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> the animosity the Trump administration has directed at the news media has injected new vigor into a beleaguered industry. I'm no fan of Trump, but leave it t

• wry_discontent 10y ago
  Trump's interactions with the media, and NYT in particular, is far worse than previous administrations. Newspapers have been having (some self inflicted) trouble for a long time, but what Trump is doing is something new and very dangerous.
  • pennydreams 10y ago
    but NYT has seen a massive increase in subs following the election, so there really is no excuse
  • ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
    More dangerous than lying us into foreign wars that kill millions of people and bankrupt the country? That's quite a high bar.
    • smt88 10y ago
      Who did that? What was the last war that killed millions?
      • rapsey 10y ago
        I guess you don't remember the lead up to the Iraq war.
        • zerocrates 10y ago
          I believe the quibble there is that millions didn't die in the Iraq War.
          • tracker1 10y ago
            s/millions/over a million/g
            • smt88 10y ago
              But that's still likely too high. The truth is important. Getting facts wrong about wars can only help people who are pro-war by making pacifists look uninformed.
              • tracker1 10y ago
                Well, how about over a quarter of a million bombs/missiles dropped during the Obama administration? If over half a million deaths in Iraq isn't enough, that number should be sobering.
                • smt88 10y ago
                  Again, these points are well-made using the real numbers. I could only find 100k bombs under Obama. Can you cite your number?
                  • tracker1 10y ago
                    When I last looked into it, there were over 20k most years (26k in 2016 alone). so more likely closer to 200k (over 8 years), been a while since I looked... In any case, it's a horrific number.
        • komali2 10y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War Estimates range from ~100,000 to 700,000. The Iraq War was a mistake that sixty years from now we will be mocked and judged for, but be careful with words like "millions."
          • ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
            Ahh yes, just an honest mistake, and so long as only one million people are killed, not two, then we can promptly dismiss any concerns. Is that how it works? I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it? Although the Iraq war is the best and most blatant example of the NYT's warmongering, it is far from the only one. All of these wars combined easily resulted in millions of deaths.
            • praxulus 10y ago
              No, the way it works is that nobody should get away with lying just because they're calling out a bad thing for being bad.
            • komali2 10y ago
              >so long as only one million people Nobody has claimed one million were killed. Stop trying to spread wrong information, it is the same thing as lying. >I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it? Holy fucking non sequitur, batman. What does a media agenda have to do with a moral position on war? How is "NYT had a hand in pushing for" related to the question of whether your examples were "moral and noble humanitarian wars?" You can't just say a thing that's absurd, and then immediately assume they're true, so that you can jump to making a moral attack. Here's a great resource for you: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analysis/most_common_logical_fallacies.htm http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analy... >best and most blatant example of NYT's warmongering Somehow we started at outright lies about the number of deaths in the Iraq war, and concluded that the NYT is a warmongering institution with the power to mobilize the most powerful military on the planet at it's whim, and thus is responsible for every death caused by the US military throughout history. Hey let's take it up a notch, did you know humans never landed on the moon and that Mark Zuckerberg's evil twin, Matt Zuckerberg, is running a robotic pizza factory that snoops through people's emails? Benghazi.
      • bulletsvshumans 10y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War Estimates appear to vary widely, with most in the hundreds of thousands range, but there's one estimate as high as a million deaths in the Iraq War (from the linked page): "Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll conducted August 12–19, 2007, estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the Iraq War. The range given was 946,000 to 1,120,000 deaths. A nationally representative sample of approximately 2,000 Iraqi adults answered whether any members of their household (living under their roof) were killed due to the Iraq War. 22% of the respondents had lost one or more household members. ORB reported that "48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance." (full Wikipedia page on this survey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualt...)
      • deleted 10y ago
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      • Filligree 10y ago
        The Iraq war killed over half a million, and led to conditions that were a direct cause of ISIS' rise, for Eris knows how many more. I don't know how much you want to attribute to it overall, but the war was based on fake evidence.
        • smt88 10y ago
          I agree that the war was based on lies. I agree it was a travesty. I honestly just wanted to know if I was correct in assuming that 1) they were indeed talking about Iraq, and 2) that they were accusing NYT of causing that war.
    • jayess 10y ago
      Which, of course, the NYT played its part in fanning the flames of war.
