9 ms·

Block The New York Times

89 points by docdeek 6y ago

TedShiller 6y ago
Awesome
high_derivative 6y ago
The NYT has a reckoning coming. They went all in on neoliberal culture war - and it worked, it gained them subscribers. People still treat them like a serious institution, but if they continue down this path, that's over.
- creddit 6y ago
  First time I’ve seen the culture war described as “neoliberal.” It seems like everyday that word becomes less and less meaningful. There seems to be a large set of people who use it as a general descriptor of things they don’t like.
  - samfar90 6y ago
    I couldn't agree more ! "Neoliberal" doesn't mean anything precise anymore, even in France where I live
  - bzb6 6y ago
    To me it just sounds like “progressive”
    - optimalsolver 6y ago
      I think it means something like "Left on welfare, Right on warfare." It's well represented by the Obama administration.
      - bzb6 6y ago
        The worst of two worlds :P
  - 0xfaded 6y ago
    neoliberalism has a fairly specific meaning in academic contexts. There absolutely was a "culture war", or war of ideas, that was waged to sell deregulation and privatization to the masses. Ironically, these included some fairly generous handouts, e.g. earned income credits or the welfare programs in the UK funded by the oil windfall. Ultimately, we wouldn't have ended up were we are today without a continuous campaign selling neoliberalism. It's how the Democrats became the party of wall street, and new labour in the UK is more conservative than the tories 50 years ago. Mark Blyth gives a great primer called "A brief history of how we got here and why": https://youtu.be/tJoe_daP0DE https://youtu.be/tJoe_daP0DE
  - jonathanstrange 6y ago
    I agree with you in the context of this thread, which exemplifies a very recent re-appropriation of the term (see below). That being said, neoliberalism is a fairly well-defined descendant from classical right-wing liberalism that arose during the 80s. It's characterized by laissez-fair market economy, less taxes for the rich, and no support for welfare programs. That it is now re-appropriated by the "alt-right" (a term coined by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer) to mean some kind of swear word against left leaning "liberals" just goes to show how uneducated and confused the US public is about politics. Over the years I've come to believe that there is a method behind this dumbing down and distortion of political views in the US, that it's the result of the two-party system that allows elites to keep voters aligned and in check, even though they'd all have reasons to vote for a third party. In a nutshell, it seems that many people in the US are unaware of the following facts: - Libertarianism in original form, propagated e.g. by the Friedmans, is a form of classical liberalism that arose against neo-Liberalism, which was too federal and corporate-friendly for them. It's a radical attempt to reform liberalism and bring it nearer to individual anarchism. (But individual anarchism was explicitly targetted against communism and classical liberalism, so in the end "anarcho-capitalism" is not a form of anarchism at all and really just liberalism.) - neo-Liberalism is a right-wing form of classical liberalism - There are many left-wing liberal traditions, but these are barely represented by the two big US parties. (Some Democrats may count as left-wing liberals but not too many of them.) - Conservatives and liberals are principally opposed to each other. That doesn't mean they cannot be somehow combined, but for a liberal the individual freedom always overrules conservative values. Especially the latter point has been distorted beyond recognition by Republicans who traditionally hold Christian-conservative values and communitarian/racist ideas about closed, homogeneous societies but felt a need to incorporate (neo-)liberal doctrines in economics. Obviously, this integration can only work to some extent before the views become plain incoherent. Liberalism does not allow the restriction or suppression of anyone's freedoms, let alone those of minorities. Basically, parties in the US just grab whatever elements they need from political traditions and ignore the rest.
    - creddit 6y ago
      > That being said, neoliberalism is a fairly well-defined descendant from classical right-wing liberalism that arose during the 80s. It's characterized by laissez-fair market economy, less taxes for the rich, and no support for welfare programs. And yet, your characterization doesn't gel very well with self-identified neoliberals! https://i.redd.it/ydvihji477a31.png https://i.redd.it/ydvihji477a31.png
  - the_only_law 6y ago
    Unfortunately having discussions about such ideologies that get ambiguated into uselessness often become often impossible to discuss even from a purely historical / intellectual standpoint.
