11 ms·

NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical

156 points by thmt 4y ago

thmt 4y ago
From former journalist Matt Yglesias on Twitter: a few years ago the New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage. Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. Almost never curious about technology or in awe of progress and potential. This was a very deliberate top-down decision. They decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry. From journalist Kelsey Piper on Twitter in response: People might think Matt is overstating this but I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it. It's shocking to me that the NYTimes would make such an editorial decision, and it's disappointing to hear this about one of the newspapers that I trust the most. Certainly there are many aspects of the tech sector that ought to be criticized and exposed to the public, but I don't think it's good for truth-seeking to take an editorial stance that tech should generally be covered negatively.
- wobbly_bush 4y ago
  It is not shocking to me, and like I commented in a separate comment here you see it in NYT's coverage of international politics. That is harder for people from US to notice as they don't have the ground truth to tell apart the nuances.
- fearthetelomere 4y ago
  I think it's a not-so-rude awakening to follow individuals rather than organizations. For example, Matt Levine could be the one you trust for finance, or Jason Schreier for news on video games. It's potentially easier to understand an individual's biases on a per-article basis than something like the NYT, especially if you follow them and their perspectives over time.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I've thought it was one of the most overt editorial decisions by most media companies. Vast numbers of people survived a pandemic due to big pharma's vaccines, big tech's business tools, Amazon's logistics, businesses built on cloud tech, and using cars instead of public transport. There has been nowhere near enough credit given to those life saving services, and it seems obvious why. Another fun story is this one, from 10 years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-internatio...
- tensor 4y ago
  Unfortunately the NYT editorial board has become quite political in a way that I don't think journalists should. I finally stopped reading them after their highly biased coverage and openly stated support of the Canadian alt-right occupation of our capital. They had statements in their articles such as "the majority of the funding for the protests came from Canada" when the actual number was 54% came from Canadian sources. Maybe from a strict mathematical definition that is still a "majority" but it's certainly not what anyone imagines when they hear the word. There were many other biases in the form of omissions or wording like this in their reporting too. Interestingly, a few years ago I did notice that the NYT and also other newspapers started attacking tech companies relentlessly. At the time it really seemed like there was a coordinated intentional effort. Interesting to see that at least in the case of the NYT that is true. In any case, I no longer trust the NYT as an accurate source that strives to be unbiased. They clearly have an agenda that is more to the right than I'm comfortable with.
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    It’s hilarious that your critique of them is that they are far right. They might be doing something right if they have somehow managed to piss off both the left and right.
    - tensor 4y ago
      I never said they are far right. I said that they are more right than I am comfortable with. I now consider them to have right-center bias, with some instances where they go a bit further. Also, it's a fallacy to think that pissing off both sides somehow mean they are doing something right. It can also just mean that they are not good at any particular thing.
    - akozak 4y ago
      That's an extremely bad way to decide what to believe.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    The NYT is the mouthpiece of the centrist establishment. If the NYT is too "right" for you then you probably want WashPo or HuffPo. And if those are still too right, you're an ultra-progressive and I don't knwo what they read.
- prepend 4y ago
  Tech really killed the news business so maybe this is just them being bitter.
- 23skidoo 4y ago
  What did anyone expect? Everyone's been getting smoke blown up their ass for years now by 'revolutionary' app makers that did very little except skate around regulations and make speculators money. The entire industry looks sleazy no matter which way you cut it. My only surprise is that the editors felt the need to say anything.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    yeah, I can't even really be upset about it. It's like the whitehouse, they SHOULD be skeptical.
- deleted 4y ago
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- glogla 4y ago
  > They decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny I mean, that is for sure true. The tech has been enormous force against freedom, democracy, human rights and science. If it wasn't for Facebook and Twitter, we wouldn't have had Brexit, Trump wouldn't have been elected, antivaxx wouldn't become mainstream stance and millions more people would have survived the pandemic, oh and women in US would still have access to abortions. Then there's Google and their mission to end privacy. Then there's Uber and Amazon and their mission to end labor rights. Then there's Airbnb and their mission to make cities unliveable. Then there's ... you get the point.
- musicale 4y ago
  > one of the newspapers that I trust the most One of the newspapers that I ... might possibly occasionally distrust a tiny bit less than some other inaccurate, biased and misrepresentation-laden newspapers and media sources. I frequently notice major errors and misrepresentations in the NYT and elsewhere, so I can only assume that it's a general property - even in stories where I lack the background information or expertise to identify them immediately.
- tootie 4y ago
  This is very easily disproven if you just go read the news they write. They are appropriately critical of things that deserve skepticism but they still write fun stories about cool internet stuff when they want. Consider this love letter to the Roku screensaver https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/style/roku-city-screensaver.html?searchResultPosition=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/style/roku-city-screensav...
yasp 4y ago
So does that mean that this decision came from the Sulzbergers? If only our hall monitors could turn their gaze inward.
wobbly_bush 4y ago
If you see coverage of any countries not part of the western countries, you will see a similar pattern in NYT, BBC, etc. This just looks like a domestic equivalent with one industry in cross-hairs.
