>But more to the point, the closer analogy is an Amazon Post that claims to be editorially independent that publishes an editorial that's supportive of, say, Bashar al Assad, and people taking this to mean Amazon supports Bashar al Assad.
True, that's a better analogy, though I'll try to make it even closer later in the post.
> (1) if the editorial writer supports X then the paper must support X (historically not how editorials work)
Indeed, but if there's only one single editorial about a certain topic, with no differing viewpoints expressed in any other editorial, it can potentially imply where the paper on average tends to lean. I can't find any other piece about it, at the moment.
Even if it's not an official position of the paper, who they hire and what they choose to publish can still be relevant.
The author: https://www.technologyreview.com/author/patrick-howell-oneil...
>Patrick Howell O’Neill is the cybersecurity senior editor for MIT Technology Review. He covers national security, election security and integrity, geopolitics, and personal security: How is cyber changing the world? Before joining the publication, he worked at the Aspen Institute and CyberScoop covering cybersecurity from Silicon Valley and Washington DC.
He's their cybersecurity senior editor, and a large percentage or majority of what he's written appears to cover US national cybersecurity topics. He probably considers this just another: Google would be allegedly acting against the US's cybersecurity interests, here.
The fact that he's who they hired to write about such topics - with no one else offering differing viewpoints, it appears - could imply something about the paper's leanings.
>> (2) if the paper supports X then the organization that owns the paper supports X (not how editorial independence of a paper works).
Yes, this is more of a stretch, but given some of the other stuff shared in this sub-thread, it doesn't seem that far-fetched that some percentage of MIT staff might feel this way.
It's possible it really does say nothing about the university, but let's say a hypothetical Amazon Post started spewing out a lot of these pro-Assad pieces, and there was evidence Bezos has had some large business deals with Assad or his regime going back decades.
Even though it says it's editorially independent, people would rightly start to question things. Given all the work MIT has done to support the US government and military, I don't think this situation is all that different. I think it could possibly hint something about the culture, there.
But I acknowledge that the second claim is indeed a pretty big leap, and I have no actual evidence to connect this reporter's articles or opinions to the opinions of MIT staff.