[outoftheabyss]

This is the second article I’ve come across today lambasting the NYT for a hit piece, the second in my opinion is much worse given what the subject has been exposed to and has had to endure. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-the-...

It seems the publication is in the midst of a takeover by woke radical authoritarians. It used to be that you should be cancelled and/or made a pariah of society for actual things you said years ago, now that’s not enough, they will go out of their way to form a narrative around you, whether the cap fits or not, in order to ostracise, they aren’t afraid to stretch the truth or outright lie. This is not unique to the NYT but it’s a concerning trend.

[cowmoo728]

This is nothing new from them. The NYT, as the "paper of record" for America, has always been mired in politics and power. One of my favorite pieces from NYT is their blistering condemnation of MLK after his famous anti-Vietnam speech.

Never forget that there is a side that benefits politically from telling you that the NYT is being taken over by "woke radical authoritarians". The NYT is a political organization playing politics, just as it has been since 1851. I still mostly respect them because they tend to report facts accurately and mostly follow the ideal of journalistic integrity better than many other media outlets. But there are certain topics now, just as always, where their prevailing politics shines through loud and clear.

https://www.nytimes.com/1967/04/14/archives/dr-king-and-the-...

[vinay_ys]

A publication can be politically titled to one side and still be factually accurate and stay true to journalistic integrity principles (or at least that's what I want).

With social media and modern communication/publication mechanisms, it is much easier for individuals who know the ground truth to bring their perspective to the fore and poke holes into a major publication's journalistic flaws. This wasn't possible just 10 years ago.

In the case of NYT, their political tilt is very clear (that's ok) but their journalistic integrity is being called into question more and more (that's problematic).

[ttoomm28]

Not sure tilted would be the correct way to describe it, more lopsided.

[alexilliamson]

I think tilted is better, unless you can somehow be titled towards center. The BS they've published attacking Bernie and AOC should feel familiar to their attacks on the right.

[forgingahead]

This seems to be contradictory. It's ok to be politically biased, but still factually accurate for things that fit their political bias? The NYT and others like it go out of their way to pretend they have no political bias, using the passive voice to give authority to slanted reporting which favours one "team" over another.

Being a partisan mouthpiece isn't itself a problem, the issue is when it pretends (and many of its supporters repeatedly and falsely claim) that items described in the paper are more objective and carries greater weight than those in your average political party's weekly newsletter.

[JohnStrangeII]

> It's ok to be politically biased, but still factually accurate for things that fit their political bias?

Everybody is biased. You, me, and every journalist on earth. Of course, that's okay. The NYT also does not go out of their way to "...pretend they have no political bias."

What is important is to be able to understand the difference between news and editorials (including editorial decisions), but sadly more and more people seem to lose grasp of this basic distinction. This may be a sign of the negative consequences of the politization of many points.

[Retric]

Not all partisan mouthpieces are equivalent. You can be factually accurate while leading people to the wrong conclusion. However, it’s much less work to find someone willing to lie, and much harder to detect lies than misleading statements.

Journalistic integrity is therefore critical when selecting which biased sources to pay attention to.

[makomk]

Leading people to believe things that are wildly untrue using statements that are technically not lies does as much damage to society as doing it any other way, in my opinion. Sure, in theory smart people might be able to spot that what the article is trying to convince them of isn't backed up by the facts it uses - but in practice they almost never seem to, not even other journalists. (Here in the UK, the BBC seems to be a bit of a repeat offender - some other partisan rag publishes something designed to lead people to an untrue conclusion without technically lying, and then the BBC just outright repeats the untrue claim.)

[JohnStrangeII]

I've noticed this thought pattern with many people who argue against freedom of speech and for tighter control of media or "canceling" them recently:

1. The arguer claims that negative consequences follow from the exercising of free speech, in this case NYT right to freely chose the topics they write about.

2. The alleged consequence is that people are made to believe wrong or false things (where "wrong" and "false" are defined by the arguer).

3. The arguer portrays himself at the same the victim of those media and the person who knows better than those media and therefore can decide between wrong and right, true and false better than the accused media.

4. The arguer presents no evidence of knowing better and when you ask them about their sources, they tend to be highly problematic, based on blogging and websites who often do not even employ journalists.

