Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nindalf 1313 days ago
This decision matters because the NYT influences other journalists to a large degree.

The person who took that autocratic decision was AG Sulzberger, the 37-year old publisher and chairman of the NYT. Surely a man wielding so much power and influence would have earned the post through merit and hard work, right? In reality it’s a hereditary post of the Sulzberger family.

It’s shocking that a man who is a product of nepotism has so little written about him. Where’s the investigative reporting into this momentous decision 5 years ago? Where’s the criticism for biasing reporters in this manner? There’s nothing because the family is that powerful.

3 comments

> The person who took that autocratic decision was AG Sulzberger,

What evidence is there of this?

Asking because it's not traditionally the case that the NYT editorial staff needs to be interfered with by ownership in order to make terrible decisions.

This wasn’t instructions to the editorial staff, it was to the regular reporters. This is alleged by reporters who heard of it second hand.

I wish I could link you to the investigative exposé about this decision published by the NYT, but they don’t look inward. And no other paper looked at them either. Instead they sycophantically copied the same direction to investigate tech.

> they don’t look inward

On that point we can agree.

Not so at all. The Judy Miller warmongering fiasco was directly attributable to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (A.G. Sulzberger's dad), whose favorite she was for whatever reason.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

You lose faith in media once you know that the same journalistic scrutiny is applied to the person at helm of NYT.

A man wielding so much power and influence I’ve never heard of them.

Start a campaign against them.

Oh that’s right it’s on everyone else to organize as you desire.

Paranoid delusions of the anti-social crowd is all this rambling adds up to.

> that I’ve never heard of him

That’s my whole point, which flew right over your head. This is a man who has inherited power and influence. There’s no incentive for the NYT to investigate their own publisher + chairman. There seems to be little appetite for anyone else to do so either. So basically there’s no scrutiny of how he wields his power, or how nepotism is rife at the top of the NYT. That’s why you haven’t heard of him.

Do you understand now?

There’s no sense believing he has power and influence. I’ve never heard of him? What power and influence? What paper named NYT?

Do you understand how to deal with figurative displays of power? They’re not going to come after us if we actively promote the idea they’re actually weak and useless.

Turn public sentiment against the idea of ephemeral power and value stores.