- TedShiller 6y ago
  It’s already over
pgsandstrom 6y ago
What am I missing? Why do people hate the new york times?
- grenoire 6y ago
  You missed the entire page, I believe.
- rado 6y ago
  Someone else could explain this particular case, but maybe because it's a biased propaganda machine?
- creddit 6y ago
  Bari Weiss writes about a general set of issues she saw: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter I’m not certain this website isn’t itself interesting for plenty of other reasons, though.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  Well, this goes back a ways but there's https://text.npr.org/319233332 https://text.npr.org/319233332 (why Snowden didn't go to them), many of us are angry they hired climate-denier Bret Stephens, and of course there are people on the right who feel their coverage is unfair to their concerns. They're also a pain to cancel (calling them??? this is what temporary card numbers were made for) and their data handling is poor https://twitter.com/rharter/status/1358809000905736194/photo/1 https://twitter.com/rharter/status/1358809000905736194/photo... They also may have fired a freelancer for a tweet mildly revealing their political affiliations https://www.vox.com/2021/1/24/22247390/lauren-wolfe-new-york-times-tweet-chills https://www.vox.com/2021/1/24/22247390/lauren-wolfe-new-york... And yet I subscribe. I read their articles fairly often and journalism is worth paying for.
- seanieb 6y ago
  They also lead the “But her emails” charge against Clinton .
  - deleted 6y ago
ALittleLight 6y ago
I was just reading this article about how a long-time NYT worker was fired, because, when he was acting as a guide/chaperone for a student field trip, one of the students asked him a question about someone else hypothetically saying a racial slur, the NYT employee pronounced the slur in question - and for this, he was fired. That seems outrageous to me. Even more outrageous that some/most of the other employees seem to support and advocate for the firing. I'm glad people are blocking the NYT. I hope it fails or changes. https://freebeacon.com/issues/inside-the-grey-ladys-meltdown-over-donald-mcneils-resignation https://freebeacon.com/issues/inside-the-grey-ladys-meltdown...
- high_derivative 6y ago
  As a non-American, the intellectual infantilization around bad words is completely insane to me.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't add nationalistic flamewar on top of ideological flamewar. That's going the wrong way down a one-way street. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - blueflow 6y ago
      I'm an European and i strongly feel like this cultural issue is coming from the anglosphere. I'm totally in for discussing this, if you dont like it about nationality, then make it about culture/language?
      - jeofken 6y ago
        In Germany, Sweden, and Norway it certainly exists as well. These countries even have laws enforcing such taboos. Good call @dang
        tjansen 6y ago
kmlevitt 6y ago
I got a subscription to the NYT for a special price, but I don’t think I’ll renew it at the end of the year. Compared to the Washington Post it seems oddly bereft of any real editorial identity anymore. They are trying to be all things to all people and so it winds up being a contradictory mess that just makes everybody angry. A generation ago a newspaper could still claim to be impartial and to be a neutral forum for people from both sides of the political spectrum. But the partisan divide is so strong now but to except the ideas of one side necessarily means you have to believe the other side is crazy, evil or both; the ideologies are to diametrically opposed for it to be logically possible to see “good points“ on both sides now. So they are just sheets in the wind. They publish an op Ed written by Tom cotton about using the army on protesters, get backlash, fire whoever green lit that idea. Then some freelance editor dares to say Joe Biden‘s inauguration was emotional for her and they immediately fire her for not being “neutral“ or some bullshit. These decisions pissed off conservatives, pissed off liberals and made nobody in the middle any happier. They need to just pick a side and run with it.
- jerzyt 6y ago
  >>> They need to just pick a side and run with it. So you don't care about objective journalism?
  - kmlevitt 6y ago
    I’m talking about their editorial content. There’s nothing about “objective journalism“ that obligates them to run an opinion piece defending China‘s actions in Hong Kong, for example.
    - philyg 6y ago
      No, but if there are opinion articles for both sides, it will create a more informed reader. Newspapers should provide enough information for readers to be able to make their position on the information alone
      - kmlevitt 6y ago
Saint_Genet 6y ago
Who are behind this? I sense a political slant.
