The claim has been filtered through a game of telephone. It may well be the case that NYTimes management directed their journalists to produce critical coverage of tech in the sense that TillE means, which then got corrupted into the "no positive coverage" meaning of 'critical'.
I think this is probably what happened, but without any better source for this supposed directive, it's impossible to say for sure.
> I think it is broadly good to be on the lookout for hard-hitting exposes and write them where you see them, and broadly bad for your ability to do journalism if you have decided the tenor of your story before reporting it out.
And yet it's clearly selectively critical, based on the editorial positions of the paper / readership. The end result of course is a biased portrait of reality.