I read the leaked emails referred to in these articles, and I don't see much that is troubling about NYT's behavior.
This is just how journalism works: the reporter has to request/negotiate access to the source. The PR folks will obviously try to spin everything positively to the reporter; that's their job. Afterward, the reporter writes up a story as objectively as possible. When some part of the story happens to be flattering, the PR people will obviously high-five themselves. When some part of the story is negative, the PR people will be disappointed and try to get the reporter to see their side.
See this article [1] from Mark Leibovich for an NYT reporter's account of one of the issues addressed in your links.
However there are documented instances, with Politico for instance where stories were given prior approval by the Clinton campaign before publishing. There's lots of evidence that reporters colluded with the Clinton campaign. That's not 'negotiating access.' Reporters ethically are bound to not give sources the ability to approve stories. Otherwise those stories might as well be press releases.
I went to journalism school and giving sources prior-review over a story is about as unethical as it gets.
Getting access to a source doesn't mean softballing everything for the benefit of the source. With the email scandal for instance, those stories could be written with or without cooperation from Clinton -- you simply say: we're running this story, care to respond? If they are 'mad' at you, they are the ones that miss out on getting their side represented. Reporters ought not be 'negotiating' anything. We have a story, we're going to run it; if you want to respond, here's your chance, if you don't want to respond, we can report that as well.
Journalists in many organizations have sold themselves out. It's no surprise that most of them are Clinton supporters. The days of Walter Cronkite objectivity have seemingly passed.
The media colluded against Sanders not even to mention all of the Republican candidates.
> However there are documented instances, with Politico for instance where stories were given prior approval by the Clinton campaign before publishing.
Since you don't say which instance you are talking about, I assume you are talking about this email [1]. Which is kind of curious because it resulted in one of the most negative articles about Clinton in the primaries [2] and widely shared among Bernie and Trump supporters to attack Clinton and now this is supposed to be example of Politico being in bed with Trump? It seems more like Vogel gave the Clinton camp to comment on it.
> I went to journalism school and giving sources prior-review over a story is about as unethical as it gets.
Is it? Even our local paper gave us the chance to comment prior to publishing an article about the little company I am working at.
>Even our local paper gave us the chance to comment prior to publishing an article about the little company I am working at.
Oh that is why you are defending the shitty aspect of journalism. There is a difference between handling all of the story and asking for a comment. Asking for a comment is a normal journalism practice and handling the whole story is the shitty nepotism. It is amazing you are defending this aspect of journalism. Handing over whole story before publishing it. It helps the campaign to plan mitigation efforts, and even can do to editor to edit out the story due to Clinton campaign pushback.
Here is the thing. The email exchange with Politico actually proves to me that the Clinton campaign has a lot less influence over the press than people assume. Politico sent an article that is very critical of Clinton to her campaign. They were trying to push back. Then Politico published the article anyway. If the Clinton campaign had any influence over Politico they would've been able to stop the article. You have to see the context. This was THE big critical story about Clinton during the primaries (besides the millions articles about emails) and I couldn't find anything essential that the Clinton campaign was able to prevent from publishing.
That's an interesting spin. Ignore the fact that Politico gave a candidate a "head's up" about a damaging piece and be happy that at least they still published it despite push back. It's less terrible than you thought it was!
On this topic, I find it mildly amusing that, for all the accusations of bias, it was actually the New York Times that broke the story of Clinton's private email server.
Some reporters can break stories too, and the same newspaper can have cronies too.
There is a good email in wikileaks where Jake Tapper is pushing back against a slanderous story published against him. Made me respect him for that. There is also another one, where a buzzfeed reporter is introducing a collegue cordially and professionally.
> However there are documented instances, with Politico for instance where stories were given prior approval by the Clinton campaign before publishing.
Did they show the story to get 'approval' or did they check elements of the story before publication?
The latter. Vogel was about to publish a piece of investigative journalism on the Hillary Victory Fund (one that the Sanders camp celebrated at the time). He asked the Clinton team for their explanation and sent a preprint to make sure he didn't misrepresent it in any way, which would have damaged his piece if it were immediately followed by the Clinton camp saying he was wrong and that they had told him why but he hadn't printed it. ttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/07/25/lay-off-politicos-ken-vogel/
If you get all of an organization's emails, you are bound to find an email that looks like some conspiracy on the surface. The people who think this email is an issue are simply not inclined to challenge their biases, so they display their ignorance proudly.
You have very conveniently sweept it under normal PR behavior. And even used NYtimes link to debunk it all. Lovely. Nytimes pandered Iraq war hard to US masses, never believing in any political position they push.
