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I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is

I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is not. I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. If it's good, I will pay for it (I subscribed tp The Atlantic at least twice, and the New Yorker once, and probably others in a mix of print and digital). But the NYT has drifted too far down the path of politically-correct fashions, and away from robust debate and discussion of challenging topics and how they intersect with real events. It feels more like they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions (which shifts rapidly), rather than informing me and letting me form my own. "Persuade" is even the wrong word; more like "pressure" or "coerce". If it's all ads, so be it; but when I pay, I expect that I am the customer and not the product. So I don't pay as of the end of my billing cycle. Also, the NYT cheers on, and even participates in bullying. Scott Alexander being a recent example, but there are a lot more when it comes to politically-charged topics. I should reiterate that this is not a right-left thing. I would have remained subscribed if the NYT had simply drifted left, and concerned itself mainly with arguments betweed various left-of-center factions. Lots of worthwhile things to discuss and debate there, and lots of events to tie it to.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
The New York Times' dismissive responses to leading American historians like Gordon Wood and James McPherson when they pointed out distortions and inaccuracies in the 1619 Project was an eye-opener to me. The NY Times promoted an extremely suspect hypothesis about the American Revolution (that it was fought in order to preserve slavery - there's essentially no evidence for this hypothesis), and got push-back from some of the top historians of the US. The NY Times' response was essentially, "You're wrong, and we're not changing anything." Then the NY Times' own fact checker published an article in Politico pointing out that she had warned the NY Times not to claim the revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery, but that the NY Times had ignored her. That finally prompted the NY Times to issue a slight modification of their claim ("some" of the colonists fought to preserve slavery - which colonists is completely unclear, but at least the updated statement is so vague that it can't be disproven). All around, it was clear that the NY Times had an agenda to push, and they didn't care if historians disagreed. That didn't stop the 1619 Project from winning a Pulitzer, though!
jb775 6y ago
> they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions Glad more people are realizing this. It's harder to spot/acknowledge for people on the left since the biased coverage feeds into their worldview...in my opinion it's artificially solidified their confidence on how "correct" they feel they are about political topics. The next step in this realization is nothing to do with one-sided reporting, it's the massive scale of what selectively gets ignored or hidden.
- knorker 6y ago
  The right don't have agenda-pushing affect their world view? Huh? There was recently an attempted insurrection based on fake news, you know. I must say though that Fox News has gotten downright rational (on all things) since then. Politically biased, sure, but they're actually news lately.
  - thinkingemote 6y ago
    the comment you replied to didn't comment about the right, but that bias is "harder to spot/acknowledge for people on the left" The implied reverse therefore would be that it's easier for people on the right to see bias in the media. Not that the right dont have bias.
    - knorker 6y ago
      > The implied reverse therefore would be that it's easier for people on the right to see bias in the media. Yeah, that's also what I read. And as evidence to the contrary I pointed out that some people had their world view changed so much that they tried to overthrow the government. Which tells me that they didn't see the agenda they were being pushed. Which contradicts the comment's point. Note that in no way do I disagree that the left has a problem too.
      - Shivetya 6y ago
        Nah, those people just needed an excuse, they were already past the tipping point. They exist on both sides and one side got called out for attacking the capitol while the other is "mostly peaceful protests" because they are only destroying police and private property. As in, both sides are equally bad for similar but different reasons but we only hear about a singular event that some whack jobs on the far right pulled off. Compare to my local media as an example which buried the story about the violence around a "citizen" road block until a seven year old was murdered as her family tried to go past. Even then it was buried with stories of police violence or right wing threats. No, those of us who lean to the right know the nut jobs and there that line begins but there where that line is for my left leaning friends is beyond me to understand.
nycancaway 6y ago
Ditto. I subscribed to the NYT when I appreciated their coverage, and unsubscribed...when I felt like it, around 2020. I had heard horror stories about needing to call customer service, but they must have heard those complaints, because now their unsubscribe process is a simple form. I'm sure they mean well, and hopefully their journalism department also has an ear to the ground. It'd be nice if they returned to centrist investigative journalism soon.
drzoltar 6y ago
Which other paid news publications do you prefer over the NYT?
- belval 6y ago
  I really like the Economist their espresso format is a pleasant read in the morning.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  I would vote The Financial Times or The Economist.
  - amf12 6y ago
    +1 to FT. I have been reading FT for a while now and have completely stopped reading NYT or other publications. They seem to have solid reporting and are pretty unbiased IMO.
