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The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history. Even in the face of cri

The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history. Even in the face of criticism from historians who are experts in the covered subject matter.

UncleMeat 4y ago
"Criticism from historians" is normal for everything. Historians criticize work that they even revere. The presence of academic criticism is not evidence that the NYT piece is an "ahistorical, ideology first product". In fact, the majority of criticism from the academic community (as mentioned in the article) is the fact that the historians that were consulted on this piece weren't named in the text.
- hitekker 4y ago
  I think the GP means that the NYT has a recent history of peddling journalistic rags as academic papers, without the approval of the academic experts they've consulted. One of those fact checkers even wrote an article about how they were ignored by the NYT: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    And I'm saying that your portrayal is foolish. From the very article you link > Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. The 1619 Project contained historical errors that the authors should have avoided. But historians working in this area do not consider it to be a "journalistic rag" even as they criticize it. As I mentioned in my post, academic criticism is not evidence that a piece is devoid of merit.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      You're misrepresenting that article. That article was not some random historian offering an academic criticism. That person was hand-picked by the NYTimes to "fact-check" their article. They undoubtedly chose her because of her ideological background, thinking that she would be okay with revisionary history. She wasn't. So they ignored her.
      - UncleMeat 4y ago
        I do not believe that I am misrepresenting the article. The reason I do not believe that is because I am personal friends with an unusual number of historians who work in early US history and the history of race in the US. The quote I pulled from the article very neatly sums up their opinion of the 1619 project. The NYT made fairly basic and preventable factual errors in the 1619 project. They should not have done this. This is not new or interesting or controversial information among relevant historians. What is controversial among relevant historians is the conclusion that therefore the 1619 project is ideological bullshit that shouldn't be seen as anything other than garbage. The author of the article you link was indeed correct - factual errors became a lightning rod for reactionaries to dismiss the work as propaganda. But that's not actually how criticism of historical writing works in the academic community. I suspect that if I spoke with the author of this piece, as I have spoken to many people who I suspect she would call colleagues, she'd be more likely to agree with my presentation than yours. All historical writing is "revisionist history." This term is not actually a slur in the academic community because each historian is almost necessarily writing on a topic that many historians have written on before and their work is in dialogue with the work that came before. Presenting a historical narrative from another perspective or through a different methodological lens is not bad nor does it attack or destroy the work that came before. Braudel has claims that are outright wrong but The Mediterranean is heralded as a triumph. Said has claims that don't hold up today but Orientalism is a critical step forward for the field. Heck, even fucking Foucault is seen as essential writing for historians despite him having all sorts of factual errors in his work. Historical writing should seek to be based in fact. But fucking up (even very badly) is not a reason to declare a work to be propaganda.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Historians have ideology too. In fact the field of history is not an exact science...
- epgui 4y ago
  If I accept the premise that "the field of history is not an exact science" (which, to be clear, I do), it does not logically follow that this makes historians particularly ideological. Both may certainly be true (which I believe), but it's not a very good argument.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    I get the feeling your definition of "ideology" is a very specific, politically-motivated one, and not the one that most philosophers and social scientists have concurred is an appropriate default definition over the last 50-70 years. Everyone carries ideology with them. It is the source of subjective interpretations and judgments. And unfortunately for your position, we have more or less come to the consensus that all language and communication is fundamentally subjective: this means that no statements or actions are without ideology.
darth_avocado 4y ago
The NYT article was not “ahistorical”, something that the author points out was the facts were mostly correct. The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn. Yeah, I think you always have to read things like the NYT with an eye towards their demonstrated institutional biases. I think they can be trusted to get the facts right (even if that fact is "ABC made claim XYZ," when XYZ turns out to have been wrong), and I don't really see a better alternative for getting facts about current events. That said, I don't think journalists at the NYT are the right people to be writing revisionist histories of events that are very much not current. If they want to publish stuff like that, it would better if the hired some actual historians to do these projects (instead of just trying to use them as QC).
sangnoir 4y ago
> The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history[...] That reads like a misrepresentation of TFA: the author conceded that the historical facts reported by the NYT are accurate, but they disagree with the tone and conclusion. The author's angle is a weird one: author thinks that the article(s) should be read as an academic paper (no reason given), and then lobs criticism at it for not being a good academic paper.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  You can use any series of truths to weave a lie, this has been known since antiquity.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    "Ahistorical" has a specific meaning, which does not apply here.
overtonwhy 4y ago
Oh the larger point is an attempt to discredit the newspaper of record for the USA. Thanks for clarifying that you're trying to spin colonial slavery as a good thing because of "liberal media bias".
- lp0_on_fire 4y ago
  That "newspaper of record" doesn't need a lot of outside help to discredit itself given the state of it in the last decade and a half.
  - fortuna86 4y ago
    How was Tucker Carlson tonight, did he own the libs to your satisfaction ?
    - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
      I don't have cable and don't watch Tucker, but good attempt at a burn nevertheless.
coldtea 4y ago
>NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history Well, isn't that the whole business of the NYT since forever, only with "history" usually replaced with "news", and "ideology first" sometimes being "the government says so"?
watwut 4y ago
The primary criticism was that historians did not get enough credit.
cyanydeez 4y ago
Right! Being wrong is the larger point
refurb 4y ago
They are just copying the kinds of clickbait though see all over the internet and highly upvoted on HN. People love it when their biases are confirmed.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  Like how an article titled 'The NYT is wrong about Haiti' is upvoted by hundreds of people who (likely) have never been to Haiti? And maybe 1-2 people who had ever heard of the economist who wrote it before?
  - refurb 4y ago
    Pretty much! I pretty much assume everything I read online is a lie unless proven otherwise.