      • dmix 10y ago
        NYT is still very war hawkish. Which wasn't so bad before when they were feigning neutrality. They were just a mainstream US paper pushing the 'company' line of their various connections in the gov. It was easy to look past. But now that they've become more blatantly partisan (maybe as they infer here because it clearly sells more to be hyper partisan) it leaves me with an odd feeling that they are pushing back hard towards the Clinton-esque center left war-friendly surveillance-state Russian-boogiemen establishment politics that so many people (not just on the right) seem to be trying evolve beyond. At least the younger generations. And they say Trump is harking back to the old days... After reading NYT daily for nearly a decade I'v moved to WSJ. It is much more expensive but I've been much happier reading it - as someone who doesn't care for either US party. I don't have to sift through vague connections to Russia or questionable accusations of secret white nationalism every time I read a political story about someone related to the current administration. For example, I was just reading a profile of Donald Trump Jr. in NYT. Half way through the article they say he's been accused of making 'white nationalist' statements. Upon further reading it turns out to be because he made an off hand reference to 'gas chamber' in a random speech. So instead of making the obvious assumption he was referring to the form of capital punishment used in the US until the 1990s (and still used as a back up to lethal injection in some states), which is exactly what he claims to have been referring to, they decide to infer he was making some anti-semitic reference to the holocaust. I am far from a Trump supporter but this type of weak partisan character assassination doesn't belong in a reputable paper like NYT. So I'm not surprised to see a random swipe at Trump within the first few paragraphs of a non-political story... it's their shtick now.
        • specialist 10y ago
          NYT's opposition to Trump et al is not partisan, its self-interest (survival).
          • 10y ago
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • kristianc 10y ago
      GWB's first term average approval rating was 62% and at one point was as high as 90%. A lot of Americans have since found their opposition to these illegal foreign wars.
      • parthdesai 10y ago
        Hmm, where was the opposition when libya happened?
      • rfrank 10y ago
        The antiwar left basically disappeared when Obama took office.
        • TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
          A commenter above says that it's a proven fact that Fox News is interested in nothing but propaganda, and the NYT is dedicated to truth, though they occasionally fail. When I look back on the Bush administration, and I think about how Code Pink was pushed front-and-center for 8 years by ABC/NBC/CBS, protesting the war(s), and how they absolutely disappeared once Obama took over, even though he materially continued the same policy in the middle east, I can't help but feel that every organization that is NOT Fox News was joined together in PRECISELY the same sort of propaganda that Fox is accused of. But, hey, I guess it's just me.
          • rfrank 10y ago
            Hah, I'm the one arguing with those people too. People don't like to admit to themselves they consume the same thing they hate. But I'm rate limited because moderation of political discussion on this website is a joke unless you want to agree with everyone, so no more comments from me there.
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • dave_sullivan 10y ago
      That's a cheap and lazy argument, trying to deflect attention from the crimes of one party by discussing the crimes of another. They're both dangerous enough to kill you; both should be discussed as separate issues, not as a comparison.
      • brazzledazzle 10y ago
        I think it's technically the same party but you wouldn't know it by looking at them.
      • ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
        It was the OP who made the comparison - I was simply replying.
    • TheCoelacanth 10y ago
      Give him time. If there is no media around to complain when he starts wars, then yes that is more dangerous.
      • tracker1 10y ago
        Really? I mean, it's not like the last Democrat president did anything to stop any wars. Or curb surveillance... or actually bring much transparency into government. All things he promised in his first campaign... I mean, constitutionally Obama was plainly against it, but I at least had some hope when he was elected he might actually do some of the things he'd promised. But no, more war, more bombs, more spying and surveillance. It's not like any of this started with Trump, and isn't like any of it would really be stopped by a president for the other party, that served in the last administration over the department most directly covering spying and warfare.
  • senior_james 10y ago
    "but what Trump is doing is something new and very dangerous." The mainstream press was not just partisan, they colluded with Hillary Clinton to destroy all of her political enemies, which included Bernie Sanders and all of the Republicans. Sanders wasn't willing to do what it took to win, which meant going to social media and using the arrogance of the press against themselves. Until the press decides not to act like spoiled children and actually start reporting non-partisan news, I'm all for the current behavior of our president. I actually had hoped his win would get some of these news organizations to admit their faults (and maybe we could all take a step back and get some better candidates next election cycle). I was wrong. The lies and collusion is only getting worse.
