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Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

103 points by magda_wang 6y ago

bduerst 6y ago
Weird to evaluate the NYT evolving the past four years and not mention The Daily podcast.
- CincinnatiMan 6y ago
  Never heard of it. Can you expand on your statement and what you're trying to get across?
  - bduerst 6y ago
    It started in 2017 and is one of the most wildly successful and popular podcasts over the past couple years. It has over 2 million downloads every weekday. It's also the reason I subscribed to the NYT - just to support the podcast.
samspenc 6y ago
This is a good question: should news media like NYT report news without any political biases? Or is it OK for them to pick a side while reporting (progressive, liberal vs conservative etc). If it is OK for media to report news with a bias, then will that accelerate the echo chambers across the political spectrum where news media only report on angles they favor? Just wanted to raise this for discussion.
- daxelrod 6y ago
  It is impossible to report news without bias. Instead, publications and journalists should strive to be honest about what their biases are, and to do what they can to correct for them.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    Perfect unbiasedness is impossible. But there is a huge difference between those who try to be unbiased, and those who don't. BTW, what are good examples of journalists being honest about their biases?
- kace91 6y ago
  People in media will usually tell you that there's no such thing as unbiased reporting; even the act of choosing which stories are important enough to report is a biased act. However, I must say that I'm not subscribed to any newspapers, and the main reason I've chosen to do so is that newspapers can: - Work for political and business moguls by offering crowd manipulation as a service - Work for ad buyers by trying to optimise engagement - Work for subscribed readers by trying their best to provide quality information Any of those is a valid business I guess, but I'm only interested in the latter. And newspapers try to sell me the third option without dropping the others. It's true that if something's free you are the product, but in this case they're trying to both make me the product and make me pay. Not cool.
  - wonnage 6y ago
    You could consider donating to a nonprofit news org like ProPublica, then. Also you are throwing out the baby with the bath water, just because news is funded by the rich doesn't mean every little mundane article they publish is biased. Oftentimes the facts are there, but the analysis or framing is biased. It's still probably more accurate than trying to get all your news via Twitter or something.
    - kace91 6y ago
      > Also you are throwing out the baby with the bath water, just because news is funded by the rich doesn't mean every little mundane article they publish is biased. Oftentimes the facts are there, but the analysis or framing is biased. It's still probably more accurate than trying to get all your news via Twitter or something. What would the baby be in this case? News are not fundamentally important to me, at least not to the point where I'd want to get them regardless of quality. The absolute crushing majority of news I read don't require or cause any action on my part. Of course I'd like to be informed of current events, developments in politics or international news; but no information is better than wrong information - my alternative would never be social media, it's just the absence of general news. My views might seem extremely pessimistic, but they're rooted in two facts: 1 - I am yet to see any piece of news related to my area of expertise where information is accurate. I should assume that it's the same for all areas, and mine isn't a weird exception. 2 - I am the son of a journalist, and happen to have close friends that work daily with press. Insider views on the journalism business can rapidly turn you into a cynic.
- damnencryption 6y ago
  No. They should disclose their biases though. It's a business. Why would you sell something that no one is buying? If I started a news site, I would target the audience with bigger pockets and more comfortable with subscribing to online services (many people are resistant). That would be people living in expensive cities. Even if you are a non-profit, you are still beholden to your donators. Mozilla can't go ape shit on Google.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Opinion: i like it when journalists state their bias and their opinion, then give their report. If I know a classical Democrat is reporting on a trump rally I can expect some heavy bias. Etc. Maybe journalists and news anchors should have scorecards where they personally identify their opinions on issues from foreign affairs to drugs to crime and gender. Ethically, is it okay to be biased towards one party (esp as a journalist) when that partys positions are objectively projective, dishonest, and baseless across senior party members, senior partisan journalists in the parties favor, and dutifully documented over the years?
- asdff 6y ago
  I think that is totally fine. If you want an unbiased source you can read from a newswire service like AP or Reuters, which often feed directly into nyt and other paper's articles directly.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  Other comments are saying there is no such thing as news without bias, which is true. But I think your question is still meaningful, since news organizations can either try to recognize and correct for their biases or lean into them. It seems like the NYT's decision to print Senator Cotton's conservative opinion piece was a poorly executed attempt to compensate for their prevailing liberal bias. It's a good idea, but I think they should solicit articles that might actually be convincing to the paper's reader base rather than easily-attacked incendiary pieces with glaring factual errors. Opinion pieces are a special case, though. For non-opinion articles, I'd prefer that papers strive to lay out the facts as objectively as they can and leave the conclusions to the readers. Their bias will still show up in which stories they choose to promote, which is why I think it's important to get news from at least a few different sources with different biases. I use the opinion section as a rough guide to identifying a paper's editorial biases. Although it may contain articles that diverge from the paper's views, there is usually a clear trend.
- nugget 6y ago
  Other positions aside, I’ve found most rational people have a natural distaste for hypocrisy/double standards, especially when it’s institutionalized. I read Tom Cotton’s op ed about civil unrest in the US and then Regina Ip’s op ed about similar issues in Hong Kong. I’m struggling to understand why anyone would think Cotton’s piece needs the post-publication disclaimer and the other does not. A clear double standard seems to be present.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    Can you explain why you think that illustrates a double standard? What principle do you think the NYT is purporting to hold but is applying inconsistently in these two cases? I haven't read either article (because I'm not a subscriber), but I gather that the former is advocating using the US military to put down civil unrest in the US, and the other is defending the actions of Hong Kong police to put down civil unrest in Hong Kong. If you suppose the principle being applied is very broad, something like "no support of any state action against civil unrest should ever be published," then that principle does seem to be applied inconsistently. But that seems very unlikely to be the principle NYT is purporting to have.
- tathougies 6y ago
  It is okay, and in fact preferable to pick a side, but they portray themselves as 'objective' and 'rational', when they're clearly biased. Just remember the Nick Sandmann story and the subsequent lack of introspection (as well as the continued insistence that the boy did anything wrong on the NYT's behalf).
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  I think the times does ok at having some conservative pieces to balance out. They got a bit unlucky in all their republican columnists, Brooks and Douthat in particular, being never trumpers, but they try to throw in some pro trump op-eds.
  - wonnage 6y ago
    I never understood this particular viewpoint. The Times is fairly centrist to begin with, and we have to balance that out by inviting the occasional fascist to write a column? What does anyone gain from that?
    - colinmhayes 6y ago
      The goal is to see perspectives outside your echo chamber.
- Veen 6y ago
  We all have bias and there is no point in denying it. But that shouldn't stop people in professions like journalism aiming for independence and neutrality. People can be honest and intellectually honest, follow the evidence and logic impartially, in spite of their biases. The problem comes where they see their role as something different; then they become propagandists and political partisans who hide behind their supposed impartiality.
  - mantap 6y ago
    The problem is when one side lies a hell of a lot more than the other. Just look at the present situation where the US President is claiming to have won an election that he has very clearly lost. If newspapers try to push back on those lies they get accused of being biased. At that point it is a very thin line between publishing the truth, and pushing one side of the story.