- noir-york 6y ago
  Consider this another vote for the Financial Times and the Economist. I am subscribed to both, and Foreign Affairs.
  - oblio 6y ago
    You have to be aware of their biases, though. If I recall correctly both predict the collapse of France, like clockwork, every few years (especially because French policies are slightly more socialist and both publications are super business). And of course, both look down on non-Anglosphere countries, in general :-)
    - noir-york 6y ago
      > both look down on non-Anglosphere countries I don't know where you get that from. Any examples? > You have to be aware of their biases, though. A point of view is not a bias. The Economist was founded as a pro-market liberal (classically liberal) publication. A Marxist would consider that a bias I guess?
woko 6y ago
This confirms my impression: the conversation does not have to go sideways about advertisements. It is kind of a deflecting trick to provide customer support instead of cancelling the subscription. Once you step in their trap, then it is slightly more cumbersome to go through the cancellation process. I guess people try to be polite and come up with a reason for cancelling their subscription, and this reason could be solved by customer support. It is not being polite to try to please Tony from customer support, he is just doing his job and does not care about polite reasons for cancelling, his job is that you do not cancel. It is important to know what you *really* want before contacting them (or any other company), in case they use this kind of trick to confuse you.
tallanvor 6y ago
NYT is quite right of center on many issues. They're not as conservative as WSJ, but they're definitely not a leftist publication.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Looking at the USA from European eyes, there are no leftist publications, nor any left mainstream politicians there!
  - pembrook 6y ago
    Someone in China could say the same thing about Europe. There’s hardly any communist mainstream politicians and publications there!
    - thinkingemote 6y ago
      However people in the USA talk about the left as a bloc and people in Europe don't talk about communist media or politicians (although there are a small number). You would have a better analogy if you used "socialism" rather than "communism".
    - oblio 6y ago
      One of them is a authoritarian regime where the press is controlled by the state and the others are a collection of countries with some of the highest democracy ratings in the world, by most scales, including for freedom of the press.
      - pembrook 6y ago
        That's my point. The farther left you go the more things the state has control over. It's all relative. From a communist perspective, most of Europe is a laissez faire free market. Private control of the press!? Hah! From Europe's mildly-socialist perspective, America is a laissez faire free market. Private control of healthcare and education!? Hah! I'm not making value judgements. Just pointing out its a spectrum.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Journalists are pretty honest about what they do if you listen to them talk candidly about their profession. It's not really about reporting reality or facts it's more they see themselves are a class above the regular people who have a moral obligation to make sure we think and believe the right things we're supposed to for what they consider the greater good. Not saying if that's the right thing to do or not but personally it's not something I'd ever pay for.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  This generalization seems overly broad.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Perhaps. ...but among the journalists I know socially (this is a worthless anecdote), they agree that they have a responsibility to report a "socially responsible narrative".
- disease 6y ago
  What proof do you have of these accusations?
scythe 6y ago
>It feels more like they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions (which shifts rapidly), rather than informing me and letting me form my own. "Persuade" is even the wrong word; more like "pressure" or "coerce". It's a little amusing to see liberals trying to describe this for the first time. Harper's is unequivocally further left than NYT. It's also less grating. To me, that's because the "left-ish" bias of NYT takes the form of telling the reader to be afraid of certain people or groups of people, whether it's Tom Cotton who wants to "send in the troops" or some little-known blogger. Which stands in direct contradiction to the ideals of what most people think of as leftism. Bias is tolerable and probably inevitable; a politics of fearmongering is not.
subpixel 6y ago
I’m not rage-quitting yet but the decision to capitalize the word used to describe the skin color of one group of people, but not the words used to describe the skin colors of other people, is just so completely asinine and panderous that I have considered doing so.
- berelig 6y ago
  Are they not in line with the APA styleguide? https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/racial-ethnic-minorities https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-... I know it's a recent trend but I thought the capitalization was applied to all ethnicities.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - zo1 6y ago
    Doesn't appear to exactly be in line with the APA guideline you posted, which suggests capitalizing "White". Though they recommend against using "Caucasian" and recommend using "White" instead. To quote the link you posted: >"Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. Therefore, use “Black” and “White” instead of “black” and “white” (do not use colors to refer to other human groups; doing so is considered pejorative)." However, the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black... >"The Times also looked at whether to capitalize white and brown in reference to race, but both will remain lowercase. Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Corbett said in their memo to staff. As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups." Edit. Side note. Maybe I should write to the NYT and tell them I'm a White African and they're not representing my cultural and historical identity!