  • justAFan 10y ago
    How would you recommend Trump respond to the media when they publish things like this "dossier" back in January before the inauguration that alleged things like Trump traveling to Russia to rent an old hotel room Obama stayed in so he could hire Russian prostitutes to perform a "golden showers" show in front of him -- a "dossier" (makes it sound more legitimate right) which has since been debunked as a 4chan prank on the intelligence community: [1] CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intellig... [2] BuzzFeed with source of "dossier" https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.uvn9vAjp1#.wpDMAn3l9 https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-t... [3] 4chan talking about Rick Wilson + dossier back in november https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/95568919/#95571329 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/95568919/#95571329 Now, NYT themselves did not run this story. But the vast majority of "main stream media" runs stories with a narrative - or as Trump himself put it - a "tone". They insist that Trump must be wrapped in controversy, and every article I come across from NYT, CNN, MSNBC, WaPo all insist on including a negative tone; or at the very least, emphasizing facts that make Trump seem negligent, stupid, arrogant or malevolent. In my opinion, it's them who have forfeited ethics. Tell me, how exactly is Trump doing something "new and very dangerous"? How should he respond to constant negativity? Even he himself is not asking for positive propaganda - he just wants neutral, honest media reporting. He has told CNN in a press conference that he'd be their greatest fan if they would report honestly.
    • lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
      /pol/ thread != debunking. You should stop spreading propaganda and consider maybe not hitching your horse to a pathological liar.
    • KZeillmann 10y ago
      First of all, the dossier was put together by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele and wasn't just some 4chan prank. How do you suggest the NYT, CNN, WaPo react to actions that seem to come from a place of incompetence or malevolence? When Trump rolls out an unconstitutional EO that seemed barely vetted by the Attorney General's office, how should the NYT paint that in such a way that Trump is depicted as competent? When Trump and Spicer repeat falsehoods that anyone with a pair of eyes can refute (inauguration crowd size) or that has zero evidence behind it whatsoever (3-5 million illegal votes, Obama wiretapping Trump), how should the WaPo react to these lies? When the president's campaign is under investigation by the FBI for potential collusion with a foreign government, and Rep. Schiff says there is 'more than circumstantial evidence', how should CNN report this? It's laughable and a little bit sad that people think that Trump is more honest than the MSM.
  • justAFan 10y ago
    Replying a second time since my first response was killed (it is now "dead") - why was it killed? What did my comment say that was illegitimate for discussion? I made valid points and used original sources. Did somebody just disagree with what I had to say?
  • justAFan2 10y ago
    Had to make a second account since my first was killed (shadowbanned?) - why was it killed? What did I have to say that was inappropriate for discussion? I made valid points in response to the above poster and used original sources. I did not make any personal attacks. Does somebody disagree with what I have to say?
  • ddingus 10y ago
    Yes. Sadly, he's getting a lot of traction with it too. Mainstream media reports from a big business point of view and it almost never reports on itself or its parents critically. People get this. Trust is low and Trump is exploiting that reality to great effect. Today, we have people growing lost, confused, seeking more and maybe better information. What they are finding from indie efforts ranges all over the map. It's reasonable to say that isn't a good thing either. Though I will also say it is at least a mild check on an ugly press machine in play today. I am very rapidly becoming a fan of people funded news and Media. In the USA there is almost no reporting and commentary from the economic left point of view, for example. I lean strong left, but I also don't see that as a blanket answer. I do see it as the basis for a more complete discussion, and we really need that right now. I know I need to understand others better and they me so the conversation can get somewhere good. This isn't happening. Not all of our problems are going to be resolved with boardroom and or bumper sticker politics. For perspective, our conservative peers could say the same thing about social issue reporting, and they would be right. The product of this is a very dangerous polarization. Ideologies are being championed as means to ends, when the better role for them is as a basis for policy ideas we can use, combine and apply toward common goals. There are a few big needs, like health care, where we have solid majority support for doing good things, necessary things, yet no real ability to accomplish them. Our press does not address this at all too. It's all process and horse race type drama, not a meaningful look at both the state of things and clear desire to make progress on them. A more inclusive discussion, sans so damn many triggers and set pieces would bring those goals to front and center. All political sides need this. We need it as ordinary people too. Badly. Some 20 percent of us have few worries about money. Another slice, maybe a third tops, must be super careful, but are OK. The rest are in big and growing trouble! Super expensive, long term trouble. Decline of a great nation type trouble. As a nation of people, that growing unrest is not good. We will pay really hard for allowing so much to get stalled, bogged down, ignored. Even those of us who are economically secure will share in that cost. It won't hurt in dollar terms like it will most Americans. It will hurt in terms of our future, environment, social laws, many norms. These kinds of things take lifetimes to come back from, if we even can It began somewhere late 70s maybe 80s too. A look at government and politics prior to that time saw the process working. Governance happened and it was net progress. Our history is littered with ugly politics. The better times seem to be associated with a more functional press. Those better periods were not the best possible, but were livable. Today? Cluster fuck. And the press has a lot to do with that as does the Internet and social media presenting different views to everyone based on some ideas of what we think people want to see. It's hard to get a sense of where people are really at outside our circles and rough class and demographic. This should be front and center journalism. Yet, it isn't. Remember earlier, simpler Internet? For a while we all saw most of the same things. People exploiting that and the need or value in curated content brought us a better information view in some ways, but a worse one in others. This idea of a weekly paper, if done in a reasonable, equitable way may just hold the potential for establishing that "we are all people and just want better for us and ours" conversation. It could unify people and foster cross class, cross gender, etc... type conversations. It could also do a lot to help understand one another better and punch through so damn much vilification going on too. When we have an opportunity to talk to one another, sans all the bullshit, we invariably find the others have good intent. Nobody wants so many others to hurt and struggle out of hand. So many of us do not have those conversations. Lack of venue, opportunity, fear, judgement all play a role here. I'll be watching efforts like this. We need to keep trying. The growing mess us quickly approaching the unrecoverable and regrettable. Almost none of us really want that, but it's gonna happen, unless we can somehow have a common conversation that can get us back to the idea of just governance. Nobody should get all they want, but all of us should be getting the things we really need. There is more than enough for it to happen too.