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  People who were negatively but accurately reported about who are now using examples of inaccurate reporting to discredit the NYT.
  - nullc 6y ago
    Why assume accurately? NYT's own actions continually discredit it.
    - spiderfarmer 6y ago
      Why assume it's possible for NYT to not make mistakes?
      - nailer 6y ago
        The examples on the site itself are not the NYT unknowingly making mistakes but rather deliberately printing falsehoods.
seanieb 6y ago
The NYTimes has amazing journalists doing great journalism... however their editorial team, executives and publisher are the worst. Out of touch, insane and convinced of their own intellect and righteousness. It’s absolutely maddening to see. This interview Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times is a good example: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/podcasts/the-daily/2020-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/podcasts/the-daily/2020-e...
jeofken 6y ago
I remember clearly when I a few years ago read NYT article about how rumours of increasing violent crime in my country (SWE) was a myth. If they were this wrong about something I knew personally, as this was the same summer gangs had a shoot out outside my Gothenburg flat, and they burned cars outside of my friends house, they were probably also incorrect about topics I don’t know personally.
- raziel2p 6y ago
  I don't know the article you're talking about and I haven't looked up violent crime statistics for Sweden - but a couple of anecdotes from you and your friends does not necessarily mean that violent crime across the country is increasing, right?
  - kruxigt 6y ago
    Crimes are increasing and immigrants are now committing almost all violent crimes (80%+ on a per capita basis probably. Proper statistics is not really "allowed" but private well done research as well as anecdotes from many policemen including in my family point to that). However total crimes are not increasing that fast since immigrants still make up a minority of the population and the native population still has a decreasing curve of violent crimes just like almost all western countries.
    - pliftkl 6y ago
      I think the objection to statistics about immigration (or minority populations) and crime is that they are inherently misleading because they generally compare crime rate to the population as a whole (as you did, jumping to the per capita), rather than to equivalent socio-economic groups. Consider two headlines: "immigrants commit most of the violent crime in this country" vs "most violent crime in this country is committed by poor people, and most immigrants are poor". How you phrase the headline makes a big difference in how people might think about policy.
      - so_tiring 6y ago
jerzyt 6y ago
I will not recognize NYT as a newspaper of record until it deals with the Walter Duranty issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
- diarrhea 6y ago
  It says there > In 1990, The New York Times, which had submitted his works for the prize in 1932, wrote that his later articles denying the famine constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper". What do you mean, dealing with it? It seems like they did.
  - jerzyt 6y ago
    I'll be happy to read the citations from the source.
    - orwin 6y ago
      Go to the wikipedia page you linked, either read it or CTRL F for the citation, then look to the closest number inside brackets following the citation (it look like this: [10], but in blue and like an exponent with the default theme). Click on it and voila, you can read the citation from the source!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
funnay 6y ago
The NYT is one of the best information sources in english language. It has its flaws and you can nitpick something up, if you try hard. It seems far right is trying to use HN to disseminate propaganda.
- l33tbro 6y ago
  I think you are politicizing things with those kinds of comments. I'm not even a conservative and I dislike the New York Times. It's unfortunate that the days of 'hard news' seems to be over across all sides of the media.
  - funnay 6y ago
    They aren't. The only people thinking that are radicalized/extremist people or people coming from an academic thesis/reflection (perfectly valid). But the latter is not something you get on this site and I'm sure is not related to the link.
- haunter 6y ago
  >The NYT is one of the best information sources in english language Really? https://www.bbc.com/ https://www.bbc.com/ is free to read, no paywall etc. I basically never read NYT because of the paywalls.
- thu2111 6y ago
  The problems at the NYT go far beyond nitpicking-level. But if you think anyone that criticises the NYT is "far right" and "disseminating propaganda", that might explain why you can't understand the concerns - you're the sort of person they employ and write for!
- nailer 6y ago