tayo42 4y ago
I don't get why this seems like a big deal or a negative thing. Why wouldn't you want reporters to be critical? Isn't that like the whole point. That's even why we have freedom of press in the 1st amendment, so journalists can be critical.
- ajhurliman 4y ago
  “Critical” in this context is a synonym with “negative”.
- blacksmith_tb 4y ago
  Yes and no, it's important to have critical reporting, but imagine say that all reporting on medicine could only be critical, no articles about breakthroughs in cancer treatment or curing disease, all malpractice and ballooning costs. That wouldn't be wrong, but it'd be incomplete?
  - mehlmao 4y ago
    I'm sure if Facebook cured cancer that would get them favorable coverage. Right now their products decrease quality of life, not increase it.
    - snovv_crash 4y ago
      They're doing awesome things for VR hardware but all people can seem to see there is that it isn't making money.
      - lscdlscd 4y ago
        They're also defining, in the public's imagination, the primary use case of VR to be corporate meeting space. That's bad for VR and bad for society.
    - parineum 4y ago
      I wouldn't really argue about that now, personally, but I know a lot of people who are still on Facebook for whom have compelling reasons to stay and I think that was much more true in the past. That said, Meta isn't the only tech company. Twitter, for example, a place journalists love for the direct-to-consumer style reporting.
mjfl 4y ago
Around the same time Sasha Baron Cohen started blasting Mark Zuckerberg, almost arbitrarily. I wonder what kind of war is going on in heaven.
TillE 4y ago
All journalistic coverage of everything should be critical, or why does it exist?
- drewcoo 4y ago
  Advertising?
- WalterSear 4y ago
  IMHO, you are using a different meaning of the word 'critical' than the tweeter.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    The claim has been filtered through a game of telephone. It may well be the case that NYTimes management directed their journalists to produce critical coverage of tech in the sense that TillE means, which then got corrupted into the "no positive coverage" meaning of 'critical'. I think this is probably what happened, but without any better source for this supposed directive, it's impossible to say for sure.
- bhupy 4y ago
  From the thread: > I think it is broadly good to be on the lookout for hard-hitting exposes and write them where you see them, and broadly bad for your ability to do journalism if you have decided the tenor of your story before reporting it out.
- fullshark 4y ago
  And yet it's clearly selectively critical, based on the editorial positions of the paper / readership. The end result of course is a biased portrait of reality.
seydor 4y ago
Why wouldn't they? They are more powerful than tech in being arbiters of truth, and the fact that they convinced everyone, even tech workers, about it proves that they are higher in the pecking order
- filoleg 4y ago
  > They are more powerful than tech in being arbiters of truth This is just the classic short-term thinking on their end. If that directive becomes widely known, their trustworthiness and status as the arbiter of truth in the public eye will not remain as such for much longer.
  - seydor 4y ago
    They will convince people that it is for their own good. It s not like the mainstream media have a real competitor in terms of narrative-building
Analemma_ 4y ago
The obvious question, of course, being: what other subjects have classified top-down "the coverage will look like this" directives.
drewcoo 4y ago
A lot of big tech is an existential threat to traditional media. It's a wonder that the coverage is as balanced as it is.
mola 4y ago
So? These companies became so big and powerful, they are basically our new governing bodies. They should be critically treated. Exactly like the political entities they are.
deanCommie 4y ago
Tech Companies are the most valuable companies in the world right now. Their CEO's/founders are some of the richest most powerful people in the world right now. As a Technologist, I do find it unfair that there is a lack of "awe" in terms of the technological progress. But I think on a global societal scale, the non-technological impact of the largest corporations in the world and the richest people in the world is more meaningful than the impact of their technologies. Put another way, the impact that Uber/AirBbnb has on employment, housing prices, and the health of cities and communities is much bigger than the impact they have on my ability to get a convenient ride to a destination, or to rent lodging on my vacation.
killjoywashere 4y ago
Does anyone know if this was done across leading journals? Did they collaborate on this top-down position with WSJ, WaPo, etc?
undoware 4y ago
You do understand that critical thinking is literally the point of journalism, right? In 2022, I'd certainly give the same directive. Our industry can and should be held to account, just like any other seat of power. (Because that's what we are now, whether we like it or not.)
- undoware 4y ago
  I take great pride in achieving a -2 point rating on a post because it means that I've spoken truth to the powers that read HN. I take even greater pride in talking about commenting of comments, _contra_ the guidelines, because a rule that you cannot discuss collective moderation decisions is like forbidding your subordinates from telling you that you have spinach in your teeth. The spinach abides.
kyleblarson 4y ago
I honestly can't even fathom having a job that requires me to be on Twitter all day. It sounds horrific.
undoware 4y ago
It's wild that HN, forum that seems disproportionately in favor of unregulated speech should feel uncomfortable when a newspaper chooses a critical editorial stance. You agree that, by your own lights, editorial stances of newspapers are none of your business, yes? Free speech, yes? Everyone says 'both sides' but that's not actually the case, is it? Shoe, meet other foot. [EDIT]: typos removed
- deleted 4y ago
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- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  I don't think anyone here is calling for the government to restrict the NYT's editorial tone. They're saying that this behaviour is unbecoming of a newspaper of the NYT's reputation, and that their trust in this institution has been damaged as a result.
  - undoware 4y ago
    No one needs to -- the Free Speech Debate is not really about the government, is it? Elon didn't buy Twitter to protect it from the fed. He bought it to protect it from what he calls a "woke mind-virus" -- aka, progressive politics. This article is trending because -- and I'm generalizing here -- HN skews center-right (what I like to call 'business-right'.) As a result, it has fallen prey to the false narrative of corrupt left-wing mainstream media unfairly maligning good honest billionaires.