    - effie 6y ago
      So if all sides lie the same amount, things are OK? I don't understand your argument.
bruceb 6y ago
NYT decided to go all in on left leaning, all anti Trump all the time, and even then some of their readers think they are carrying water for Trump.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  No they didn’t. They are left leaning only in specific neo liberal ways.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > They are left leaning only in specific neo liberal ways. They are only left-leaning in specific center-right ways? Neoliberalism isn't a left ideology.
    - skinnymuch 6y ago
      In America it is. And yes exactly what you wrote in your second paragraph. You can be pedantic all you want. But 90%+ of America’s won’t follow what you’re saying if you’re saying at best NYT is center right. You also likely won’t be able to have the conversation without seeming smug (or insert other related adjectives) either. Likely hurting any discussion you have. At which point, any pt of discussion is defeated.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > In America it is. Neoliberalism isn't a left view in America, either. While it's true that only since Trump it's been somewhat displaced by vague mix of kleptocracy and protectionism as the economic policy of the dominant faction of the Republican Party, it remains widely shared between both parties, there's nothing left, even in American terms, about neoliberalism. > But 90% of people in America will have no clue what you mean when you say things like that. If I rephrased neoliberalism as “corporate capitalism”, they'd understand it perfectly.
      - onecommentman 6y ago
damnencryption 6y ago
I have a simpler explanation for media failure. Huge job cuts. Many journalists are now doing work of multiple positions in many places especially online media. New York Times has reduced the number of their total editors in the last 10 years for example. Every major online media had layoffs comparable to 10% of their total workforce in the last 5 years. It affects mid level journalists the most so there are more interns now. Most of the jobs have been concentrated geographically. Whatever people say, environment changes how they act and what they believe in the most, likely to report. There isn't enough exclusive content. Any big announcement or what rich people say can be read on social media by directly following their account. Why buy a NYT subscription for that? There are thousands of big YouTubers reading the latest news from NYT to their subscribers and taking NYT's cut if they actually do something exclusive and costly. News has become an entertainment commodity for people. The vast explosion of content means fewer people are willing to pay for less but greatly researched content compared to more content and noise. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroo... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bub...
- andreilys 6y ago
  I agree with your analysis. Watching the last season of The Wire it really struck home the incentive structures, and how News organizations are ultimately businesses that are beholden to financial interests. A business that unfortunately has lost its viability, which is how we've ended up in this current predicament.
- ianmobbs 6y ago
  Did you read the article? The Times now employs more people than it ever has and is doing better financially than ever.
  - damnencryption 6y ago
    Yes I did. It didn't mention anything about more employees (mostly policies to encourage more POC). Although it does mention the expansion of their digital media. That seems fine to me but what about total employees from both digital and paper? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times...
shrimpx 6y ago
In my opinion the NYT has been the clearest and most unrelenting source of anti-Trumpism in the Trump era, and continues to push hard as Trump is not showing signs of letting go. Historically this may play out as NYT devolving into a hopelessly polarized sensationalist pseudo news source, but it could be cemented as a clear stand against despotic inclinations in the Presidency when few others were so determined.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  You are confusing anti-Trump bias with telling the truth. Trump being a pathological liar means that any given story about him will sound bad. Example: “Trump said today he is still under audit and unable to release his tax returns. Of course there is zero reason why being under audit would prevent someone from releasing their tax returns and the most likely explanation is that there is evidence of tax fraud that can be uncovered if his tax returns became public.” This is what happens why you are a public figure who lies: it makes you look bad. The solution isn’t to blame the reporters but to stop lying.
  - tathougies 6y ago
    Okay, sure, Trump misrepresented that maybe -- although his tax returns are typical of someone with lots of depreciable real estate, and don't have much evidence of fraud. But let's talk about other so-called trump 'lies'. What about the continued doubts by the NYT that there would soon be news about a working coronavirus vaccine at the end of October, early November? What about the Steele Dossier that is now known to have been paid for by Russia (which Trump said at the beginning, but was claimed to be a lie)? What about the forced firing via threat of withholding aide of the Ukrainian prosecutor by Joe Biden, who denied being involved with his son's business dealings in the Ukraine? We were told that was lies, but there is indisputable DKIM evidence that an e-mail from Burisima to Hunter Biden thanked him for meeting his father while he was in office (https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim). Are those lies too? Sure Trump lies, like any other politician. But sometimes he tells the truth, and the truth is so ludicrous, that it seems like lies, but when it finally comes out that it was true, we all sit and say to ourselves... maybe we should believe the guy. But I mean... continue on with the denial, you'll just turn more formerly anti-Trump people into pro-Trumpers.
huy-nguyen 6y ago
I still highly respect NYT but I agree that the tone of its headlines (if not the actual article text) in general has gotten more sensationalized over time. I now read both NYT and the news section of WSJ to get a more balanced perspective (I steer clear of the opinion section of WSJ because it's a total dumpster fire).
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  If you're ever looking to absolutely lose all faith in humanity the journal's comment section is even better than facebook. Never thought I'd see the day where someone unironically says "LIBERAL NOONAN"
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    I would have expected the $40/month price tag for the WSJ to be a more effective filter. I guess there's plenty of racist-grandpa types happy to shell out the cash.
    - lostgame 6y ago
      [Citation needed] I have $52 for 52 weeks here as a subscription option, then $9.95/mo. (https://store.wsj.com/shop/us/ca/wsjcass21/?trackingCode=aaqwghr4&cid=WSJ_RD_ALL_ACQ_NA https://store.wsj.com/shop/us/ca/wsjcass21/?trackingCode=aaq...)
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  From the article, > In 2018, a group of data scientists at the Times unveiled Project Feels, a set of algorithms that could determine what emotions a given article might induce. ... “Hate drives readership more than any of us care to admit,” one employee on the business side told me. Sounds like the exact same feedback-optimized gradient-descent optimization for engagement that is biting social media in the ass is affecting them, too.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Oh the circumlocutions of woke centrists... NYT's slant is currently ammo for "class reductionists"[1], but if they were to enage in some of the dirtbag left stuff of the sort that Putin likes to sponsor, they could make the MSNBC Moms uncomfortable from both sides of the political spectrum (!), and antipodal-ly restore some bipartisan credibility. [1]: https://www.salon.com/2020/07/25/how-calling-someone-a-class-reductionist-became-a-lefty-insult/ https://www.salon.com/2020/07/25/how-calling-someone-a-class... (much better than "Salon" would usually indicate) --------- The article puts James Bennet in a kinda good light, but that is wrong as the Opinion section is trash trolling of boomers and he made it worse. It would be bad business sense in the short term, but they should admit that "columns" from the same people until they are long past being out of ideas are superfluous in the internet age, and keep the opinionated stuff to the magazine long-form investigative piece (like the magazine). Basically keep the emotions at a minimum by maintaining an attention-span-requiring vs outrage-unleashing trade-off.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Wait Putin sponsors Chapo Trap House? Does that mean I can’t play Disco Elysium guilt-free anymore?
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    No Putin doesn't. But much of the facebook astroturfing was vaguely similar. Just cause it's agitprop doesn't mean it's wrong :D.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
