9 ms·

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously pub

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a lawsuit calling for Facebook to be broken up. It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? The core conflict here isn't new, surely. Newspapers have taken advertising money from news-making companies since time immaterial. The question has always been whether that money affects coverage. And so far it seems like "no", or "not yet". And there's a very worthy debate to be had here, much as there always has been about advertising in news media, but the headline doesn't do that debate justice.

FpUser 6y ago
>"My question is: is this actually happening?" I think what is happening is they are buying their ability to publish news. Once accomplished you will see plenty of those "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" I think.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Offering an interview to a news outlet is really not significantly different from cutting them a check. Apple has been known for pretty much cutting out any site that dares to step out of line. I think whatever is left of Gizmodo is still banned from Apple events after Gizmodo reported about getting hands on a prototype iPhone.
- adrian_mrd 6y ago
  This is what is referred to as ‘access journalism’ and indeed, it’s heavily prescient in technology - as it is in music, showbiz, sports, as well.
  - 1cvmask 6y ago
    And politics and international coverage
- crazygringo 6y ago
  > Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. There's a gigantic difference between tech blogs and the NYT or WaPo. Nobody expects tech blogs to exercise journalistic independence/integrity. People do with the NYT and WaPo, and loudly cancel their subscriptions when the believe that's violated.
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    Tech blogs are about as independent as news sources get, so no, they are very much expected to act that way.
    - CryptoBanker 6y ago
      They’re also very small and therefore more easily bribed or crushed, whichever tactic is needed to get them in line
      - ironmagma 6y ago
        The fact they’re small means they’re more easily abandoned, though.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      ? In what world? Tech blogs seem to have the most obvious industry ties of most media
ManBlanket 6y ago
The question of whether money affects coverage is among those which are incredibly difficult to find evidence for without a smoking gun. There's no direct proof in whether a given story supports or hurts a financier. I'm stretching for an example but there is circumstantial evidence the interactions between various macro ecosystems push conditions of earth's biosphere toward homeostasis, but suggesting this is deterministic is not substantiated by any known directly testable phenomena. Until we decode latent genetic algorithms, it'll remain speculation. Likewise we're left only with speculation in the absence of an explicit, "run story or we pull funding" type memo. That said a lot of economics tends to make sense when examined through a lens of incentives. There has been an observable shift toward radicalization of news content since this article indicates FB began funding its news feature. Opinion pieces seem to often displace primary stories based on whether they suit a dominant hyperbolic narrative. Whether by FB design or simply a natural response to the soaring appeal of hyperbolic click bait favored by social news aggregation is anybody's guess. I will say I am appalled by a lack of accountability the Times has had over the last year. For example regularly publishing summary statistics without acknowledging significant sampling problems, figures any self-respecting statistician would never consider submitting for academic review are still regularly passed off as fact. Moreover discourse regarding what constitutes effective policy, consideration of cost and benefit, or even determination of what society's goals are let alone whether they are realistic has been contemptuously derided as conspiracy and dogma of the Trumpian cult. Without rational discourse there is little hope for progress, and in that regard I arrived at my own foregone conclusions, that the hyperbolic nature of news media is one of the most significant barriers to positive change we face as a society. On that note, if you find yourself buying into a fear of outsiders you might want to reconsider the fact most people share the same fundamental values and our differences between one another is often negligible. Believe it or not beyond the lazy opinions about issues scantly related to every day life, the average liberal and conservative have exactly the same amount of love for their friends and family. We often simply disagree regarding the means to similar ends. As a single global society we all face the same problems, but our biggest problem right now is spanning the distance we've created between coming together socially as friends and colleagues.