Paraphrase: "I know better than large group of people X but everybody else is mislead by X" - I don't think so.

[Gene_Parmesan]

You used the term "biased," not them -- just to be clear. Which way a publication leans can be determined by things that have nothing directly to do with integrity or truth telling -- which stories they cover, for instance. In practice, lean often comes along with audience. Like any publication, news outlets have audiences, and the interests of that audience group will determine what stories it covers and how it covers them. This can be done with full journalistic integrity; in fact, it's harder (and perhaps impossible) for a publication to have zero political lean.

Political lean != acting as a mouthpiece.

Do also please note that your personal political leanings will determine whether you view the reporting of any publication as unethically biased or not. No matter which sides we're talking about, what one party reports as truth, another will hear as politically motivated.

[rendall]

> Never forget that there is a side that benefits politically from telling you that the NYT is being taken over by "woke radical authoritarians"

There is always "a side that benefits politically" from literally every statement. What is clear, irrespective of the side that benefits politically from stating it: the NYT is willing to use its influence to distort the political opinions of its readers, using innuendo and cherrypicked facts.

Those who look to the NYT (and The Washington Post) for accurate facts are literally (mis)guided into holding a specific political opinion, and defending that opinion even against facts that would rationally moderate that opinion.

I am as certain as stone that most people who read the NYT will forever associate Scott Alexander Siskind with white supremacy, conservatism, and anti-woke ideology because of that hit piece; for these people, this will be a fact. For them "Never forget that there is a side that benefits politically from calling that article a 'hit piece'" is a statement that actually has meaning, and they will operate on that assumption. His Wikipedia page will be inundated with editors who insist that the NYT interpretation is "true" while Scott's blog is "opinion", and will dutifully and duly note these interpretations as facts onto his Wikipedia entry. For these people, reading and discussing Scott Alexander will be tantamount to supporting white supremacy, and so a whole encyclopedia of delightful, thoughtful inquiry will be foreclosed.

It is reprehensible, and I cannot in future take anyone who cites the NYT without caution as a serious person who actually understands their world.

[DubiousPusher]

This is similar to arguments I frequently make about the paper. The reason it has such standing as it does is because it was a mast of Northeast elite hedgemony. I mean this more in a sociological sense than in a true dynastic political sense. The Northeast had been thought for very long to have the best schools, culture, technology, leadership and values.

There was a time when that culture was not just dominant among elite circles but often revered by everyday people as something to live up to. As much as the 80s, 90s and on were seemingly about the decline of that power nexus, the institutions retained a lot of mystique and fascination.

That ideal of American life is in a tailspin. Norman Rockwell is more a punchline than a comfort to people. The nation's opinions aren't filtered through New York TV personalities any more.

The paper has weakend and that has allowed the social agreement about it to change. Before if you expressed a negative opinion about such a paper it was mostly washed away in a consistent wave of accolade. If disagreement always meets reproach it is hard for it to spread. Agreement is an innoculatiom against criticism.

[rootsudo]

I can see this. I'd like to read up more on it, any good sources?

[foldr]

> Northeast elite hedgemony

This. Housing associations in the Northeast are getting completely out of control. Whatever happened to people trimming their own hedges in the style they see fit?

[Lammy]

> The NYT, as the "paper of record" for America, has always been mired in politics and power. One of my favorite pieces from NYT is their blistering condemnation of MLK after his famous anti-Vietnam speech.

https://www.hfsbooks.com/books/the-rising-clamor-hadley/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

"The Agency’s relationship with the [New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers" v(._. )v

[remarkEon]

>It seems the publication is in the midst of a takeover by woke radical authoritarians.

I'm skeptical it's an actual takeover per se, and not the older generation being completely blindsided by the force with which the younger generation(s) release their demands. They probably just don't know how to deal with it, and so are giving too much deference to them because doing otherwise risks the online twitter mob.

Is legacy media really leaking talent and cash like I hear so often (honestly asking, haven't seen the data)? If that's true, and social media and technology have neutered their position atop of opinion-forming institutions, that is going to build some very bad incentives in these legacy media companies as far as journalistic integrity goes.