    - amadeuspagel 4y ago
      No one is calling for twitter to censor the New York Times either.
      - undoware 4y ago
        ...I can't tell if this is willful misinterpretation or not, but I certainly did not mean to imply anything at all about twitter censorship. confused sounds EDIT: above, read 'FOR EXAMPLE, ....' when I begin to talk about Twitter. HTH
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
Outrage sells papers. Or, er, digital subscriptions.
muaytimbo 4y ago
I mean the NYT is wrong about everything. Krugman said the Internet was never going to be a thing, post Covid the editorializing was inflation wasn’t possibly a thing, the government should go bigger with stimulus and print more money. Their whole paper ages like milk, the only reason it persists is apparently Americans have no short term memory.
- deleted 4y ago
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pvg 4y ago
Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708
kuharich 4y ago
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459740
- deleted 4y ago
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brucelidl 4y ago
I would like to see more proof for this than just one guy saying he heard it from others. It may very well be true, but it would be far more convincing, to me, if some one with actual direct knowledge commented publicly. Surely, if it was so widespread, and unambiguous, it would not be be difficult to get clear evidence of this directive from NYT leadership.
- deleted 4y ago
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- glitcher 4y ago
  Agreed. And you would think at least some of the journalists would leak evidence of this if they took the integrity of their profession seriously. Again, a lack of evidence isn't proof it didn't happen either.
  - mountainb 4y ago
    Journalism isn't a profession. Even nurses and some managerial employees are held to a higher standard of duty. You will have an easier time holding someone who is responsible for fixing ice cream machines to an objective standard of professionalism than you will a journalist. Some journalists have tried to conjure up "professional standards" that aren't binding, but the fact that they are not binding is why it's not a profession and why those "standards" are just suggestions. Unfortunately, the accumulated cruft of decades of wrongly decided cases grants this pseudo-profession many special rights and no formal duties to counterbalance those.
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - rad88 4y ago
      That is a very incisive analysis of "software engineering". I don't know how you did it.
  - azinman2 4y ago
bhauer 4y ago
This should not be a surprise to anyone who has been reading the New York Times' technology journalism for the past several years. In fact, I'd argue that even before any such "directive" was made, the bias in high-profile papers was already predominantly anti-tech, except in rare circumstances where praising a technology sector or tech company served the overarching political narrative of the moment (e.g., then-nascent social media was a good thing when Obama leveraged it to success; and a toxin when later less palatable politicians did the same). This is not limited to the New York Times. Even tech-oriented journalistic venues such as The Verge have a decidedly snarky and grim view of many technologies. And they are effective at steering discourse, even among notionally technology-savvy people. Consider, for example, how antagonistic coverage of autonomous transportation by major media outlets has yielded widespread pessimism and doubt. Presently, you have non-trivial numbers of otherwise intelligent technology-forward journalism consumers convinced that autonomy is an unsolvable problem.
- spfzero 4y ago
  I agree with you in general about media bias, but with regard to autonomous vehicles you've picked the exact thing media should have been skeptical about. It's the critical, even skeptical view, that is appropriate. I don't think people got the impression that it is unsolvable, but hopefully people understand that it is difficult, and far from solved at the moment. That's not the feeling you'd get if you just blindly accepted tech companies' press releases. Of course, major media outlets like NYT telling reporters to bend stories away from the reporter's own experience, and slant them towards an editorial position, is disturbing at the very least.
- greenthrow 4y ago
  I do read the NYT and I 100% disagree with your claim. In my view it is overly friendly to big corporations of all kinds.
- deleted 4y ago
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- dclusin 4y ago
  I don’t think autonomous driving is unsolvable. But every single company in that field has shamelessly lied about the time tables for the availability of the tech. And there’s been zero accountability for it. Remember how 2020 was supposed to be the year we get fully autonomous vehicles? The only thing unfortunate about the coverage is that the media was entirely complicit and exercised no skepticism or pushback against these seemingly impossible time tables for deliveries of such a clearly complicated and as yet unsolved problem. They just blindly regurgitated the tech industry marketing pr around it. Has any single car company ever demonstrated a car that can drive while it’s pouring rain out?
insane_dreamer 4y ago
Not sure that this is entirely a bad thing. I would read any glowing article about a tech company suspiciously (was it a paid placement?) I wonder though if this was fallout from the media's fawning coverage of Holmes pre-Carreyeou, and Facebook's fall from grace with the Cambridge Analytica story.
cbtacy 4y ago
Former NYT writer here.... NYT, as far as I know, has always had a "top-down" directive that coverage be critical. That's, you know, the job of journalism and all. Non-critical pieces are opinion, not reporting.
- luckylion 4y ago
  "And make sure to shit on tech, because everything else would be opinion, not reporting"?
  - lscdlscd 4y ago
    Pretty much every major tech company is either inherently or in practice worth shitting on.
    - rutierut 4y ago
      This is exactly that attitude. It's both awesome that I can facetime my dying grandma in HD and Apple is deliberately non-conforming with it's messages and charging port behavior. Tech isn't bad per se. Some things are super dangerous. Some things are literally awesome.
- kodyo 4y ago
  Most of us normies had been operating under the impression that the job of journalists was to report facts about notable events.
- loeg 4y ago
  You're using critical in a different sense than the linked tweet. The claim being made is: > There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story.
