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Comment by narrator | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how the next big idea for the news media to get on board with starts at the New York Times and then filters it's way down the food chain through the less influential newspapers, CNN, and other mainstream news outlets, etc. It's sad that nobody is coming up with their own material much any more among the big networks. The agenda is set and it's all just a bunch or mstaphorical retweets.

It's like there's some board somewhere that comes up with the next big thing we are going to try and sell to the American people on and they publish it in the NYT and then the whole mainstream dutifully jumps on board and it gets pushed and pushed by all the networks until they give up or they move onto something else.

Searching news archives, one could build a nice directed timeline of the genesis and bloom through the media of these regular campaigns.

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The NYT seemingly has written a well supported and fact checked story explaining how a verifiably false tweet from a person with few followers spread far and wide.

What exactly is being pushed on the American people?

It's not that they aren't factual, it's that they direct the nation's attention. There are millions of newsworthy stories, but only some are published and the NYT seems to be the source of that focus that then leads the whole mainstream media around by the nose.

>What exactly is being pushed on the American people?'

what about that time the NYT pushed the iraq war

or that time they pushed hillary clinton

or that time they pushed (insert whatever their paid PR "article" of the second is pushing for)

If I remember correctly, the NYT published a written apology for their role in popularizing the invasion of Iraq. Newspapers make mistakes, recognize them, and apologize publicly. That's journalistic ethics.

They were also forwards about their editorial support for HRC, having declared her their candidate well before she became the presumptive DNC nominee. You might not like the fact that pro-HRC opinion pieces made their way to the top, but there's no ethical dilemma there either.

There's not an ethical dilemma in pushing a candidate but an issue of trust. Lots of people don't trust Hillary. So when a publication goes out it's way to pump her up and writes biased hit pieces on the opposition are people who mistrust Hillary going to trust the publication?

The point is, you can't argue why people should trust you rather than the opposition. You have to provide reasons for them to do so.

It would be like building an app that wasn't getting positive reception and then trying to argue or shame people into liking it rather than giving people what they want. It plain doesn't work.

People want to know what is going on. Tell them to the best of your ability. Don't couch it in spin, don't support sides, don't appear biased. That is how you establish a reputation of trust. It's not a matter of what is legal or ethical in this case at all.

The irony of attempting to "argue" with my point is incredibly hilarious. I would suggest suspending ideological preference for a moment and re-reading my post.

It's about trust and human nature. Not nitpicking details to try to "prove" you are right. You will never win what you are trying to win like this. Ever.

But since you asked here is a sample:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/donald-trump-w...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/donald-trump-w...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes-donal... (the implication being of course that Trump is tied to racism).

Now lets oppose the outrage above with the treatment of Hillary's behavior.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/27/us/politics/wh...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/us/politics/hillary-clinto...

Look guys... it's not an ideological thing here. But you can't behave like this and have people who support a different ideology take you seriously. That's a simple fact.

When this happens people will get their information from elsewhere.

Last I have to say about this. Think about it or not. But I don't intend to argue.

Debate isn't ironic, and it's not productive to laugh at people who want to reason with you.

I'm not sure what you mean by "trust and human nature". These seem to be self-evident (read: mostly rhetorical), and not directly in conflict with what I've said.

I'm also not sure what details I've nitpicked. I pointed out a case that I thought you might consider a hit piece, and explained why dulling it down to just that has a chilling effect on journalism as a whole and operates against the public interest.

The articles you linked portray Trump in a negative light. Is the conclusion supposed to be that HRC must be portrayed in an equally negative light? It's odd to have to say this, seeing how I'm not a particular fan of hers, but the media cannot treat circumstances as equals when they are definitively not equal. There is no modern analog to what either candidate has in their closets, but to equivocate between them via this fact alone is, bluntly, bewildering.

I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, and I hope you revisit this conversation (or perhaps the thoughts behind it) at a later point without immediately defaulting to a defense against "ideology".

I'm sorry, but what hit pieces? The NYT's coverage of Trump hasn't been favorable, but it would be difficult to characterize their exclusives on him as hits. Even their most negative coverage (the $916 million story comes to mind) was, at its core, factual.