  - sequoia 6y ago
    It's the AP style guide: https://apnews.com/article/9105661462 https://apnews.com/article/9105661462
Person5478 6y ago
> I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. As someone who is slightly left of center, it's kind of a painful place to be. You tend to get attacked by both sides. Personally I've just kind of checked out. I'm not sure there's actually anything relevant that gets said on these newspapers/media that you can't get from just being in online communities, and you'd have to sift through all the shit. For example, sometimes I'll come across a Tucker Carlson video on youtube and about 80% of what he says is just biased bullshit, but he will make good points sometimes. It honestly makes me miss Jon Stewart. At least we had a means of laughing at them, now they take themselves so seriously. And the hard on for Joe Biden makes no sense to me either, he's a sleezeball and how people can't be angry at the democratic party for putting up two horrible people in a row I'll never know.
beowulfey 6y ago
Highly recommend getting news through either AP news or Reuters. Both are non-profit journalism groups and I find that the headlines that pop up from those apps are straight up boring (and I mean this in the absolute best way possible).
- zo1 6y ago
  I just pulled up two Reuters articles to look. First article had 12 paragraphs, and a grand total of 12 sentences. 7 of those are quotes/paraphrases of what people said/claimed. Oh and the page had 20 ad images. 60% of the article is "s/he said X". The remaining 40% are low-fat versions of something one can find on Wikipedia. Another one: 10 paragraphs, 11 sentences. 5 are quotes/paraphrases. 15 (fifteen) ad images! That is not journalism, that's Twitter with extra steps, masquerading as news. At this point, if I didn't know any better, I'd call Reuters a glorified ad farm!
fatjokes 6y ago
Oh God I'm glad it's not just me that was feeling this. It's been pointedly obvious that there are narratives they want to push and there are clear newsworthy items that they do not cover for fear of making some groups look bad that would not look "woke". I've been forced to balance my news with right-leaning publications (NYPost... ew) just because they'll at least mention some events.
jancsika 6y ago
> But the NYT has drifted too far down the path of politically-correct fashions, and away from robust debate and discussion of challenging topics and how they intersect with real events. > I should reiterate that this is not a right-left thing. This very likely is a right-left thing: * The NYT systematically avoided the term "torture" in everything except op-eds when describing the Bush admin's post-911 torture program[1] It's difficult to think of a more dastardly use of political correctness than a newspaper employing a euphemism for torture that effectively softens the blow in their stories about a government torture program. Obviously if you knew about this but still subscribed to NYT anyway while now unsubscribing for problems wrt left-thing political correctness, that's a "right-left thing." (And however bad we both agree their left-thing political correctness problem is, it can't possibly be worse than systematically dressing up torture.) But even if you didn't know about it, it's still the same problem. At best your comment makes it seem like NYT gave in to its long-standing penchant for left-leaning fashions, and that ended up actually damaging its ability to do robust reporting. That interpretation makes a special case of the entire Keller period when the most important stories were scuttled in deference to the Bush administration. That period includes refusing repeatedly to run some of the most impactful stories-- like Jim Risen's on the Bush-Cheney domestic spying program-- because the government told them not to[2]. That period is in major "never forget" territory wrt to journalistic integrity. Edits: clarifications [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jul/06/torture-waterboarding-bush https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/ju... [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/ https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-ti...
- chmod600 6y ago
  You misunderstood my point. Bias exists and I have accepted that, and I won't unsubscribe from good reporting because of bias. Giving into left-leaning fashions is bad not because of the "left-leaning" part; its bad because of the "fashions" part. It's lazy groupthink at best, and bullying people into conformity at worst. Have you noticed how narrow and specific all of the rules for reporting have become? Do you honestly believe that leftism is defined by these narrow rules, many of which are changing rapidly? No. Most left-leaning people don't believe this stuff (how could a normal person even change their beliefs from one day to the next?). They go along with it because either they are too scared of getting bullied themselves; or because it's mostly hurting the right, and they believe they can regain control of the discourse after the right is diminished. But it's easy to destroy good discourse and hard to rebuild it. After the right gets marginalized, we won't go to open-minded chats over coffee among left-leaning folks. It will be these same horrible tactics over the most minor differences of opinion on the left. Proponents of socialized medicine will be doxxing proponents of Medicare for all. There will be no end to the ridiculousness.
Atlas-Marbles 6y ago
If you haven't read Bari Weiss's resignation letter from the NYT, I would recommend it: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter > But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”
ketamine__ 6y ago
Scott Alexander is a public figure. Get over it.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