  Are you sure you mean the far right? There is not a single person arguing for a white ethnostate in the article or these comments.
jonathanstrange 6y ago
This should be flagged. There is nothing wrong in particular with NYT and this is clearly a political slant. This HN story is an orchestrated attempt of promoting the page. Ask the people who want to block it what they read and where they get their information from and you'll be in for a nasty surprise...
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I think it should be blocked. I don't exactly read specific publications so much as articles that get attention on Twitter, hackernews, or are relevant to my personal or professional interests. I think I read from a wide variety of reputable and official sources as well as more general sources. e.g. my browser history for today shows I read the Free Beacon, an article on CNBC, a couple substack posts by mainstream news figures. What is the nasty surprise?
  - jonathanstrange 6y ago
    The nasty surprise is that your sources make you less informed than if you'd read the NYT.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      How do you know that?
      - jonathanstrange 6y ago
        Because "Free Beacon" is a political site funded by an American billionaire hedge fund manager and conservative activist that only aggregates news from other sources and is openly biased in their own mission statement (so they don't even attempt to be fair), Twitter and social media are major sources of disinformation and do not employ journalists at all, and CNBC is specialized in financial news and otherwise draw their news from the same Press Agencies as the NYT, of course.
        6y ago
jeswin 6y ago
NYT is glaringly inaccurate if you're closer to the source of the news. Not merely a bias or a cherry picking of the data, but just really shallow research. From a distance though, most articles will seem well-researched (even if opinionated) - and in the majority of cases we're not connected to the subject at hand. I will still keep my subscription, because the half-truths are almost always well-written; better than everyone else.
picardythird 6y ago
Genuinely curious. For those who hate the NYT. Where do you get your news from?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- notmarkus 6y ago
  Personally, all over. You have to know the biases of the particular source you're consuming, and take that into account with every article. It's possible to read NYT and get some good info from it, but you need to know when to look elsewhere for more information. Some places I find myself frequenting more than others though: Democracy Now, Popular Front, Antiwar.com, Harper's. I also like Glenn Greenwald a lot — in my mind if you genuinely risked your life for one of the most important stories ever, I give you a lot of benefit-of-the-doubt. Places I avoid completely: Fox News, CNN, Breitbart (do I even need to mention that?), Vox.
- MrMember 6y ago
  Reuters, the Associated Press.
- pgrote 6y ago
  I get most of my news from NewsNationNow and the Reuters direct feed. I am a long time current subscriber to the NY Times. I hate what they have become, but still subscribe as they have have a handful of professional reporters. Anything US political from the NY Times is untrusted by me, but their foreign reporters are still trustworthy and doing good work. I maintain paid subscriptions to other newspapers including NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Las Vega Sun, Houston Chronicle, St. Louis Post Dispatch and Cincinnati Enquirer among others. I believe in supporting news publishing as there is importance ensuring it continues. Where do you get your news from?
- nailer 6y ago
  WaPo, Daily Wire, The Telegraph.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MikeUt 6y ago
The Times is very purposeful in which stories they select to cover, and how they cover them. E.g. they removed race references from title after a story turned out to be a hoax: A Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks at a Playground - https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/dreadlocks-cut-off-immanuel-christian-school.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytim... Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault, and Family Apologizes - https://web.archive.org/web/20191001003852/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/dreadlocks-cut-off-immanuel-christian-school.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191001003852/https://www.nytim... In addition to how they chose to write the titles, would they be covering something as minor as a schoolyard scuffle if victim and perpetrator were reversed?
mick_schroeder 6y ago
geez, where is this coming from? the NYT is a national treasure maybe a design problem? user interface issue? differentiation of editorial content vs. the newsroom? I'm genuinely curious