Journalists have been giving the campaign full stories before being published, will Clinton team not push back on any negative aspects?
There are 2 3 other emails; one from a batch released a month ago and one around last week. Form your own opinions if they are journalists asking for a genuine access, or...
Stopped reading there. This is why we need journalism. People like you are unable to interpret the content of these emails. He is subscribed to the NYtimes First Draft blog [1]. Everyone with an NYTimes subscription can get the newsletter. As you can also tell by the sender nytdirect@nytimes.com [2]This isn't an actual first draft. Stop spreading misinformation and take your bs back to reddit.
You got the second one wrong as well, so I stopped there instead. He was giving veto on what to use on off-the-record questions, which I hope you agree, is a very good practice.
Someone else can deal with your third, and fourth...
But if you want apples to apples, it's unfortunate that you can't dig through Trumps emails [1].
It's sad that politics is no longer about politics.
"PR agency" is quite the stretch. If you read the actual email (https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/10634) instead of the poor secondhand accounts you linked, you'll see that there's a staffer that says "I think it’s as good as we could hope for. We were able to keep him from including more on the JVF"
This is a staffer saying that they talked the reporter from the NYT out of focusing on an area they didn't like. It shows the Hilary campaign is slimey, but it doesn't mean that the NYT has suddenly lost all credibility as a news source. It's not clear from the email that the reporter actually promised anything; it sounds equally probable that the Clinton people were just happy with the NYT's reporting.
I also think (perhaps cynically) that this happens all the time, and is not a huge deal - sources try to angle the pieces journalists write about them, and selectively reveal information favorable to them, and journalists comply to varying degrees to get more information out of those sources in the future; it's not an ethical bright line - it's murky, and I doubt if you listened to all the communication that journalists had with their sources, you would find some stark ethical boundary between sources and journalists 100% of the time.
All reporters talk to the people they are covering. There is always a risk of sources having undue control over a story, but this doesn't sound as extreme as you are making it out to be. We can't abandon a respected source of journalism just because there is a vague appearance of impropriety.
I would argue the Clinton campaign isnt slimey because of this -- it's smart media relations. What does call credibility into question is The NY Times was "talked out of" reporting on something. An objective reporter would tell them to pound sand at a request to not report something.
So did I. There's nothing wrong with a news org expressing its opinions -- on the editorial page. But a news organization earns respect by offering solid, objective reporting.
To paraphrase George Orwell, journalism is writing the stories that powerful interests don't want written! The Times did the exact opposite and had a political campaign proofread stories before publication.
If it weren't such a major failure of a key institution of our democratic system it would be funny.
The purpose of the press is to be adversarial, not to help meet the PR objectives of those it views as friends.
> The Times did the exact opposite and had a political campaign proofread stories before publication.
This is false, or misleading at best, if you're referring to the Mark Leibovich profile of Clinton. He sent an off-the-record transcript the campaign asking whether it could be put on the record, and the campaign only allowed him to publish part of it. Not ideal of course, but I'm not sure how you would avoid this, unless you think off-the-record interviews should be banned entirely.
I think your take on this is a bit misleading. The only thing subject to being on the record would be specific quotes or statements by HRC. The rest of the article, the parts he was asking for approval on, were the journalistic conclusions he drew. He was asking for approval in case the campaign felt any of it was off message. There was also discussion of staying on message!
It's absurd that candidates should be treated with such kid gloves. HRC should be happy to subject herself to whatever interviews, etc., from the nation's most respected paper simply to allow her side of the story to be noted.
The predominant vibe should be adversarial, skeptical of her motives and promises, and doing the interview and reading the resulting piece should be unpleasant for the candidate.
I know the NYT tailors the composition of various pages based on the print, afternoon, or online edition, etc., but throughout most of September and October, the pre-paywall politics section contained at least two flattering/fluffy stories about the HRC campaign every single day.
I'm sure there are people who want to read that stuff, but they should be asking how she'll turn all the promises into law, why she waited to support gay marriage, why she allowed her cronies to sabotage Sanders' campaign on her behalf, etc. The NYT did none of that. So coupled with the very friendly treatment by Leibovich, the news org doesn't really seem much like a news org.
> The purpose of the press is to be adversarial, not to help meet the PR objectives of those it views as friends.
Once you know enough "good" PR people, you quickly realize that the press often doesn't work that way, save a few investigative journalists. Some PR-types I know at larger SV organizations have a lot of blogger and journalist friends, and they appear to have an unwritten "we'll give you the scoop if you give us right of first refusal" on a lot of stories.