googthrowaway42 6y ago
The New York Times is simply the propaganda arm of the permanent political class. That's all it is.
mncharity 6y ago
Another perspective: > As a “big S” Socialist [...] I often find myself explaining my preference for the pink paper of liberal capitalism over the Gray Lady of cultural liberalism. The answer is simple: by literally any measure, the Financial Times is just a better paper. It covers the world as it is—a global battle not of ideas or values, but of economic and political interests. [1] [1] Why the Left Can’t Stand The New York Times https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-the-new-york-times.php https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-t...
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  Economic and political clashes are not reality. Like the great houses of Game of Thrones fighting a huge civil war, while an unstoppable army of wights readies invasion from the north. Perhaps one can throw around accusations of bias in economics and politics easily, but our own world squabbles in internecine insular conflict while Global Warming, Species Depletion, and other major threats loom. If your "side" denies the existence and threat of those and calls those "liberal" issues, then it taints the entire "side" it represents. The denialism of global warming the fundamental argument to "reality has a liberal bias". Until the right accept the basics of rationalism and science, "centrist" media should appear liberally biased to the right wing zealots of our time.
  - shard 6y ago
    What are the White Walkers and wights but another nation with a different economic system and political agenda?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
      Sigh, they're a force of nature. Winter for a generation? Remember?
      - 6y ago
Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
The sad decline of media into partisanship. The New York Times is as partisan in its readership as MSNBC or Fox(!!). https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-main-sources-for-political-news-vary-by-party-and-age/ft_2020-04-01_newssources_02/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-m...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 0goel0 6y ago
  What you link to doesn't back your claim. It tells me that people think orgs are partisan, not that they actually are.
  - syrrim 6y ago
    GP is making a claim about the readership, not the orgs themselves.
  - Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
    If I said "all the audience of Fox is confused - Fox is actually left-wing, it's just a bunch of confused right-wingers who used it as their primary source of news", would you believe me? The audience tells you the message. There's a reason no one calls Fox left-wing, or NYT right-wing.
- duxup 6y ago
  >The New York Times is as partisan That article talks about the reader's partisanship, not the actual content or particular news org.
  - generalizations 6y ago
    > The New York Times is as partisan in its readership Yes, that's what the parent said.
  - Anon1096 6y ago
RickJWagner 6y ago
What now, indeed. When Trump is gone, what will the NYT do when an African-American is killed in a police matter? How will they spin incidents of unrest? The Times has gone way past the pale in terms of left/right. They are now in the same boat MSNBC/CNN/NBC/etc. are in (the opposite boat than the one occupied by Fox/Breitbart/etc.) They won't be considered 'news' much. Will they try to tack more to center, or go whole-hog on the left side?
- tzs 6y ago
  > When Trump is gone, what will the NYT do when an African-American is killed in a police matter? I didn't do a thorough search, but a brief search didn't turn up much difference between how the Times covered such things in the two or three years before Trump (BLM started in mid-2013) and how they covered them after. I'd expect they will continue to cover them the same way after Trump.
- matchbok 6y ago
  Uh, like they did when Obama was president? The same as long as current president isn't encouraging violence? You cutely act like trump doesn't encourage this crap. Nonsense. Comparing the times to breitbart shows how ignorant you are. Breitbart peddled conspiracy theories (seth rich, dem voter fraud etc) while the times reports... the news.
wombatmobile 6y ago
News has changed a lot since the internet broke newspapers revenue model. The trend began before the internet, with television. Marshall McLuhan anticipated the change when he said the medium is the message. What he meant is that the UI and dynamics of each media format determines what kind of dialogs are possible. Typographical media encouraged history, background, and timeless reflection. Television changed that by chopping news into 30 second pieces, with no background understanding required, infrequent depth, and a change of topic after every 3 stories for a message from our sponsor, after which you'd return to something completely different. Neil Postman explains it in his classic 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. News has become entertainment. Entertainment has become trivia and indulgences. https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/5/8/15440292/donald-trump-politics-culture-neil-postman-television-media https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/5/8/15440292/donald-t...
ajay-b 6y ago
I Was looking at a newspaper from the 1940s and the difference in content presented then, versus even now in large print newspapers, is astounding. There was so much more information conveyed back then, less opinions more information that people could use. It makes me think that our definition of news has gotten away from its original meaning
- asdff 6y ago
  You can read AP or Reuters if you want more newswire oriented coverage.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    I tried that but it's no different. AP and Reuters articles are written in a style no different to what you'd find in a Guardian or NYT article. The problem is journalists as a class, not specific firms. They don't have any incentives to report dry, factual news without a slant.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  I would love to see an example, perhaps, if what you were looking at is digital. The way I see it, there is some inherent bias in even the newsroom, but I feel that the information I get from New York Times is accurate and substantial.
  - CincinnatiMan 6y ago
    Look at the same topic on NYT and WSJ and you'll see NYT uses a lot more emotional language while WSJ is more dry.
- jariel 6y ago
  1940's? Try using the wayback machine to see CNN from 2000. You will see instantly how opinion/intersectionalist/narrative it is now relative to then. It used to be Cable News, now it's Cable Opinion. The article points to this: there is an ideological war in the NYT that speaks to their bottom line: "There’s still this huge gap between what the staff and audience and management want. The audience is Resistance Moms." There's also a huge gap between editorial and news at the NYT, apparently, they don't like each other. There are also different editors for each side - there is effectively 2 'Top Editors' so it's a weird dynamic. To be fair though - historically, papers were always very biased, usually in the names of their owners. Rich dudes would buy papers to slander their political opponents. So a mix of crude facts and the polity stabbing each other in the back.
rayiner 6y ago
Tucker Carlson defended the NYT in 2009, saying the paper had a liberal slant but was careful about the facts. He urged conservative media to pay attention to accuracy. But sadly, after devastating revenue losses from 2010-2016, the NYT decided to become Fox News instead.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  This proves that a broken clock, or broken man, can be correct upon occasion. Tucker Carlson is a despicable human being, utterly without guile or integrity or good faith.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    I think you'll find he has a modicum of guile.
    - effie 6y ago
      Any examples?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    My comment was about the NYT, not Tucker Carlson. The point is that even in the recent past, the paper had credibility even among people like Tucker Carlson.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    > Tucker Carlson is a despicable human being, utterly without guile or integrity or good faith. Can you explain this? I don’t particularly like him and have only seen a few clips here and there, but I am surprised anyone might have such a strong reaction.
jdkee 6y ago
I teach a course titles "Free Speech, Fake News and Foreign Influence in American Democracy." As part of the course I assign my students to watch and discuss a lecture by Jack Balkin at Yale on the modalities of 20th/21st century media. In it Prof. Balkin really hits home the aspect of how we pay for the news in the 21st century under the model of surveillance capitalism. It is a fantastic lecture and well worth the hour or so. https://youtu.be/4daIk8PCPIc https://youtu.be/4daIk8PCPIc See also https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol66/iss5/1/ https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol6...
Stronico 6y ago
