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Ironic that this is from the New York Times, which has (in)famously had several years of poor or biased reporting.
by ameminator 5y ago
Ironic that this is from the New York Times, which has (in)famously had several years of poor or biased reporting.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoCurious, Are there earlier examples of negligence, prior to the episode of "weapons of mass destruction"? When did the decline really start?
- GranularRecipe 5y agocf Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent_(film))
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoDoes he cite specific examples? I dont reject the thesis but im curious about the evidence.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kevinschumacher 5y agoYes, for about 400 pages.
- radmuzom 5y agoThis book was life changing for me. I also watched '12 Angry Men' around the same time as I read the book. I sometimes joke that these should be required reading or watching before someone is allowed to post an internet comment.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThe answer probably depends on the specific geographic and political distance of the commenter related to the New York Times. Here's one critique in the form of a song: https://slate.com/culture/2018/02/i-am-the-very-model-of-a-new-york-times-contrarian.amp https://slate.com/culture/2018/02/i-am-the-very-model-of-a-n...
- elliekelly 5y agoI recently watched “How to Become a Tyrant” and they mentioned a NYT reporter in the 30s, the Moscow bureau chief IIRC, who was more or less bribed by Stalin* to write articles denying people were starving in Ukraine. He even won a pulitzer for the “reporting”. I don’t know that it was the start of “the decline” of the New York Times (and full disclosure: I subscribe) but the WMDs weren’t the first egregiously wrong reporting. Searching for anything relating to NYT and Ukraine obviously gives a lot of more recent results but I found this Huffington Post article[1] that I think has enough background to point you in the right direction if you’re curious to learn more. And I think this[2] is the journalist’s wikipedia article. Edit: It was Stalin he had a very friendly relationship with, not Lenin. [1]https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a15c588e4b0f401dfa7ecce https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a15c588e4b0f401dfa7ecce [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Clubber 5y agoThey recently did a movie on this: Mr. Jones. It was really good. You can probably catch it on Netflix or something similar. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6828390/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6828390/
- ameminator 5y agoThere have been some noticeable stinkers that I have been aware of for maybe 20 years, up to and including the Jason Blair affair. However, I have seen a steep decline in quality since 2010-2012.
- dharmaturtle 5y agoMy opinion of the NYT plummeted when they doxxed Scott Alexander https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-times-article https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
- dahart 5y agoA personal favorite example of mine was the article “Recycling is Garbage” from 1996 that is chock full of misinformation and continues to do damage today. I wouldn’t be surprised if the article was sponsored by the plastics industry. (I’m speculating with zero proof, it just feels and smells like paid propaganda and corporate interests.) The online version has had orders of magnitude more readers than the excellent rebuttal at the time by the Environmental Defense Fund, but the NYT gave the author another platform to reprise his anti-environmental rants again six years ago, where he repeated the untrue talking points. There are a lot of real problems with recycling, some of them stemming from lack of buy-in and participation, and these NYT articles are fueling the anti-recycling sentiment with myths, undermining the will to improve the situation. The article’s pushing and glorifying of throwing things away is even doing damage to the idea that we should reduce consumption of single use plastic packaging, which is far more important than trying to recycle plastic.
- mc32 5y agoAh, the pot getting jealous of losing influence and calling the kettle black. As someone pointed out upthread, these media take money from foreign interests (China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and quite a umber of others) and it's all good according to them, because they apparently are "good" by self-definition. They are part of the problem!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rschoultz 5y agoEven credible news sources are bound to have an implicit bias, to a certain degree. There is, however, quite a few other types of media sources ranging from media bias, to fake news, misinformation, disinformation etc. I recommend reading the Cornell university library guides to learn about how to distinguish one from the other.
- shadowgovt 5y agoAs a useful rule of thumb, the New York Times prints retractions. If your news source never prints retractions, it's not to be trusted.
- rbanffy 5y ago> As a useful rule of thumb, the New York Times prints retractions. And, yet, a lot of the US public opinion is shaped by Fox News...
- giantg2 5y agoDo other tv/cable news networks print retractions? I can't remember any, but maybe they have a specific webpage you have to go to in order to see it? I doubt any of the non-news programs on those networks do, and those comprise the majority of the programming. So maybe it's just hard to find for the little bit of actual news.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- grumblenum 5y agoIn 2005 I was in a college dorm that provided the NYT in a common area. I picked up one and the first article I read was a column about Hurricane Katrina. The author interviewed a history professor who bewailed the failings of the president and the United States and how this was "worse than Antitem". In other words the esteemed Grey Lady interviewed an "expert" whose expertise has nothing to do with meteorology or disaster response to get a "Bush sucks, haha!" hot-take. Even as a know-nothing teenager (of strong anti-war sentiment at the time), I recognized that "area man says natural disaster proves Bush sucks" is just pablum. I put the paper down, and I have never picked up an NYT since. Thanks to the hero who provided an archive link, so that I could skim this. This article appears to be NYT heroically defending a corporate sponsor against the vile slander of other content marketers. Still speaking truth to power, I see.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- graycat 5y agoI used to live in New York State and, back before the Internet got very powerful, got frequent offers from the NYT to subscribe. I had long since concluded that the NYT was junk, resented the offers, and wrote a scathing denuciating letter to the Publisher ending with I don't want your work for free. Actually, I was a little too hard on the NYT: On paper it can be used to wrap dead fish heads. My short recommendation for the NYT and the rest of the mainstream media is, first, to get the level of quality of writing and information up to common standards for high school term papers.