Adding to your point: I sense they've taken a tacky and somewhat nannyish "guardian of democracy" approach in their headline selection lately. I like to be told the news, but it felt as if I was being told how I should be voting; it seemed manipulative and insulting to my intelligence and experience.
I feel a sense of distrust between the news editors and their readers; that Citizen Kane feeling.
That said, I thought David Brooks' latest piece was well-put.
>but it felt as if I was being told how I should be voting
I've felt this sentiment since slightly before the conventions. Ask this independent voter why he's anxious for this to all be over? It's all the "Do you want Trump? Because that's how you get Trump" histrionics.
Indeed, that's how they do that, in the hope the horde will follow their made up winner. Unfortunately most media in this world are more corrupt than people are willing to believe.
It depends on what you mean by 'better'. The sources I linked are reporting on emails from Wikileaks. Therefore, I think Wikileaks would be the best source for the raw information without any editorializing or spin.
I doubt some media outlets would offer any decent reporting on these leaks as it damaged their credibility (e.g. Huffington Post, CNN, Politico, NYT, etc)
Then at least link to the emails you find objectionable? Everything I've seen is just the normal process of reporters talking to the people they cover.
What do those have to do with the nytimes? (Maybe explain what you think is going on here, and why it's bad? It looks like they are suggesting questions to CNN to ask Trump in an interview?)
No news agency anywhere merits trust. Many merit attention nonetheless; a thoughtful reader armed with knowledge of a given agency's bias and style can still derive useful information from its work, and every blue moon or so one finds a story that's actually true at face value. (Never count on it, though.)
Keeping up with current events has always been a full-contact sport, never more so than today. Whether you feel it a sport worth playing is your own lookout.
(And a US presidential election is maybe not the best introduction to this perspective, unless you value full immersion, because it's the one time when absolutely everyone is guaranteed to be lying just as hard as they can - and all in the most meritorious of causes, of course.)
>Keeping up with current events has always been a full-contact sport
-------------------------------
>nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle... I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time... general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Norvell (11 June 1807)
It's the "that and" part that is not. There is no evidence that the NYT colluded with the Clinton campaign against Sanders. There isn't even a Challabi-like informant in the Sanders camp trying to make that claim.
There is no evidence that the NYT colluded with the Clinton campaign against Sanders
I'm not a Sanders supporter but you don't need "evidence of collusion" to make that assertion. You just need to take a look at the NYT's own online archive. They waited until the last possible minute before they even began talking about Sanders -- or anyone else -- as a serious primary contender. Meanwhile, coverage of Clinton was almost a daily affair.
Clinton was anointed by the press from the get-go, just as Trump was anointed with billions of dollars' worth of free publicity by the same media outlets. Their preferences were so obvious, in both cases, that the burden of proof belongs to those who claim otherwise.
Of course, the NYT covered Clinton more. She was the Senator of the state the newspaper is located in, she won the popular vote in the 2008 primaries, and she had recently been Secretary of State. She was obviously the frontrunner.
The kind of coverage that the NYT gave Clinton wasn't more favorable than what it gave Sanders, on the other hand. The NYT broke the Clinton email story.
The level of Democratic party and media cooperation is staggering. Media has effectively become a part of the liberal part of the government. The reason Wikileaks scandal got so little attention is because they all, CNN, NYT, etc, are in bed with each other. It's effectively a government-media complex.
It's not actually liberal. In reality it's quite conservative... moneyed, powerful interests shaping the messages that they want the public to consume.
The idea that HRC is politically leftist is a bizarre bit of wizardry that is completely false and helps people who would vote for a leftward leaning candidate believe that she is on their side.
It's arguable whether HRC or George H.W. Bush is further to the right... they are in a similar ballpark... the endorsement is not too farfetched, though normally party loyalty would have prevented it from being made public.
You're just calling whatever you dislike "conservative." Left/right, conservative/liberal are all relative, there are no absolute points of reference. In modern US, GOP represent the conservatives and Democrats are liberals.
Thanks to neoconservatives, some younger people got used to the fact that right wingers are warmongers building global empires* but these are not intrinsically right or conservative views. Plenty of truly hardcore leftists, like Russian communists who were so far to the left of Hillary they would have useless bourgeois scum like her executed, loved war. Socialism is war time economy planning applied in peace time. They wanted a never-ending revolution that spread to the entire world, or at least the English Channel since they were better at manufacturing tanks than ships.
* Well, trying to build global empires while in reality bombing a random stretch of desert.
> They wanted a never-ending revolution that spread to the entire world, or at least the English Channel since they were better at manufacturing tanks than ships.
The Soviet Navy was one of the biggest navies in the world. I don't have the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure it was #2 in the world, only behind the US Navy.
