[naturalgradient]

The greatest marketing trick the NYT has ever pulled off is presenting themselves as the last bastion of objectivity in the trump era.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I think the most recent Sarah Jeong controversy and virtually all reporting on migration, feminism, campus politics etc shows this. Mind you this is from a European perspective where I see almost all reporting about politics here as copying off talking points from the far left.

This is the true genius of their marketing though: They are actually as polarized as any other source in the culture war, but market themselves to an audience that likes to think of themselves as rational, objective, sensible.

[Latty]

"Far left" is a pretty polarising way to describe them.

I'm from the UK, which is a country which is firmly on the right of most of Europe, and policy in the US is extremely far right of here. The reporting I've seen from the New York Times is barely left, let alone "far left".

The right seems to have moved so far out to the far right, and yet people act like the centre-point of the Repbulicans and Democrats is still somehow the neutral position.

[oriol18]

"UK is on the right of most of Europe". That's a wrong premise in my opinion. While economic policy is definitely more liberal than the average, social left is pervasive in both main political parties, and there's a solid consensus around open borders, gender equality and other forms of egalitarianism.

[Latty]

Uh... you really haven't been paying attention if you think there is a "solid consensus" on open borders in the UK. We have never had "open borders", and Brexit is going to mean reduced immigration.

Economic policy is a part of people's lives - public spending is a big issue (e.g: healthcare spending), and we are very far from left in that regard. We aren't terrible for social policy, no, but we aren't leading the pack either.

[oriol18]

[flagged]

[sctb]

If you keep breaking the guidelines like this, we'll ban the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[naturalgradient]

I did not call the NYT a far left magazine.

I said their reporting on EUROPEAN politics ("politics here") copies points from the far left (e.g. all mass migration is unquestionably good, parties against it must be right wing populists if not racists, etc).

I think their reporting on campus politics, identity politics is also far left, but other than that their stance on Iraq war etc is more Hillary-left than traditional 'left'. It's pointless semantics though, outrage mode is already engaged in this thread and it will probably soon turn into a dumpster fire.

Someone cannot just be wrong or inaccurate, they must be the enemy ('right rant'), and culture wars demand I first clarify I am on 'the right side of the issues' before saying anything. The more objective people think they are, the blinder towards their own bias. Of course I am biased too, but what people engage with in my post is the 'far left' comment on European politics instead of the actual point.

My point was that the NYT engages in culture war because it sells. I can agree with many issues on the NYT but still observe that and be annoyed by it, but that does not matter in tribalistic discourse.

[Latty]

Maybe we have seen different articles from them - I admit I'm definitely not an avid reader - but I haven't seen what you are describing.

You claim they write articles saying "mass migration is unquestionably good" but even googling now, I can't find anything of the sort - just articles that try to point out the negative effects of migration are massively overstated and flat-out-lied about. Nowhere do I see them arguing that we want more migration or should have no controls, just that migrants are used as scapegoats and the issue is misrepresented a lot of the time by right-wing parties.

Your point just appears to be "they report on some stuff and I don't agree with them on it", therefore you they are intentionally causing a "culture war"?

Policy progresses - the idea that this is some new thing that has never happened before is flat-out wrong. I see the democrats very gradually shifting left, while I see the Republicans sprinting to the right. Blaming the gap, the "culture war" on the left seems disingenuous.

At some point, when the Republicans are actively calling for discriminating against and reducing the quality of life of friends and family: denying them healthcare, kicking them out of the army, etc... You can't expect people to just sit back and accept it. It hurts. Just saying "this is wrong and it's wrong to support it" really doesn't seem excessive.

Saying it's a "culture war" and that they need to stop calling people out on supporting this policy sure sounds like an attempt to shut people up, rather than saying why the policy is actually good.

[ggm]

You're just saying you don't like their editorial. So.. don't subscribe!

There is no trickery here.

Far left.. you really have no idea how silly you look. There is almost no institution in the USA which actively publishes a broadsheet newspaper you could call left, let alone "far" left. Middle of the road looks pretty left from a ranty right view maybe.