throwawayay02 6y ago
How does it seem like "no" or "not yet". We will never know what even worst news would've come up if they weren't getting bribed.
js2 6y ago
The headline is provocative, as headlines often are. The article also focuses heavily on the Times but mentions that FB has these deals with other publishers too. To the extent that there’s ire in the article, I think it would be better focused on Facebook. The ad-supported business model of newspapers has always been problematic. In theory there’s a firewall between the business side and the journalists, but my faith that this is the case is reduced when orgs like the NYT get rid of their public editor. The NDA between FB and the publishers is really gross. It shackles the NYT from covering itself and keeps the various orgs that have this deal from reporting about it on each other. It’s not a good sign when the NYT can’t hold the WSJ accountable. This part is weird tho: > Facebook has been funneling money to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Bloomberg, and other select paid partners since late 2019. [...] The exact terms of these deals remain secret, because Facebook insisted on nondisclosure and the news organizations agreed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agreements were worth as much as $3 million a year... So the WSJ is reporting on the deal despite signing the NDA?
whimsicalism 6y ago
I think we shouldn't be naïve about how money works to influence actions. Proving the quid pro quo is hard, but just the knowledge that the money is there and can go away at the whim of a private actor will having a chilling effect on the sort of content you report on. Journalistic entities have an incentive to project an image of an unbiased, principles institution untouched by the private business world, but as someone who was raised by two editors, that narrative is more mythos than reality.
- 1cvmask 6y ago
  No idea why you are being downvoted but this is quite well known and acknowledged. https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/27/media/bloomberg-news-wells-fargo-ceo/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/27/media/bloomberg-news-wells-...
- reedjosh 6y ago
  This can be seen easily via pharma adds on major news networks. It's not like anybody's ever asked their doctor after witnessing the list of side effects scroll by. Pharma ads as the #1 advertiser on major network news channels is purely to reign in negative press. The very idea of consuming news wherein the primary funding comes from a third party is absurd, but it's what people are used to.
1cvmask 6y ago
Miramax was over 10 percent of the ad spend in the NY Times in the early 2000s. They conveniently killed the story of Harvey Weinstein (head of Miramax) then: https://www.thewrap.com/harvey-weinstein-new-york-times-bill-keller-editor-fabrizio-lombardo-2004-expose/ https://www.thewrap.com/harvey-weinstein-new-york-times-bill...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
donohoe 6y ago
The news/reporting side of the organization and the Opinion group are very very separate. It's important to look at the news gathering side. Reporters don't take to being told to 'go easy on this group cos we have business ties' - that usually provides the opposite response.
- kgog 6y ago
  This x1000. Although on HN, the core message is "media bad, cos good" so I doubt that people will want to understand how media orgs actually work.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    As someone who was raised in a news media household by two editors, "writers calling the shots" is exactly not how media orgs actually work.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Sure, reporters don't like it, but it doesn't matter, because editors decide what ultimately gets printed.
longchen 6y ago
...
slg 6y ago
>The core conflict here isn't new, surely. Newspapers have taken advertising money from news-making companies since time immaterial. And if you can find a viable alternative to this, your company will be worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars[1]. The internet has killed the classifieds business and commoditized news to the point that most people won't pay for it. Accepting advertising from potentially news-making companies is hugely important to keeping news organizations afloat. Vilifying it whenever it happens is potentially dangerous and we should really wait to level these accusations until there is actual evidence of wrongdoing. [1] - https://www.axios.com/substack-andreessen-horowitz-newsletter-36cb98ea-a7b3-43b1-883a-fa45586eaad4.html https://www.axios.com/substack-andreessen-horowitz-newslette...
