Hacker News Reader

Comment by noetic_techy | Hacker News Reader

The New York Times is no longer the steady unbias pillar it once was. They hire fresh out SJW types to do their writing and it shows. Once I finally came to that realization, I stopped taking them seriously, but I feel others have not quite reached that epiphany yet. Keep in mind they almost went bankrupt if it were not for Carlos Slim bailing them out. Then you saw a bunch of praise pieces about Slim, and you realize much of the old guard is gone. That should have been the first red flag. The NYT lives off its names legacy reputations alone, but all the quality journalism is gone, with just refined legacy veneer wrapped around very questionable bias premises for most stories.

View on HN

> The New York Times is no longer the steady unbias pillar it once was

Okay, I'm open to hearing this - I've certainly noticed a decrease in quality (vs quantity - NYT still leads there) vs, say, the Washington Post.

> They hire fresh out SJW types

I'm not even sure what this means. I'm used to seeing "SJW" as an attack label that is absent actual meaning, similar to "snowflake" or "libtard", stemming from groups stauchly biased themselves. Are you using it here as an attack based on political belief, or do you have some more nuanced substantive meaning? The rest of your comment doesn't expand on this "epiphany" so I'm left uncertain as to your argument.

It certainly can be used as you described, but it doesn't have to be. I sort of loosely define an SJW as someone who 1) believes that the law should be wielded to enforce their version of morality, 2) that the correctness of their morality justifies pretty much any means of attaining it, and 3) that doing anything to further their goal is always preferable to doing nothing to further their goal, even if a specific thing is likely to have adverse consequences.

That's a pretty broad definition that almost includes religious people on the right wing of the spectrum, and that's pretty much what I would say is the only difference between a Social Justice Warrior and a Religious Justice Warrior--the source of where they validate their brand of morality. Other than that, they are approximately identical in both their methods and the extent to which they are damaging to liberal democracy.

I recognize that this is probably not a very common definition, and your point about SJW being a meaningless insult is likely the correct one.

Nope, see my comment above. I added some meaning.

I understand your concern about the SJW label and the charged political context its often used, but it is to me accurate, since this it what they would call themselves.

Take a look at this Joe Rogan + Johnathon Haidt podcast clip that talks about SJW cultural origins in northeastern and western elite liberal arts colleges:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9VYf9FKHo

NOTE: Jonathan David Haidt is an American social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business (not a crackpot is my point).

You see downstream echo's of this hyper virtue signaling subculture now in the NYT since much of thier journalism is fresh outs with little real world experience outside their bubble.

I'm a centrist libertarian if you must qualify my argument with my position on the spectrum. In my opinion, I find that classic liberal have a very hard mental block acknowledging that even their own side of the coin can have a toxic extremist end. One that will NOT look and behave like the toxic extremes on the right, but the outcome is the largely negative in the same manor. As Jonathan Haidt in that clip says, they often write it off or are unaware of the problem.

It's fascinating to watch comments like this get downvoted.

Everything you noted is accurate, and is reflected in recent high-profile hires at NYT (Sarah Jeong the most recent). All organizations can go through preference cascades like this, where hiring for certain views becomes self reinforcing to the point where the organization doesn't even realize it has a bias toward them. It can be especially acute when the views are activist in nature, and signaling alignment with them is how to achieve in-group status. Frankly this is kind of a boring observation - it's basic organizational psychology, which Professor Haidt notes on several occasions.

Fox News in the run-up to the Iraq War is another great example of this. Every single talking-head they had on aligned with their internal bias toward invasion.

“It's fascinating to watch comments like this get downvoted.” Honestly not anymore, there is an overriding current of well SJWism on this site currently, of course they'll never admit it to themselves. If you ever find yourself downvoting a comment because you disagree with it on an emotional level, you might be the problem.

As the acronym implies, a "social justice warrior" is someone who fights for social justice.

Hiring journalists with a strong homogenous political agenda is a poor way to produce neutral, fact-based reporting.

> Hiring journalists with a strong homogenous political agenda is a poor way to produce neutral, fact-based reporting.

Have you considered the possibility that these SJW's are actually representative of today's youth? If they are, shouldn't NYT be hiring even more of them?

I really don't care about what the backgrounds of Journalists are, as long as they adhere to the principles of journalism (honesty, a desire to question authority and find the truth at all costs etc.).

There’s an inherent conflict in “I am an activist with a specific cause (or causes) I advocate for” and “adher[ing] to the principles of journalism”. It will produce journalism that is not at all neutral (ignoring for a moment if such journalism is possible), but tainted, even unknowingly, but the views of the journalists themselves. It might not even manifest in the story itself, but in the stories they choose to cover.