(I'm a Guardian subscriber btw)

[lsmarigo]

  There is almost no institution in the USA which actively publishes a broadsheet newspaper you could call left, let alone "far" left. Middle of the road looks pretty left from a ranty right view maybe.

You are correct and GP betrays his bias here. You want to see far left check out Chapo Trap House, thats far left and it's a far cry from what NYT is publishing. Discouraging to see this here.

[naturalgradient]

To be honest I think you are just proving my point by getting upset and calling me 'ranty right'. Tribalism sells because it triggers emotions like these. It works for the Guardian just as well as it works for the NYT, Fox news or anyone else.

[ggm]

Oh please. You said far left. You invited the response. The NYT is simply not left, or far left. To clarify can you self identify your position in this spectrum? You think you are middle-of-the-road and the NYT is far left journalism?

Look, I really don't care. Go talk to people with a range of views but saying the NYT is left wing journalism just beggars belief. Have you ever read a left wing paper? Here's a hint: the guardian is not a left wing paper. The morning star, which was the daily worker. That's a left wing paper.

[adwn]

I think your disagreement mainly stems from using different terminology: naturalgradient uses "left" as in "socially left/socially progressive", while you use "left" as in "economically left/socialism".

[ggm]

Plausible. On either choice, is the NYT a far left paper?

Btw, I don't think the accusation of its political leaning holds water, in saying plausible I mean I think you're right that the other person believes social justice headlines indicate left wing when to me, they just indicate normal middle of the road democrat positions.

[jottr]

Agree. Same view looking at it from India.

They aren't bridging any gaps or increasing understanding in society. They are playing the same game everyone else is playing in amplifying an us VS them narrative. Because that is what the underlying social media architecture of likes/clicks/views/upvotes produces in everyone.

There is no genius about this.

It's just their method to survive. Obv it benefits them temporarily but the costs are accruing to society.

Journalism cannot be built on top of likes/views/clicks/retweets/upvotes. Stuff that is built on top of that architecture conditions journalists and talking heads to pander. That architecture must change. There is no sane reason for these numbers to be shown to journalists and their readers in real time.

It's like watching E.B.Skinners behaviour experiments with rats.

Changing this architecture of real time counts used as behaviour conditioners can be changed only by the tech world.

[ericdykstra]

Maybe in the past the NYT had earned their reputation as a trustworthy source, but they're certainly eroding that reputation at a blistering pace. They might survive as a partisan publisher, plenty do, but I always go into NYT articles expecting bias in reporting.

It's not just the politics, either. I ran across this article from just a couple of days ago and couldn't believe it got past an editor: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/well/why-take-diet-advice...

> Keep in mind that the life expectancy of people before the advent of agriculture 15,000 years ago rarely reached or exceeded 40, so their risk of developing the so-called diseases of civilization is unknown.

To completely ignore how infant mortality affects life expectancy shows a complete lack of knowledge of history or statistics.

[nl]

I don't understand your point about the Paleo diet.

I just Googled, and apparently the "ignore how infant mortality affects life expectancy" is a talking point of pro-Paleo websites. This is a good point (although it seems to ignore the high mortality rate of women during childbirth), but seems pretty irrelevant to the rest of the article.

Ignoring that, it seemed a reasonably well thought-out counterpoint to another fad diet.

[paulgb]

I think the issue is that 40 years seems to be extrapolated from an average, but the distribution of human lifespans (especially in pre-modern times) is bi-modal so the average doesn't tell you much about how long they lived conditioned on reaching adulthood. I found mostly questionable-looking paleo-diet related results as well, but to their credit the chain of citations led back to peer-reviewed research such as this:

> we see that on average 57 percent, 64 percent, and 67 percent of children born survive to age 15 years among hunter-gatherers, forager-horticulturalists, and acculturated hunter-gatherers. Of those who reach age 15, 64 percent of traditional hunter-gatherers and 61 percent of forager-horticulturalists reach age 45. The acculturated hunter-gatherers show lower young adult mortality rates, with 79 percent surviving to age 45, conditional on reaching age 15.