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  “If you don’t take money from companies you have a conflict of interest with, it’s dangerous! Think of the children!” I’m sorry but I may have exaggerated for humorous effect, but your line of reasoning I reject outright. There are ways to do this effectually. This is not that way.
  - slg 6y ago
    This is the New York Times we are talking about. Literally everything is within their reporting purview. Who can they possibly accept money from that won't present a potential conflict of interest?
    - imwillofficial 6y ago
      Not freaking the Evil Empire of companies would be a great start.
    - ipaddr 6y ago
      NYT provides national coverage. By only accepting and showing regional or local ads this problem can be avoided.
      - 6y ago
coldtea 6y ago
>It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? All the time. Using both direct bribes to journalists, friendly favors to the owners of the newspaper, and more often than not advertising money (which can be open from the company looking for favorable coverage itself, or through 1-2 layers of subsidies and shell companies which nobody can/will track).
op03 6y ago
The AP's NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recent report on Trust in American Media shows no one gives a fig what the NYT thinks, especially what its critical of - https://apnorc.org/projects/a-new-way-of-looking-at-trust-in-media-do-americans-share-journalisms-core-values/ https://apnorc.org/projects/a-new-way-of-looking-at-trust-in...
- xxpor 6y ago
  The public's perception isn't what's important. It's what people in DC think. And they read the NYT op-ed page.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Politicians in DC think, voters in DC are the last people asked.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Could you justify that claim a bit more? I downloaded the report and the phrase New York Times doesn't seem to appear in it. The whole report is actually a bit odd. It talks about the "five core values of journalism" and claims only super-liberal people support all of them, but the list of values appears to be basically a list of left wing priorities and worldviews, e.g. the last two values are "giving voice to the less powerful" and "social criticism". Factualism is defined not as an absolute value but merely a tradeoff, given that "the truth is more than just the matter of adding facts and this emphasis on factualism can mask bias". So that would appear to be tautological - all they've done is ask a bunch of journalists what they feel is important, got a bunch of left wing priorities, discovered that only left wing people agree with the full list, and the only thing people across the spectrum agree in is that facts are important. Surely these findings are true, but so what? It's just a dozen different ways of telling people things that are already obvious, rephrased in terms of Haidt's moral foundations theory. US journalists are much more left wing than the population as a whole, that's a widely published result for many years already. The fact that the AP felt a need to do a research study to prove it is sort of indicative of why the media has such deep problems. The final section is quite telling. They do an experiment where they take a test story and rewrite it to be less left-biased and contain more facts. They find the resulting story appeals more to everyone, not just conservatives. It's a sad indictment of the AP that this is actually presented as a novel finding.
bogomipz 6y ago
>"And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher ..." Those two individuals are both Op-Ed writers. The Opinion section in a paper is not the same as regular news reporting and so not beholden to a newspaper's editorial policy.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed
- saas_sam 6y ago
  Really? Tom Cotton might beg to differ.
hsitz 6y ago
> It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Human nature is human nature; there's little doubt that it's happening to some extent. Virtually impossible that it's not happening at all. The problem to me seems quite similar to campaign contributions in politics. Yes, it's indirect, and all parties can say it's innocent, no strings attached, the elected representative is not "required" to do anything. Those are words that help people ignore the reality of human nature. Money is influence.