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Journalism is supposed to be critical, no? Otherwise it is just rehashed press releases.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Most journalism is just press releases. I am surprised people are just now figuring this out.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Journalism is supposed to be critical, no? Otherwise it is just rehashed press releases. But the people who put out those press releases, like tech executives and investors, want it just be rehashed press releases. They actually got their wish for a looong time, and came to feel they were entitled to it.
whateveracct 4y ago
A lot of HNers say Twitter and Google and FB and the like have gotten so powerful they are pseudo-governmental institutions. Don't those same people want the journalistic lens used for government to be investigative?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tablespoon 4y ago
The post title here is misleading. What's being described here by Yglesias isn't a directive to be "critical" (in the colloquial sense meaning "negative"), but more a directive to be skeptical and investigate: > Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. A lot of tech people would like tech coverage puffy, un-skeptical, and positive, but that's totally inappropriate for an industry as influential and frankly difficult to understand (for a layman) as tech. It sounds like now they coverage like they cover the government, which to me is totally appropriate.
z7 4y ago
I feel like journalism needs to be re-invented in a way that accounts for our modern understanding of human psychology. We might need to define new standards and processes that counteract against a natural inclination towards various biases, herd effects, conformity, double standards, partisanship etc. The current system seems quite dysfunctional.
nikodunk 4y ago
Careful! "Critical" is paraphrased. The thread says "tough investigative lens"! "Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair." Of course that will often lead to critical articles, but it is not precise to paraphrase the actual meaning here IMO.
- tootie 4y ago
  "Critical" in journalism doesn't mean antagonistic or agenda-driven. It just means to not treat it like fluff. The Style section is not critical. Cooking is not critical. I can imagine Tech used to be soft news (David Pogue era) but had to pivot as it became so central to daily life.
faeriechangling 4y ago
Hearsay on twitter
Adraghast 4y ago
> For the record, Vox has never told me that my coverage of something must be 'hard-hitting' Perhaps Vox might be worth something if they did, Kelsey.
greenthrow 4y ago
Matt Yglesias is not a reliable source for this kind of claim. Nor is this even believable if you actually have been reading the NYT instead of just listening to the imaginary bogeyman peddled by the far right. The NYT is a center right paper that is generally friendly and welcoming to big money (see greenwashing "advertorials" by Shell and many others), it is not the leftist rag that right wing hacks like Yglesias constantly paint it as.
nr2x 4y ago
The NYT basically IS a tech company at this point. They have gripes with the competition.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  By the same token, some tech companies, especially Twitter, basically ARE media companies. I tried to analyze News Corp's annual report to find their R&D spending, the same way I did for six tech companies (https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/should-elon-lay-off-all-those-developers https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/should-elon-lay-off-all-...) Unfortunately, their accounting treatments of software are different, so a direct comparison was quite difficult. NYT sells ads and also subscriptions; Twitter sells ads and wants to start selling subscriptions. Yeah, NYT pays an editorial staff, but they've been downsizing that pretty relentlessly. The hypothesis is that the two business models will be converging.
  - nr2x 4y ago
    Exactly, aside from journalists the skill set of their employees broadly overlaps.
- jiscariot 4y ago
  Exactly. They've got great investigative journalism when focused on direct competitors, who they assure us are all peddlers of misinformation. It's also laughable to watch them do the daily Meta hit piece, pretending they're the good guys and were never advertiser funded. A gate-keeping, deeply-embedded mono-culture of an institution funded by 5M well-off subscribers, going after a platform that 2.9B people use on a daily basis to connect with each other. It's not that they are doing it, it's that they do it and pretend they are taking the moral high ground.
  - nr2x 4y ago
    To be fair, they did publish an op ed to that effect: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/opinion/data-privacy-tracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/opinion/data-privacy-trac...
TurkishPoptart 4y ago
I wonder how many other top-down directives they might have. I'm sure there was one about only portraying mRNA vaccines in a positive light, for all age groups.
bubblethink 4y ago
The thing is, what else can NYT, or any mainstream paper do ? The mainstream papers lack the talent or expertise to cover technology rigorously. There are specialized technical publications (e.g., at the level of lwn or anandtech), a few middle of the road ones (e.g., at the level of verge or ars), and then garden variety blog spam and youtube content. NYT has to find some niche that works for its core competence and its reader base. And that would be broad coverage with political undertones. That seems like what they do - mostly useless stuff with occasional well-sourced articles that may have tie ins with public policy.
all2well 4y ago
If I understand Yglesias' point, tech executives got annoyed that twitter would grant verification to journalists that gave them negative press attention? Why is everyone so obsessed with blue checks? Don't tech executives have their own PR departments? The twitter thread doesn't mention any specifics, but I've seen self-driving cars mentioned in other comments as something "unfairly maligned" by major newspapers. So far as I can tell, the self-driving efforts of Tesla, Uber, and other startups have failed to deliver again and again on the promise of having a car that can drive itself without human supervision. Is that not deserving of criticism? Not to mention how Google in particular has gone to war to not pay newspapers a single dime for reproducing their content. Business is business, and a lot depends on interpersonal relationships. Strong-arming somebody usually doesn't endear them to you. Skepticism of new technologies has been around forever. The way to earn public trust is to actually deliver on things that make people's lives better.
bhk 4y ago
Relevant to the top-down nature of NYT coverage: https://twitter.com/DaCaveOfWonders/status/1366168277676920832 https://twitter.com/DaCaveOfWonders/status/13661682776769208...
alphabettsy 4y ago
I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean actual reporting rather than what often read like company press releases or marketing.