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/gurvenlab/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.ed...

[nl]

Sure, I agree it's a good point. But it does seem to be a fairly minor point in the whole article, and I really don't understand what the OP's point was.

Was it just they didn't like the criticism of paleo? Because honestly, to me publishing reasonably well thought out criticism of anything seems exactly what a good newspaper should do.

[darkerside]

> There have been no studies of large groups of people who have followed the currently popular versions of the Paleo diet for decades to assess their long-term health effects.

You could say similar things about climate change. The science is, and always will be, out. That's the nature of science.

[ejstronge]

>> There have been no studies of large groups of people who have followed the currently popular versions of the Paleo diet for decades to assess their long-term health effects.

> You could say similar things about climate change. The science is, and always will be, out. That's the nature of science.

This is a false equivalency.

Science requires experiments to support or refute hypotheses. The fact that new experiments may cause us to revisit a theory does not mean that one can assert any arbitrary theory to be correct.

[darkerside]

Where did I assert any theory as being correct. Stop twisting my words. You're seeing an agenda where there isn't one.

[tanilama]

I can echo that. Their journalism feels predictable, not only the opinion, but also the writing of it. The way they approach the subject from an observer, and possibly assumed superior perspective make me feel detached and indifferent as with the reporter. Other left-learning publication, like Guardian, suffers less from such formulaic problem, make me wonder this might be intentional.

[scarface74]

What’s far left about criticizing yet another fad diet?

[colordrops]

This is why these big papers still exist despite questionable profit mechanisms. They are propaganda mouth pieces. There's a reason billionaires buy newspaper companies.

[WalterBright]

Everybody thinks that they're unbiased, and everyone else is biased. Hence, the target audience of any newspaper thinks it's unbiased.

[morsch]

Mind you this is from a European perspective where I see almost all reporting about politics here as copying off talking points from the far left.

The largest newspaper, by circulation, in Germany is a right wing tabloid (Bild).

The largest newspaper, by circulation, in the UK is a right wing tabloid (The Sun).

The largest newspaper, by circulation, in Austria is a right wing tabloid (Kronen).

[swarnie_]

The NYT keeps popping up on UK focused subreddits in the last few months with articles extremely critical of our conservative politicians.

I knew NYT by reputation but never knew they took such an interest in another countries politics. Is there really an appetite for this content across the pond?

If they're trying to appeal to a broader international market then they seem to be doing a good job. Personally if i want X person bashed for 2000 words i already have far too much choice as is.

[toyg]

I don't know how old you are, but from a 40-yo perspective, the NYT being seen as "leftist" is a terrifying signal of how right-wing the mainstream political window has gone in the US. The traditional megaphone of the East-Coast moneyed, the newspaper that sold the Iraq War to the public with lie after lie, is now seen as a bastion of liberalism.

The US is in a very dark place right now. Last time it happened, it took Katrina to briefly break the spell. I wonder what it will take this time.

[leereeves]

The NY Times recently hired an editor who tweeted things like "kill all the men", "fuck the police", "it's sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men".

I'd like to think that's well outside the mainstream political window.

[VSTN]

This is because there is a massive confusion of the political spectrum which is better divided as 4 parts rather than 2.

The NYT isn't left at all when it comes to its views on how the economy should be run. But on social issues it certainly is a left rag. In fact, in what kind of environment but the leftomost extremist side could one tolerate the presence of an employee like Sarah Jeong who said such nice things as "white people are only fit to live underground like groveling goblins"? Not only did they not fire her but they even came to her defense.

The NYT is the poster child of the new generation of leftists, whose core obsessions are not whether the proletariat earns enough to make a decent living but whether they can dye their hair blue and still find a job.

[rainonmoon]

Arguably, the kind of environment in which one elects a President who generalises an entire nationality as criminals and rapists except for "a few, [who] I assume, are good people." If you want to find how low the bar has fallen, understand that one side of the political divide lowered it long before Jeong got there.

Your final assertion is not worth addressing.