89 points by docdeek 6y ago

Awesome

The NYT has a reckoning coming. They went all in on neoliberal culture war - and it worked, it gained them subscribers. People still treat them like a serious institution, but if they continue down this path, that's over.

creddit 6y ago
First time I’ve seen the culture war described as “neoliberal.” It seems like everyday that word becomes less and less meaningful. There seems to be a large set of people who use it as a general descriptor of things they don’t like.
- samfar90 6y ago
  I couldn't agree more ! "Neoliberal" doesn't mean anything precise anymore, even in France where I live
- bzb6 6y ago
  To me it just sounds like “progressive”
  - optimalsolver 6y ago
    I think it means something like "Left on welfare, Right on warfare." It's well represented by the Obama administration.
    - bzb6 6y ago
      The worst of two worlds :P
- 0xfaded 6y ago
  neoliberalism has a fairly specific meaning in academic contexts. There absolutely was a "culture war", or war of ideas, that was waged to sell deregulation and privatization to the masses. Ironically, these included some fairly generous handouts, e.g. earned income credits or the welfare programs in the UK funded by the oil windfall. Ultimately, we wouldn't have ended up were we are today without a continuous campaign selling neoliberalism. It's how the Democrats became the party of wall street, and new labour in the UK is more conservative than the tories 50 years ago. Mark Blyth gives a great primer called "A brief history of how we got here and why": https://youtu.be/tJoe_daP0DE https://youtu.be/tJoe_daP0DE
- jonathanstrange 6y ago
  I agree with you in the context of this thread, which exemplifies a very recent re-appropriation of the term (see below). That being said, neoliberalism is a fairly well-defined descendant from classical right-wing liberalism that arose during the 80s. It's characterized by laissez-fair market economy, less taxes for the rich, and no support for welfare programs. That it is now re-appropriated by the "alt-right" (a term coined by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer) to mean some kind of swear word against left leaning "liberals" just goes to show how uneducated and confused the US public is about politics. Over the years I've come to believe that there is a method behind this dumbing down and distortion of political views in the US, that it's the result of the two-party system that allows elites to keep voters aligned and in check, even though they'd all have reasons to vote for a third party. In a nutshell, it seems that many people in the US are unaware of the following facts: - Libertarianism in original form, propagated e.g. by the Friedmans, is a form of classical liberalism that arose against neo-Liberalism, which was too federal and corporate-friendly for them. It's a radical attempt to reform liberalism and bring it nearer to individual anarchism. (But individual anarchism was explicitly targetted against communism and classical liberalism, so in the end "anarcho-capitalism" is not a form of anarchism at all and really just liberalism.) - neo-Liberalism is a right-wing form of classical liberalism - There are many left-wing liberal traditions, but these are barely represented by the two big US parties. (Some Democrats may count as left-wing liberals but not too many of them.) - Conservatives and liberals are principally opposed to each other. That doesn't mean they cannot be somehow combined, but for a liberal the individual freedom always overrules conservative values. Especially the latter point has been distorted beyond recognition by Republicans who traditionally hold Christian-conservative values and communitarian/racist ideas about closed, homogeneous societies but felt a need to incorporate (neo-)liberal doctrines in economics. Obviously, this integration can only work to some extent before the views become plain incoherent. Liberalism does not allow the restriction or suppression of anyone's freedoms, let alone those of minorities. Basically, parties in the US just grab whatever elements they need from political traditions and ignore the rest.
  - creddit 6y ago
    > That being said, neoliberalism is a fairly well-defined descendant from classical right-wing liberalism that arose during the 80s. It's characterized by laissez-fair market economy, less taxes for the rich, and no support for welfare programs. And yet, your characterization doesn't gel very well with self-identified neoliberals! https://i.redd.it/ydvihji477a31.png https://i.redd.it/ydvihji477a31.png
- the_only_law 6y ago
  Unfortunately having discussions about such ideologies that get ambiguated into uselessness often become often impossible to discuss even from a purely historical / intellectual standpoint.
TedShiller 6y ago
It’s already over

pgsandstrom 6y ago

What am I missing? Why do people hate the new york times?

