10 ms·

There is a separation between NYT the corporation and the editorial staff. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was an article in NYT complaining about CCTVs insta

There is a separation between NYT the corporation and the editorial staff. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was an article in NYT complaining about CCTVs installed in NYT office [0]. Should we now dismiss every article in NYT complaining about surveillance (especially workplace surveillance) as hypocritical and ironic, because if NYT thinks surveillance is bad, why do they do it themselves? Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. The other example is tenured professors. We should celebrate this, not mock it. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/surveillance-cameras-work.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/surveillance-came...

icxa 7y ago
> We should celebrate this, not mock it. I don't know what dystopian world you want to live in, but any time I see a company profit off sheer hypocrisy, I am going to call it out and mock it. They can have freedom all they want, but this article is generating clicks and revenues for Parent Corp, so they deserve the scrutiny. This isn't some public service they are providing.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  Asking for curiosity: Given the tenured faculty comparison, should we blame tenured faculty who criticize predatory lending when their university accepts students with the same predatory loans? Or perhaps a more direct comparison: Are tenured faculty at D1 sports universities hypocritical for researching the benefits of more funding going towards education and less towards massive stadiums?
  - akozak 7y ago
    Blame is the wrong word, but YES we should expect that they would hold their own employer accountable too.
  - icxa 7y ago
    I don't think there is a universal criteria for what constitutes whether an action is criticizable or not. I think more importantly is that the standards, whatever they may be, are applied uniformly, despite the circumstance and scenario. It isn't hard to imagine other scenarios which are seen as "lesser" where this wouldn't even be a question: of course you do, but for some reason we think that as an increase of import or salary, or whatever metric you may have in mind, all of a sudden some gray area is introduced. Stay true to your standards, and let it guide you. I wouldn't put up with this type of hypocrisy from my frozen yogurt shop, my clothing store, or coffee shop, so I shouldn't put up with it with my news organizations, schools and universities and politicians. The inputs to the situation might be different, but the output should be the same. Otherwise, we are being the hypocrite as well.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - dantheman 7y ago
    Tenured faculty who are teaching students who can't afford their class are doing something wrong. They are advising students and should be advising them to switch to a more affordable college. It's a fundamental dereliction of duty if they don't.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      "Welcome to PHY 4509, Classical Electromagnetism. You should not be here, this school is too expensive. If you would like to discuss transferring, you can find me in my office Tuesday and Thursday from 9 to 11AM. This message will repeat in thirty seconds."
    - bogwog 7y ago
      Is this a joke?
    - MockObject 7y ago
      How are they even able to teach students who can't afford the class? And if they managed to (distance learning?), how is that hypocritical?
      - yati 7y ago
        I think the OP might be talking about student debts.
    - aranelsurion 7y ago
      How it can be a professor's responsibility to give such advice? They are not there to offer life coaching.
    - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      That's academic advisors, not professors.
  - longway2go 7y ago
    If the lecturer gave a lecture and handed out fliers for the thing they were criticising without explaining that this was an example of the same problem the yes 100%. The only way the article, its writer, the editor and the organisation should not be ridiculed is if they explicitly reference their own t's and c's in the article. Or if we all agree this is not news but entertainment and should not be takrn seriously (or shared on hacker news)
    - dahfizz 7y ago
      > Or if we all agree this is not news but entertainment and should not be takrn seriously (or shared on hacker news) I've hardly seen news in my life that wasnt actually just profit seeking entertainment. I have never understood why society praises these huge corporations. They do not have your best interest at heart. They are not doing a public service. They are a private entity seeking money and power just like every other private company.
  - thanhhaimai 7y ago
    There are two different cases for this: 1) The faculty member from University A writes an article criticizing University B, without mentioning that University A also has the same problems. 2) The faculty member from University A writes an article criticizing a set of problems, including examples from both University A and B. The subtle distinction between both #1 and #2 is why people have different opinions on this. Many people consider #1 to be hypocritical and #2 to be fair.
    - JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
      It would never be pointed out at all if you're following case #2 though if you're in a position of the OP though. The university wouldn't allow the article. The net result is a loss. If people can't criticise at all due to some level of hypocrisy (which is separated from the author in this case!) then we all end up in a worse spot.
