Ignoring the silly reddit-style rhetoric and getting to your underlying implied suspicion: On the contrary, the perspective I was offering, if understood, would

Ignoring the silly reddit-style rhetoric and getting to your underlying implied suspicion: On the contrary, the perspective I was offering, if understood, would tend to deflate the value of statements that the government spoon feeds to the media, often intentionally and through anonymous officials. The problem is that many people don't read the NYT literally. They read the statements as vetted statements of fact about the matters at hand, instead of vetted statements of fact about statements. The NYT knows this. The government knows this. So they use it to advance their agendas. Not that their interests are often aligned, but they sometimes are. And when their interests are not aligned, they still try to use each other and use the basic misunderstanding many people have about facts about statements versus facts about events. I do believe the NYT tries to be factual when a close reading is done.