The New York Times' dismissive responses to leading American historians like Gordon Wood and James McPherson when they pointed out distortions and inaccuracies in the 1619 Project was an eye-opener to me. The NY Times promoted an extremely suspect hypothesis about the American Revolution (that it was fought in order to preserve slavery - there's essentially no evidence for this hypothesis), and got push-back from some of the top historians of the US. The NY Times' response was essentially, "You're wrong, and we're not changing anything." Then the NY Times' own fact checker published an article in Politico pointing out that she had warned the NY Times not to claim the revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery, but that the NY Times had ignored her. That finally prompted the NY Times to issue a slight modification of their claim ("some" of the colonists fought to preserve slavery - which colonists is completely unclear, but at least the updated statement is so vague that it can't be disproven). All around, it was clear that the NY Times had an agenda to push, and they didn't care if historians disagreed. That didn't stop the 1619 Project from winning a Pulitzer, though!

jb775 6y ago

> they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions Glad more people are realizing this. It's harder to spot/acknowledge for people on the left since the biased coverage feeds into their worldview...in my opinion it's artificially solidified their confidence on how "correct" they feel they are about political topics. The next step in this realization is nothing to do with one-sided reporting, it's the massive scale of what selectively gets ignored or hidden.

knorker 6y ago
The right don't have agenda-pushing affect their world view? Huh? There was recently an attempted insurrection based on fake news, you know. I must say though that Fox News has gotten downright rational (on all things) since then. Politically biased, sure, but they're actually news lately.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  the comment you replied to didn't comment about the right, but that bias is "harder to spot/acknowledge for people on the left" The implied reverse therefore would be that it's easier for people on the right to see bias in the media. Not that the right dont have bias.
  - knorker 6y ago
    > The implied reverse therefore would be that it's easier for people on the right to see bias in the media. Yeah, that's also what I read. And as evidence to the contrary I pointed out that some people had their world view changed so much that they tried to overthrow the government. Which tells me that they didn't see the agenda they were being pushed. Which contradicts the comment's point. Note that in no way do I disagree that the left has a problem too.
    - Shivetya 6y ago
      Nah, those people just needed an excuse, they were already past the tipping point. They exist on both sides and one side got called out for attacking the capitol while the other is "mostly peaceful protests" because they are only destroying police and private property. As in, both sides are equally bad for similar but different reasons but we only hear about a singular event that some whack jobs on the far right pulled off. Compare to my local media as an example which buried the story about the violence around a "citizen" road block until a seven year old was murdered as her family tried to go past. Even then it was buried with stories of police violence or right wing threats. No, those of us who lean to the right know the nut jobs and there that line begins but there where that line is for my left leaning friends is beyond me to understand.

nycancaway 6y ago

Ditto. I subscribed to the NYT when I appreciated their coverage, and unsubscribed...when I felt like it, around 2020. I had heard horror stories about needing to call customer service, but they must have heard those complaints, because now their unsubscribe process is a simple form. I'm sure they mean well, and hopefully their journalism department also has an ear to the ground. It'd be nice if they returned to centrist investigative journalism soon.

drzoltar 6y ago

Which other paid news publications do you prefer over the NYT?

belval 6y ago
I really like the Economist their espresso format is a pleasant read in the morning.
jessriedel 6y ago
I would vote The Financial Times or The Economist.
- amf12 6y ago
  +1 to FT. I have been reading FT for a while now and have completely stopped reading NYT or other publications. They seem to have solid reporting and are pretty unbiased IMO.
noir-york 6y ago
Consider this another vote for the Financial Times and the Economist. I am subscribed to both, and Foreign Affairs.
- oblio 6y ago
  You have to be aware of their biases, though. If I recall correctly both predict the collapse of France, like clockwork, every few years (especially because French policies are slightly more socialist and both publications are super business). And of course, both look down on non-Anglosphere countries, in general :-)
  - noir-york 6y ago
    > both look down on non-Anglosphere countries I don't know where you get that from. Any examples? > You have to be aware of their biases, though. A point of view is not a bias. The Economist was founded as a pro-market liberal (classically liberal) publication. A Marxist would consider that a bias I guess?