And it would have gotten the ever-living shit knocked out of it in a conventional shooting war with the US Navy.
Saddam's Iraqi army was one of the largest in the world. North Korea still has one of the largest. Quantity doesn't have quite the same quality as in Stalin's day.
> In modern US, GOP represent the conservatives and Democrats are liberals
This is totally inaccurate. There is a small aspect of the parties' rhetoric that evokes liberal and conservative ideals, but no substantial policy differences.
HRC only very recently came to support same sex marriage, after it was a sure-fire winning issue. In the past she has called for a wall between the US and Mexico, she uses race baiting language to make white voters feel that she'll be tough on crime, and her remarks justifying neoconservative foreign policy are very disrespectful of the citizens (typically brown-skinned) of the nations the US attacks.
HRC is strongly supported by the banking and finance industry, as well as by essentially all large, establishment industry groups. This is the definition of conservatism, preserving the status quo.
HRC also focuses very much on American exceptionalism and makes a moralistic argument for US foreign policy. She's presided over the largest arms deal in the history of the world, selling US arms to Saudi Arabia.
She wishes for the US to be the world hegemon and to use drone strikes (terrorism) to intimidate and subjugate the (often) brown-skinned people who might try to prevent that.
As we've seen via Wikileaks, HRC has used her and WJC's considerable political influence to amass a fortune exceeding a quarter of a billion dollars. She's advocated most of the economic policies that the super-rich want most. Some of these are, frankly, good policies, but many are handouts and loopholes that help preserve the status quo at the expense of those on the bottom and in the middle.
I would never vote for Donald Trump, but I would also never vote for HRC for many of the same reasons that prevent me from voting for someone like Trump or George W. Bush, etc.
As we've seen with Wikileaks, HRC despises the Sanders voters and strategized not just to sabotage Sanders' candidacy by installing her own cronies in the DNC, but also by pretending to care about their issues while telling banks the opposite. Not only is HRC a political pragmatist, she's on record actively trying to stop the only moderately successful leftist political movement in the US (Sanders) and joking about it to bankers!
Voting for HRC because she's a woman evokes a tribal instinct that is on the same level as voting for someone because they are white. We all want a world of equal rights and we all want to respect powerful, even flawed, leaders whether they are male or female. But HRC goes way too far with the sabotage of Sanders' campaign and the warmongering. Thus I believe voting for HRC (or Trump) is an unconscionable act.
One thing I'm personally tiring of in this election cycle is the very strong "media is an xyz conspiracy" narrative; a lot of the reasoning seems nothing more than, gasp, people actually have opinions and bias, and marketing spin is a thing. I don't see spin as a "conspiracy", frankly. There is no such thing as unbiased media, I've never known it ever. Connections are not surprising here either. It's rather puzzling to hear opinion and connections being treated automatically as strong conspiracy.
For the record, liberals these days will tend to say rather the same thing as the above, but substitute Fox News and Breitbart, maybe even the WSJ. There's certainly connections -- Fox News certainly has hired Republican big guns in the past, and Breitbart's executive chairman went on to manage Trump's campaign after all. There's also certainly spin in the other direction. You treat the source accordingly.
Narrative, spin, and marketing will always exist (not just for government and media, but for any organization, from big businesses all the way down to non-profit advocacy groups), it's omnipresent in life. It's a good skill in life to develop a sense for looking past the more egregious forms of marketing and spin in life (the "clickbait" of the web, as it were).
Well, what makes a journalist good at their job is reporting facts and allowing the reader/viewer to understand as much as possible and formulate a decision.
When journalists are bad at their job they make it very easy to arrive at a particular opinion without really having to understand the issue. This too is the point of PR and of moralistic calls to action... to circumvent rational thought and make someone do something (vote a certain way, buy a certain product, hate a group of people, etc).
This is true -- the better journalists and papers actually give you enough facts to allow for meaningful conversation and disagreement. And this really is what we should look for, to separate good quality journalism from tabloid trash, regardless of bias.
From my viewpoint, the New York Times still has a reputation for quality journalism. Very few of the anti-New York Times viewpoints in this thread are terribly convincing to me from that perspective.
This is just how journalism works: the reporter has to request/negotiate access to the source. The PR folks will obviously try to spin everything positively to the reporter; that's their job. Afterward, the reporter writes up a story as objectively as possible. When some part of the story happens to be flattering, the PR people will obviously high-five themselves. When some part of the story is negative, the PR people will be disappointed and try to get the reporter to see their side.
See this article [1] from Mark Leibovich for an NYT reporter's account of one of the issues addressed in your links.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/magazine/anatomy-of-a-medi...