UncleMeat 4y ago

"Criticism from historians" is normal for everything. Historians criticize work that they even revere. The presence of academic criticism is not evidence that the NYT piece is an "ahistorical, ideology first product". In fact, the majority of criticism from the academic community (as mentioned in the article) is the fact that the historians that were consulted on this piece weren't named in the text.

hitekker 4y ago
I think the GP means that the NYT has a recent history of peddling journalistic rags as academic papers, without the approval of the academic experts they've consulted. One of those fact checkers even wrote an article about how they were ignored by the NYT: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  And I'm saying that your portrayal is foolish. From the very article you link > Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. The 1619 Project contained historical errors that the authors should have avoided. But historians working in this area do not consider it to be a "journalistic rag" even as they criticize it. As I mentioned in my post, academic criticism is not evidence that a piece is devoid of merit.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    You're misrepresenting that article. That article was not some random historian offering an academic criticism. That person was hand-picked by the NYTimes to "fact-check" their article. They undoubtedly chose her because of her ideological background, thinking that she would be okay with revisionary history. She wasn't. So they ignored her.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      I do not believe that I am misrepresenting the article. The reason I do not believe that is because I am personal friends with an unusual number of historians who work in early US history and the history of race in the US. The quote I pulled from the article very neatly sums up their opinion of the 1619 project. The NYT made fairly basic and preventable factual errors in the 1619 project. They should not have done this. This is not new or interesting or controversial information among relevant historians. What is controversial among relevant historians is the conclusion that therefore the 1619 project is ideological bullshit that shouldn't be seen as anything other than garbage. The author of the article you link was indeed correct - factual errors became a lightning rod for reactionaries to dismiss the work as propaganda. But that's not actually how criticism of historical writing works in the academic community. I suspect that if I spoke with the author of this piece, as I have spoken to many people who I suspect she would call colleagues, she'd be more likely to agree with my presentation than yours. All historical writing is "revisionist history." This term is not actually a slur in the academic community because each historian is almost necessarily writing on a topic that many historians have written on before and their work is in dialogue with the work that came before. Presenting a historical narrative from another perspective or through a different methodological lens is not bad nor does it attack or destroy the work that came before. Braudel has claims that are outright wrong but The Mediterranean is heralded as a triumph. Said has claims that don't hold up today but Orientalism is a critical step forward for the field. Heck, even fucking Foucault is seen as essential writing for historians despite him having all sorts of factual errors in his work. Historical writing should seek to be based in fact. But fucking up (even very badly) is not a reason to declare a work to be propaganda.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Historians have ideology too. In fact the field of history is not an exact science...

epgui 4y ago
If I accept the premise that "the field of history is not an exact science" (which, to be clear, I do), it does not logically follow that this makes historians particularly ideological. Both may certainly be true (which I believe), but it's not a very good argument.
- uoaei 4y ago
  I get the feeling your definition of "ideology" is a very specific, politically-motivated one, and not the one that most philosophers and social scientists have concurred is an appropriate default definition over the last 50-70 years. Everyone carries ideology with them. It is the source of subjective interpretations and judgments. And unfortunately for your position, we have more or less come to the consensus that all language and communication is fundamentally subjective: this means that no statements or actions are without ideology.

darth_avocado 4y ago

The NYT article was not “ahistorical”, something that the author points out was the facts were mostly correct. The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn.

tablespoon 4y ago
> The problem here is the narrative that is built based on the facts is not accurate and conclusions weren’t scientifically drawn. Yeah, I think you always have to read things like the NYT with an eye towards their demonstrated institutional biases. I think they can be trusted to get the facts right (even if that fact is "ABC made claim XYZ," when XYZ turns out to have been wrong), and I don't really see a better alternative for getting facts about current events. That said, I don't think journalists at the NYT are the right people to be writing revisionist histories of events that are very much not current. If they want to publish stuff like that, it would better if the hired some actual historians to do these projects (instead of just trying to use them as QC).

sangnoir 4y ago

> The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history[...] That reads like a misrepresentation of TFA: the author conceded that the historical facts reported by the NYT are accurate, but they disagree with the tone and conclusion. The author's angle is a weird one: author thinks that the article(s) should be read as an academic paper (no reason given), and then lobs criticism at it for not being a good academic paper.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
You can use any series of truths to weave a lie, this has been known since antiquity.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  "Ahistorical" has a specific meaning, which does not apply here.

overtonwhy 4y ago

Oh the larger point is an attempt to discredit the newspaper of record for the USA. Thanks for clarifying that you're trying to spin colonial slavery as a good thing because of "liberal media bias".

lp0_on_fire 4y ago
That "newspaper of record" doesn't need a lot of outside help to discredit itself given the state of it in the last decade and a half.
- fortuna86 4y ago
  How was Tucker Carlson tonight, did he own the libs to your satisfaction ?
  - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
    I don't have cable and don't watch Tucker, but good attempt at a burn nevertheless.

coldtea 4y ago

>NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history Well, isn't that the whole business of the NYT since forever, only with "history" usually replaced with "news", and "ideology first" sometimes being "the government says so"?

watwut 4y ago

The primary criticism was that historians did not get enough credit.

cyanydeez 4y ago

Right! Being wrong is the larger point

refurb 4y ago

They are just copying the kinds of clickbait though see all over the internet and highly upvoted on HN. People love it when their biases are confirmed.

RC_ITR 4y ago
Like how an article titled 'The NYT is wrong about Haiti' is upvoted by hundreds of people who (likely) have never been to Haiti? And maybe 1-2 people who had ever heard of the economist who wrote it before?
- refurb 4y ago
  Pretty much! I pretty much assume everything I read online is a lie unless proven otherwise.