grenoire 6y ago
You missed the entire page, I believe.
rado 6y ago
Someone else could explain this particular case, but maybe because it's a biased propaganda machine?
creddit 6y ago
Bari Weiss writes about a general set of issues she saw: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter I’m not certain this website isn’t itself interesting for plenty of other reasons, though.
CalRobert 6y ago
Well, this goes back a ways but there's https://text.npr.org/319233332 https://text.npr.org/319233332 (why Snowden didn't go to them), many of us are angry they hired climate-denier Bret Stephens, and of course there are people on the right who feel their coverage is unfair to their concerns. They're also a pain to cancel (calling them??? this is what temporary card numbers were made for) and their data handling is poor https://twitter.com/rharter/status/1358809000905736194/photo/1 https://twitter.com/rharter/status/1358809000905736194/photo... They also may have fired a freelancer for a tweet mildly revealing their political affiliations https://www.vox.com/2021/1/24/22247390/lauren-wolfe-new-york-times-tweet-chills https://www.vox.com/2021/1/24/22247390/lauren-wolfe-new-york... And yet I subscribe. I read their articles fairly often and journalism is worth paying for.
seanieb 6y ago
They also lead the “But her emails” charge against Clinton .
- deleted 6y ago

ALittleLight 6y ago

I was just reading this article about how a long-time NYT worker was fired, because, when he was acting as a guide/chaperone for a student field trip, one of the students asked him a question about someone else hypothetically saying a racial slur, the NYT employee pronounced the slur in question - and for this, he was fired. That seems outrageous to me. Even more outrageous that some/most of the other employees seem to support and advocate for the firing. I'm glad people are blocking the NYT. I hope it fails or changes. https://freebeacon.com/issues/inside-the-grey-ladys-meltdown-over-donald-mcneils-resignation https://freebeacon.com/issues/inside-the-grey-ladys-meltdown...

high_derivative 6y ago
As a non-American, the intellectual infantilization around bad words is completely insane to me.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't add nationalistic flamewar on top of ideological flamewar. That's going the wrong way down a one-way street. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - blueflow 6y ago
    I'm an European and i strongly feel like this cultural issue is coming from the anglosphere. I'm totally in for discussing this, if you dont like it about nationality, then make it about culture/language?
    - jeofken 6y ago
      In Germany, Sweden, and Norway it certainly exists as well. These countries even have laws enforcing such taboos. Good call @dang
      - tjansen 6y ago

kmlevitt 6y ago

I got a subscription to the NYT for a special price, but I don’t think I’ll renew it at the end of the year. Compared to the Washington Post it seems oddly bereft of any real editorial identity anymore. They are trying to be all things to all people and so it winds up being a contradictory mess that just makes everybody angry. A generation ago a newspaper could still claim to be impartial and to be a neutral forum for people from both sides of the political spectrum. But the partisan divide is so strong now but to except the ideas of one side necessarily means you have to believe the other side is crazy, evil or both; the ideologies are to diametrically opposed for it to be logically possible to see “good points“ on both sides now. So they are just sheets in the wind. They publish an op Ed written by Tom cotton about using the army on protesters, get backlash, fire whoever green lit that idea. Then some freelance editor dares to say Joe Biden‘s inauguration was emotional for her and they immediately fire her for not being “neutral“ or some bullshit. These decisions pissed off conservatives, pissed off liberals and made nobody in the middle any happier. They need to just pick a side and run with it.

jerzyt 6y ago
>>> They need to just pick a side and run with it. So you don't care about objective journalism?
- kmlevitt 6y ago
  I’m talking about their editorial content. There’s nothing about “objective journalism“ that obligates them to run an opinion piece defending China‘s actions in Hong Kong, for example.
  - philyg 6y ago
    No, but if there are opinion articles for both sides, it will create a more informed reader. Newspapers should provide enough information for readers to be able to make their position on the information alone
    - kmlevitt 6y ago