- unethical_ban 7y ago
  That sounds like the tired phrase from nationalists, "If you don't LOVE our country, you can LEAVE it!". People can both be in an organization and criticize its behavior.
  - majormajor 7y ago
    Yes, to say we should require otherwise is to embrace the status quo. Demanding that everybody hold their employer accountable for any breach is simply an unreachable standard, given the power distribution between employers and employees and the lack of sufficient "good" employers. So shifting the conversation to complaints about complaints (for not being sufficiently motivated to risk everything trying to burn the system down) is just distraction and helping the status quo even more.
  - stronglikedan 7y ago
    But apparently, in this case, they didn't. They criticized another company while staying mum on theirs.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      It’s akin to criticizing a different country while ignoring that your own does the same thing.
      - dahfizz 7y ago
        Don't you agree that what you describe is bad and should be pointed out and/or ridiculed?
        colejohnson66 7y ago
        I do. That’s why I gave a more appropriate analogy
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Would it be better if their journalists all just ignored the issue, or issued corporate-approved screeds about how whatever it is that their corporate owners are doing is just fine? Because to me both those options seem worse than hypocrisy. I'll grant you that diving into Google's TOS without mentioning their own is a bit tone-deaf.
  - inlined 7y ago
    Journalists disclose when they or their parent companies have any vested interest in the companies they cover. It seems like the article could have more journalistic integrity to note that Google isn’t the only one to follow the trend and their company does so as well.
- lhorie 7y ago
  I'm not sure I like the alternative, where articles like this would not be allowed and companies' bad behavior would never get called out in the media. Because let's face it, that's the more likely non-hypocritical scenario than the one where corporations behave nicely.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    But you're assuming 4k word privacy policies are bad behaviour. The NYT is asserting this, but clearly doesn't believe it institutionally, so why should we accept this rather strange claim at face value? What's wrong with a privacy policy that has 4k words, especially for a service as complex and powerful as what Google provides?
    - lhorie 7y ago
      You don't have to accept anything at face value. The whole point is that you are able to consume different points of view and make up your own mind on the matter. This theme seems to come up a lot with different topics, not just privacy policies. Would it be better for NYT to NOT be hypocritical and just not report on accessibility if they don't implement it correctly themselves? Would it be better if it as a whole never verified sources given that their editorials are largely their own opinions? Personally, I'd take the "hypocrisy" because I understand that in large corps, typically the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand.
      - repolfx 7y ago
        Well .... yes? It'd be better for the NYT to not report on something that clearly is overblown and doesn't matter! Accusations of hypocrisy are useful because they act as a reality check. If 4k word privacy policies were so terrible the NYT wouldn't have one. Clearly nobody cares, so journalists should have taken this as a strong cue that they're chasing a non-story, almost certainly due to their own strong biases and desires. This isn't some evidence of heroic journalistic integrity, it's evidence they're spinning something out of nothing.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
On the other hand, shouldn't management/leadership of journalism firms be held just as accountable for their actions as others? I think we're too quick to give a pass to business/leadership people for unethical behavior we rationalize to be good for business -- in education, journalism and anywhere else.
Cyph0n 7y ago
> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. Eh, not really. They recently shuttered their daily political cartoon section, mainly due to a submission they published that was labelled as anti-Semitic.
- 1wheel 7y ago
  They were syndicated political cartoons; not created by NYT employees.
  - Cyph0n 7y ago
    Ah, I somehow thought it was a mix of both. Thanks for the info.
njharman 7y ago
> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions by institutions I'll assume you mean journalistic ones. Cause employees of non-consumer facing corporations have far more freedom. The thing is, journalism, good journalism, and certainly public service journalism, no longer requires an institution. Don't believe in the lies that claim otherwise.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  > The thing is, journalism, good journalism, and certainly public service journalism, no longer requires an institution. Good journalism is expensive, no current model sustainably funds that kind of work without advertising and infrastructure.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    That depends a lot on how you define "good journalism". Journalism is ultimately writing about what you see and investigating it to get the facts. Most stories are broken by just one journalist, big ones sometimes multiple. Journalists don't earn very much either. This isn't an expensive endeavour compared to many things even quite small companies routinely do, like build and run a TV advertising campaign. Moreover a lot of hard-hitting journalism appears to run on a shoestring. Look at Project Veritas. It's breaking a series of scoops about the internal behaviour of Valley firms, and it seems to basically be one or two people plus some cameras and a website.