woko 6y ago

This confirms my impression: the conversation does not have to go sideways about advertisements. It is kind of a deflecting trick to provide customer support instead of cancelling the subscription. Once you step in their trap, then it is slightly more cumbersome to go through the cancellation process. I guess people try to be polite and come up with a reason for cancelling their subscription, and this reason could be solved by customer support. It is not being polite to try to please Tony from customer support, he is just doing his job and does not care about polite reasons for cancelling, his job is that you do not cancel. It is important to know what you *really* want before contacting them (or any other company), in case they use this kind of trick to confuse you.

tallanvor 6y ago

NYT is quite right of center on many issues. They're not as conservative as WSJ, but they're definitely not a leftist publication.

thinkingemote 6y ago
Looking at the USA from European eyes, there are no leftist publications, nor any left mainstream politicians there!
- pembrook 6y ago
  Someone in China could say the same thing about Europe. There’s hardly any communist mainstream politicians and publications there!
  - thinkingemote 6y ago
    However people in the USA talk about the left as a bloc and people in Europe don't talk about communist media or politicians (although there are a small number). You would have a better analogy if you used "socialism" rather than "communism".
  - oblio 6y ago
    One of them is a authoritarian regime where the press is controlled by the state and the others are a collection of countries with some of the highest democracy ratings in the world, by most scales, including for freedom of the press.
    - pembrook 6y ago
      That's my point. The farther left you go the more things the state has control over. It's all relative. From a communist perspective, most of Europe is a laissez faire free market. Private control of the press!? Hah! From Europe's mildly-socialist perspective, America is a laissez faire free market. Private control of healthcare and education!? Hah! I'm not making value judgements. Just pointing out its a spectrum.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Journalists are pretty honest about what they do if you listen to them talk candidly about their profession. It's not really about reporting reality or facts it's more they see themselves are a class above the regular people who have a moral obligation to make sure we think and believe the right things we're supposed to for what they consider the greater good. Not saying if that's the right thing to do or not but personally it's not something I'd ever pay for.

Hnrobert42 6y ago
This generalization seems overly broad.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Perhaps. ...but among the journalists I know socially (this is a worthless anecdote), they agree that they have a responsibility to report a "socially responsible narrative".
disease 6y ago
What proof do you have of these accusations?

scythe 6y ago

>It feels more like they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions (which shifts rapidly), rather than informing me and letting me form my own. "Persuade" is even the wrong word; more like "pressure" or "coerce". It's a little amusing to see liberals trying to describe this for the first time. Harper's is unequivocally further left than NYT. It's also less grating. To me, that's because the "left-ish" bias of NYT takes the form of telling the reader to be afraid of certain people or groups of people, whether it's Tom Cotton who wants to "send in the troops" or some little-known blogger. Which stands in direct contradiction to the ideals of what most people think of as leftism. Bias is tolerable and probably inevitable; a politics of fearmongering is not.

subpixel 6y ago

I’m not rage-quitting yet but the decision to capitalize the word used to describe the skin color of one group of people, but not the words used to describe the skin colors of other people, is just so completely asinine and panderous that I have considered doing so.

berelig 6y ago
Are they not in line with the APA styleguide? https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/racial-ethnic-minorities https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-... I know it's a recent trend but I thought the capitalization was applied to all ethnicities.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zo1 6y ago
  Doesn't appear to exactly be in line with the APA guideline you posted, which suggests capitalizing "White". Though they recommend against using "Caucasian" and recommend using "White" instead. To quote the link you posted: >"Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. Therefore, use “Black” and “White” instead of “black” and “white” (do not use colors to refer to other human groups; doing so is considered pejorative)." However, the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black... >"The Times also looked at whether to capitalize white and brown in reference to race, but both will remain lowercase. Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Corbett said in their memo to staff. As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups." Edit. Side note. Maybe I should write to the NYT and tell them I'm a White African and they're not representing my cultural and historical identity!
- sequoia 6y ago
  It's the AP style guide: https://apnews.com/article/9105661462 https://apnews.com/article/9105661462

