Hacker News Reader

Comment by wingspar | Hacker News Reader

Yes it's been bad for a long time. I recall the "George Bush encounters barcode scanners" story back in the day. YEARS later, working in data-capture technology, I learned the truth. It wasn't a run-of-the-mill supermarket barcode scanning system. But that wouldn't have made as 'good' of a story that matched the papers pre-conceived notions.

https://apnews.com/article/61f29d10e27140b0b108d8e12b64b839

View on HN

Here's a (free gift) link to the original NYTimes story

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/05/us/bush-encounters-the-su...

It's certainly one of the more misleading stories I've read in a national paper.

A newspaper is not a single entity. In its life it will have hundreds or thousands of employees with a range from good to bad. You can claim that there's a management structure that should know what's going on but they put trust in their employees even if they are ultimately responsible. If a reporter claims a government source said X but doesn't want to be revealed they need to make a decision based on that reporters history. Basically it's difficult to prevent rogue employees from putting out garbage stories.

------------------------------

Here a more recent article from the NYT examining the original reporting about the Bush scanner story showing how it was mostly misleading and the paper's response to those claims at the time (that they were misleading)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/us/politics/fact-check-pr... (See EDIT at bottom for pastebin link)

For any single news organization over a period of time a certain amount of articles will be inaccurate, sometimes purposefully. The NYT has been around for 150+ years and what matters it is how they manage their reporters and sources. We also need to look at the positive accomplishments. Shouldn't that be weighed against the negative when making a judgement of trust?

The NYT is probably responsible for more breaking news and investigations than any other paper in US history. Stories we might not have have known about without the resources they allocated and their contacts (i.e. government or business sources)

I don't think trust is black and white and that people who claim it is may have an ulterior motive. If you dismiss news organizations based on having a few misleading stories without considering what they have accomplished you wouldn't trust any news organization. This of course would greatly benefit corrupt governments, businesses, and people.

EDIT: Here's a pastebin link to the section of the 2018 article where they examine the original reporting

https://pastebin.com/VKHyGARK

I gave up on the NYT with the Judith Miller WMD non-sense. The NYT failed the United States during the run up to the Iraq war. All they had to do was honestly report what they knew.

I remember that and thought George H.W. was a busy guy and probably only got out to the supermarket in Kennebunkport. Where they mail the bill at the end of the month.

(it was a then-uncommon combo scanner/scale with error correction)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com