156 points by thmt 4y ago

thmt 4y ago

From former journalist Matt Yglesias on Twitter: a few years ago the New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage. Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. Almost never curious about technology or in awe of progress and potential. This was a very deliberate top-down decision. They decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry. From journalist Kelsey Piper on Twitter in response: People might think Matt is overstating this but I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it. It's shocking to me that the NYTimes would make such an editorial decision, and it's disappointing to hear this about one of the newspapers that I trust the most. Certainly there are many aspects of the tech sector that ought to be criticized and exposed to the public, but I don't think it's good for truth-seeking to take an editorial stance that tech should generally be covered negatively.

wobbly_bush 4y ago
It is not shocking to me, and like I commented in a separate comment here you see it in NYT's coverage of international politics. That is harder for people from US to notice as they don't have the ground truth to tell apart the nuances.
fearthetelomere 4y ago
I think it's a not-so-rude awakening to follow individuals rather than organizations. For example, Matt Levine could be the one you trust for finance, or Jason Schreier for news on video games. It's potentially easier to understand an individual's biases on a per-article basis than something like the NYT, especially if you follow them and their perspectives over time.
robertlagrant 4y ago
I've thought it was one of the most overt editorial decisions by most media companies. Vast numbers of people survived a pandemic due to big pharma's vaccines, big tech's business tools, Amazon's logistics, businesses built on cloud tech, and using cars instead of public transport. There has been nowhere near enough credit given to those life saving services, and it seems obvious why. Another fun story is this one, from 10 years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-internatio...
tensor 4y ago
Unfortunately the NYT editorial board has become quite political in a way that I don't think journalists should. I finally stopped reading them after their highly biased coverage and openly stated support of the Canadian alt-right occupation of our capital. They had statements in their articles such as "the majority of the funding for the protests came from Canada" when the actual number was 54% came from Canadian sources. Maybe from a strict mathematical definition that is still a "majority" but it's certainly not what anyone imagines when they hear the word. There were many other biases in the form of omissions or wording like this in their reporting too. Interestingly, a few years ago I did notice that the NYT and also other newspapers started attacking tech companies relentlessly. At the time it really seemed like there was a coordinated intentional effort. Interesting to see that at least in the case of the NYT that is true. In any case, I no longer trust the NYT as an accurate source that strives to be unbiased. They clearly have an agenda that is more to the right than I'm comfortable with.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  It’s hilarious that your critique of them is that they are far right. They might be doing something right if they have somehow managed to piss off both the left and right.
  - tensor 4y ago
    I never said they are far right. I said that they are more right than I am comfortable with. I now consider them to have right-center bias, with some instances where they go a bit further. Also, it's a fallacy to think that pissing off both sides somehow mean they are doing something right. It can also just mean that they are not good at any particular thing.
  - akozak 4y ago
    That's an extremely bad way to decide what to believe.
- dekhn 4y ago
  The NYT is the mouthpiece of the centrist establishment. If the NYT is too "right" for you then you probably want WashPo or HuffPo. And if those are still too right, you're an ultra-progressive and I don't knwo what they read.
prepend 4y ago
Tech really killed the news business so maybe this is just them being bitter.
23skidoo 4y ago
What did anyone expect? Everyone's been getting smoke blown up their ass for years now by 'revolutionary' app makers that did very little except skate around regulations and make speculators money. The entire industry looks sleazy no matter which way you cut it. My only surprise is that the editors felt the need to say anything.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  yeah, I can't even really be upset about it. It's like the whitehouse, they SHOULD be skeptical.
deleted 4y ago
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glogla 4y ago
> They decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny I mean, that is for sure true. The tech has been enormous force against freedom, democracy, human rights and science. If it wasn't for Facebook and Twitter, we wouldn't have had Brexit, Trump wouldn't have been elected, antivaxx wouldn't become mainstream stance and millions more people would have survived the pandemic, oh and women in US would still have access to abortions. Then there's Google and their mission to end privacy. Then there's Uber and Amazon and their mission to end labor rights. Then there's Airbnb and their mission to make cities unliveable. Then there's ... you get the point.
musicale 4y ago
> one of the newspapers that I trust the most One of the newspapers that I ... might possibly occasionally distrust a tiny bit less than some other inaccurate, biased and misrepresentation-laden newspapers and media sources. I frequently notice major errors and misrepresentations in the NYT and elsewhere, so I can only assume that it's a general property - even in stories where I lack the background information or expertise to identify them immediately.
tootie 4y ago
This is very easily disproven if you just go read the news they write. They are appropriately critical of things that deserve skepticism but they still write fun stories about cool internet stuff when they want. Consider this love letter to the Roku screensaver https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/style/roku-city-screensaver.html?searchResultPosition=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/style/roku-city-screensav...

yasp 4y ago

So does that mean that this decision came from the Sulzbergers? If only our hall monitors could turn their gaze inward.

wobbly_bush 4y ago

If you see coverage of any countries not part of the western countries, you will see a similar pattern in NYT, BBC, etc. This just looks like a domestic equivalent with one industry in cross-hairs.

tayo42 4y ago

I don't get why this seems like a big deal or a negative thing. Why wouldn't you want reporters to be critical? Isn't that like the whole point. That's even why we have freedom of press in the 1st amendment, so journalists can be critical.