- dlp211 6y ago
  This is why the business side and news side of (quality) news papers have been historically kept separate. It also leads to perceived "weirdness" to readers when they see a paper taking money from a corporation to run an advertisement alongside an article critical of said corporation. This isn't to invalidate your point completely, but to give some insight to those who are not aware of how this conflict of interest has been generally handled.
  - hsitz 6y ago
    Yes, of course, I agree. And it doesn't invalidate my point at all. I would say that you're pointing out the problem that people don't understand how important it is to avoid conflicts of interest, and that we need systems in place to minimize it. The case of Donald Trump is a perfect example. He had conflicts of interest galore, didn't even deny them, in fact he flouted them, and many people seemed to think everything was fine. We need to be aware not only of the existence of conflicts of interest, but also of (1) how corrosive these conflicts are, and (2) the crucial importance of designing systems to minimize the bad incentives and effects that arise from conflicts of interest. Systems, in other words, that minimize the harm that -- because of human nature -- inevitably flows even from well-intentioned people when conflicts of interest are tolerated.
- imgabe 6y ago
mola 6y ago
You can't know what they didn't publish. So how can you know there's no influence? How do you know the NYT doesn't use theis bad coverage as leverage in some negotiations? Your attitude is very naive.
TomMckenny 6y ago
> so far it seems like "no", or "not yet" On the contrary, it does indeed and has been known to do so for many decades [0,1] Indeed, in Citizens United, SCOTUS in the concurring opinion claimed the founders intent in the 1st amendment was to allow monied interests to own and influence media for political purposes. The question is not whether distortion exists but how prevalent it is. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#News_media_and_propaganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#News_media_and_pr...
johjohjoh 6y ago
It doesn't. This isn't how American media is made; this is just another money grab by desperate media outlets who are used to getting massive revenue that isn't going to be there in a 10 years. https://www.reddit.com/r/NetflixBestOf/comments/dob8pq/discussion_how_the_media_makes_movies_television/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NetflixBestOf/comments/dob8pq/discu...
minimuffins 6y ago
These discussions often miss the point and get bogged down in trying to prove or disprove individual instances of bias or censorship. The problem for me is prior to all of that. If the New York Times (say) lacks financial independence, then it will always be structurally indebted to whoever foots the bill. It's just a matter of fact built into the nature of the relationship between the two entities. Facebook executives may not have established the relationship simply to "buy off" the Times. I imagine most of them have a real commitment to "fixing the news" in their hearts. But it doesn't matter. If news agencies depend on organizations outside of themselves for the basic necessities of their existence and reproduction, then they aren't independent. They are dependent on those organizations, by definition. What they can report on now has conditions and limits. I want to emphasize that this is a restriction on what it is *possible* to report on. It might not ever produce a distinction that you could easily measure. This is a different, and worse, problem than Facebook purchasing some flattering reporting. Facebook now (obscurely, tacitly) sets the structural conditions (without having to explicitly state any rules or appear to be a bad guy in any way). It's not hard to think of an example of reporting which could become impossible under these conditions. Imagine if the Times, due to some public outcry, or for whatever reason, took a major rhetorical turn toward combating digital surveillance, just like they did in the last year with racism and issues of cultural morality. A sudden "moral clarity" emerged around topics that the paper used to try to be neutral about. Whether you like those developments or not, I imagine most people will agree that the employees of the New York Times, not executives at Facebook, or anybody else, should decide the course of the Times' reporting. An existential financial dependence will of course condition all reporting on the maintenance of that dependence.