[Gene_Parmesan]

As someone who majored in journalism and who graduated in 2009, what most people consider traditional journalism has been slowly dying since at least the 07/08 crisis. They were already struggling due to not knowing how to properly handle the internet. Giving away content for free was a mistake made in the 90s that was proving impossible to claw back, and online ads were nowhere close to making up for the lost revenue from print ads (because, in a bit of news surprising no one, there's no real proof that online ads work).

Then the crisis hit. I'll never forget one of my adjunct professors, who often appeared on CNBC, having a near panic attack in class one day. It came like a virus striking an already sickly herd. Local papers shed jobs, many papers shut down or became nothing but AP copy-paste jobs. I decided around this time to go to law school (ahh, the mistakes of youth) because I would have been competing with hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants for near-poverty-line salaries at local papers in rural states.

Many places that didn't fold during this time changed hands, and you should ask yourself what the motive would be for someone to purchase a traditional newspaper when it was clear the market for traditional news was being strangled. It's not exactly a good bet for profit-making, so I've always felt like alternative goals were in play.

[thisiszilff]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-... is a great article about changes at NYTimes in the past few years.

[dohnuts1919]

> I'm skeptical it's an actual takeover per se, and not the older generation being completely blindsided by the force with which the younger generation(s) release their demands.

This. The change is coming from the bottom up, and internal reports from the NYT and elsewhere usually suggest that when there's another "woke" controversy it's generally the young being pitted against the old.

There's been an enormous cultural shift at our elite colleges in the last five to ten years, and the inquisitors of the new religion have by now had several years to graduate and enter the institutions. This trend is going to continue - we're only just getting started.

[BurningFrog]

One quite possible scenario is that this is the dying process of the "legacy media", as it gets replaced by... whatever comes next.

That's one way to see the recent NYT purges. If I can force out a colleague for some marginal etiquette infraction, that's one fewer competitor in the shrinking job pool.

[pm90]

> Is legacy media really leaking talent and cash like I hear so often (honestly asking, haven't seen the data)? If that's true, and social media and technology have neutered their position atop of opinion-forming institutions, that is going to build some very bad incentives in these legacy media companies as far as journalistic integrity goes.

They're definitely in decline financially, but that does mean there are a lot of great journalists that are available to hire.

[anticristi]

I lost count of the number of times the NYT used the same numbers and switched from praising to blaming and back the Swedish corona startegy.

I want facts and information goddammit. Not a tearjerking drama to fill my inbox. I was already annoyed with the NYT before this incident. This just broke the camel's back. I unsubscribed.

[smsm42]

> It seems the publication is in the midst of a takeover by woke radical authoritarians

It'd say towards the end of it. And yes, it is a very bad and concerning trend.

[john_moscow]

There's a huge tension in the society caused by the wealth shift from individuals to corporations. As a rank-and-file millennial, in most of the cases you are priced out of property ownership, are expected to do your shitty job until death, and you starting a family would be directly directly against your employer's interests.

The woke movement and is artificially splintering people based on identities. It is redirecting the tension between people and corporations into tension between artificially created identity groups. So far they are very successful at it. Plenty of people are so busy trying to ruin someone else's life, they completely don't notice the decline of their own long-term perspectives.

[kortilla]

> in most of the cases you are priced out of property ownership

This is only true for a selection of coastal cities. The property ownership ladder is still available all over the US to the lower middle class and up.

The narrative you are parroting that this is because of corporations is another distraction designed to keep people from actually addressing housing issues with large legal reforms crushing NIMBYism.

Take as much money as you want from Google and Apple, it won’t change the fact that there are only enough houses in the Bay Area for about half of the people that live there.

[john_moscow]

>The property ownership ladder is still available all over the US to the lower middle class and up.

It is available outside the coastal cities if you have a coastal city salary. That kind of defeats the purpose.

>Take as much money as you want from Google and Apple, it won’t change the fact that there are only enough houses in the Bay Area for about half of the people that live there.

There's enough space in the U.S. to build new housing. Like nice 2000+ sqft houses with lots, owned by the people living there. If only a huge chunk of the economy wasn't tied to a few megacorporations located in a handful of cities. So instead, we keep fighting for a right to live in a rented 500sqft box with barely enough space to sleep.