    - nkozyra 7y ago
      I don't know how "shoestring" Project Veritas is, but it's not a particularly good source for unbiased information. Breaking a good, big story takes time and time takes money. Journalists don't earn a ton, but great journalists do pretty well. Their work and the merit of their work is considered worth paying for. The money has to come from somewhere. The best a good news organization can do is not allow the money to directly influence the journalism. At least in theory then the source of the money - within reason - is somewhat irrelevant. Historically, that's advertising or subscription. People got so used to free or nearly-free journalism in the late 1800s that even today people bristle at subscription, particularly for a non-physical product. So you have advertising.
tomcam 7y ago
They are regarded as among the world’s best reporters. They can Google up their own privacy policy just like anyone else, no disturbance of the editorial/sales wall necessary.
btrettel 7y ago
> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. The other example is tenured professors. PhD student here. I think the impression that tenured professors have freedom from management is an illusion at best. As far as I can tell, getting a PhD, getting hired as a professor, and getting tenure seem to filter out people who would challenge the system. It's easy for a university to say that their tenured faculty are free to do whatever they want if they select and cultivate people who won't take them up on that offer. (Now that I write this, I'm reminded of web hosting companies that offer unlimited storage or bandwidth but get irritated if you actually use a lot of storage or bandwidth.) Personally, I'm leaning towards the conclusions of the financial independence/early retirement community: real freedom comes when you have "FU money". Money is the unit of freedom in the US.
- whymauri 7y ago
  I think the degree of disobedience from faculty varies between disciplines and schools. Professors in the humanities seem more inclined towards activism or iconoclasm than STEM. This isn't a dig at anyone, it's just that people who study social structures, interactions, and trends are seemingly more inclined to exert their ideological freedom(s). Meanwhile in STEM fields I think you're totally right: we keep our heads down and hyper-optimize for publishing research, leaving little space for rebellion or questioning of the academic status quo.
  - golergka 7y ago
    > Professors in the humanities seem more inclined towards activism or iconoclasm than STEM. But said activism is not usually any kind of disagreement with school administration though.
- rjf72 7y ago
  I expect the same is also true of whatever freedom may exist for NYTimes writers. The site has taken a sharp and extremely homogeneous ideological slant in recent years on a wide array of different topics. This is ostensibly indicative of editorial manipulation, but it's also possible that instead they simply make sure to hire only journalists that already align with their biases and will, at the minimum, toe the line without needing to be told. Compare this with people such as e.g. Glenn Greenwald who seems to have achieved "FU money" and you actually see insightful and meaningful journalism [1] that isn't boxed into predictable ideological or partisan tropes. Of course he doesn't live in the US anymore either. Money isn't the unit of freedom in the US - it's the unit of freedom in the world. Not such a bad thing in many ways though. In times past your blood lineage was the unit of freedom. Money can be earned even from humble beginnings, but lineage cannot. [1] - https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/ https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/
catacombs 7y ago
> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. That is not the case. Every every reporter has an editor he or she must report to. Sure, reporters are given some freedom on the stories they pursue, but it's hardly a hands-off approach.
- procinct 7y ago
  I believe they are saying there is a separation between the editors and the rest of the Corp. The editors aren’t the ones coming up with the sites privacy policy.
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    Right; the idea is a separation of the profit-driven part of the organization from the editorial part. This is commonly known as "the wall."
    - catacombs 7y ago
      Got it. Thanks for the clarification.
Fnoord 7y ago
> There is a separation between NYT the corporation and the editorial staff. Google is also a diverse company, with a lot of employees... What matters, in the end, is the policies.
- rhacker 7y ago
  True, there come times where one person has to stand up and be counted.
rhizome 7y ago
That essay is an opinion piece, not an article, and ironically for you the office surveillance was almost certainly installed by NYT corporate (or its designee), so the hypocrisy you raise cannot even exist according to the terms you provide unless you remove the separation between corp and editorial.
haberman 7y ago
> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. Then why do these articles not also criticize the NYT for these practices? Google is an easy target for newspapers because they are competitors for traffic and ads. Show me NYT reporters calling out their own practices and I will believe they enjoy this level of freedom from management.
- tedunangst 7y ago
  The google privacy policy affects more people than the NYT's?

