Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

You believe that the NYT has a goal of misleading people with facts?

I do. The NYT is chock full of partisans who seem to have little to no apprehension about framing "the facts" in whatever way helps to shape public opinion in a direction that aligns with their worldview. All the while presenting themselves as some beacon of objective truth and journalistic integrity.

And, they're notoriously obtuse to work with. Remember what they did to Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex)?

Apparently, you see no difference in the goals of "shaping public opinion" and misleading people (with or without facts).

I'm not interested in defending the NYT. I'm just interested in the judgements of other people about the NYT that seem to me to be, shall we say, a little over the top.

And note: I think it would as true of SSC/SA as the NYT that they seek to shape public opinion in a direction that aligns with their worldview. If you speak publically, and don't speak complete jibberish, what else are you doing than seeking to shape public opinion?

I concur that the term "shaping public opinion" is more accurate in many cases, but not in others. There are enough stories where the author clearly understood something about the story and attempted to convey something else to the reader for political/cultural effect. For example, not reporting on the race of a black perpetrator but always reporting on the race of a black victim.

There is a less activist way of presenting the news that doesn't attempt to "shape public opinion". I'm old enough to remember Walter Cronkite. I've read (some of) Manufacturing Consent. Today's media in America (almost all of it, NYT being no exception) heavily shapes public opinion, turning news reporting into a political battleground.

The most noticeable example of activism at work is the difference in coverage (and condemnation) between January 6th and the CHAZ/CHOP event. While both events included the occupation of a government building, one is seen as an insurrection and the other is more of a protest. I don't want to start a tangent comparing every aspect of the two, but needless to say, there are some big commonalities that are covered in a very different light depending on one's partisan outlook.

> I don't want to start a tangent comparing every aspect of the two, but needless to say, there are some big commonalities that are covered in a very different light depending on one's partisan outlook.

The idea that there are "big commonalities" between these two is a claim that only makes sense given a fairly specific worldview.

While I can understand the worldview that identifies the commonalities and thus finds inconsistencies in the way the NYT covered them both, I also happen to have a worldview in which the two incidents are not fundamentally related at all other than under an extremely broad category, so broad that it's not particularly meaningful. Armed with that worldview, I don't find anything inconsistent in the coverage.

Anyway, I'm a European by birth. I don't buy into the nominal American dream of objective news coverage, not in any way shape or form. Journalistic integrity to me has almost nothing to do with whether one's journalism is free from bias. You can argue that the only meaningful definition is the one claimed by a journalism outlet about its own work, and I think that's fair. But I don't really see anywhere that the NYT claims to to have no worldview that informs and structures its work.

I sense debating my choice of the words "shaping public opinion" is going to be tangential. While what you said "If you speak publically, and don't speak complete jibberish, what else are you doing than seeking to shape public opinion?" is true, that isn't the heart of what I was getting at.

If the NYT is going to brand itself as some paragon of journalistic integrity, I would expect them to be dramatically more consistent with how they choose to cover and editorialize things.

I find the NYT to be extremely consistent in how they choose to cover and editorialize things. But by that I mean internally self-consistent, not that they behave as if they do not have a worldview that informs and shapes their work.

Their fawning support for 43 but opposition to 45 seems sort of inconsistent.

I would recommend reading Bari Weiss' resignation letter from the New York Times. They have really stepped up their efforts to mislead people

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

Bari Weiss' resignation letter is primarily about the NYT no longer publishing op-eds that she thinks they should (and would have) published. If you want to interpret that as "misleading people", be my guest.

Weiss has her own problems with misleading people too, and I for one was glad to see her leave the NYT and make her positions clearer than they had been in a number of her op-eds for the paper.

Can you share some examples that have led you to this belief?

> And, they're notoriously obtuse to work with. Remember what they did to Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex)?

What do you mean? All they were going to do was mention his name, which is a very normal thing to do.

The obtuse bit was actually the expectation of Alexander and various SSC fans that they could impose idiosyncratic rules on others that they were in no position to enforce.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com