Person5478 6y ago

> I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. As someone who is slightly left of center, it's kind of a painful place to be. You tend to get attacked by both sides. Personally I've just kind of checked out. I'm not sure there's actually anything relevant that gets said on these newspapers/media that you can't get from just being in online communities, and you'd have to sift through all the shit. For example, sometimes I'll come across a Tucker Carlson video on youtube and about 80% of what he says is just biased bullshit, but he will make good points sometimes. It honestly makes me miss Jon Stewart. At least we had a means of laughing at them, now they take themselves so seriously. And the hard on for Joe Biden makes no sense to me either, he's a sleezeball and how people can't be angry at the democratic party for putting up two horrible people in a row I'll never know.

beowulfey 6y ago

Highly recommend getting news through either AP news or Reuters. Both are non-profit journalism groups and I find that the headlines that pop up from those apps are straight up boring (and I mean this in the absolute best way possible).

zo1 6y ago
I just pulled up two Reuters articles to look. First article had 12 paragraphs, and a grand total of 12 sentences. 7 of those are quotes/paraphrases of what people said/claimed. Oh and the page had 20 ad images. 60% of the article is "s/he said X". The remaining 40% are low-fat versions of something one can find on Wikipedia. Another one: 10 paragraphs, 11 sentences. 5 are quotes/paraphrases. 15 (fifteen) ad images! That is not journalism, that's Twitter with extra steps, masquerading as news. At this point, if I didn't know any better, I'd call Reuters a glorified ad farm!

fatjokes 6y ago

Oh God I'm glad it's not just me that was feeling this. It's been pointedly obvious that there are narratives they want to push and there are clear newsworthy items that they do not cover for fear of making some groups look bad that would not look "woke". I've been forced to balance my news with right-leaning publications (NYPost... ew) just because they'll at least mention some events.

jancsika 6y ago

> But the NYT has drifted too far down the path of politically-correct fashions, and away from robust debate and discussion of challenging topics and how they intersect with real events. > I should reiterate that this is not a right-left thing. This very likely is a right-left thing: * The NYT systematically avoided the term "torture" in everything except op-eds when describing the Bush admin's post-911 torture program[1] It's difficult to think of a more dastardly use of political correctness than a newspaper employing a euphemism for torture that effectively softens the blow in their stories about a government torture program. Obviously if you knew about this but still subscribed to NYT anyway while now unsubscribing for problems wrt left-thing political correctness, that's a "right-left thing." (And however bad we both agree their left-thing political correctness problem is, it can't possibly be worse than systematically dressing up torture.) But even if you didn't know about it, it's still the same problem. At best your comment makes it seem like NYT gave in to its long-standing penchant for left-leaning fashions, and that ended up actually damaging its ability to do robust reporting. That interpretation makes a special case of the entire Keller period when the most important stories were scuttled in deference to the Bush administration. That period includes refusing repeatedly to run some of the most impactful stories-- like Jim Risen's on the Bush-Cheney domestic spying program-- because the government told them not to[2]. That period is in major "never forget" territory wrt to journalistic integrity. Edits: clarifications [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jul/06/torture-waterboarding-bush https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/ju... [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/ https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-ti...

chmod600 6y ago
You misunderstood my point. Bias exists and I have accepted that, and I won't unsubscribe from good reporting because of bias. Giving into left-leaning fashions is bad not because of the "left-leaning" part; its bad because of the "fashions" part. It's lazy groupthink at best, and bullying people into conformity at worst. Have you noticed how narrow and specific all of the rules for reporting have become? Do you honestly believe that leftism is defined by these narrow rules, many of which are changing rapidly? No. Most left-leaning people don't believe this stuff (how could a normal person even change their beliefs from one day to the next?). They go along with it because either they are too scared of getting bullied themselves; or because it's mostly hurting the right, and they believe they can regain control of the discourse after the right is diminished. But it's easy to destroy good discourse and hard to rebuild it. After the right gets marginalized, we won't go to open-minded chats over coffee among left-leaning folks. It will be these same horrible tactics over the most minor differences of opinion on the left. Proponents of socialized medicine will be doxxing proponents of Medicare for all. There will be no end to the ridiculousness.

Atlas-Marbles 6y ago

If you haven't read Bari Weiss's resignation letter from the NYT, I would recommend it: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter > But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

ketamine__ 6y ago

Scott Alexander is a public figure. Get over it.