[leereeves]

Sarah Jeong's anti-white, anti-male, anti-cop tweets date back to 2013, long before the election.

https://archive.fo/7m0Tz

I don't agree with you that "they did it first" is a valid defense for this behavior, but if it were, it would be a defense for Trump, not for Jeong.

[rainonmoon]

By "one side of the political divide" I'm not referring to Trump specifically, but the online subcultures that dovetailed into the alt-right, which most certainly existed before Jeong's tweets.

EDIT: To further clarify, I'm not saying "they did it first" is a defence. I'm explaining that this is the context that Vox article going around is saying is missing when people want to condemn those tweets -- the tone and vocabulary of a certain part of Twitter. Jeong's mistake was posting those tweets with a particular audience in mind - one that understood the touchstones of these conversations (e.g. "kill all men" being obviously not a serious rallying cry to murder males) - when, although Twitter can sometimes feel like a clubhouse, it's still a public forum. At the time, I, and many other people situated within that context, understood Jeong's meaning perfectly, and even as a white man I empathise with what she's saying. Others may not be aware of that context, or choose to ignore it, which is where the fraughtness of her comments lay, not the content itself.

I'm certain the response to this will be along the lines of "Then why are white men persecuted for making racist jokes?" and the answer is because young Asian-American women have a lot more to fear from young white men than vice versa, which is the power dynamic at the heart of why Jeong's comments can only be called "racist" in the strictest definition of the term, disregarding the present situation. But this is all getting too complex to outline in a comment unambiguously, so I hesitate to say even that much.

[leereeves]

Then don't use "the kind of environment in which one elects a President..." (in 2016) as a defense.

If you must use the "they did it first" defense, at least use specific examples from 2013 to defend her.

[VSTN]

"some people did it first" is not worth addressing either.

[hhjinks]

The complete and irreversible collapse of several important ecosystems is on the horizon...

[guessthejuice]

> The greatest marketing trick the NYT has ever pulled off is presenting themselves as the last bastion of objectivity in the trump era.

Considering most of the nation doesn't trust the NYT, not sure it was much of a trick. People trust foxnews more than the NYT. Think about that.

The real trick that the NYT ( along with CNN, MSNBC, etc ) pulled was forcing google, youtube, facebook and much of social media to give it an unfair privileged position to increase network traffic. They got a short term boost but it wasn't as significant as they'd hoped and it certainly won't last. Already, the subscriber growth has declined along with overall traffic.

Keep in mind that if we get a recession, the first thing the new subs will cut is the NYT subscription. I'm speaking from experience here. Also, as people get older and have more experience reading the NYT, their mistrust of NYT increases. Not a good sign for a trust based product.

And their activities ( hirings, stories and agenda pushing ) isn't helping.

[radmuzom]

[flagged]

[zarkov99]

even their incoherent stance on racism as illustrated in the Sarah Jeong debacle? I could live with a left bias but not their blatant hypocrisy.

[Latty]

Weaponizing old, out-of-context tweets is just the new alt-right playbook. James Gunn is the other obvious example.

Yes, these people posted things that were bad ideas. They also apologised, made it clear they were not serious about what was said, and moved past it.

To claim it makes their entire coverage of racism incoherent is... misleading at best. Imitating the masses of people trolling you as a joke may be a bad idea, but it's not comparable to the racism sustained by minorities that regularly damages their quality of life. Pretending the two things are the same is severely downplaying the severity of the latter.

People grow, change and learn. I've known people who used to be racist, and I don't hold it against them, because they have changed and deserve a chance to be a part of society, as long as they don't act like that any more.

Trying to stop anyone on the left who has ever made a mistake from having a voice, long after they made those mistakes is insane. The fact that alt-right voices arguing in bad faith are actively targeting the people trying to change the very issues at hand shows the issue.

[wyclif]

Oh, please. "Weaponizing old tweets", writings, or politics is not a phenomenon particular to the alt-right. Examples abound:

Kevin Williamson, formerly of the National Review, was recently fired by The Atlantic for old tweets.

James Damore, a Google engineer, was fired for making controversial statements about gender science that feminists at the company didn't like.