I read a print version of the NYT recently and the feeling I got was quite different than the web version - mostly in that what was being pushed on you was "news", not opinion. Almost all of it could be described as "These People Did This Thing In This Place". It was great actually, dispassionate and informative. The editorials were packed away somewhere in the back, not worth looking for. A very different experience than the web version.
- seppin 6y ago
  I still don't understand why any news org has an opinion page. The two have nothing to do with one another.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    In a lot of the world, they don't really have unbiased newspapers. Except for the BBC, newspapers in the UK openly fly their colours for example.
  - c06n 6y ago
    It's in the article: Opinion at NYT produces 10% of the output, but 20% of the views. Emotions, especially negative ones, drive engagement.
    - seppin 6y ago
      Sadly this is the answer.
  - alphager 6y ago
    It's where values-based analysis can happen. "Person X did Y on Z date" is a perfectly fine information properly residing in the news section. Writing about what the consequences of Y are very easily leaves the purely factual space once Ys consequences reach a certain complexity.
  - unethical_ban 6y ago
    Consider the role of newspapers historically. It's not unreasonable to expect an institution of reporters of current events to have a section of opinion and analysis on the facts of the day. That may seem antiquated now, with an unlimited amount of opinion readily available on social media or advocacy websites.
solatic 6y ago
Why doesn't NYT establish a separate "woke" section? It's not like NYT can't publish bias; it has the Opinion section. NYT has grown into a media empire and is pumping out more content in more areas than ever before. Why not just create a new "woke" section, where progressives are given more reign over what to publish and in what tenor? The erosion of journalistic standards in Newsroom and Opinion will ultimately bring about its downfall. Those standards are the reason why so many people subscribe. If the standards fall away, eventually some other outlet will come along upholding those standards and siphon away the subscriber base.
dnhz 6y ago
Sounds quite messy in the slack channels of the nytimes. A democratic (small D) atmosphere where the newspaper’s hierarchy does not seem to matter. Interesting that the tech and data workers of the times feel as justified in opining on the paper’s direction as the writers and editors. This article makes it sound as if the insurrection from within is driven partly by those who are not producing the main content of the paper. I was surprised to read that the opinion section garners 20% of the reads despite being 10% of the content. I personally avoid the opinion section because it feels impotent; the republicans control the government and indignant opinions change nothing about that.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > Interesting that the tech and data workers of the times feel as justified in opining on the paper’s direction as the writers and editors. A colleague at a hip American energy-tech startup tells me that this is the new normal for zoomers (<26 years old) in the workplace. "Speaking their mind" at all times on chat when it would be absolutely inappropriate for them to do so in person, no awareness of or care for the existing hierarchy. This meshes badly with boomers and gen-x'rs who implicitly expect a much higher degree of formality, and react in unpredictable ways to insubordination or feeling challenged. It's only going to get worse as the generational shift widens.
0898 6y ago
I've observed the NYT's recent drift with dismay. Here's a recent example I noticed: https://imgur.com/a/uST4zE0 https://imgur.com/a/uST4zE0 Somebody was murdered at a protest, and two bullet-points the NYT splashes with are "blame the victim" context hits because the deceased was on the "wrong" side. It should not be necessary to visit a toxic site like Breitbart to get a balanced diet, but at the moment as an NYT reader I feel it is.
- tsycho 6y ago
  I don’t get it. The bullet points in your screenshot seemed factual to me. Which part of it felt like victim blaming to you?
  - 0x445442 6y ago
    Really? You see nothing wrong with a news article throwing around terms like "Far Right"?
    - weakfish 6y ago
      I agree that the bullet points are on the victim blaming end of things, but Far Right is a factual term and I'm not sure what the issue with it is - could you elaborate on your point please?
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
>Gang, it would be great to shift the tone of this discussion,” Baquet jumped in to say during a fight about whether “Opinion”-section provocateur Bari Weiss’s description of a “civil war inside The New York Times Right message, wrong person. Journalism is in crisis but it's not money, there's more journalists today than there ever has been. More budget than ever before. More journalistic freedom than ever before. This freedom isn't the problem. The problem is that political activists are becoming journalists, this occurs at the same time where a political ideology is in their death throes. USSR collapsing was a huge blow to the left-wing but worse China's free trade zones success is undeniable. Shenzen went from tiny town to over 10 million people because of capitalism. The free trade zones in China resulted in hyper globalization and all the 'problems' from China is because they adopted capitalism. In 2004, China made a huge change, they recognize private property. Communism is dead, China has been shifting toward capitalism. Obviously you can't immediately switch to capitalism. Who are the remaining communists? Cuba? North Korea? Vietnam? Laos? Venezuela? Spain? Greece? Not only is communism as dead as ever and it's leading to communist political activists taking over some journalistic positions and pushing communism. The problem is that they keep getting caught and rebranding. Marxists, collectivists, communists, socialists, postmodernists, etc. They go by many names and all propose the same thing. The conflict in the NYTimes is that journalism tends to lean left and they certainly dont have any right-leaning viewpoints. So the conflict arises where moderate left-wing collides with the communist journalists. Why is everyone a racist? Because communism requires a classless society and intersectionality demands this. Why is Russia the big bad evil people trying to ruin everything? They are the ones who are anti-communist.
mancerayder 6y ago
It is difficult to think of many businesses that have benefited more from Donald Trump’s presidency — aside from the Trump-family empire — than the Times. After Trump’s election, in 2016, subscriptions grew at ten times their usual rate, and they have never looked back. The Times has gone from just over three million subscribers at the beginning of the Trump presidency to its record of more than 7 million last month. It has hired hundreds of journalists to staff a newsroom that is now 1,700 people strong — bigger than ever. Its stock has risen fourfold since Trump took office, and the Times has consolidated its Trump bump into a business that includes Serial Productions, the podcast juggernaut; Audm, the audio-translation business; and a TV show based on the Times series “Modern Love” that was filming its second season this summer, until a COVID-19 false positive on-set forced it to halt shooting. I think this is key. The journalist Matt Taibbi has been chronicling this and writing detailed analysis of the trend that these 'center-left' publications became suddenly 'far left' (culturally, not economically, if you ask me), very hyperpartisan coastal establishment DNC. Most importantly, the incentive structures within these organizations have found ways to 'weed out' those who don't toe the line: Trump out at any cost. Don't get me wrong; I'm not lamenting Trump being out. I'm lamenting journalistic integrity being out. It's now fully acceptable to wage a war with a newspaper, something we criticized Fox and the Murdoch papers for doing. But the real loss here is the independent spirit; an independent mind holds opinion even if everyone in the room downvotes them, if they think that opinion is correct and supported with reason. Instead, what we have is a sort of herd mentality where the group decides what's good and bad. That tech people were hired in droves and this is the result, I find quite scary given how influential young tech companies have become. Most recently the Times wrote an article that asks the question, on the topic of the beheading in France of the teacher, did France do it to themselves? In reference to the Mohammed cartoons and its secular tradition. Additionally the Times seemed to support suppressing The NY Post's account based on their Biden article. ^^ Both of these examples would never be tolerated by the ethical journalists of yesteryear, when seeking the truth, no matter how ugly took precedence over hyper-partisan The End Justifies the Means attitude being seen here. But it really comes down to money, doesn't it. As Taibbi documents, the Fox News model has spread to MSNBC and CNN, and of course the Times and Washington Post. Cater to your base is more profitable an idea. That's the real reason the Cotton thing was removed and an editor fired; they feared they'd upset their reader base - their clients.