Saint_Genet 6y ago

Who are behind this? I sense a political slant.

spiderfarmer 6y ago
People who were negatively but accurately reported about who are now using examples of inaccurate reporting to discredit the NYT.
- nullc 6y ago
  Why assume accurately? NYT's own actions continually discredit it.
  - spiderfarmer 6y ago
    Why assume it's possible for NYT to not make mistakes?
    - nailer 6y ago
      The examples on the site itself are not the NYT unknowingly making mistakes but rather deliberately printing falsehoods.

seanieb 6y ago

The NYTimes has amazing journalists doing great journalism... however their editorial team, executives and publisher are the worst. Out of touch, insane and convinced of their own intellect and righteousness. It’s absolutely maddening to see. This interview Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times is a good example: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/podcasts/the-daily/2020-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/podcasts/the-daily/2020-e...

jeofken 6y ago

I remember clearly when I a few years ago read NYT article about how rumours of increasing violent crime in my country (SWE) was a myth. If they were this wrong about something I knew personally, as this was the same summer gangs had a shoot out outside my Gothenburg flat, and they burned cars outside of my friends house, they were probably also incorrect about topics I don’t know personally.

raziel2p 6y ago
I don't know the article you're talking about and I haven't looked up violent crime statistics for Sweden - but a couple of anecdotes from you and your friends does not necessarily mean that violent crime across the country is increasing, right?
- kruxigt 6y ago
  Crimes are increasing and immigrants are now committing almost all violent crimes (80%+ on a per capita basis probably. Proper statistics is not really "allowed" but private well done research as well as anecdotes from many policemen including in my family point to that). However total crimes are not increasing that fast since immigrants still make up a minority of the population and the native population still has a decreasing curve of violent crimes just like almost all western countries.
  - pliftkl 6y ago
    I think the objection to statistics about immigration (or minority populations) and crime is that they are inherently misleading because they generally compare crime rate to the population as a whole (as you did, jumping to the per capita), rather than to equivalent socio-economic groups. Consider two headlines: "immigrants commit most of the violent crime in this country" vs "most violent crime in this country is committed by poor people, and most immigrants are poor". How you phrase the headline makes a big difference in how people might think about policy.
    - so_tiring 6y ago

jerzyt 6y ago

I will not recognize NYT as a newspaper of record until it deals with the Walter Duranty issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

diarrhea 6y ago
It says there > In 1990, The New York Times, which had submitted his works for the prize in 1932, wrote that his later articles denying the famine constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper". What do you mean, dealing with it? It seems like they did.
- jerzyt 6y ago
  I'll be happy to read the citations from the source.
  - orwin 6y ago
    Go to the wikipedia page you linked, either read it or CTRL F for the citation, then look to the closest number inside brackets following the citation (it look like this: [10], but in blue and like an exponent with the default theme). Click on it and voila, you can read the citation from the source!

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funnay 6y ago

The NYT is one of the best information sources in english language. It has its flaws and you can nitpick something up, if you try hard. It seems far right is trying to use HN to disseminate propaganda.

l33tbro 6y ago
I think you are politicizing things with those kinds of comments. I'm not even a conservative and I dislike the New York Times. It's unfortunate that the days of 'hard news' seems to be over across all sides of the media.
- funnay 6y ago
  They aren't. The only people thinking that are radicalized/extremist people or people coming from an academic thesis/reflection (perfectly valid). But the latter is not something you get on this site and I'm sure is not related to the link.
haunter 6y ago
>The NYT is one of the best information sources in english language Really? https://www.bbc.com/ https://www.bbc.com/ is free to read, no paywall etc. I basically never read NYT because of the paywalls.
thu2111 6y ago
The problems at the NYT go far beyond nitpicking-level. But if you think anyone that criticises the NYT is "far right" and "disseminating propaganda", that might explain why you can't understand the concerns - you're the sort of person they employ and write for!
nailer 6y ago
Are you sure you mean the far right? There is not a single person arguing for a white ethnostate in the article or these comments.

jonathanstrange 6y ago

This should be flagged. There is nothing wrong in particular with NYT and this is clearly a political slant. This HN story is an orchestrated attempt of promoting the page. Ask the people who want to block it what they read and where they get their information from and you'll be in for a nasty surprise...

