Hacker News Reader

Comment by QuinnyPig | Hacker News Reader

I’m skeptical. I’ve worked with the NYT on a few stories; they’re incredibly thorough, and don’t publish unsubstantiated trash.

View on HN

> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. Cardinal Richelieu

There’s no need to lie in a hit piece. You can select your material, shade the truth and quote people who hate your subject on their opinions. Lying leaves you open to libel and slander too.

"Hit piece" is in and of itself a framing that clearly has a bias toward one side. Was the reporting from multiple outlets on Theranos a series of hit pieces? They were all negative, but that doesn't mean they were wrong.

Coinbase has preemptively presented their side of the story in an effort to make us all say "oh, yeah, that's the hit piece we were warned about," but we haven't actually seen the other side of the story yet.

Tim Draper absolutely called the Carreyou articles hit pieces, and I'm fairly certain still believes that.

All framing has bias. That’s standpoint theory in four words. It’s entirely possible the NYT reporter working on the piece about CoinBase feels they are being scrupulously honest and that anyone who reviewed their notes, interviews and background work would come to the same conclusions they do in the article. Not everyone would actually agree. People have divergent experiences and beliefs and will come to different conclusions based on exactly the same evidence because their prior beliefs are different.

it all really depends on what happened there. some things are undefendable

Like the case for the war with Iraq?

If your best criticism is something that is old enough to finish college right around now, and ignores that the Times ran plenty of opposition to that war, maybe they aren’t as bad as you make them out to be?

> If your best criticism is something that is old enough to finish college right around now

I mean Libya, Syria, Iran, Venezuela if 200k dead isn't enough for you.

like the russia hoax?

Like that Iraq was full of WMD's to justify another US invasion in 2003. Don't publish trash, my *.

> they’re incredibly thorough, and don’t publish unsubstantiated trash.

Iraq, Libya etc. would like a word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair

> They don't publish unsubstantiated trash

Ever heard of the 1619 Project?

they almost exclusively publish unsubstantiated trash

Reply on news.ycombinator.com