ajhurliman 4y ago
“Critical” in this context is a synonym with “negative”.
blacksmith_tb 4y ago
Yes and no, it's important to have critical reporting, but imagine say that all reporting on medicine could only be critical, no articles about breakthroughs in cancer treatment or curing disease, all malpractice and ballooning costs. That wouldn't be wrong, but it'd be incomplete?
- mehlmao 4y ago
  I'm sure if Facebook cured cancer that would get them favorable coverage. Right now their products decrease quality of life, not increase it.
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    They're doing awesome things for VR hardware but all people can seem to see there is that it isn't making money.
    - lscdlscd 4y ago
      They're also defining, in the public's imagination, the primary use case of VR to be corporate meeting space. That's bad for VR and bad for society.
  - parineum 4y ago
    I wouldn't really argue about that now, personally, but I know a lot of people who are still on Facebook for whom have compelling reasons to stay and I think that was much more true in the past. That said, Meta isn't the only tech company. Twitter, for example, a place journalists love for the direct-to-consumer style reporting.

mjfl 4y ago

Around the same time Sasha Baron Cohen started blasting Mark Zuckerberg, almost arbitrarily. I wonder what kind of war is going on in heaven.

TillE 4y ago

All journalistic coverage of everything should be critical, or why does it exist?

drewcoo 4y ago
Advertising?
WalterSear 4y ago
IMHO, you are using a different meaning of the word 'critical' than the tweeter.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  The claim has been filtered through a game of telephone. It may well be the case that NYTimes management directed their journalists to produce critical coverage of tech in the sense that TillE means, which then got corrupted into the "no positive coverage" meaning of 'critical'. I think this is probably what happened, but without any better source for this supposed directive, it's impossible to say for sure.
bhupy 4y ago
From the thread: > I think it is broadly good to be on the lookout for hard-hitting exposes and write them where you see them, and broadly bad for your ability to do journalism if you have decided the tenor of your story before reporting it out.
fullshark 4y ago
And yet it's clearly selectively critical, based on the editorial positions of the paper / readership. The end result of course is a biased portrait of reality.

seydor 4y ago

Why wouldn't they? They are more powerful than tech in being arbiters of truth, and the fact that they convinced everyone, even tech workers, about it proves that they are higher in the pecking order

filoleg 4y ago
> They are more powerful than tech in being arbiters of truth This is just the classic short-term thinking on their end. If that directive becomes widely known, their trustworthiness and status as the arbiter of truth in the public eye will not remain as such for much longer.
- seydor 4y ago
  They will convince people that it is for their own good. It s not like the mainstream media have a real competitor in terms of narrative-building

Analemma_ 4y ago

The obvious question, of course, being: what other subjects have classified top-down "the coverage will look like this" directives.

drewcoo 4y ago

A lot of big tech is an existential threat to traditional media. It's a wonder that the coverage is as balanced as it is.

mola 4y ago

So? These companies became so big and powerful, they are basically our new governing bodies. They should be critically treated. Exactly like the political entities they are.

deanCommie 4y ago

Tech Companies are the most valuable companies in the world right now. Their CEO's/founders are some of the richest most powerful people in the world right now. As a Technologist, I do find it unfair that there is a lack of "awe" in terms of the technological progress. But I think on a global societal scale, the non-technological impact of the largest corporations in the world and the richest people in the world is more meaningful than the impact of their technologies. Put another way, the impact that Uber/AirBbnb has on employment, housing prices, and the health of cities and communities is much bigger than the impact they have on my ability to get a convenient ride to a destination, or to rent lodging on my vacation.

killjoywashere 4y ago

Does anyone know if this was done across leading journals? Did they collaborate on this top-down position with WSJ, WaPo, etc?

undoware 4y ago

You do understand that critical thinking is literally the point of journalism, right? In 2022, I'd certainly give the same directive. Our industry can and should be held to account, just like any other seat of power. (Because that's what we are now, whether we like it or not.)

undoware 4y ago
I take great pride in achieving a -2 point rating on a post because it means that I've spoken truth to the powers that read HN. I take even greater pride in talking about commenting of comments, _contra_ the guidelines, because a rule that you cannot discuss collective moderation decisions is like forbidding your subordinates from telling you that you have spinach in your teeth. The spinach abides.

kyleblarson 4y ago

I honestly can't even fathom having a job that requires me to be on Twitter all day. It sounds horrific.

undoware 4y ago

It's wild that HN, forum that seems disproportionately in favor of unregulated speech should feel uncomfortable when a newspaper chooses a critical editorial stance. You agree that, by your own lights, editorial stances of newspapers are none of your business, yes? Free speech, yes? Everyone says 'both sides' but that's not actually the case, is it? Shoe, meet other foot. [EDIT]: typos removed

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mitthrowaway2 4y ago
I don't think anyone here is calling for the government to restrict the NYT's editorial tone. They're saying that this behaviour is unbecoming of a newspaper of the NYT's reputation, and that their trust in this institution has been damaged as a result.
- undoware 4y ago
  No one needs to -- the Free Speech Debate is not really about the government, is it? Elon didn't buy Twitter to protect it from the fed. He bought it to protect it from what he calls a "woke mind-virus" -- aka, progressive politics. This article is trending because -- and I'm generalizing here -- HN skews center-right (what I like to call 'business-right'.) As a result, it has fallen prey to the false narrative of corrupt left-wing mainstream media unfairly maligning good honest billionaires.
  - amadeuspagel 4y ago
    No one is calling for twitter to censor the New York Times either.
    - undoware 4y ago
      ...I can't tell if this is willful misinterpretation or not, but I certainly did not mean to imply anything at all about twitter censorship. confused sounds EDIT: above, read 'FOR EXAMPLE, ....' when I begin to talk about Twitter. HTH

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

Outrage sells papers. Or, er, digital subscriptions.

muaytimbo 4y ago

I mean the NYT is wrong about everything. Krugman said the Internet was never going to be a thing, post Covid the editorializing was inflation wasn’t possibly a thing, the government should go bigger with stimulus and print more money. Their whole paper ages like milk, the only reason it persists is apparently Americans have no short term memory.