ALittleLight 6y ago
I think it should be blocked. I don't exactly read specific publications so much as articles that get attention on Twitter, hackernews, or are relevant to my personal or professional interests. I think I read from a wide variety of reputable and official sources as well as more general sources. e.g. my browser history for today shows I read the Free Beacon, an article on CNBC, a couple substack posts by mainstream news figures. What is the nasty surprise?
- jonathanstrange 6y ago
  The nasty surprise is that your sources make you less informed than if you'd read the NYT.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    How do you know that?
    - jonathanstrange 6y ago
      Because "Free Beacon" is a political site funded by an American billionaire hedge fund manager and conservative activist that only aggregates news from other sources and is openly biased in their own mission statement (so they don't even attempt to be fair), Twitter and social media are major sources of disinformation and do not employ journalists at all, and CNBC is specialized in financial news and otherwise draw their news from the same Press Agencies as the NYT, of course.
      - 6y ago

jeswin 6y ago

NYT is glaringly inaccurate if you're closer to the source of the news. Not merely a bias or a cherry picking of the data, but just really shallow research. From a distance though, most articles will seem well-researched (even if opinionated) - and in the majority of cases we're not connected to the subject at hand. I will still keep my subscription, because the half-truths are almost always well-written; better than everyone else.

picardythird 6y ago

Genuinely curious. For those who hate the NYT. Where do you get your news from?

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notmarkus 6y ago
Personally, all over. You have to know the biases of the particular source you're consuming, and take that into account with every article. It's possible to read NYT and get some good info from it, but you need to know when to look elsewhere for more information. Some places I find myself frequenting more than others though: Democracy Now, Popular Front, Antiwar.com, Harper's. I also like Glenn Greenwald a lot — in my mind if you genuinely risked your life for one of the most important stories ever, I give you a lot of benefit-of-the-doubt. Places I avoid completely: Fox News, CNN, Breitbart (do I even need to mention that?), Vox.
MrMember 6y ago
Reuters, the Associated Press.
pgrote 6y ago
I get most of my news from NewsNationNow and the Reuters direct feed. I am a long time current subscriber to the NY Times. I hate what they have become, but still subscribe as they have have a handful of professional reporters. Anything US political from the NY Times is untrusted by me, but their foreign reporters are still trustworthy and doing good work. I maintain paid subscriptions to other newspapers including NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Las Vega Sun, Houston Chronicle, St. Louis Post Dispatch and Cincinnati Enquirer among others. I believe in supporting news publishing as there is importance ensuring it continues. Where do you get your news from?
nailer 6y ago
WaPo, Daily Wire, The Telegraph.

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MikeUt 6y ago

The Times is very purposeful in which stories they select to cover, and how they cover them. E.g. they removed race references from title after a story turned out to be a hoax: A Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks at a Playground - https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/dreadlocks-cut-off-immanuel-christian-school.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytim... Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault, and Family Apologizes - https://web.archive.org/web/20191001003852/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/dreadlocks-cut-off-immanuel-christian-school.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191001003852/https://www.nytim... In addition to how they chose to write the titles, would they be covering something as minor as a schoolyard scuffle if victim and perpetrator were reversed?

mick_schroeder 6y ago

geez, where is this coming from? the NYT is a national treasure maybe a design problem? user interface issue? differentiation of editorial content vs. the newsroom? I'm genuinely curious