• sidlls 10y ago
  Their coverage hasn't been increasingly partisan. It has been increasingly infotainment directed. Regardless, the major news media in this country is laughably neglect in serving in any capacity like they should.
  • oh_sigh 10y ago
    So....your argument is that the media wasn't really doing it's job for the past 5-10+ years? Does the media only do their job when they get someone in the white house they don't like?
    • sidlls 10y ago
      I see no evidence of the latter. They simply haven't been doing their job, period, regardless of who is in the White House.
• xxpor 10y ago
  I believe a large part of the issue is that newspapers' neutrality has been part of their downfall, not their partisanship. Now it's easy to read something you always agree with. Local newspapers no longer have the captive audience of "this is the only paper that will deliver to your front door daily"
  • weberc2 10y ago
    I think it's slightly more nuanced; as the mainstream media moves to the left, the swath of views they fail to accurately represent grows larger (moderate conservatives and centrists, for example). Those whose views aren't being represented fairly are more likely to give up on MSM entirely and choose to support their own partisan media. This is all conjecture of course.
• dkarl 10y ago
  As though decades of increasingly partisan coverage had nothing to do with the industry's problems. When someone gains an advantage for their point of view by consistently associating it with professional, reliable journalism, I consider it an advantage well-earned. A point of view that isn't compatible with that advantage doesn't deserve it. Much worse than having a point of view is trying to avoid the perception of having a point of view, which leads to vapid, passive, easily exploitable schlock journalism.
  • braveo 10y ago
    I seriously dislike it when people use this sort of false dichotomy. Look, you can be biased and have an opinion and still treat dissenting opinions, and the people who hold them, with fairness and understanding. It doesn't happen, but it CAN. It's the 3rd option between "has no point of view" and "crafts a narrative around their point of view".
    • dkarl 10y ago
      I'm not sure how you expect people not to construct narratives around their point of view. If you read the Wall Street Journal and New York Times stories about the same event (or the Financial Times and Guardian stories about the same event) you'll see slightly different stories told with slightly different subsets of the available facts. That's what having a point of view is all about. I'd rather get the Times point of view from the Times stories and the WSJ point of view from the WSJ stories than ask them to converge on exactly the same dry list of uninterpreted facts (if that were even possible.) They can try to do justice to other points of view, and it certainly helps their credibility when they're able to, but I wouldn't depend on it. Not even if they had the purest motivations. It's better to have a diversity of voices than to have one dominant voice doing a ventriloquist act. Also, I think people ask for "fairness and understanding" but want a great deal more; they want to feel that their ideas are held in equal esteem, when in reality ideas can't all have an equal share of social approval. If I went to a singles bar with Ryan Gosling, I could justifiably ask to be treated with equal civility, but not with equal enthusiasm. No amount of civility or journalistic detachment can enable us to forget that different ideas prevail among different groups of people with different levels of wealth, power, social prestige, and cultural cachet.
• Fricken 10y ago
  The internet has arrived. Institutional media outlets no longer direct the public discourse. Has this improved our ability to sort fact from fiction? Quite the opposite. When the 5th estate is in crisis, democracy is in crisis. You don't know what you got 'til it's gone.
  • ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
    Despite what we like to think, with every declassified document released we learn that what we thought were facts in the past were really just fictional stories being pushed upon us by the media. Our ability to see this deception admittedly means that finding the truth will be a bit more messy than the "truths" we've been presented with in the past. But far from this diminishing our ability to discern truth, it is helping us by forcing us to return to critical thinking. If this means democracy is in crisis, then democracy requires deception to operate.
