[jimmydoreornot]

I concur that the term "shaping public opinion" is more accurate in many cases, but not in others. There are enough stories where the author clearly understood something about the story and attempted to convey something else to the reader for political/cultural effect. For example, not reporting on the race of a black perpetrator but always reporting on the race of a black victim.

There is a less activist way of presenting the news that doesn't attempt to "shape public opinion". I'm old enough to remember Walter Cronkite. I've read (some of) Manufacturing Consent. Today's media in America (almost all of it, NYT being no exception) heavily shapes public opinion, turning news reporting into a political battleground.

[BitwiseFool]

The most noticeable example of activism at work is the difference in coverage (and condemnation) between January 6th and the CHAZ/CHOP event. While both events included the occupation of a government building, one is seen as an insurrection and the other is more of a protest. I don't want to start a tangent comparing every aspect of the two, but needless to say, there are some big commonalities that are covered in a very different light depending on one's partisan outlook.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> I don't want to start a tangent comparing every aspect of the two, but needless to say, there are some big commonalities that are covered in a very different light depending on one's partisan outlook.

The idea that there are "big commonalities" between these two is a claim that only makes sense given a fairly specific worldview.

While I can understand the worldview that identifies the commonalities and thus finds inconsistencies in the way the NYT covered them both, I also happen to have a worldview in which the two incidents are not fundamentally related at all other than under an extremely broad category, so broad that it's not particularly meaningful. Armed with that worldview, I don't find anything inconsistent in the coverage.

Anyway, I'm a European by birth. I don't buy into the nominal American dream of objective news coverage, not in any way shape or form. Journalistic integrity to me has almost nothing to do with whether one's journalism is free from bias. You can argue that the only meaningful definition is the one claimed by a journalism outlet about its own work, and I think that's fair. But I don't really see anywhere that the NYT claims to to have no worldview that informs and structures its work.