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pvg 4y ago

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708

kuharich 4y ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459740

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brucelidl 4y ago

I would like to see more proof for this than just one guy saying he heard it from others. It may very well be true, but it would be far more convincing, to me, if some one with actual direct knowledge commented publicly. Surely, if it was so widespread, and unambiguous, it would not be be difficult to get clear evidence of this directive from NYT leadership.

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glitcher 4y ago
Agreed. And you would think at least some of the journalists would leak evidence of this if they took the integrity of their profession seriously. Again, a lack of evidence isn't proof it didn't happen either.
- mountainb 4y ago
  Journalism isn't a profession. Even nurses and some managerial employees are held to a higher standard of duty. You will have an easier time holding someone who is responsible for fixing ice cream machines to an objective standard of professionalism than you will a journalist. Some journalists have tried to conjure up "professional standards" that aren't binding, but the fact that they are not binding is why it's not a profession and why those "standards" are just suggestions. Unfortunately, the accumulated cruft of decades of wrongly decided cases grants this pseudo-profession many special rights and no formal duties to counterbalance those.
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  - rad88 4y ago
    That is a very incisive analysis of "software engineering". I don't know how you did it.
- azinman2 4y ago

bhauer 4y ago

This should not be a surprise to anyone who has been reading the New York Times' technology journalism for the past several years. In fact, I'd argue that even before any such "directive" was made, the bias in high-profile papers was already predominantly anti-tech, except in rare circumstances where praising a technology sector or tech company served the overarching political narrative of the moment (e.g., then-nascent social media was a good thing when Obama leveraged it to success; and a toxin when later less palatable politicians did the same). This is not limited to the New York Times. Even tech-oriented journalistic venues such as The Verge have a decidedly snarky and grim view of many technologies. And they are effective at steering discourse, even among notionally technology-savvy people. Consider, for example, how antagonistic coverage of autonomous transportation by major media outlets has yielded widespread pessimism and doubt. Presently, you have non-trivial numbers of otherwise intelligent technology-forward journalism consumers convinced that autonomy is an unsolvable problem.

spfzero 4y ago
I agree with you in general about media bias, but with regard to autonomous vehicles you've picked the exact thing media should have been skeptical about. It's the critical, even skeptical view, that is appropriate. I don't think people got the impression that it is unsolvable, but hopefully people understand that it is difficult, and far from solved at the moment. That's not the feeling you'd get if you just blindly accepted tech companies' press releases. Of course, major media outlets like NYT telling reporters to bend stories away from the reporter's own experience, and slant them towards an editorial position, is disturbing at the very least.
greenthrow 4y ago
I do read the NYT and I 100% disagree with your claim. In my view it is overly friendly to big corporations of all kinds.
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dclusin 4y ago
I don’t think autonomous driving is unsolvable. But every single company in that field has shamelessly lied about the time tables for the availability of the tech. And there’s been zero accountability for it. Remember how 2020 was supposed to be the year we get fully autonomous vehicles? The only thing unfortunate about the coverage is that the media was entirely complicit and exercised no skepticism or pushback against these seemingly impossible time tables for deliveries of such a clearly complicated and as yet unsolved problem. They just blindly regurgitated the tech industry marketing pr around it. Has any single car company ever demonstrated a car that can drive while it’s pouring rain out?

insane_dreamer 4y ago

Not sure that this is entirely a bad thing. I would read any glowing article about a tech company suspiciously (was it a paid placement?) I wonder though if this was fallout from the media's fawning coverage of Holmes pre-Carreyeou, and Facebook's fall from grace with the Cambridge Analytica story.

cbtacy 4y ago

Former NYT writer here.... NYT, as far as I know, has always had a "top-down" directive that coverage be critical. That's, you know, the job of journalism and all. Non-critical pieces are opinion, not reporting.

luckylion 4y ago
"And make sure to shit on tech, because everything else would be opinion, not reporting"?
- lscdlscd 4y ago
  Pretty much every major tech company is either inherently or in practice worth shitting on.
  - rutierut 4y ago
    This is exactly that attitude. It's both awesome that I can facetime my dying grandma in HD and Apple is deliberately non-conforming with it's messages and charging port behavior. Tech isn't bad per se. Some things are super dangerous. Some things are literally awesome.
kodyo 4y ago
Most of us normies had been operating under the impression that the job of journalists was to report facts about notable events.
loeg 4y ago
You're using critical in a different sense than the linked tweet. The claim being made is: > There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

Journalism is supposed to be critical, no? Otherwise it is just rehashed press releases.

encryptluks2 4y ago
Most journalism is just press releases. I am surprised people are just now figuring this out.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Journalism is supposed to be critical, no? Otherwise it is just rehashed press releases. But the people who put out those press releases, like tech executives and investors, want it just be rehashed press releases. They actually got their wish for a looong time, and came to feel they were entitled to it.

whateveracct 4y ago

A lot of HNers say Twitter and Google and FB and the like have gotten so powerful they are pseudo-governmental institutions. Don't those same people want the journalistic lens used for government to be investigative?