[jhbadger]

I think you are confusing cause and effect. Cities like SF aren't crowded because megacorporations are located there, but rather megacorporations are located there because they are crowded. SF, NYC, Paris, and London are cities that people have moved to for well over a century, because they were excited to live in places with so much culture, shopping, and restaurants. This has always meant that housing in these cities is much more expensive than elsewhere. People have tried to start tech centers elsewhere, which generally fail (In the 1990s the big new thing was the so called "Silicon Prairie" in the Midwest, but that didn't really take off). Some new centers, like Austin, TX do seem to be taking off, but that's because Austin is an exciting city.

[kodah]

You are very misinformed.

Austin is not "new". It was at competition with Silicon Valley and used to be referred to as Silicon Hill. A lot of hardware manufacturing happened in Texas. At some point, between favorable business laws and Google starting large scale recruiting events it sucked a lot of the talent out of places like Texas.

So your statement is more accurately framed as, "Austin is finally recovering as a tech hub."

While businesses these days may move to SV because of the large population and other businesses, that was not the case in the beginning.

[jhbadger]

I think the modern attraction of Austin has a bit more to do with its reputation as a "cool" city with its music scene than its history of chip manufacturing.

[Junk_Collector]

Silicon Valley was built in the valley because that was cheap available land that was mostly empty but still accessible to a major coastal port. It only became the crowded modern environment after the corporations were built there and became successful. San Francisco became big because it was a major shipping port.

Not that long ago it was Detroit, Buffalo, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Princeton, Pittsburgh, Trenton, and more than I can count that were the bustling megalopolis' of America where you went to if you wanted engineering talent or culture for that matter.

[jhbadger]

The Valley and SF are different, despite being near each other. The Valley, as you say, started as a chip manufacturing hub and has transitioned over to software and services now that manufacturing mostly gone to Asia. SF is different. While it indeed started (as did NYC) as a shipping port, it has more recent history as a center of creative workers such as authors and artists. The reason that many Internet companies are located now in SF rather than the valley is that they (and the workers they want to attract) want to suggest that their work is cool and creative like that of authors and artists. Of course, an unfortunate side effect of this is making the city even more expensive and displacing the creative people that made the city "cool" to start with.

[ryl00]

I can't speak for the others, but why do you think Dallas and Houston are moribund? Based on the last decade of population growth, their respective metro areas certainly seem to be doing well for themselves.

[kortilla]

> It is available outside the coastal cities if you have a coastal city salary. That kind of defeats the purpose.

This is false, why would you think this? My youngest sister makes $70k and bought a 3br/2ba house with a 2 car garage for $215k that’s 20 mins from where she works. That is in just a random medium city in the Midwest.

I have another friend who works in San Antonio. Got his house for $300k and makes $90k as a SWE.

Housing is seriously just an isolated problem in particular hot spots. Unless you need to be there, get the fuck out. The governments are broken.

[yanderekko]

>As a rank-and-file millennial, in most of the cases you are priced out of property ownership, are expected to do your shitty job until death, and you starting a family would be directly directly against your employer's interests.

No, this is not "typical" of most cases, it is typical of millennials living in a small subset of property markets (DC, LA, SF, NYC) who have low earnings relative to their educational attainment + age but also a vastly disproportionate media influence. The delusion that the Ivy grad journo living in Brooklyn whose Twitter follower count is larger than their salary somehow reflects the voice of their generation is a huge problem.

[astrange]

> As a rank-and-file millennial, in most of the cases you are priced out of property ownership, are expected to do your shitty job until death, and you starting a family would be directly directly against your employer's interests.

That would not be against your employer's interests, because companies need customers to exist. Doesn't everyone know what Ford did there?

In highly-corporatist Japan your boss will personally find you a wife if you don't have one, and will give you a raise if you have kids.

[john_moscow]

>That would not be against your employer's interests, because companies need customers to exist.

Except, with globalization, it's cheaper to import people from 3rd-world countries and then pay them just enough so that the current generation will keep doing its duties.

I'm a first-generation immigrant myself and I'm quite baffled at how unaffordable it is to raise 2+ kids and make sure their life quality will be similar to mine. It's almost like the expectation is that I won't do that because they will instead import those who were raised at a fraction of the cost elsewhere.