icxa 7y ago

> We should celebrate this, not mock it. I don't know what dystopian world you want to live in, but any time I see a company profit off sheer hypocrisy, I am going to call it out and mock it. They can have freedom all they want, but this article is generating clicks and revenues for Parent Corp, so they deserve the scrutiny. This isn't some public service they are providing.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
Asking for curiosity: Given the tenured faculty comparison, should we blame tenured faculty who criticize predatory lending when their university accepts students with the same predatory loans? Or perhaps a more direct comparison: Are tenured faculty at D1 sports universities hypocritical for researching the benefits of more funding going towards education and less towards massive stadiums?
- akozak 7y ago
  Blame is the wrong word, but YES we should expect that they would hold their own employer accountable too.
- icxa 7y ago
  I don't think there is a universal criteria for what constitutes whether an action is criticizable or not. I think more importantly is that the standards, whatever they may be, are applied uniformly, despite the circumstance and scenario. It isn't hard to imagine other scenarios which are seen as "lesser" where this wouldn't even be a question: of course you do, but for some reason we think that as an increase of import or salary, or whatever metric you may have in mind, all of a sudden some gray area is introduced. Stay true to your standards, and let it guide you. I wouldn't put up with this type of hypocrisy from my frozen yogurt shop, my clothing store, or coffee shop, so I shouldn't put up with it with my news organizations, schools and universities and politicians. The inputs to the situation might be different, but the output should be the same. Otherwise, we are being the hypocrite as well.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dantheman 7y ago
  Tenured faculty who are teaching students who can't afford their class are doing something wrong. They are advising students and should be advising them to switch to a more affordable college. It's a fundamental dereliction of duty if they don't.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    "Welcome to PHY 4509, Classical Electromagnetism. You should not be here, this school is too expensive. If you would like to discuss transferring, you can find me in my office Tuesday and Thursday from 9 to 11AM. This message will repeat in thirty seconds."
  - bogwog 7y ago
    Is this a joke?
  - MockObject 7y ago
    How are they even able to teach students who can't afford the class? And if they managed to (distance learning?), how is that hypocritical?
    - yati 7y ago
      I think the OP might be talking about student debts.
  - aranelsurion 7y ago
    How it can be a professor's responsibility to give such advice? They are not there to offer life coaching.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    That's academic advisors, not professors.
- longway2go 7y ago
  If the lecturer gave a lecture and handed out fliers for the thing they were criticising without explaining that this was an example of the same problem the yes 100%. The only way the article, its writer, the editor and the organisation should not be ridiculed is if they explicitly reference their own t's and c's in the article. Or if we all agree this is not news but entertainment and should not be takrn seriously (or shared on hacker news)
  - dahfizz 7y ago
    > Or if we all agree this is not news but entertainment and should not be takrn seriously (or shared on hacker news) I've hardly seen news in my life that wasnt actually just profit seeking entertainment. I have never understood why society praises these huge corporations. They do not have your best interest at heart. They are not doing a public service. They are a private entity seeking money and power just like every other private company.
- thanhhaimai 7y ago
  There are two different cases for this: 1) The faculty member from University A writes an article criticizing University B, without mentioning that University A also has the same problems. 2) The faculty member from University A writes an article criticizing a set of problems, including examples from both University A and B. The subtle distinction between both #1 and #2 is why people have different opinions on this. Many people consider #1 to be hypocritical and #2 to be fair.
  - JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
    It would never be pointed out at all if you're following case #2 though if you're in a position of the OP though. The university wouldn't allow the article. The net result is a loss. If people can't criticise at all due to some level of hypocrisy (which is separated from the author in this case!) then we all end up in a worse spot.
unethical_ban 7y ago
That sounds like the tired phrase from nationalists, "If you don't LOVE our country, you can LEAVE it!". People can both be in an organization and criticize its behavior.
- majormajor 7y ago
  Yes, to say we should require otherwise is to embrace the status quo. Demanding that everybody hold their employer accountable for any breach is simply an unreachable standard, given the power distribution between employers and employees and the lack of sufficient "good" employers. So shifting the conversation to complaints about complaints (for not being sufficiently motivated to risk everything trying to burn the system down) is just distraction and helping the status quo even more.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  But apparently, in this case, they didn't. They criticized another company while staying mum on theirs.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    It’s akin to criticizing a different country while ignoring that your own does the same thing.
    - dahfizz 7y ago
      Don't you agree that what you describe is bad and should be pointed out and/or ridiculed?
      - colejohnson66 7y ago
        I do. That’s why I gave a more appropriate analogy
roywiggins 7y ago
Would it be better if their journalists all just ignored the issue, or issued corporate-approved screeds about how whatever it is that their corporate owners are doing is just fine? Because to me both those options seem worse than hypocrisy. I'll grant you that diving into Google's TOS without mentioning their own is a bit tone-deaf.
- inlined 7y ago
  Journalists disclose when they or their parent companies have any vested interest in the companies they cover. It seems like the article could have more journalistic integrity to note that Google isn’t the only one to follow the trend and their company does so as well.
lhorie 7y ago
I'm not sure I like the alternative, where articles like this would not be allowed and companies' bad behavior would never get called out in the media. Because let's face it, that's the more likely non-hypocritical scenario than the one where corporations behave nicely.
- repolfx 7y ago
  But you're assuming 4k word privacy policies are bad behaviour. The NYT is asserting this, but clearly doesn't believe it institutionally, so why should we accept this rather strange claim at face value? What's wrong with a privacy policy that has 4k words, especially for a service as complex and powerful as what Google provides?
  - lhorie 7y ago
    You don't have to accept anything at face value. The whole point is that you are able to consume different points of view and make up your own mind on the matter. This theme seems to come up a lot with different topics, not just privacy policies. Would it be better for NYT to NOT be hypocritical and just not report on accessibility if they don't implement it correctly themselves? Would it be better if it as a whole never verified sources given that their editorials are largely their own opinions? Personally, I'd take the "hypocrisy" because I understand that in large corps, typically the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand.
    - repolfx 7y ago
      Well .... yes? It'd be better for the NYT to not report on something that clearly is overblown and doesn't matter! Accusations of hypocrisy are useful because they act as a reality check. If 4k word privacy policies were so terrible the NYT wouldn't have one. Clearly nobody cares, so journalists should have taken this as a strong cue that they're chasing a non-story, almost certainly due to their own strong biases and desires. This isn't some evidence of heroic journalistic integrity, it's evidence they're spinning something out of nothing.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