103 points by magda_wang 6y ago

bduerst 6y ago

Weird to evaluate the NYT evolving the past four years and not mention The Daily podcast.

CincinnatiMan 6y ago
Never heard of it. Can you expand on your statement and what you're trying to get across?
- bduerst 6y ago
  It started in 2017 and is one of the most wildly successful and popular podcasts over the past couple years. It has over 2 million downloads every weekday. It's also the reason I subscribed to the NYT - just to support the podcast.

samspenc 6y ago

This is a good question: should news media like NYT report news without any political biases? Or is it OK for them to pick a side while reporting (progressive, liberal vs conservative etc). If it is OK for media to report news with a bias, then will that accelerate the echo chambers across the political spectrum where news media only report on angles they favor? Just wanted to raise this for discussion.

daxelrod 6y ago
It is impossible to report news without bias. Instead, publications and journalists should strive to be honest about what their biases are, and to do what they can to correct for them.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Perfect unbiasedness is impossible. But there is a huge difference between those who try to be unbiased, and those who don't. BTW, what are good examples of journalists being honest about their biases?
kace91 6y ago
People in media will usually tell you that there's no such thing as unbiased reporting; even the act of choosing which stories are important enough to report is a biased act. However, I must say that I'm not subscribed to any newspapers, and the main reason I've chosen to do so is that newspapers can: - Work for political and business moguls by offering crowd manipulation as a service - Work for ad buyers by trying to optimise engagement - Work for subscribed readers by trying their best to provide quality information Any of those is a valid business I guess, but I'm only interested in the latter. And newspapers try to sell me the third option without dropping the others. It's true that if something's free you are the product, but in this case they're trying to both make me the product and make me pay. Not cool.
- wonnage 6y ago
  You could consider donating to a nonprofit news org like ProPublica, then. Also you are throwing out the baby with the bath water, just because news is funded by the rich doesn't mean every little mundane article they publish is biased. Oftentimes the facts are there, but the analysis or framing is biased. It's still probably more accurate than trying to get all your news via Twitter or something.
  - kace91 6y ago
    > Also you are throwing out the baby with the bath water, just because news is funded by the rich doesn't mean every little mundane article they publish is biased. Oftentimes the facts are there, but the analysis or framing is biased. It's still probably more accurate than trying to get all your news via Twitter or something. What would the baby be in this case? News are not fundamentally important to me, at least not to the point where I'd want to get them regardless of quality. The absolute crushing majority of news I read don't require or cause any action on my part. Of course I'd like to be informed of current events, developments in politics or international news; but no information is better than wrong information - my alternative would never be social media, it's just the absence of general news. My views might seem extremely pessimistic, but they're rooted in two facts: 1 - I am yet to see any piece of news related to my area of expertise where information is accurate. I should assume that it's the same for all areas, and mine isn't a weird exception. 2 - I am the son of a journalist, and happen to have close friends that work daily with press. Insider views on the journalism business can rapidly turn you into a cynic.
damnencryption 6y ago
No. They should disclose their biases though. It's a business. Why would you sell something that no one is buying? If I started a news site, I would target the audience with bigger pockets and more comfortable with subscribing to online services (many people are resistant). That would be people living in expensive cities. Even if you are a non-profit, you are still beholden to your donators. Mozilla can't go ape shit on Google.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
Opinion: i like it when journalists state their bias and their opinion, then give their report. If I know a classical Democrat is reporting on a trump rally I can expect some heavy bias. Etc. Maybe journalists and news anchors should have scorecards where they personally identify their opinions on issues from foreign affairs to drugs to crime and gender. Ethically, is it okay to be biased towards one party (esp as a journalist) when that partys positions are objectively projective, dishonest, and baseless across senior party members, senior partisan journalists in the parties favor, and dutifully documented over the years?
asdff 6y ago
I think that is totally fine. If you want an unbiased source you can read from a newswire service like AP or Reuters, which often feed directly into nyt and other paper's articles directly.
titanomachy 6y ago
Other comments are saying there is no such thing as news without bias, which is true. But I think your question is still meaningful, since news organizations can either try to recognize and correct for their biases or lean into them. It seems like the NYT's decision to print Senator Cotton's conservative opinion piece was a poorly executed attempt to compensate for their prevailing liberal bias. It's a good idea, but I think they should solicit articles that might actually be convincing to the paper's reader base rather than easily-attacked incendiary pieces with glaring factual errors. Opinion pieces are a special case, though. For non-opinion articles, I'd prefer that papers strive to lay out the facts as objectively as they can and leave the conclusions to the readers. Their bias will still show up in which stories they choose to promote, which is why I think it's important to get news from at least a few different sources with different biases. I use the opinion section as a rough guide to identifying a paper's editorial biases. Although it may contain articles that diverge from the paper's views, there is usually a clear trend.
nugget 6y ago
Other positions aside, I’ve found most rational people have a natural distaste for hypocrisy/double standards, especially when it’s institutionalized. I read Tom Cotton’s op ed about civil unrest in the US and then Regina Ip’s op ed about similar issues in Hong Kong. I’m struggling to understand why anyone would think Cotton’s piece needs the post-publication disclaimer and the other does not. A clear double standard seems to be present.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  Can you explain why you think that illustrates a double standard? What principle do you think the NYT is purporting to hold but is applying inconsistently in these two cases? I haven't read either article (because I'm not a subscriber), but I gather that the former is advocating using the US military to put down civil unrest in the US, and the other is defending the actions of Hong Kong police to put down civil unrest in Hong Kong. If you suppose the principle being applied is very broad, something like "no support of any state action against civil unrest should ever be published," then that principle does seem to be applied inconsistently. But that seems very unlikely to be the principle NYT is purporting to have.
tathougies 6y ago
It is okay, and in fact preferable to pick a side, but they portray themselves as 'objective' and 'rational', when they're clearly biased. Just remember the Nick Sandmann story and the subsequent lack of introspection (as well as the continued insistence that the boy did anything wrong on the NYT's behalf).
colinmhayes 6y ago
I think the times does ok at having some conservative pieces to balance out. They got a bit unlucky in all their republican columnists, Brooks and Douthat in particular, being never trumpers, but they try to throw in some pro trump op-eds.
- wonnage 6y ago
  I never understood this particular viewpoint. The Times is fairly centrist to begin with, and we have to balance that out by inviting the occasional fascist to write a column? What does anyone gain from that?
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    The goal is to see perspectives outside your echo chamber.
Veen 6y ago
We all have bias and there is no point in denying it. But that shouldn't stop people in professions like journalism aiming for independence and neutrality. People can be honest and intellectually honest, follow the evidence and logic impartially, in spite of their biases. The problem comes where they see their role as something different; then they become propagandists and political partisans who hide behind their supposed impartiality.
- mantap 6y ago
  The problem is when one side lies a hell of a lot more than the other. Just look at the present situation where the US President is claiming to have won an election that he has very clearly lost. If newspapers try to push back on those lies they get accused of being biased. At that point it is a very thin line between publishing the truth, and pushing one side of the story.
  - effie 6y ago
    So if all sides lie the same amount, things are OK? I don't understand your argument.

bruceb 6y ago

NYT decided to go all in on left leaning, all anti Trump all the time, and even then some of their readers think they are carrying water for Trump.