FpUser 6y ago

>"My question is: is this actually happening?" I think what is happening is they are buying their ability to publish news. Once accomplished you will see plenty of those "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" I think.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Offering an interview to a news outlet is really not significantly different from cutting them a check. Apple has been known for pretty much cutting out any site that dares to step out of line. I think whatever is left of Gizmodo is still banned from Apple events after Gizmodo reported about getting hands on a prototype iPhone.

adrian_mrd 6y ago
This is what is referred to as ‘access journalism’ and indeed, it’s heavily prescient in technology - as it is in music, showbiz, sports, as well.
- 1cvmask 6y ago
  And politics and international coverage
crazygringo 6y ago
> Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. There's a gigantic difference between tech blogs and the NYT or WaPo. Nobody expects tech blogs to exercise journalistic independence/integrity. People do with the NYT and WaPo, and loudly cancel their subscriptions when the believe that's violated.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  Tech blogs are about as independent as news sources get, so no, they are very much expected to act that way.
  - CryptoBanker 6y ago
    They’re also very small and therefore more easily bribed or crushed, whichever tactic is needed to get them in line
    - ironmagma 6y ago
      The fact they’re small means they’re more easily abandoned, though.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    ? In what world? Tech blogs seem to have the most obvious industry ties of most media

ManBlanket 6y ago

The question of whether money affects coverage is among those which are incredibly difficult to find evidence for without a smoking gun. There's no direct proof in whether a given story supports or hurts a financier. I'm stretching for an example but there is circumstantial evidence the interactions between various macro ecosystems push conditions of earth's biosphere toward homeostasis, but suggesting this is deterministic is not substantiated by any known directly testable phenomena. Until we decode latent genetic algorithms, it'll remain speculation. Likewise we're left only with speculation in the absence of an explicit, "run story or we pull funding" type memo. That said a lot of economics tends to make sense when examined through a lens of incentives. There has been an observable shift toward radicalization of news content since this article indicates FB began funding its news feature. Opinion pieces seem to often displace primary stories based on whether they suit a dominant hyperbolic narrative. Whether by FB design or simply a natural response to the soaring appeal of hyperbolic click bait favored by social news aggregation is anybody's guess. I will say I am appalled by a lack of accountability the Times has had over the last year. For example regularly publishing summary statistics without acknowledging significant sampling problems, figures any self-respecting statistician would never consider submitting for academic review are still regularly passed off as fact. Moreover discourse regarding what constitutes effective policy, consideration of cost and benefit, or even determination of what society's goals are let alone whether they are realistic has been contemptuously derided as conspiracy and dogma of the Trumpian cult. Without rational discourse there is little hope for progress, and in that regard I arrived at my own foregone conclusions, that the hyperbolic nature of news media is one of the most significant barriers to positive change we face as a society. On that note, if you find yourself buying into a fear of outsiders you might want to reconsider the fact most people share the same fundamental values and our differences between one another is often negligible. Believe it or not beyond the lazy opinions about issues scantly related to every day life, the average liberal and conservative have exactly the same amount of love for their friends and family. We often simply disagree regarding the means to similar ends. As a single global society we all face the same problems, but our biggest problem right now is spanning the distance we've created between coming together socially as friends and colleagues.

throwawayay02 6y ago

How does it seem like "no" or "not yet". We will never know what even worst news would've come up if they weren't getting bribed.

js2 6y ago

The headline is provocative, as headlines often are. The article also focuses heavily on the Times but mentions that FB has these deals with other publishers too. To the extent that there’s ire in the article, I think it would be better focused on Facebook. The ad-supported business model of newspapers has always been problematic. In theory there’s a firewall between the business side and the journalists, but my faith that this is the case is reduced when orgs like the NYT get rid of their public editor. The NDA between FB and the publishers is really gross. It shackles the NYT from covering itself and keeps the various orgs that have this deal from reporting about it on each other. It’s not a good sign when the NYT can’t hold the WSJ accountable. This part is weird tho: > Facebook has been funneling money to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Bloomberg, and other select paid partners since late 2019. [...] The exact terms of these deals remain secret, because Facebook insisted on nondisclosure and the news organizations agreed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agreements were worth as much as $3 million a year... So the WSJ is reporting on the deal despite signing the NDA?

whimsicalism 6y ago

I think we shouldn't be naïve about how money works to influence actions. Proving the quid pro quo is hard, but just the knowledge that the money is there and can go away at the whim of a private actor will having a chilling effect on the sort of content you report on. Journalistic entities have an incentive to project an image of an unbiased, principles institution untouched by the private business world, but as someone who was raised by two editors, that narrative is more mythos than reality.

1cvmask 6y ago
No idea why you are being downvoted but this is quite well known and acknowledged. https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/27/media/bloomberg-news-wells-fargo-ceo/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/27/media/bloomberg-news-wells-...
reedjosh 6y ago
This can be seen easily via pharma adds on major news networks. It's not like anybody's ever asked their doctor after witnessing the list of side effects scroll by. Pharma ads as the #1 advertiser on major network news channels is purely to reign in negative press. The very idea of consuming news wherein the primary funding comes from a third party is absurd, but it's what people are used to.