You could argue that it's indicative of bias for the NYT to break such a story at all, but it's in the public interest to know the financial solvency of their leaders. At the risk of conflating news and opinion, there was no shortage of opinion pieces calling on HRC to release her speeches - also in the public interest.

It's difficult to ask the NYT to "establish a reputation of trust" when it already has one, deserved or not. Such a request, to the editors and ethicists of any media outlet, is just a nice way to ask for more favorable (or perhaps less damning) coverage of your candidate of choice.

False dichotomy. Just because an article has some facts buried in it does not mean it's not a hit piece. A hit piece is simply something crafted to create a strong negative impression of a person.

With that in mind, let's go to the NYT front page:

    Donald Trump’s Swamp Gets Murkier
    A disturbing number of lobbyists and special interest players
    are joining the transition team. 


    The interaction does not appear to violate federal laws or 
    ethics rules, three lawyers said, but it did create the appearance 
    that Mr. Trump and his partners are using his status as a way to 
    profit.

    Cabinet Selection Turns Into Spectacle That’s Made for TV

Do we now live in some kind of alternate reality where stuff like this is considered normal, unbiased journalism?

I just visited the NYT front page.

"Donald Trump’s Swamp Gets Murkier" is an opinion piece.

"Cabinet Selection Turns Into Spectacle That’s Made for TV" is a silly title and a cheap shot, but cabinet pageantry is nothing new. The article itself has a message in the form of facts focused on (e.g., the fact that all of Trump's picks seem to be old white men), but doesn't seem to express an opinion in the way that the editorial board's piece does.

Does it have a bias? Yes. Is it abnormal, or even unusually biased? No.

Well, "he started it" by not releasing tax returns, not relinquishing his control of his businesses nor disclosing his international business deals. Its fair game, then, to interpret subsequent actions as part of a pattern.

Links to the biased hit pieces please?

There aren't any. The Times bent over backwards to stab Clinton in the back at every opportunity, to avoid accusations of bias.

>the NYT published a written apology for their role in popularizing the invasion of Iraq

i also remember how it was widely thought to be a bad idea at the time by millions of people, yet, somehow they managed to pick the wrong position.

> somehow they managed to pick the wrong position.

... along with millions of other people.

It's called a "scoop". There's nothing particular novel or unusual about the way a story proliferates through media outlets. The nature of online news and media has simply made the process more visible.

Good point. It would be good to see a tree (or graph, it's probably cyclic at some point) of exactly how it spreads.

The left and the right have those as well (although calling Hillary and Trump supporters "left" and "right" is inaccurate, but that's for another discussion).

The "right" had "the protests are started by Soros" and so they saw buses everywhere for a whole week or so. There was another such thing for a "get paid $3.5k to attend an anti-Trump protest" that ended up as a fake CL screen capture.

The left first started with "let's hack the electoral college". There was a lot of discussion about that - "what if we convince/force them to vote the other way. Maybe invoke some hidden article from the Constitution..." or some thing like that. That went on for a while. It died down.

Then "fake news" started, almost overnight. And it's been fake news since then.

Just yesterday here there was some discussion about an oil field in Texas, and it seems they overestimated the cost or used a different metric or some such thing. But people here were calling it "Fake News". I thought it was initially supposed to lizard people controlling the government?

Then this story as another example. A major fuck up, everyone got worked about stuff without verifying. The source doesn't seem to have done it on purpose and has since deleted it (but it was too late) of course. Everyone in the chain begin idiots and overreacting. But NYT, CNN, CBS, FOX, NBC have been doing this stuff for years! Especially regurgitating anything coming out of the State Department or other government institutions. They are billion dollar corporation, if anyone can verify stuff it should be them. Would they consider themselves "Fake News"...

The problem is they are realizing they are losing the ability to manufacture consent like they could before. That must be terrifying, so they have to respond or do something about it. "Fake News" is their response.

To be fair, is a useful PR technique - a label that can be quickly thrown on anything. This makes sense also in the context of how popular Identity Politics became, where flinging labels like "fascist", "racist", "sexist" is done all too easily. Also with Twitter becoming an acceptable political discourse medium, try to argue a complex point in 140 characters. You can't! Instead throw a short label in there and you're done. Wipe hands on pants and refresh to see the results.

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