3 ms·
It's not an opinion piece, it's a biased piece. Let's compare the headlines and ledes, which set the tone of a piece (some might argue they're all that matter).
by rory096 11y ago
It's not an opinion piece, it's a biased piece. Let's compare the headlines and ledes, which set the tone of a piece (some might argue they're all that matter).
Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
1. Ellen Pao, the interim chief executive of Reddit, resigned from the online message board on Friday after a week of ceaseless criticism from scores of angry users over the handling of an employee departure.
This a pretty matter-of-fact statement of what happened, as you'd expect from a quick reaction piece. 1) Resigned. 2) Week of criticism. (wait, only scores of users?) 3) Employee departure.
It’s Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0: Fighter of Sexism Is Out at Reddit
1. Ellen Pao became a hero to many when she took on the entrenched sexist culture of Silicon Valley. But sentiment is a fickle thing, and late Friday the entrepreneur fell victim to a shrill crowd demanding her ouster as chief executive of the popular social media site Reddit.
Boom. 1) Hero. 2) Anti-sexist. 3) Angry mob. There's some serious spin being applied here. No mention of any reasoning, we only know they're "shrill."
Next couple:
(initial article was matter-of-fact details that should definitely have been buried later)
2. Ms. Pao’s abrupt downfall in the face of a torrent of sexist and racist attacks, many of them on Reddit itself, is likely to renew charges that bullying, harrassment and ugly behavior are out of control on the web — and that Silicon Valley’s well-publicized lack of interest in hiring anyone who is not male and white is contributing to the problem.
3. The debates over diversity in technology and invective on the Internet have been simmering for a long time, but they boiled over in the last year. One reason was Ms. Pao’s lawsuit against her former employer, the venerable venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Most people will have stopped reading at this point. It's 100% about sexism, bullying and shitty internet behavior. No mention of Victoria, /r/fatpeoplehate, or IAmA.
Victoria's not mentioned until paragraph 5, below the second picture, and it's hedged by an unrelated part about Pao's gender fueling it. Victoria's gender is never mentioned as a factor, and isn't revealed except by her name the only other time she's discussed, in paragraph 12.
The moderator protests get one sentence, also in paragraph 12. None of their complaints besides Victoria were mentioned. Note that the IAmA mods' op-ed was published in the Times 2 days prior.
FPH never makes it in there, even though it would lend credence to their argument about bullying and harassment being "out of control on the web." I would argue its omission leans the article towards the SV sexism storyline.
I'm not saying that anything in the article is false. Nor do I think it's an opinion piece – it absolutely falls on the "objective news" side of the spectrum. It could even be perfectly cromulent as a standalone article — just not as the lead story on the reddit drama.
It's about what's said, what's emphasized, and what's buried. That's spin. And this article is spun, whether because the reporter hates freedom or because Silicon Valley sexism makes for a hot story. That's not the type of reportage I expect from the New York Times.
- tptacek 11y agoI think we mostly agree. I'm willing to concede that the piece is "biased" --- I don't know if it is, because I think misogyny is in fact the most important attribute of the Pao story, but that alone forces me to accept that reasonable people could believe the piece wasn't perfectly balanced. So when you say: I'm not saying that anything in the article is false. Nor do I think it's an opinion piece – it absolutely falls on the "objective news" side of the spectrum. It could even be perfectly cromulent as a standalone article — just not as the lead story on the reddit drama. I think that leaves us in a place without much interesting debate. You think the lede of the latest piece is "spin"; I think it's pretty self-evidently the right lede for the piece. But this is a very far cry from the debate "TechRaptor" and this thread are suggesting we have!
- rory096 11y ago> But this is a very far cry from the debate "TechRaptor" and this thread are suggesting we have! Actually, as a guy who refreshes the news every 20 minutes (in particular the NYT), I think we've finally arrived at exactly the point. I'd argue there's two groups of objective (as in not editorial) news reporting: summary and expository. The first is balanced, toned roughly at the median reader's viewpoint and getting across maybe the middle ~50% of the public's view/opinion/reaction. The second goes in deep on one side, really digging into who the different factions are, what they believe and why. It explains maybe the 45-95th percentiles – a touch of lip service for the opposition, but that's not what we're here to see. Each side has merits and drawbacks. Obviously summaries are more neutral and matter-of-fact, but they gloss over important stuff. Expositions are one-sided – Fox News at the extreme – but they're where you start feeling empathy (or antipathy) instead of just facts. Yes, they're biased. That's the point. The first article was an (incomplete) member of the former category. The second article was certainly legitimate as a member of the latter – I might disagree while reading it but I wouldn't cry foul that it was published. My claim is exactly that the Times erred by updating instead of posting this article as another. I expect the top story on a piece to be neutral and follow-ups to take sides. By updating the original article instead, the Times is saying that the way they write it is what happened! Where you fall in the spectrum isn't the question. If you can concede that the middle ground on this issue is somewhere to the sexists' side of "Hero Pao was chased out by shrill angry mob," the New York Times' reportage^Weditorial decisions were bad.