1cvmask 6y ago

Miramax was over 10 percent of the ad spend in the NY Times in the early 2000s. They conveniently killed the story of Harvey Weinstein (head of Miramax) then: https://www.thewrap.com/harvey-weinstein-new-york-times-bill-keller-editor-fabrizio-lombardo-2004-expose/ https://www.thewrap.com/harvey-weinstein-new-york-times-bill...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

donohoe 6y ago

The news/reporting side of the organization and the Opinion group are very very separate. It's important to look at the news gathering side. Reporters don't take to being told to 'go easy on this group cos we have business ties' - that usually provides the opposite response.

kgog 6y ago
This x1000. Although on HN, the core message is "media bad, cos good" so I doubt that people will want to understand how media orgs actually work.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  As someone who was raised in a news media household by two editors, "writers calling the shots" is exactly not how media orgs actually work.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Sure, reporters don't like it, but it doesn't matter, because editors decide what ultimately gets printed.

longchen 6y ago

...

slg 6y ago

>The core conflict here isn't new, surely. Newspapers have taken advertising money from news-making companies since time immaterial. And if you can find a viable alternative to this, your company will be worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars[1]. The internet has killed the classifieds business and commoditized news to the point that most people won't pay for it. Accepting advertising from potentially news-making companies is hugely important to keeping news organizations afloat. Vilifying it whenever it happens is potentially dangerous and we should really wait to level these accusations until there is actual evidence of wrongdoing. [1] - https://www.axios.com/substack-andreessen-horowitz-newsletter-36cb98ea-a7b3-43b1-883a-fa45586eaad4.html https://www.axios.com/substack-andreessen-horowitz-newslette...

imwillofficial 6y ago
“If you don’t take money from companies you have a conflict of interest with, it’s dangerous! Think of the children!” I’m sorry but I may have exaggerated for humorous effect, but your line of reasoning I reject outright. There are ways to do this effectually. This is not that way.
- slg 6y ago
  This is the New York Times we are talking about. Literally everything is within their reporting purview. Who can they possibly accept money from that won't present a potential conflict of interest?
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    Not freaking the Evil Empire of companies would be a great start.
  - ipaddr 6y ago
    NYT provides national coverage. By only accepting and showing regional or local ads this problem can be avoided.
    - 6y ago

coldtea 6y ago

>It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? All the time. Using both direct bribes to journalists, friendly favors to the owners of the newspaper, and more often than not advertising money (which can be open from the company looking for favorable coverage itself, or through 1-2 layers of subsidies and shell companies which nobody can/will track).

op03 6y ago

The AP's NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recent report on Trust in American Media shows no one gives a fig what the NYT thinks, especially what its critical of - https://apnorc.org/projects/a-new-way-of-looking-at-trust-in-media-do-americans-share-journalisms-core-values/ https://apnorc.org/projects/a-new-way-of-looking-at-trust-in...

xxpor 6y ago
The public's perception isn't what's important. It's what people in DC think. And they read the NYT op-ed page.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Politicians in DC think, voters in DC are the last people asked.
thu2111 6y ago
Could you justify that claim a bit more? I downloaded the report and the phrase New York Times doesn't seem to appear in it. The whole report is actually a bit odd. It talks about the "five core values of journalism" and claims only super-liberal people support all of them, but the list of values appears to be basically a list of left wing priorities and worldviews, e.g. the last two values are "giving voice to the less powerful" and "social criticism". Factualism is defined not as an absolute value but merely a tradeoff, given that "the truth is more than just the matter of adding facts and this emphasis on factualism can mask bias". So that would appear to be tautological - all they've done is ask a bunch of journalists what they feel is important, got a bunch of left wing priorities, discovered that only left wing people agree with the full list, and the only thing people across the spectrum agree in is that facts are important. Surely these findings are true, but so what? It's just a dozen different ways of telling people things that are already obvious, rephrased in terms of Haidt's moral foundations theory. US journalists are much more left wing than the population as a whole, that's a widely published result for many years already. The fact that the AP felt a need to do a research study to prove it is sort of indicative of why the media has such deep problems. The final section is quite telling. They do an experiment where they take a test story and rewrite it to be less left-biased and contain more facts. They find the resulting story appeals more to everyone, not just conservatives. It's a sad indictment of the AP that this is actually presented as a novel finding.

bogomipz 6y ago

>"And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher ..." Those two individuals are both Op-Ed writers. The Opinion section in a paper is not the same as regular news reporting and so not beholden to a newspaper's editorial policy.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed

saas_sam 6y ago
Really? Tom Cotton might beg to differ.