Brendan Eich, a software developer who created JavaScript and was a co-founder of Mozilla, was forced to resign as the CEO of that company after making a political donation.

And there are many more instances of "repressive tolerance" in Big Tech, which Herbert Marcuse and others have described as a tolerance for 'all viewpoints' which actually contributes to social oppression in our culture.

The weaponizing of alternate viewpoints in the interests of "social justice" isn't owned by any one political faction, it's deployed nowadays by all of them, and it leads to a corrosive and toxic public discourse and environment.

[Latty]

There is a big difference between pointing out someone is actively acting in bad faith, and taking content they have apologised for and say they disagree with now when they don't act in that way any more.

> Kevin Williamson, formerly of the National Review, was recently fired by The Atlantic for old tweets.

He spoke with the editor who fired him because that was still his viewpoint, not an old tweet he apologised for or regretted.

> Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg forced to conclude that his new hire did, in fact, believe what he said he believed. “The language he used in this podcast — and in my conversations with him in recent days — made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views,”

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/5/17202182/the-atlantic-kevin-wil...

> James Damore, a Google engineer, was fired for making controversial statements about gender science that feminists at the company didn't like.

He stood by his comments, in fact, he doubled down on them.

> Brendan Eich, a software developer who created JavaScript and was a co-founder of Mozilla, was forced to resign as the CEO of that company after making a political donation.

This isn't historic, that's current behaviour.

> And there are many more instances of "repressive tolerance" in Big Tech, which Herbert Marcuse and others have described as a tolerance for 'all viewpoints' which actually contributes to social oppression in our culture.

> The weaponizing of alternate viewpoints isn't owned by any one political faction, it's deployed nowadays by all of them, and it leads to a corrosive and toxic public environment.

Your examples are different things - it's perfectly reasonable, in fact, I would argue a moral obligation, not to accept bad actions and support of abhorrent policy from those around you.

My point was that people can and do change - if any of these people renounced their viewpoints, acted in good faith and changed, I would happily support them in any endeavour. That isn't what happened in these cases - there is a fundamental difference.

Even if this does happen to people on the right (and I'm sure there must be cases of it, as with all things), that doesn't justify the recent spate of cases being intentionally pushed by the alt-right. The particular instance being discussed here is wrong in the same way it would be wrong if it was someone on the right.

[gurkendoktor]

> Weaponizing old, out-of-context tweets is just the new alt-right playbook

No, it was the cultural mainstream that made it acceptable to fire people over communication mistakes. See the "Just kidding, I'm white" tweet[1], Tim Hunt getting fired by Twitter before even getting off his plane[2], or in tech: Donglegate, where people on both sides were fired.

NYT should totally hire Sarah Jeong, but as a leftie, I have to agree with the "alt-right" that the double standard is ridiculous. The Verge sums it up pretty well[3]: Nobody should attack our journalists for their tweets, with the implication that firing everyone else was a great idea.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-for...

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17644878/the-verge-new-yor...

[Latty]

It isn't a double standard, because the standard is consistent:

- People are responsible for what they say and can and should be fired if they support abhorrent policy or abuse people.

- People should always be able to reform and come back into society if they apologise, state they don't support their previous actions, and act differently.

These things are not contradictory.

Right now, there is an intentional effort by the alt-right to dig up these kinds of things from people who fit the latter category and raise them and promote them to try and minimise the voices of people who are now promoting things they dislike. It has nothing to do with the original issue, just the means to an end.

I'm not saying that the problem doesn't exist elsewhere, but that doesn't mean it's right that these people are targeted.

[xeeeeeeeeeeenu]

> Weaponizing old, out-of-context tweets is just the new alt-right playbook. James Gunn is the other obvious example.

They merely adopted left's usual tactics.

Personally, I don't support firing people over their private views, but in this case it's blatant hypocrisy. For example, a few months ago NYT fired Quinn Norton for almost the same thing[1]. Almost, because her old racist tweets weren't targeting white people.

>Yes, these people posted things that were bad ideas. They also apologised, made it clear they were not serious about what was said, and moved past it.