skinnymuch 6y ago
No they didn’t. They are left leaning only in specific neo liberal ways.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > They are left leaning only in specific neo liberal ways. They are only left-leaning in specific center-right ways? Neoliberalism isn't a left ideology.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    In America it is. And yes exactly what you wrote in your second paragraph. You can be pedantic all you want. But 90%+ of America’s won’t follow what you’re saying if you’re saying at best NYT is center right. You also likely won’t be able to have the conversation without seeming smug (or insert other related adjectives) either. Likely hurting any discussion you have. At which point, any pt of discussion is defeated.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > In America it is. Neoliberalism isn't a left view in America, either. While it's true that only since Trump it's been somewhat displaced by vague mix of kleptocracy and protectionism as the economic policy of the dominant faction of the Republican Party, it remains widely shared between both parties, there's nothing left, even in American terms, about neoliberalism. > But 90% of people in America will have no clue what you mean when you say things like that. If I rephrased neoliberalism as “corporate capitalism”, they'd understand it perfectly.
    - onecommentman 6y ago

damnencryption 6y ago

I have a simpler explanation for media failure. Huge job cuts. Many journalists are now doing work of multiple positions in many places especially online media. New York Times has reduced the number of their total editors in the last 10 years for example. Every major online media had layoffs comparable to 10% of their total workforce in the last 5 years. It affects mid level journalists the most so there are more interns now. Most of the jobs have been concentrated geographically. Whatever people say, environment changes how they act and what they believe in the most, likely to report. There isn't enough exclusive content. Any big announcement or what rich people say can be read on social media by directly following their account. Why buy a NYT subscription for that? There are thousands of big YouTubers reading the latest news from NYT to their subscribers and taking NYT's cut if they actually do something exclusive and costly. News has become an entertainment commodity for people. The vast explosion of content means fewer people are willing to pay for less but greatly researched content compared to more content and noise. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroo... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bub...

andreilys 6y ago
I agree with your analysis. Watching the last season of The Wire it really struck home the incentive structures, and how News organizations are ultimately businesses that are beholden to financial interests. A business that unfortunately has lost its viability, which is how we've ended up in this current predicament.
ianmobbs 6y ago
Did you read the article? The Times now employs more people than it ever has and is doing better financially than ever.
- damnencryption 6y ago
  Yes I did. It didn't mention anything about more employees (mostly policies to encourage more POC). Although it does mention the expansion of their digital media. That seems fine to me but what about total employees from both digital and paper? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times...

shrimpx 6y ago

In my opinion the NYT has been the clearest and most unrelenting source of anti-Trumpism in the Trump era, and continues to push hard as Trump is not showing signs of letting go. Historically this may play out as NYT devolving into a hopelessly polarized sensationalist pseudo news source, but it could be cemented as a clear stand against despotic inclinations in the Presidency when few others were so determined.

IgorPartola 6y ago
You are confusing anti-Trump bias with telling the truth. Trump being a pathological liar means that any given story about him will sound bad. Example: “Trump said today he is still under audit and unable to release his tax returns. Of course there is zero reason why being under audit would prevent someone from releasing their tax returns and the most likely explanation is that there is evidence of tax fraud that can be uncovered if his tax returns became public.” This is what happens why you are a public figure who lies: it makes you look bad. The solution isn’t to blame the reporters but to stop lying.
- tathougies 6y ago
  Okay, sure, Trump misrepresented that maybe -- although his tax returns are typical of someone with lots of depreciable real estate, and don't have much evidence of fraud. But let's talk about other so-called trump 'lies'. What about the continued doubts by the NYT that there would soon be news about a working coronavirus vaccine at the end of October, early November? What about the Steele Dossier that is now known to have been paid for by Russia (which Trump said at the beginning, but was claimed to be a lie)? What about the forced firing via threat of withholding aide of the Ukrainian prosecutor by Joe Biden, who denied being involved with his son's business dealings in the Ukraine? We were told that was lies, but there is indisputable DKIM evidence that an e-mail from Burisima to Hunter Biden thanked him for meeting his father while he was in office (https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim). Are those lies too? Sure Trump lies, like any other politician. But sometimes he tells the truth, and the truth is so ludicrous, that it seems like lies, but when it finally comes out that it was true, we all sit and say to ourselves... maybe we should believe the guy. But I mean... continue on with the denial, you'll just turn more formerly anti-Trump people into pro-Trumpers.

huy-nguyen 6y ago

I still highly respect NYT but I agree that the tone of its headlines (if not the actual article text) in general has gotten more sensationalized over time. I now read both NYT and the news section of WSJ to get a more balanced perspective (I steer clear of the opinion section of WSJ because it's a total dumpster fire).

colinmhayes 6y ago
If you're ever looking to absolutely lose all faith in humanity the journal's comment section is even better than facebook. Never thought I'd see the day where someone unironically says "LIBERAL NOONAN"
- titanomachy 6y ago
  I would have expected the $40/month price tag for the WSJ to be a more effective filter. I guess there's plenty of racist-grandpa types happy to shell out the cash.
  - lostgame 6y ago
    [Citation needed] I have $52 for 52 weeks here as a subscription option, then $9.95/mo. (https://store.wsj.com/shop/us/ca/wsjcass21/?trackingCode=aaqwghr4&cid=WSJ_RD_ALL_ACQ_NA https://store.wsj.com/shop/us/ca/wsjcass21/?trackingCode=aaq...)
brandmeyer 6y ago
From the article, > In 2018, a group of data scientists at the Times unveiled Project Feels, a set of algorithms that could determine what emotions a given article might induce. ... “Hate drives readership more than any of us care to admit,” one employee on the business side told me. Sounds like the exact same feedback-optimized gradient-descent optimization for engagement that is biting social media in the ass is affecting them, too.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Oh the circumlocutions of woke centrists... NYT's slant is currently ammo for "class reductionists"[1], but if they were to enage in some of the dirtbag left stuff of the sort that Putin likes to sponsor, they could make the MSNBC Moms uncomfortable from both sides of the political spectrum (!), and antipodal-ly restore some bipartisan credibility. [1]: https://www.salon.com/2020/07/25/how-calling-someone-a-class-reductionist-became-a-lefty-insult/ https://www.salon.com/2020/07/25/how-calling-someone-a-class... (much better than "Salon" would usually indicate) --------- The article puts James Bennet in a kinda good light, but that is wrong as the Opinion section is trash trolling of boomers and he made it worse. It would be bad business sense in the short term, but they should admit that "columns" from the same people until they are long past being out of ideas are superfluous in the internet age, and keep the opinionated stuff to the magazine long-form investigative piece (like the magazine). Basically keep the emotions at a minimum by maintaining an attention-span-requiring vs outrage-unleashing trade-off.

selimthegrim 6y ago
Wait Putin sponsors Chapo Trap House? Does that mean I can’t play Disco Elysium guilt-free anymore?
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  No Putin doesn't. But much of the facebook astroturfing was vaguely similar. Just cause it's agitprop doesn't mean it's wrong :D.
deleted 6y ago
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googthrowaway42 6y ago

The New York Times is simply the propaganda arm of the permanent political class. That's all it is.

mncharity 6y ago

Another perspective: > As a “big S” Socialist [...] I often find myself explaining my preference for the pink paper of liberal capitalism over the Gray Lady of cultural liberalism. The answer is simple: by literally any measure, the Financial Times is just a better paper. It covers the world as it is—a global battle not of ideas or values, but of economic and political interests. [1] [1] Why the Left Can’t Stand The New York Times https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-the-new-york-times.php https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-t...