    • Fricken 10y ago
      I've got facts you can spin into whatever dumb shit you feel like believing. How we choose to direct civilization is less contingent on facts than beliefs. When our belief systems are as badly fractured as they are we can't do much of anything, we're a clusterfuck nation. Even our best people, armed with the best facts available can't predict the future, but a bad plan is better than no plan at all. Nobody is even on the same page anymore. Our world is officially too complex for anyone to understand, and you expect the average voter to to engage critical thinking to positive effect? We just failed at that catastrophically. It's completely unrealistic, there's no evidence for it.
      • ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
        I agree with you. I think I'm just more optimistic is all.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• criddell 10y ago
  I thought the loss of classified ad revenue due to sites like Craigslist was the big problem combined with taking on too much debt in the 80's? I think most newspapers do a pretty good job.
• rhizome 10y ago
  I don't think it's partisan so much as incurious and sycophantic as access journalism has evolved. Celebrity culture includes way too many people, including in politics, and the NYT has not defended itself against this trend as much as it should have. The media is much less oppositional these days (see: Broderism).
• gist 10y ago
  > I'm no fan of Trump Noting that it appears to be SOP to always make everyone aware that someone doesn't support Trump if the statement that they are making seems to make it appear that they might support Trump or are not part of 'the resistance' to Trump.
  • weberc2 10y ago
    I don't like making these disclaimers, but if I don't put them, people seem to think I'm making a partisan statement. With the disclaimer, the number of knee-jerk vitriolic comments goes down and people seem more likely to debate my post on its merits.
• eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
  I can't stand this false equivalency. You are conflating the entire media landscape with the New York Times. NYT has its bias, but you are effectively saying that NY Times is just as a responsible for the destruction of journalism as the likes of Fox News and Breitbart.
  • weberc2 10y ago
    You misread my post. I made no such equivalency. The industry as a whole created its problems (the NYT included); the NYT is just well-known for framing those problems as the effect of conservative rhetoric.
  • rfrank 10y ago
    During the election cycle they openly defended their bias, and have continued to produce extremely biased coverage since then. They are just as responsible as anyone else. If their bias is acceptable, why is bias from Fox or Breitbart unacceptable? How is NYT meaningfully better, if they present an equally biased perspective, just from a side you agree with? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/balance-fairness-and-a-proudly-provocative-presidential-candidate.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/balance-fairness...
    • eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
      What made you think I agree with all of their bias? I specifically said they have a bias, just like everyone does. But there is also a huge difference between individual reporter bias, the entire bias of the paper, the bias of the editorial board, etc. Just like WSJ op-ed pages are not the same as the rest of the paper. I am fully aware NYT screwed up stories, they generally back a globalist tilt, they screwed up the Iraq/WMD story, etc. But I also know they are, overall, committed to the truth. And Fox News and Breitbart are committed to propaganda. To compare the two is an absolute joke.
      • rfrank 10y ago
        > What made you think I agree with all of their bias? Your defense of it. Their entire organization is biased, just like Fox or Breitbart. Why are they "committed to the truth" when conservative outlets are "propaganda"? Do you think conservatives view NYT/CNN bias as "truth telling" or "propaganda"?
• tps5 10y ago
  From Hunter S. Thompson's obituary for Nixon: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful." I don't necessarily disagree with you (or agree with Thompson), but I always liked that quote. I do think "Objective Journalism" is a hard line to toe, and I don't think the NY Times does the worst job with it. Sure, the paper is clearly anti-Trump. My perspective is that this is only really a problem if they fabricate evidence. As long as they're presenting the world as they see it, it's hard to complain. I'd apply that equally to right wing publications.
  • weberc2 10y ago
    That's a good quote indeed! My issue isn't that the media isn't sufficiently objective or that NYT in particular dislikes Trump; the issue is that the media generally is abandoning objectivity as a virtue to strive after, and they're beginning to see it increasingly as an impediment to their (mostly leftist) political activism. One could argue that this new political bias is motivated by an increasingly powerful leftist market, and I would agree to an extent, but given the political composition of journalists (90% are registered Democrats IIRC), I can't imagine they fought too hard to oppose the changing tide. There's a lot more to this of course, and there's fault to be shared on the right, but I haven't the time to opine on the entire landscape.
    • triplesec 10y ago
      Unfortunately, you're only opining, and falling for the oldest data error in the media book, in that you think they're biased against your side. Equl numbers of moderates and left-leaning people think that the media are biased to the Right, from their coporate advertising masters. You'll have therefore to bring some data to the table to persuade anyone here.