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Comment by bloomingkales | Hacker News Reader

Let me correct you, this will be election month at minimum.

The NYT kind of brings this kind of heat on itself because it has shifted from being just the paper of record over to an institution to the current definition of progressivism. You can only really do this union kinda stuff against self-important institutions. Which developer is ever going to attempt this on Accenture? They are straight up and honest about their business, which is they are trying to rake profits from connecting developers with companies - whatever it takes, whoever, from wherever, at whatever price is profitable.

The Times adorned itself as something more than a business, a special kind of business, a business that fights for something. So there you go, live up to it I guess.

Here is some of the content that the NYTimes focuses on:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/opinion/starbucks-union-s...

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> the current definition of progressivism

It's a fairly pro-business paper, certainly not very critical of Israel, and you appear to have completely missed all of its somewhat trans-skeptical reporting and opinion. (The latter pervasive enough to rankle many of its own employees about the tone and tenor of NYT coverage of trans issues.)

I want to believe you, but my hunch is your reply is similar to someone suggesting "Well, you see, you forgot all the pro liberal coverage that Fox News has been doing all year".

Does NYT not have a reputation or am I truly out of touch here? I went through some of their podcasts recently and it's all quite one-sided, for example.

I think the paper is generally lib-left, but not necessarily progressive-left. I also see NPR as pretty centrist reporting.

It depends where you're coming from. Some (many now?) see Dick Cheney as a progressive liberal liar, and many on the left see him as a right-wing devil incarnate.

Who exactly is calling Dick Cheyney a progressive? That’s not the same thing as refusing to endorse Trump, btw.

The Overton window has truly shifted that far right. We're in trouble.

NPR and NY Times are almost identically left-biased, with NPR being slightly more so.

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/npr-editorial

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times

Please look at the confidence score for the npr rating.

I think it’s a mistake to judge the NYT by their podcasts. I canceled my subscription when they reported on the concessions the UAW had won from automakers mostly in terms of how it might affect the bottom line of the companies, and with little to no mention of the effect on the workers and their families.

I was very disappointed with NYT’s coverage of the 2020 elections, and it has been difficult for me to take their reporting seriously since then. That they had their own workers striking is not a good look, yet unsurprising to me at this point. Just my opinion, I don’t know if this counts as reputation.

(NPR was even more disappointing because they positioned themselves as centrist; APM’s Marketplace was closer centrist that than NPR).

> am I truly out of touch here?

Yes, you are absolutely out of touch. drawkward gave you three incredibly specific examples but you just kept on sticking with your hunch.

A paper that is the "epitome of progressivism" probably isn't going to have multiple conservative opinion columnists heavily featured and isn't going to have recurring problems with fawning interviews of white supremacists over barbecue.

I suppose if you're any further than center-right, a paper that is narrowly center-left is going to appear to be the "epitome of progressivism", but many years of critique would probably suggest otherwise. politely, i don't think this would be something you'd get tripped up on if you'd paid attention for a few years longer than a singular skim of the podcasts recently.

> It's a fairly pro-business paper, certainly not very critical of Israel

Sorry, are we both talking about the New York Times in 2024 here? Not a day goes by that there isn’t an article crying about Palestinians and bashing Israel - there’s one right now, just scroll down to the section just above sports.

Calling it the preeminent progressive institution in America media today is axiomatic.

I'm sorry, when did the NYT call Isreal's behavior genocidal? I must have missed it.

Any objective observer would call Israel's behavior abhorrent wrt Gaza. In fact, it seems like the majority of the planet is doing that, if the UN is representative.

Is it crying about Palestinians or just reporting the news? Can you tell the difference?

>Calling it the preeminent progressive institution in America media today is axiomatic.

...among certain not-unbiased segments of the population.

The NYT is most definitely pro-Israel - so much that after October 7, it made up[1] a story of mass rape[2] to justify the attacks on Gaza. Just because it's not as pro-Israel as you doesn't mean it's not pro-Israel.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schw...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-at...

This comment will be deleted by moderators, though, just like every other comment which points this out. Yet no moderator has ever mentioned why they are doing that. It's factual and relevant to the discussion.

The Palestine exception to free speech.

I like the implication that being "trans-skeptical" is "non-progressive" and therefore to be a progressive you have to buy into the ideology without questioning anything. That does align with my current views of where progressive ideology is headed

I think the bulk of the pro-trans movement would consider themselves progressive. I think that the bulk of progressives would consider themselves pro-trans.

I don't consider myself a progressive for just this reason. I would be considered a TERF by the trans community, not because I think trans people don't exist or arent worth of love, employment, and respect, but rather because there are some hot issues (bathroom access, sports access, how to handle children permanently transitioning, replacing cisgendered terminology in medical textbooks) that I believe merit more study or nuanced approaches.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the question of who has the right to define what labels, and I think most progressives would not call you a progressive if you don't 100% accept trans rights. Of course, this demands lockstep ideological behavior, which is rarely a good thing for long. Could you be progressive on some issues and not others? Certainly! But which mix defines you as "progressive" or not is not up to me.

> [...] I would be considered a TERF [...]

I had to look that up. I'm I out of touch with the times by not knowing such acronyms? I am standing here at the station minding my business and Overton Express is passing by at 60 mph. "TERF" seem to describe most progressives. But I think I lag the avant guard conscious by 10 years of something.

But anyhow, I would say NYT is very much not left nor progressive. Maybe on some tangential culture issues. It is a centre corporate newspaper.

"skeptical" is in most cases just a euphemism for "opposed".

This is a controversial statement. To pretend that the NYT has not changed is dishonest: https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-...

The NYT literally published an Op-Ed in which an American senator called for sending american troops to quell BLM protests.

So progressive!

> The NYT kind of brings this kind of heat on itself because it has shifted from being just the paper of record over to an institution to the current definition of progressivism.

This sounds like how American conservatives describe it rather than how most readers or actual progressives would - the latter having significant misgivings about how it covered Iraq, Occupy Wall Street, the 2016 election coverage of things like the email hacks and FBI investigations relative to their actual substance, the tone of their coverage and editorials about transgender issues, etc.

The best way I’ve found to describe the NYT is as representing the east coast establishment. The issues which earned them attacks as liberal were things like favorably covering gay rights, which affects those elites (even rich sons of influential families can be born gay so everyone knows someone who benefits from that), but they tend to be more conservative on things like workers rights or tax issues which don’t affect or may even threaten their affluent readers. Climate change affects everyone but their opinion pieces are going to be things like “buy an induction stove” or “vacation in Nepal before the snow melts and buy some carbon offsets” rather than “stop flying and eat less beef” because their target reader wants to do the former and not the latter.

> The Times adorned itself as something more...

+/- your buy-in on that image. Pete's Pizza Parlor also adorns itself - as being on a mission to serve up piping hot pizza pies.

You are comically uninformed. If the NYT were even remotely progressive, they'd have been consistently flogging the living shit out of Donald Trump and his idiotic, dementia-driven behavior behind a podium for months now instead of pretending like we should accept it as normal while excoriating Harris for behaving like a mainstream political candidate.

Dementia driven? We can certainly disagree on policy objectives, but claiming Trump has dementia is absolute nonsense. Did you watch the Rogan interview? Regardless of one’s views on his politics, there is not even a remote hint of dementia.

Have you? Just last not he was confused about what *state he was in. A week ago he spent 40 minutes kn stage doing nothing as music played until his handlers yanked him.

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