[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).

[leereeves]

> So what that they're partisan?

So it's led them to uncritically publish lies time after time.

They claimed "Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage", but the medical examiner found no evidence of injuries, and a thorough review of the tapes found no event that would have caused his death.

They pushed the Steele dossier, whose claims, even they now admit, "have never materialized or have been proved false" and which was the work of a "renegade, billion-dollar [private spying] industry, one that is increasingly invading our privacy, profiting from deception and manipulating the news."[1]

They said “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church” but a thorough investigation by the inspector general, published under the Biden administration, found that “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.”[2]

Something that claims to be the "newspaper of record" should have higher standards and not just run with any story that suits their partisan agenda.

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

2: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/yet-another-media-tale-trum...

[tablespoon]

It's a mistaken idea that the media should never ever publish a wrong fact, and if it does it's proof that it's broken. The media (or most of it) has to make tradeoffs between (for lack of a better term) future-historical accuracy, timeliness, and some other things. That means sometimes (maybe even often) it will publish something that turns out to be wrong, because if it didn't it would never publish anything that was timely.

If you don't want that, wait a year or more for someone to publish a definitive history after all the investigations are done.

And you're seeing that process in action: the NY Times wrote about the Steele dossier in a timely fashion and later wrote about how it was false after new facts come to light.

[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."

[leereeves]

That seems like the Gell-Mann amnesia effect ("you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page...and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate...You turn the page, and forget what you know.")

That's always seemed rather strange to me. When I see that a newspaper isn't trustworthy on one subject, I think it's reasonable to doubt them on all subjects.

I'm not saying they're always wrong; sometimes they're even right about Trump. But no one should trust something simply because they've written it.

[everdrive]

I don't think gell-mann amnesia applies here. At least, it doesn't apply to me in particular. I'm moderately well informed about the topics I've posted, and not particularly well informed about U.S. politics. If anything, you've got it backwards (at least in my specific case) -- I'm reading the topics I don't know very well with increased skepticism, and am more trusting when I see that topics I'm better versed in are presented well.

I don't think being wrong on one subject damns a whole paper.

[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."