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Economic and political clashes are not reality. Like the great houses of Game of Thrones fighting a huge civil war, while an unstoppable army of wights readies invasion from the north. Perhaps one can throw around accusations of bias in economics and politics easily, but our own world squabbles in internecine insular conflict while Global Warming, Species Depletion, and other major threats loom. If your "side" denies the existence and threat of those and calls those "liberal" issues, then it taints the entire "side" it represents. The denialism of global warming the fundamental argument to "reality has a liberal bias". Until the right accept the basics of rationalism and science, "centrist" media should appear liberally biased to the right wing zealots of our time.
- shard 6y ago
  What are the White Walkers and wights but another nation with a different economic system and political agenda?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
    Sigh, they're a force of nature. Winter for a generation? Remember?
    - 6y ago

Wolfenstein98k 6y ago

The sad decline of media into partisanship. The New York Times is as partisan in its readership as MSNBC or Fox(!!). https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-main-sources-for-political-news-vary-by-party-and-age/ft_2020-04-01_newssources_02/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-m...

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0goel0 6y ago
What you link to doesn't back your claim. It tells me that people think orgs are partisan, not that they actually are.
- syrrim 6y ago
  GP is making a claim about the readership, not the orgs themselves.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  If I said "all the audience of Fox is confused - Fox is actually left-wing, it's just a bunch of confused right-wingers who used it as their primary source of news", would you believe me? The audience tells you the message. There's a reason no one calls Fox left-wing, or NYT right-wing.
duxup 6y ago
>The New York Times is as partisan That article talks about the reader's partisanship, not the actual content or particular news org.
- generalizations 6y ago
  > The New York Times is as partisan in its readership Yes, that's what the parent said.
- Anon1096 6y ago

RickJWagner 6y ago

What now, indeed. When Trump is gone, what will the NYT do when an African-American is killed in a police matter? How will they spin incidents of unrest? The Times has gone way past the pale in terms of left/right. They are now in the same boat MSNBC/CNN/NBC/etc. are in (the opposite boat than the one occupied by Fox/Breitbart/etc.) They won't be considered 'news' much. Will they try to tack more to center, or go whole-hog on the left side?

tzs 6y ago
> When Trump is gone, what will the NYT do when an African-American is killed in a police matter? I didn't do a thorough search, but a brief search didn't turn up much difference between how the Times covered such things in the two or three years before Trump (BLM started in mid-2013) and how they covered them after. I'd expect they will continue to cover them the same way after Trump.
matchbok 6y ago
Uh, like they did when Obama was president? The same as long as current president isn't encouraging violence? You cutely act like trump doesn't encourage this crap. Nonsense. Comparing the times to breitbart shows how ignorant you are. Breitbart peddled conspiracy theories (seth rich, dem voter fraud etc) while the times reports... the news.

wombatmobile 6y ago

News has changed a lot since the internet broke newspapers revenue model. The trend began before the internet, with television. Marshall McLuhan anticipated the change when he said the medium is the message. What he meant is that the UI and dynamics of each media format determines what kind of dialogs are possible. Typographical media encouraged history, background, and timeless reflection. Television changed that by chopping news into 30 second pieces, with no background understanding required, infrequent depth, and a change of topic after every 3 stories for a message from our sponsor, after which you'd return to something completely different. Neil Postman explains it in his classic 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. News has become entertainment. Entertainment has become trivia and indulgences. https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/5/8/15440292/donald-trump-politics-culture-neil-postman-television-media https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/5/8/15440292/donald-t...

ajay-b 6y ago

I Was looking at a newspaper from the 1940s and the difference in content presented then, versus even now in large print newspapers, is astounding. There was so much more information conveyed back then, less opinions more information that people could use. It makes me think that our definition of news has gotten away from its original meaning

asdff 6y ago
You can read AP or Reuters if you want more newswire oriented coverage.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I tried that but it's no different. AP and Reuters articles are written in a style no different to what you'd find in a Guardian or NYT article. The problem is journalists as a class, not specific firms. They don't have any incentives to report dry, factual news without a slant.
unethical_ban 6y ago
I would love to see an example, perhaps, if what you were looking at is digital. The way I see it, there is some inherent bias in even the newsroom, but I feel that the information I get from New York Times is accurate and substantial.
- CincinnatiMan 6y ago
  Look at the same topic on NYT and WSJ and you'll see NYT uses a lot more emotional language while WSJ is more dry.
jariel 6y ago
1940's? Try using the wayback machine to see CNN from 2000. You will see instantly how opinion/intersectionalist/narrative it is now relative to then. It used to be Cable News, now it's Cable Opinion. The article points to this: there is an ideological war in the NYT that speaks to their bottom line: "There’s still this huge gap between what the staff and audience and management want. The audience is Resistance Moms." There's also a huge gap between editorial and news at the NYT, apparently, they don't like each other. There are also different editors for each side - there is effectively 2 'Top Editors' so it's a weird dynamic. To be fair though - historically, papers were always very biased, usually in the names of their owners. Rich dudes would buy papers to slander their political opponents. So a mix of crude facts and the polity stabbing each other in the back.

rayiner 6y ago

Tucker Carlson defended the NYT in 2009, saying the paper had a liberal slant but was careful about the facts. He urged conservative media to pay attention to accuracy. But sadly, after devastating revenue losses from 2010-2016, the NYT decided to become Fox News instead.

unethical_ban 6y ago
This proves that a broken clock, or broken man, can be correct upon occasion. Tucker Carlson is a despicable human being, utterly without guile or integrity or good faith.
- Angostura 6y ago
  I think you'll find he has a modicum of guile.
  - effie 6y ago
    Any examples?
- rayiner 6y ago
  My comment was about the NYT, not Tucker Carlson. The point is that even in the recent past, the paper had credibility even among people like Tucker Carlson.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  > Tucker Carlson is a despicable human being, utterly without guile or integrity or good faith. Can you explain this? I don’t particularly like him and have only seen a few clips here and there, but I am surprised anyone might have such a strong reaction.

jdkee 6y ago

I teach a course titles "Free Speech, Fake News and Foreign Influence in American Democracy." As part of the course I assign my students to watch and discuss a lecture by Jack Balkin at Yale on the modalities of 20th/21st century media. In it Prof. Balkin really hits home the aspect of how we pay for the news in the 21st century under the model of surveillance capitalism. It is a fantastic lecture and well worth the hour or so. https://youtu.be/4daIk8PCPIc https://youtu.be/4daIk8PCPIc See also https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol66/iss5/1/ https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol6...

