[everdrive]

Although a lot of the mistrust of mainstream news is well earned, there is also an explosion of doubt and misinformation these days. (How many stories these days are a media story with a strawman? "You'll never believe what [publication] is saying!") The NY Times actually does a lot of good journalism these days. At least at the level of the individual story and/or writer. But people have become so cynical or mistrustful, that a NY Times article is dismissed automatically even when it shouldn't. Feel free to swap out NY Times for any other publication which performs good journalism.

There's a difference between legitimate criticism of a publication, (which nearly any publication would deserve to varying degrees) and lazy, automatic dismissals of the news as "broadly untrustworthy."

(To be clear, and at a personal level, I don't particularly like the NY Times. Their headlines are often politicized and the editorial section is completely awful. However if you get off the front page and just read some of their in depth reporting, you'd be crazy to write them off as wholly biased or untrustworthy.)

[leereeves]

> The NY Times actually does a lot of good journalism these days. At least the level of the individual story and/or writer.

And what about the level above that? The level of giving readers an accurate picture of the world, not distorted by selective editing?

The most effective misinformation tells the truth, but not the whole truth.

[tablespoon]

>> The NY Times actually does a lot of good journalism these days. At least the level of the individual story and/or writer.

> And what about the level above that? The level of giving readers an accurate picture of the world, not distorted by selective editing?

All editing is selective, that's pretty much definitional.

I think you're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The alternative to the NY Times (and similar publications) isn't some ideal publication that gives an accurate picture without distortion, it's talk radio and other opinionated sources that give pictures that are even more distorted.

The NY Times is like a plate of food with a fly in it. There are salesmen out there that spend a lot of time talking about the fly, reminding you how gross it is and how bad they must be for it to get there, etc. Then they'll offer a plate of dogshit as a substitute, and distressingly a lot of people will take it because they've been successfully fixated on that damn fly.

[leereeves]

A better alternative is not trusting any of them. Realize that they're all distorting the truth, and yet also sharing a part of the truth, and dig deeper.

Uncritical acceptance of any source leads to mistakes like believing the Steele dossier and claims about collusion between Trump and Russia, whose claims even the NY Times itself now admits "have never materialized or have been proved false".[1]

That was one of the biggest pieces of disinformation in the last five years, and the NY Times pushed it wholeheartedly for many years. Their mistake here is summarized well in their own article:

> To learn from the dossier episode, news organizations would have to examine their ties to private intelligence agents, including why they so often granted them anonymity. But as long as the media allows private spies to set the rules, journalists and the public will continue to lose.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-pr...

[tablespoon]

> A better alternative is not trusting any of them. Realize that they're all distorting the truth, and yet also sharing a part of the truth, and dig deeper.

I think that's kinda right, but I have some quibbles. Basically, I feel the attitude that they're not trustworthy and distorting the truth leads to a kind of paranoia, feelings of helplessness, or succumbing to the trap letting an uncritical indulgence of one's own biases dictate what's "factual." I think there's a better way to say a similar thing:

You can trust the members if the mainstream media to try their best, but realize they make mistakes for understandable reasons and have their own biases, so you need to read with those biases in mind and try to correct for them with a measure of skepticism (e.g. a grain of salt, not a boulder). Realize that they're all sharing a part of the truth, dig deeper, and withhold judgement. The news is a first draft of history, written before all the facts are in.

[leereeves]

I think this is giving them entirely too much credit. The NY Times own editor admitted their staff was partisan:

> “What I’m saying is that our readers and some of our staff cheer us when we take on Donald Trump, but they jeer at us when we take on Joe Biden,” New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet told his staff in a town hall on Monday.[1]

No doubt some members of the media are still trying their best, but look how many of the best have left the media for Substack or other independent pursuits, because the climate in the big media organizations no longer permits the pursuit of truth over politics.

1: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/new-york-times-m...

[tablespoon]

> I think this is giving them entirely too much credit. The NY Times own editor admitted their staff was partisan:

So what that they're partisan? It's a myth that a good journalist must be personally detached and disinterested, since that's frankly inhuman. They should strive to act that way in their work, but they're not going to be perfect at it, and they'll still have their personal opinions. It's one of those things to understand and correct for.

> No doubt some members of the media are still trying their best, but look how many of the best have left the media for Substack or other independent pursuits, because the climate in the big media organizations no longer permits the pursuit of truth over politics.

I haven't been following Substack, but the format only seems like a good fit for self-important pundit types and maybe few name-brand journalists that cover a few narrow but particularly popular topics. Honestly, IMHO, the op-ed section (where the former live) is the least valuable kind of journalism (but it's unfortunately the only kind of journalism a lot of people pay attention to).

[everdrive]

I think that in isolation this is a completely fair criticism of the NY Times. My point would be that not every topic covered by them suffers in the same way. Check out some of their topic feeds:

- https://www.nytimes.com/section/world/middleeast

- https://www.nytimes.com/section/business/economy

- https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/nuclear-energy

- etc.

I'm not suggesting that these stories are all perfect. But, my claim would be that they don't suffer from the same problems (or at least to the same degree) as the very loud Trump vs. Biden bias that may exist there. It ought to be possible to say something like the following: "The NY Times probably has a measurable slant when it comes to reporting on the major US political parties, however that particular bias does not directly bleed into all other areas of their reporting."

[md_]

There's a lot of valid criticism to be had, but the alternative of "doing your own research"* is a little bit facile.

Real people who are actually engaged in the business of participating in society--holding down jobs, going to school, being citizens--don't have the time to effectively "research" every important issue, and, as a corollary, those who do tend to be cranks.

For sure nobody should engage in "uncritical acceptance", though to me this seems like a straw man. The test of a good newspaper isn't whether you can read it uncritically, but whether reading it critically leaves you more or less well informed.

* A distinctive phraseology which, as detailed in "Pale Horse Rider" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OQS4DYQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...), goes back to at least William Cooper and the 1990s, but has recently come to be used for things like vaccine skepticism and QAnon.

[leereeves]

> A distinctive phraseology which...

A phrase that I didn't use. If you're going to put words in my mouth, don't try to overanalyze what they might have meant had I said them.

As you said "there's a lot of valid criticism to be had". All I'm saying is to be aware of that and seek out that criticism. And don't believe everything you read, even in the NYT.

Not having time for in depth critical reading is understandable, but if that's the case, recognize it and adjust your confidence level appropriately.

[md_]

> A phrase that I didn't use.

For sure. :) My point was only that there's a weirdly fine line between asking readers to be critical--which I think is valid--and the crank-laden calls to "do your own research."