- shanecleveland 5y agoYou used the term "column," which insinuates an opinion piece. All news publications have purposely-biased opinion pieces, and in the case of The NY Times, they will be limited to the clearly-marked op-ed section. And they also offer countering views, in many cases. Very different from news.
- JCVI-syn10 5y ago> the first article I read was a column A column is a personal opinion piece, not a news story. > how this was "worse than Antitem [sic]" I can't find any columns that mention Antietam from NYT published in 2005. Is there any reason to believe what you're describing actually happened?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- afpx 5y agoThe NYT reporting seems pretty reliable to me. Could you give a few notable examples at least to support that claim?
- the-dude 5y agohttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-new-york-times-wmd-coverage https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-new-york-times-wmd-cov...
- chewmieser 5y agoFair but that also stemmed from their own reporting that their own coverage was flawed... It makes me trust them more since they're auditing themselves like that. Shows high journalistic integrity.
- the-dude 5y agoWhat do you mean? They did not uncover themselves that the WMDs did not exist.
- dd36 5y agoThey shared it with their audience. The standard isn’t always be right, it’s have integrity.
- the-dude 5y agoEverybody shared it with 'the audience'. The WMDs were obviously not there, were they? Hard to keep it up.
- colinmhayes 5y agoEveryone in the government was saying they were there. Not reporting that would be negligent. Should NYT have been faster at reporting the truth? Of course. But when the president says there are weapons of mass destruction you report as much. The NYT retracted the story, which is pretty much all I can hope for in a situation like this.
- chewmieser 5y agoBias is in every source (although I'd give Reuters an AP a general pass there). Being biased is not a "bad thing" just because it doesn't fit your world view, it expands horizons if you allow other views into your narrow view. And poor? Laughable. NYTimes is a high quality source on-par with WSJ.
- ameminator 5y agoBias is in every news source, but let's not pretend it's a "good thing" - I would rather everyone be less biased and more open in their reporting. I still do occasionally read the New York Times, but I find that reporting from Axios and local news sources is usually superior, because they have less of this bias and seem to stick to clear, direct facts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 5y ago"Nobody is perfect" is always true, but also a common intellectual defence mechanism that is only applied to your ingroup. When the outgroup shows their imperfections, a whole other set of cognitive tools are used.
- fortuna86 5y agoIf your side "owns a mistake" and the other side doubles down on a lie, that's not the same thing. You can't both sides that.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoI read both for a while and consider WSJ more reliable and far far less sensationalist than NYT (as of maybe 5 years ago).
- colinmhayes 5y agoI still read both and consider them two of the most reliable sources of domestic journalism. Their non editorial sections are of very similar qualities. Their editorial sections are both political hackery.
- Lendal 5y agoThis story is about shady companies funded by government propaganda agencies around the world, and which cease operating as soon as you start investigating them. The New York Times has been doing business continuously since 1851, is one of the cornerstones of democracy, a recognized leader in journalism schools across the globe, and to this day regularly fires journalists who are caught lying in a story. Anyone is free to literally walk into its offices at any time without being followed or shot. It's safe to say there is no comparison here.
- LocalChapter 5y agoSorry I don't care how long they have been in business. Generally, "You are as good as your last performance." The New York Times (along with many other news outlets) has been known in recent years to be biased and untrustworthy to anyone that has been paying attention. So while it is nice they have been around since the mid-19th century they should not be bestowed trust just because in the past they have may have had good reporting.
- refurb 5y agoNo. The story is about disinformation. Whether someone does it for money or ideology doesn’t matter, lies are lies and the NYTimes is not an innocent party here. They were a major driver of the Iraq WMD theory and thus the Iraq War if you want one solid example.
- 84thryu 5y agoThat is a "one solid example", it is so. It was a bad practice of them. Does there have ANY others? This one example gets pulled out every time the NYT is mention and never have I seen other, not any.
- zepto 5y ago> fires journalists who are caught lying in a story No good misinformation or politically biased piece includes lies.
- dharmaturtle 5y ago
- omgwtfbbq 5y agoBiased reporting != misinformation. By conflating the two I think you tip your hand and reveal yourself to be interested in propagating the latter.