On the other hand, shouldn't management/leadership of journalism firms be held just as accountable for their actions as others? I think we're too quick to give a pass to business/leadership people for unethical behavior we rationalize to be good for business -- in education, journalism and anywhere else.

Cyph0n 7y ago

> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. Eh, not really. They recently shuttered their daily political cartoon section, mainly due to a submission they published that was labelled as anti-Semitic.

1wheel 7y ago
They were syndicated political cartoons; not created by NYT employees.
- Cyph0n 7y ago
  Ah, I somehow thought it was a mix of both. Thanks for the info.

njharman 7y ago

> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions by institutions I'll assume you mean journalistic ones. Cause employees of non-consumer facing corporations have far more freedom. The thing is, journalism, good journalism, and certainly public service journalism, no longer requires an institution. Don't believe in the lies that claim otherwise.

nkozyra 7y ago
> The thing is, journalism, good journalism, and certainly public service journalism, no longer requires an institution. Good journalism is expensive, no current model sustainably funds that kind of work without advertising and infrastructure.
- repolfx 7y ago
  That depends a lot on how you define "good journalism". Journalism is ultimately writing about what you see and investigating it to get the facts. Most stories are broken by just one journalist, big ones sometimes multiple. Journalists don't earn very much either. This isn't an expensive endeavour compared to many things even quite small companies routinely do, like build and run a TV advertising campaign. Moreover a lot of hard-hitting journalism appears to run on a shoestring. Look at Project Veritas. It's breaking a series of scoops about the internal behaviour of Valley firms, and it seems to basically be one or two people plus some cameras and a website.
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    I don't know how "shoestring" Project Veritas is, but it's not a particularly good source for unbiased information. Breaking a good, big story takes time and time takes money. Journalists don't earn a ton, but great journalists do pretty well. Their work and the merit of their work is considered worth paying for. The money has to come from somewhere. The best a good news organization can do is not allow the money to directly influence the journalism. At least in theory then the source of the money - within reason - is somewhat irrelevant. Historically, that's advertising or subscription. People got so used to free or nearly-free journalism in the late 1800s that even today people bristle at subscription, particularly for a non-physical product. So you have advertising.

