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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Condoleeza Rice its director, John Yoo is a Visiting Fellow, Donald Rumsfeld, Ed Meese, and Henry Kissinger are Distinguished Visiting Fellows.

Non-partisan? Come on.

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And what percentage of the New York Times editorial board is Democrats? I would still call the Times a non-partisan paper (albeit one with liberal leanings).

A somewhat old (2000) Hoover Institution article notes that 1/4 of its Fellows are Democrats. I would be shocked if 1/4 of the Times editorial Board was Republicans. Or really if even one person on the Times editorial Board was a Republican.

Not a single member of the NY Times editorial board ever worked in the White House (except as a reporter), worked as a full-time political operative, or the like. They’re all career journalists and scholars. It’s not remotely comparable to the Hoover Institution.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/opinion/editorialbo...

Sure, because the Times is a newspaper and the Hoover Institute is a think tank. Part of the mission of a think tank requires having people with real world experience in government. I don’t think that’s a good proxy of whether the work is politically biased (rather than ideologically biased). Arguably, the Times is more overtly politically biased with its new “moral clarity” angle.

I think if they didn't have an agenda, at least with this specific topic, they would have included data on other states to compare to.

The parent did say editorial board but I would suggest that a criticism of the NYTimes in the same spirit that actually warrants attention is its board of directors. Many if not all of them are wealthy lifelong democrats.

I'm not trying to move the goal posts on you, just pointing out what I think was the original intent of the comment that - that left or right you should always follow the money.

Not a single member of the NYT board of directors ever worked in the White House or worked as a full-time political operative either.

They’re a mix of people from the journalism industry and people who had senior management roles in other kinds of businesses: some lawyers, some finance people, etc.

https://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/

I certainly have problems with the NYT. It is generally pro-corporate and pro-establishment. It is under strong pressure to accept bullshit at face value, and often succumbs (e.g. in the run up to the Iraq War). It tends far too strongly towards nonsensical “bothsidesism”

There are also a lot of excellent journalists working there, and they do a lot of important work. So it’s a mixed bag.

John W. Rogers, Jr. "was a leading campaigner for ... Bill Bradley's 2000 United States presidential campaign" and "served as a fundraising leader in Project Vote efforts led by former United States President Barack Obama". "He was part of the inner circle of the Barack Obama presidential campaign. He is a long-time Obama associate who serves as the co-chair of Obama's Illinois finance committee and who has been a major fundraiser for Democratic Party candidates. He served along with Bill Daley, Pat Ryan, Penny Pritzker and Julianna Smoot on Barack Obama 2009 presidential inauguration committee."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Rogers_Jr.

He’s a rich finance guy who is a major campaign contributor and fundraiser. That’s not the same as being a political operative, working in the White House, or the like.

For example, Brian McAndrews (also on the NYT board of directors) maxed out his campaign contributions to the RNC, Mitt Romney, GOP PACs, etc. But he also isn’t a political operative.

Seems like a very fine distinction you are making. John W. Rogers, Jr. is on the board of the Barack Obama Foundation, and his wife did literally work in the White House.

7% of reporters identify as Republicans versus 28% identify as Democrats.[1]

If we're going to play the "this source is biased" with every article published on HN, then we're going to see a lot of "people should know this paper has a Democratic bias".

[1]https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/05/survey-7-percen...

It's media owners who decide the direction of their holdings, not the lowly reporter on the beat.

I don't think that true, but if it was, that would be even worse since every single reporter for the NYTimes would have to tow the Democratic line. Thank god it's not that bad (they still will have a right-leaning opinion column once a month or so).

From what I remember from the Gentzkow/Shapiro work on media bias, media owners isn't really the source of bias. Paraphrasing, it turns out the bias comes from... the readers, who want a paper where they can read what pleases them.

One amazing fact is that the Democrat:Republican skew among reporters is higher than almost every group traditionally perceived to skew Democratic. Gay people, for example, skew Democrat versus Republican closer to 3:1.

But circling back, this is a theme. Conservative organizations and think tanks (Federalist Society is another example) have more Democrats than putatively objective professions (journalism, academia) have Republicans. That’s bad.

Gay people are not 3:1. You’re making up statistics to further your argument, but it’s not helping. Any source I’ve seen in terms of voting record and polling it’s 5:1 or higher.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/record-lgbt-support-...

You're citing data for voting while the statistic for reporters above is party identification. So you're comparing apples and oranges. This survey cites data for LGBT party identification: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/20...

> Nearly nine million LGBT adults are registered and eligible to vote in the 2020 general election. Half of registered LGBT voters (50%) are Democrats, 15% are Republicans, 22% are Independent

You're also comparing the 2014 party identification data posted above to 2018 voting data, during the midterm election under perhaps the least popular Republican President in generations. Your own source shows that in 2014, LGBT votes favored Democrats 3:1, similar to the party identification data.

Moreover, many journalists register as independent to avoid perceptions of bias even if they identify strongly with one party. I haven't see data breaking down voting by party, but during the Trump era journalists donated to Clinton by a more than 20:1 margin: https://publicintegrity.org/politics/journalists-shower-hill...

Guessing the NYTimes has less than 3 people on its board that would be put on trial for war crimes at the ICC if the US didn’t forbid it, which isn’t something an org with Yoo, Kissinger, and Rumsfeld can say.

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