They also printed this letter by Putin: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau... Doesn't mean they endorse the letter and it's content. And it seems like it would be wrong for them to be editing the content.
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  Their supposedly-factual section has its share as well. Consider the recent misleading article about economists' feelings about market-based education. Scott Alexander points out what it seems to me can only be a deliberately-engineered effort to mislead: By leaving it at “only a third of economists support vouchers”, the article implies that there is an economic consensus against the policy. Heck, it more than implies it – its title is “Free Market For Education: Economists Generally Don’t Buy It”. But its own source suggests that, of economists who have an opinion, a large majority are pro-voucher. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/30/contra-nyt-on-economists-on-education/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/30/contra-nyt-on-economist...
nostromo 10y ago
You don't get much more "fake news" than Jayson Blair or Judith Miller. But I still do appreciate their journalism. Unlike some journalism outfits they do seem to try to get it right.
- serge2k 10y ago
  2 disgraced journalists from 13 years ago is hardly indicative of a problem with the NYT now.
  - massysett 10y ago
    Apparently much of the memo talks about how much editing a Times story undergoes, a process that certainly existed 13 years ago. If all these editors didn't catch Blair, what value are they adding?
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Editors at newspapers may well ask hard questions about how well sourced an article is--as well as making lots of other changes to improve rigor and readability. But, as in the day-to-day operations of many professions, they tend to assume that the journalists aren't actively lying about things.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  The difference is between organizations that admit when they're wrong by issuing retractions, firing people, etc. and organizations that allow known falsehoods to linger without comment.

marze 10y ago

What do you even mean? NYT has a price sheet for sponsered content/native ads. If you have the funds, you can put any "fake news" you want in the NYT. Much more up front about it than back in the day. All "news" is fake to some degree or another, it is a fantasy to think otherwise.

unethical_ban 10y ago
What a load of garbage. If you're talking about what I think you are, you're mentioning those half/full page ads that are marked "advertisement" and have slightly different fonts than the normal news. It's hardly a conspiracy theory to allow Trump to buy reporters.
brightball 10y ago
I remember thinking it was odd that for the last year or so I've been getting bombarded with mail and advertising from ZipRecruiter...and then magically they have a major quote in a NYT piece pre-election around the state of the job market.
dinkumthinkum 10y ago
What do you mean all news is fake to so degree? That just sounds like Thiel's contrarianism or just an attempt at being provocative, or is it some sort epistemological claim?
okreallywtf 10y ago
This is a trend I've noticed: because everything is on a scale then people just feel justified to basically pick whatever they want. Because its impossible to say anything with certainty, everything can be given equal consideration? You can allow for nuance and uncertainty without using faith-based logic for news, science does a pretty good job of it and gives a good framework for best-guess judgements. Just because everything is "fake" to some extent doesn't excuse lazy, confirmation-biased opinions.

dinkumthinkum 10y ago

But that party's base has lost faith in the media precisely because it reported accurately and did not set forth a bunch of propaganda about a return to the utopia of 1950s.

Zooper 10y ago

It's just the one party, is it?