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tablespoon 4y ago

The post title here is misleading. What's being described here by Yglesias isn't a directive to be "critical" (in the colloquial sense meaning "negative"), but more a directive to be skeptical and investigate: > Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. A lot of tech people would like tech coverage puffy, un-skeptical, and positive, but that's totally inappropriate for an industry as influential and frankly difficult to understand (for a layman) as tech. It sounds like now they coverage like they cover the government, which to me is totally appropriate.

z7 4y ago

I feel like journalism needs to be re-invented in a way that accounts for our modern understanding of human psychology. We might need to define new standards and processes that counteract against a natural inclination towards various biases, herd effects, conformity, double standards, partisanship etc. The current system seems quite dysfunctional.

nikodunk 4y ago

Careful! "Critical" is paraphrased. The thread says "tough investigative lens"! "Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair." Of course that will often lead to critical articles, but it is not precise to paraphrase the actual meaning here IMO.

tootie 4y ago
"Critical" in journalism doesn't mean antagonistic or agenda-driven. It just means to not treat it like fluff. The Style section is not critical. Cooking is not critical. I can imagine Tech used to be soft news (David Pogue era) but had to pivot as it became so central to daily life.

faeriechangling 4y ago

Hearsay on twitter

Adraghast 4y ago

> For the record, Vox has never told me that my coverage of something must be 'hard-hitting' Perhaps Vox might be worth something if they did, Kelsey.

greenthrow 4y ago

Matt Yglesias is not a reliable source for this kind of claim. Nor is this even believable if you actually have been reading the NYT instead of just listening to the imaginary bogeyman peddled by the far right. The NYT is a center right paper that is generally friendly and welcoming to big money (see greenwashing "advertorials" by Shell and many others), it is not the leftist rag that right wing hacks like Yglesias constantly paint it as.

nr2x 4y ago

The NYT basically IS a tech company at this point. They have gripes with the competition.

AlbertCory 4y ago
By the same token, some tech companies, especially Twitter, basically ARE media companies. I tried to analyze News Corp's annual report to find their R&D spending, the same way I did for six tech companies (https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/should-elon-lay-off-all-those-developers https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/should-elon-lay-off-all-...) Unfortunately, their accounting treatments of software are different, so a direct comparison was quite difficult. NYT sells ads and also subscriptions; Twitter sells ads and wants to start selling subscriptions. Yeah, NYT pays an editorial staff, but they've been downsizing that pretty relentlessly. The hypothesis is that the two business models will be converging.
- nr2x 4y ago
  Exactly, aside from journalists the skill set of their employees broadly overlaps.
jiscariot 4y ago
Exactly. They've got great investigative journalism when focused on direct competitors, who they assure us are all peddlers of misinformation. It's also laughable to watch them do the daily Meta hit piece, pretending they're the good guys and were never advertiser funded. A gate-keeping, deeply-embedded mono-culture of an institution funded by 5M well-off subscribers, going after a platform that 2.9B people use on a daily basis to connect with each other. It's not that they are doing it, it's that they do it and pretend they are taking the moral high ground.
- nr2x 4y ago
  To be fair, they did publish an op ed to that effect: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/opinion/data-privacy-tracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/opinion/data-privacy-trac...

TurkishPoptart 4y ago

I wonder how many other top-down directives they might have. I'm sure there was one about only portraying mRNA vaccines in a positive light, for all age groups.

bubblethink 4y ago

The thing is, what else can NYT, or any mainstream paper do ? The mainstream papers lack the talent or expertise to cover technology rigorously. There are specialized technical publications (e.g., at the level of lwn or anandtech), a few middle of the road ones (e.g., at the level of verge or ars), and then garden variety blog spam and youtube content. NYT has to find some niche that works for its core competence and its reader base. And that would be broad coverage with political undertones. That seems like what they do - mostly useless stuff with occasional well-sourced articles that may have tie ins with public policy.

all2well 4y ago

If I understand Yglesias' point, tech executives got annoyed that twitter would grant verification to journalists that gave them negative press attention? Why is everyone so obsessed with blue checks? Don't tech executives have their own PR departments? The twitter thread doesn't mention any specifics, but I've seen self-driving cars mentioned in other comments as something "unfairly maligned" by major newspapers. So far as I can tell, the self-driving efforts of Tesla, Uber, and other startups have failed to deliver again and again on the promise of having a car that can drive itself without human supervision. Is that not deserving of criticism? Not to mention how Google in particular has gone to war to not pay newspapers a single dime for reproducing their content. Business is business, and a lot depends on interpersonal relationships. Strong-arming somebody usually doesn't endear them to you. Skepticism of new technologies has been around forever. The way to earn public trust is to actually deliver on things that make people's lives better.

bhk 4y ago

Relevant to the top-down nature of NYT coverage: https://twitter.com/DaCaveOfWonders/status/1366168277676920832 https://twitter.com/DaCaveOfWonders/status/13661682776769208...

alphabettsy 4y ago

I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean actual reporting rather than what often read like company press releases or marketing.