hsitz 6y ago

> It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Human nature is human nature; there's little doubt that it's happening to some extent. Virtually impossible that it's not happening at all. The problem to me seems quite similar to campaign contributions in politics. Yes, it's indirect, and all parties can say it's innocent, no strings attached, the elected representative is not "required" to do anything. Those are words that help people ignore the reality of human nature. Money is influence.

dlp211 6y ago
This is why the business side and news side of (quality) news papers have been historically kept separate. It also leads to perceived "weirdness" to readers when they see a paper taking money from a corporation to run an advertisement alongside an article critical of said corporation. This isn't to invalidate your point completely, but to give some insight to those who are not aware of how this conflict of interest has been generally handled.
- hsitz 6y ago
  Yes, of course, I agree. And it doesn't invalidate my point at all. I would say that you're pointing out the problem that people don't understand how important it is to avoid conflicts of interest, and that we need systems in place to minimize it. The case of Donald Trump is a perfect example. He had conflicts of interest galore, didn't even deny them, in fact he flouted them, and many people seemed to think everything was fine. We need to be aware not only of the existence of conflicts of interest, but also of (1) how corrosive these conflicts are, and (2) the crucial importance of designing systems to minimize the bad incentives and effects that arise from conflicts of interest. Systems, in other words, that minimize the harm that -- because of human nature -- inevitably flows even from well-intentioned people when conflicts of interest are tolerated.
imgabe 6y ago

mola 6y ago

You can't know what they didn't publish. So how can you know there's no influence? How do you know the NYT doesn't use theis bad coverage as leverage in some negotiations? Your attitude is very naive.

TomMckenny 6y ago

> so far it seems like "no", or "not yet" On the contrary, it does indeed and has been known to do so for many decades [0,1] Indeed, in Citizens United, SCOTUS in the concurring opinion claimed the founders intent in the 1st amendment was to allow monied interests to own and influence media for political purposes. The question is not whether distortion exists but how prevalent it is. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#News_media_and_propaganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#News_media_and_pr...

johjohjoh 6y ago

It doesn't. This isn't how American media is made; this is just another money grab by desperate media outlets who are used to getting massive revenue that isn't going to be there in a 10 years. https://www.reddit.com/r/NetflixBestOf/comments/dob8pq/discussion_how_the_media_makes_movies_television/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NetflixBestOf/comments/dob8pq/discu...

minimuffins 6y ago

These discussions often miss the point and get bogged down in trying to prove or disprove individual instances of bias or censorship. The problem for me is prior to all of that. If the New York Times (say) lacks financial independence, then it will always be structurally indebted to whoever foots the bill. It's just a matter of fact built into the nature of the relationship between the two entities. Facebook executives may not have established the relationship simply to "buy off" the Times. I imagine most of them have a real commitment to "fixing the news" in their hearts. But it doesn't matter. If news agencies depend on organizations outside of themselves for the basic necessities of their existence and reproduction, then they aren't independent. They are dependent on those organizations, by definition. What they can report on now has conditions and limits. I want to emphasize that this is a restriction on what it is *possible* to report on. It might not ever produce a distinction that you could easily measure. This is a different, and worse, problem than Facebook purchasing some flattering reporting. Facebook now (obscurely, tacitly) sets the structural conditions (without having to explicitly state any rules or appear to be a bad guy in any way). It's not hard to think of an example of reporting which could become impossible under these conditions. Imagine if the Times, due to some public outcry, or for whatever reason, took a major rhetorical turn toward combating digital surveillance, just like they did in the last year with racism and issues of cultural morality. A sudden "moral clarity" emerged around topics that the paper used to try to be neutral about. Whether you like those developments or not, I imagine most people will agree that the employees of the New York Times, not executives at Facebook, or anybody else, should decide the course of the Times' reporting. An existential financial dependence will of course condition all reporting on the maintenance of that dependence.