tomcam 7y ago

They are regarded as among the world’s best reporters. They can Google up their own privacy policy just like anyone else, no disturbance of the editorial/sales wall necessary.

btrettel 7y ago

> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. The other example is tenured professors. PhD student here. I think the impression that tenured professors have freedom from management is an illusion at best. As far as I can tell, getting a PhD, getting hired as a professor, and getting tenure seem to filter out people who would challenge the system. It's easy for a university to say that their tenured faculty are free to do whatever they want if they select and cultivate people who won't take them up on that offer. (Now that I write this, I'm reminded of web hosting companies that offer unlimited storage or bandwidth but get irritated if you actually use a lot of storage or bandwidth.) Personally, I'm leaning towards the conclusions of the financial independence/early retirement community: real freedom comes when you have "FU money". Money is the unit of freedom in the US.

whymauri 7y ago
I think the degree of disobedience from faculty varies between disciplines and schools. Professors in the humanities seem more inclined towards activism or iconoclasm than STEM. This isn't a dig at anyone, it's just that people who study social structures, interactions, and trends are seemingly more inclined to exert their ideological freedom(s). Meanwhile in STEM fields I think you're totally right: we keep our heads down and hyper-optimize for publishing research, leaving little space for rebellion or questioning of the academic status quo.
- golergka 7y ago
  > Professors in the humanities seem more inclined towards activism or iconoclasm than STEM. But said activism is not usually any kind of disagreement with school administration though.
rjf72 7y ago
I expect the same is also true of whatever freedom may exist for NYTimes writers. The site has taken a sharp and extremely homogeneous ideological slant in recent years on a wide array of different topics. This is ostensibly indicative of editorial manipulation, but it's also possible that instead they simply make sure to hire only journalists that already align with their biases and will, at the minimum, toe the line without needing to be told. Compare this with people such as e.g. Glenn Greenwald who seems to have achieved "FU money" and you actually see insightful and meaningful journalism [1] that isn't boxed into predictable ideological or partisan tropes. Of course he doesn't live in the US anymore either. Money isn't the unit of freedom in the US - it's the unit of freedom in the world. Not such a bad thing in many ways though. In times past your blood lineage was the unit of freedom. Money can be earned even from humble beginnings, but lineage cannot. [1] - https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/ https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/

catacombs 7y ago

> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. That is not the case. Every every reporter has an editor he or she must report to. Sure, reporters are given some freedom on the stories they pursue, but it's hardly a hands-off approach.

procinct 7y ago
I believe they are saying there is a separation between the editors and the rest of the Corp. The editors aren’t the ones coming up with the sites privacy policy.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  Right; the idea is a separation of the profit-driven part of the organization from the editorial part. This is commonly known as "the wall."
  - catacombs 7y ago
    Got it. Thanks for the clarification.

Fnoord 7y ago

> There is a separation between NYT the corporation and the editorial staff. Google is also a diverse company, with a lot of employees... What matters, in the end, is the policies.

rhacker 7y ago
True, there come times where one person has to stand up and be counted.

rhizome 7y ago

That essay is an opinion piece, not an article, and ironically for you the office surveillance was almost certainly installed by NYT corporate (or its designee), so the hypocrisy you raise cannot even exist according to the terms you provide unless you remove the separation between corp and editorial.

haberman 7y ago

> Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. Then why do these articles not also criticize the NYT for these practices? Google is an easy target for newspapers because they are competitors for traffic and ads. Show me NYT reporters calling out their own practices and I will believe they enjoy this level of freedom from management.

tedunangst 7y ago
The google privacy policy affects more people than the NYT's?