Sarah did not apologize. All she did was claiming that she's a victim.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/business/media/quinn-nort...

[Latty]

Your link is broken, but she absolutely has apologised: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/1025050118989332480

Yes, she was a victim, she also admitted she was wrong, and said she would not do it again, and she has not.

> They merely adopted left's usual tactics. > Personally, I don't support firing people over their private views, but in this case it's blatant hypocrisy. For example, a few months ago NYT fired Quinn Norton for almost the same thing[1]. Almost, because her old racist tweets weren't targeting white people.

If it was the same, then maybe it was wrong with her too. I can't find an apology, however, so it seems different to me.

[xeeeeeeeeeeenu]

>Your link is broken

Sorry, fixed now.

>she absolutely has apologised: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/1025050118989332480

It's a non-apology, she basically said "some people were mean to me, which gave me a right to be a racist and I'm the real victim".

> If it was the same, then maybe it was wrong with her too. I can't find an apology, however, so it seems different to me.

As I said, I don't support firing people for that, I'm just pointing out hypocrisy.

[zarkov99]

Come on, even if what you said wasn't absurd,i.e you can be racist if someone attacks you on Twitter, the NYT fired people for much, much less than the disgusting vitriol the woman posted for years.

[Latty]

> i.e you can be racist if someone attacks you on Twitter

That is not what I said. I said she admitted what she said was wrong, publicly renounced the tweets, and stopped doing it. That is literally the opposite of what you are claiming I said.

Yes, it also matters that her intent at the time was not a belief that white people are inferior but to mimic the style of people abusing her to point out the absurdity. Was it the wrong course of action? Yes, but not all wrong things are equal. As I just said, the fact she has apologised, not repeated the action, and renounced what she did matters.

> the NYT fired people for much, much less than the disgusting vitriol the woman posted for years

Then give those examples, they don't change the facts of this case.

[zarkov99]

They don't change the facts, I agree, but they reveal the hypocrisy and incoherence of their stance with respect to racism.

[rainonmoon]

Their stance is Jeong used to imitate the language of her harassers, has since learned that was wrong, and has apologised. We should all be seeking rehabilitation, not retribution, and although I personally don't think her tweets were particularly objectionable, her remorse should earn her a second chance.

[lumberjack]

Being a liberal (the philosophy) is equivalent to being neutral and objective according to all the mainstream media, which are all liberals.

[Latty]

Is being neutral reporting on facts or is it reporting a viewpoint at the middle of the two parties? Those are two very different things.

As someone from the UK, a country that is pretty far to the right of most of Europe, and yet still far to the left of the US, the idea that these publications are biased to the left is, frankly, laughable.

[naturalgradient]

A good read on this is (at least to me as an outsider to American politics):

https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberal...

[garblegarble]

I'm afraid I stopped reading that 1/3rd of the way through after 50 paragraphs just repeating "liberals [American democrats, they mean] are smug" in slightly different ways without really delving into detail. (disclaimer: I'm European)

[tim333]

[flagged]

[xeeeeeeeeeeenu]

[flagged]

[untog]

Jeong's tweets were very, very obviously jokes. To suggest it's evidence of "hating white people" is just parroting manufactured outrage.

In any case. WSJ isn't more objective that NYT. It's just further to the right, which is why it appears objective to someone on the right.

[xeeeeeeeeeeenu]

>Jeong's tweets were very, very obviously jokes.

No, they were not. Maybe replacing 'white' with other races will help you to gain some perspective: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjnUykIUUAAifwH.jpg:large

[maxerickson]

Have you written somewhere about why you believe that context is not a relevant aspect of communication?

(That is, putting the tweets into a different context doesn't demonstrate anything about what was meant when they were twote.)

[anthonybsd]

[flagged]

[WalterBright]

After all, the NYT did leak the existence of the Doomsday Machine to the Soviets. It's why I don't subscribe.

[ginko]

Um, "leak" the existence of a doomsday machine? Isn't the whole point of a doomsday machine that the other side knows you have one?