Stronico 6y ago

I read a print version of the NYT recently and the feeling I got was quite different than the web version - mostly in that what was being pushed on you was "news", not opinion. Almost all of it could be described as "These People Did This Thing In This Place". It was great actually, dispassionate and informative. The editorials were packed away somewhere in the back, not worth looking for. A very different experience than the web version.

seppin 6y ago
I still don't understand why any news org has an opinion page. The two have nothing to do with one another.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  In a lot of the world, they don't really have unbiased newspapers. Except for the BBC, newspapers in the UK openly fly their colours for example.
- c06n 6y ago
  It's in the article: Opinion at NYT produces 10% of the output, but 20% of the views. Emotions, especially negative ones, drive engagement.
  - seppin 6y ago
    Sadly this is the answer.
- alphager 6y ago
  It's where values-based analysis can happen. "Person X did Y on Z date" is a perfectly fine information properly residing in the news section. Writing about what the consequences of Y are very easily leaves the purely factual space once Ys consequences reach a certain complexity.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  Consider the role of newspapers historically. It's not unreasonable to expect an institution of reporters of current events to have a section of opinion and analysis on the facts of the day. That may seem antiquated now, with an unlimited amount of opinion readily available on social media or advocacy websites.

solatic 6y ago

Why doesn't NYT establish a separate "woke" section? It's not like NYT can't publish bias; it has the Opinion section. NYT has grown into a media empire and is pumping out more content in more areas than ever before. Why not just create a new "woke" section, where progressives are given more reign over what to publish and in what tenor? The erosion of journalistic standards in Newsroom and Opinion will ultimately bring about its downfall. Those standards are the reason why so many people subscribe. If the standards fall away, eventually some other outlet will come along upholding those standards and siphon away the subscriber base.

dnhz 6y ago

Sounds quite messy in the slack channels of the nytimes. A democratic (small D) atmosphere where the newspaper’s hierarchy does not seem to matter. Interesting that the tech and data workers of the times feel as justified in opining on the paper’s direction as the writers and editors. This article makes it sound as if the insurrection from within is driven partly by those who are not producing the main content of the paper. I was surprised to read that the opinion section garners 20% of the reads despite being 10% of the content. I personally avoid the opinion section because it feels impotent; the republicans control the government and indignant opinions change nothing about that.

core-questions 6y ago
> Interesting that the tech and data workers of the times feel as justified in opining on the paper’s direction as the writers and editors. A colleague at a hip American energy-tech startup tells me that this is the new normal for zoomers (<26 years old) in the workplace. "Speaking their mind" at all times on chat when it would be absolutely inappropriate for them to do so in person, no awareness of or care for the existing hierarchy. This meshes badly with boomers and gen-x'rs who implicitly expect a much higher degree of formality, and react in unpredictable ways to insubordination or feeling challenged. It's only going to get worse as the generational shift widens.

0898 6y ago

I've observed the NYT's recent drift with dismay. Here's a recent example I noticed: https://imgur.com/a/uST4zE0 https://imgur.com/a/uST4zE0 Somebody was murdered at a protest, and two bullet-points the NYT splashes with are "blame the victim" context hits because the deceased was on the "wrong" side. It should not be necessary to visit a toxic site like Breitbart to get a balanced diet, but at the moment as an NYT reader I feel it is.

tsycho 6y ago
I don’t get it. The bullet points in your screenshot seemed factual to me. Which part of it felt like victim blaming to you?
- 0x445442 6y ago
  Really? You see nothing wrong with a news article throwing around terms like "Far Right"?
  - weakfish 6y ago
    I agree that the bullet points are on the victim blaming end of things, but Far Right is a factual term and I'm not sure what the issue with it is - could you elaborate on your point please?

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

>Gang, it would be great to shift the tone of this discussion,” Baquet jumped in to say during a fight about whether “Opinion”-section provocateur Bari Weiss’s description of a “civil war inside The New York Times Right message, wrong person. Journalism is in crisis but it's not money, there's more journalists today than there ever has been. More budget than ever before. More journalistic freedom than ever before. This freedom isn't the problem. The problem is that political activists are becoming journalists, this occurs at the same time where a political ideology is in their death throes. USSR collapsing was a huge blow to the left-wing but worse China's free trade zones success is undeniable. Shenzen went from tiny town to over 10 million people because of capitalism. The free trade zones in China resulted in hyper globalization and all the 'problems' from China is because they adopted capitalism. In 2004, China made a huge change, they recognize private property. Communism is dead, China has been shifting toward capitalism. Obviously you can't immediately switch to capitalism. Who are the remaining communists? Cuba? North Korea? Vietnam? Laos? Venezuela? Spain? Greece? Not only is communism as dead as ever and it's leading to communist political activists taking over some journalistic positions and pushing communism. The problem is that they keep getting caught and rebranding. Marxists, collectivists, communists, socialists, postmodernists, etc. They go by many names and all propose the same thing. The conflict in the NYTimes is that journalism tends to lean left and they certainly dont have any right-leaning viewpoints. So the conflict arises where moderate left-wing collides with the communist journalists. Why is everyone a racist? Because communism requires a classless society and intersectionality demands this. Why is Russia the big bad evil people trying to ruin everything? They are the ones who are anti-communist.

mancerayder 6y ago

It is difficult to think of many businesses that have benefited more from Donald Trump’s presidency — aside from the Trump-family empire — than the Times. After Trump’s election, in 2016, subscriptions grew at ten times their usual rate, and they have never looked back. The Times has gone from just over three million subscribers at the beginning of the Trump presidency to its record of more than 7 million last month. It has hired hundreds of journalists to staff a newsroom that is now 1,700 people strong — bigger than ever. Its stock has risen fourfold since Trump took office, and the Times has consolidated its Trump bump into a business that includes Serial Productions, the podcast juggernaut; Audm, the audio-translation business; and a TV show based on the Times series “Modern Love” that was filming its second season this summer, until a COVID-19 false positive on-set forced it to halt shooting. I think this is key. The journalist Matt Taibbi has been chronicling this and writing detailed analysis of the trend that these 'center-left' publications became suddenly 'far left' (culturally, not economically, if you ask me), very hyperpartisan coastal establishment DNC. Most importantly, the incentive structures within these organizations have found ways to 'weed out' those who don't toe the line: Trump out at any cost. Don't get me wrong; I'm not lamenting Trump being out. I'm lamenting journalistic integrity being out. It's now fully acceptable to wage a war with a newspaper, something we criticized Fox and the Murdoch papers for doing. But the real loss here is the independent spirit; an independent mind holds opinion even if everyone in the room downvotes them, if they think that opinion is correct and supported with reason. Instead, what we have is a sort of herd mentality where the group decides what's good and bad. That tech people were hired in droves and this is the result, I find quite scary given how influential young tech companies have become. Most recently the Times wrote an article that asks the question, on the topic of the beheading in France of the teacher, did France do it to themselves? In reference to the Mohammed cartoons and its secular tradition. Additionally the Times seemed to support suppressing The NY Post's account based on their Biden article. ^^ Both of these examples would never be tolerated by the ethical journalists of yesteryear, when seeking the truth, no matter how ugly took precedence over hyper-partisan The End Justifies the Means attitude being seen here. But it really comes down to money, doesn't it. As Taibbi documents, the Fox News model has spread to MSNBC and CNN, and of course the Times and Washington Post. Cater to your base is more profitable an idea. That's the real reason the Cotton thing was removed and an editor fired; they feared they'd upset their reader base - their clients.