>> Have you considered the possibility that these SJW’s are actually representative of todays youth?

That could not be further from the truth. The phenomena is very localized and manifests from confluence of factors that HAS been studied scientifically:

https://youtu.be/2e9VYf9FKHo

It would be like going back in time and saying the youth of the Communist Revolution or the youth of the Iranian Revolution were just “representative of todays youth.” The answer would be: yes, some of them, and look how that turned out for the rest. We can’t conceive of that sort of backward progression in american freedom because we have never experienced it. You have to call out negative toxic ideologies both right AND left.

I agree with your second statement, but instead you of journalists you get activist masquerading as journalists.

I disagree strongly that there should be any link whatsoever between representation of a populace and journalism. If there was a community that is full of uneducated folks with a strong anti-science sentiment, I would still hope that any community journalism outlets would still report factually about scientific discoveries and strive to remain untainted by any specific bias, 'representation' be damned. Journalism should not be about being representative of a populace's ideals or agendas, but rather should be about reporting facts, unbiased as much as possible.

The NYT (and others) should in fact be striving to hire less employees with any kind of agenda (whether they be 'SJWs' or anyone else).

Have you considered that if you are fighting for anything other than truth, you have a serious conflict of interest as a journalist?

The problem being that most everyone thinks they're fighting for the truth.

Person A will complain that "SJW types" are being hired, the complaint being that they are biased against the truth.

Person B will complain that "SJW types" AREN'T being hired, the complaint being that people biased against the truth are being hired instead.

I don't know the answers, but I do think the "let's present both sides" of journalism has left journalism doing a terrible job of effectively presenting the truth. Finding a path that embraces objective reporting AND denies efforts to exploit the weaknesses of systems designed to promote objectivity is something we've not figured out yet.

Originally the "warrior" part was the sarcastic reference that criticized the vehemence and tactics of some proponents fighting for more equality and fairness. Policies like quotas were criticized as prescribed justice for example. I do think many of these objections were quite apt.

That solidarity cannot be enforced was a lecture learned from the failures of communism. It was used as an oxymoron in a similar way. Social justice warriors did not convince anyone, they started crusades against dissidents.

But it went downhill form there as people started accusing everyone in favor of equality as social justice warrior. As a result others started to self-identify as such. It has been a train of reactionary conduct since then.

https://nyti.ms/2rznv8D

Based on your comment, I, and I'm sure many others, would have quickly countered by pointing out that it shouldn't matter who you hire provided you have a competent and passionate ombudsman to rein in your inadequacies as a company. However, the link I've provided shows that they fired (without replacement) their ombudsman in 2017. This certainly supports your argument.

So disappointing but I have noticed the same thing.

NYT has dove so deep into identity politics, opinion, agenda, and editorial that it's very hard to imagine their actual legitimate journalistic/reporting division is not being negatively impacted and influenced.

What specifically about the NYT as opposed to any other newspaper?

Opinion and editorial are explicitly not part of the newsroom and are published in a different section under a different heading. You may have some problems with the people they hire as opinion commentators but hiring opinionated commentators is absolutely part of the job of a good newspaper. Lefty types regularly make fun of NYT's conservative and centrist commentators, so it's not like they're loved by the left either.

For instance, I detest many of the WSJ's editorial stances but freely admit that they do some very good journalism, which I admire.

The NYT is not unblemished - cough cough the Iraq War cough cough Judith Miller cough, ahem.

>>Lefty types regularly make fun of NYT conservative and centrist commentators

Do you have some examples of this?

From more left to moderate: CurrentAffairs.org, any criticism of David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Bari Weiss, David Brooks, Maggie Haberman.

I had a quick trawl through Splinter, which is a reliable source for prickly takes on NYT commentators. I'm not going to argue whether they're good, reasoned, or accurate takes, but that absolutely it's a regular, normal, and extremely popular hobby on the left to make fun of NYT's worst commentators.

On Bret Stephens: https://splinternews.com/by-all-means-tell-me-more-milk-boy-...

On Bari Weiss: https://splinternews.com/the-new-york-times-is-shipping-bari...

On Thomas Friedman: https://splinternews.com/thomas-friedman-goes-full-fascist-a...

On Ross Douthat: https://splinternews.com/nyt-columnist-who-wanted-to-ban-por...

On Liz Mair: https://splinternews.com/new-york-times-allows-seattle-born-...

Everything tagged with "New York Times": https://splinternews.com/tag/new-york-times

What is the "SJW" position on Google?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com