[neaden]

"Can such a left wing cornerstone really afford to look anti-union inside their own house?" - The NYTimes isn't left wing and being anti-union is entirely within their wheelhouse. Now they won't come out and say "We don't like unions" all their issues will of course be why this specific union isn't a good idea at this specific time, but they'd never willingly accept a union unless they really don't think they have a choice.

[seneca]

> The NYTimes isn't left wing

Allsides media bias rating for NYT is lean left[1], a -2.2 with -6 as the most extreme and 0 as neutral. Rating is left for their opinion section[2], a -4.

1. https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times

2. https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times-opinion-...

[norir]

I don't fully agree with how neutral is defined. The US has always been a right leaning country for better and worse. I might be able to agree with Allsides on a relative scale but I think all corporate media has a right leaning bias relative to what one would expect from non-profit media. Since very few people regularly consume non-profit media, it is not surprising to me that the NYTimes appears on the left even though I do not agree that it is on an absolute scale.

[TylerE]

From that page:

Editorial Review: Sep 2018

The NYT's slant has shifted post 2020.

[nickff]

Perhaps the NYT isn't left-wing in a global context, and it is likely centrist in New York City, but it is definitely to the left of the median US voter. They're probably anti-union in this case because they're on tenuous financial footing, and unions in New York have a history of squeezing their employers out of business.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times...

[mandmandam]

> it is definitely to the left of the median US voter.

No, it isn't, and it's not remotely close.

The median US voter is far more left wing than you would know from politics and media. Most voters actually support an arms embargo vs Israel, support universal healthcare, support action on climate change, want an end to the prison industrial complex, want minimum wage increases, gun control, an end to predatory college costs and loans, stronger worker's rights, reproductive rights, cannabis legalization, reduction in militarism, affordable housing, etc.

The NYT is central to fooling these "median voters" into supporting politicians and parties that have absolutely no intention of supporting genuine left wing action.

To say the NYT supports unions in general is to ignore very recent history, such as their coverage of Amazon and Starbucks union efforts. You also need to ignore a very very long and well described slant against left wing causes in general. Here, have a nice digestible Chomsky piece from nearly 30 years ago: https://chomsky.info/199710__/

[spondylosaurus]

See also: the NYT's coverage of trans issues, which in recent years has tried to both-sides the topic in a way that gives fundamentalist hate groups equal oxygen as the fucking APA. No self-respecting leftist publication is handing the mic to Mumsnet users and conversion therapy advocates. (Contrast that to the New Yorker, which is hardly a commie rag and yet has been unambiguously progressive on that front, among others.)

An apt quote from Pynchon's Bleeding Edge, which was published in 2013 but set in 2001:

> How right-wing, Maxine wonders, does a person have to be to think of the New York Times as a left-wing newspaper?

[hollerith]

And the main problem with Stalin was that he wasn't leftist enough, eh?

[mandmandam]

Thank you for exemplifying my point.

There's nothing particularly radical about wanting more fair healthcare, labor rights, education, housing etc.

As I pointed out, the majority of Americans want those things. It's pretty basic human decency, empathy, efficiency, etc.

And yet, when you raise these _majority_ viewpoints, someone pops up from behind a Bush to call you 'tankie'/'commie'/'literally Stalin'. That's not an accident. There are some people who like things the way thay are, and about 6 of those people own 90% of all media.

We spent over 8 trillion dollars (!) in the Middle East, murdering millions, all based on lies; and now our Democrat candidate is overjoyed to get endorsements from the architects of those wars... At every stage, from plotting to image rehabilitation, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to Yemen, etc, to Gaza, the NYT was with those warmongers all the way.

They're not left. Never were.

[Hasu]

> Perhaps the NYT isn't left-wing in a global context, and it is likely centrist in New York City, but it is definitely to the left of the median US voter.

That isn't true at all. You're probably thinking of the NYT 20 years ago, under the Bush administration. Do you read the newspaper, or are you parroting talking points? I used to subscribe until the blatantly conservative bias became overwhelming.

> They're probably anti-union in this case because they're on tenuous financial footing

Didn't they just report a 13.3% increase in YoY profits on their most recent financial quarter? Your chart shows a company with healthy growth for several years running. A billion dollars in profit last year and on track to do it again this year isn't "tenuous".

[nickff]

According to this source, NYT Opinion is "Left", and NYT News is "Lean Left", and I think their ratings seem relatively well-calibrated: https://www.allsides.com/blog/see-our-updated-bias-rating-ab...

You can't just look at results over the last four years when you're analyzing a newspaper that's 172 years old. They've had massive declines in recent years, which caused huge cutbacks. I think it's reasonable for them to try to preserve their options to cut costs in the future.

[Hasu]

Their methodology is literally, "We didn't like the results we got so we assumed they were wrong and ignored them."

> Surprisingly, ABC News was rated Lean Right (1.18) in the July 2024 Blind Bias Survey. A total of 478 respondents rated ABC. This rating differed from AllSides’ current rating of Lean Left (-2.40) at the time, and triggered the Aug. 2024 Editorial Review.

> AllSides speculates this outlier response is because the survey content was collected on July 15 and 18, 2024, which were just days after the July 14 assassination attempt of Donald Trump.

> The Lean Right rating was incorporated into the final rating for ABC News, but was weighted less to account for outlier conditions.

This is literally just putting your foot on the numbers to make it show what you want - the network showed more right-leaning content and they said, "Well that doesn't count." Why doesn't it count?

Look at the increasing number of criticisms of Times coverage from the Left. Look at their trajectory since the Cotton editorial. Look at how they're covering this election. It's not a left wing paper, under A.G. Sulzberger.

> You can't just look at results over the last four years when you're analyzing a newspaper that's 172 years old. They've had massive declines in recent years, which caused huge cutbacks. I think it's reasonable for them to try to preserve their options to cut costs in the future.

They had massive declines from the mid-oughts to 2018 in line with the rest of the newspaper industry. They've reinvented themselves as a tech media company and are on a better track now, so it makes sense that the employees who made that happen want the same union protections as the rest of the employees of the newspaper!

They also were never doing so badly that they weren't still making millions of dollars in profit, which I'm not willing to call "tenuous" for a newspaper that's 172 years old.

[spondylosaurus]

It's wild how few people in this thread are unaware of the massive blowback the NYT has faced from the left, but I guess most people are generally not in sync with the left to begin with :P

Really telling that the NYT's attempt to please everyone has pleased almost no one, though. Progressives are angry that hate groups get airtime in the name of "objectivity". Conservatives still think it's a left-wing paper and won't read it. Liberal centrists are playing Wordle?

[pessimizer]

The NYT isn't left-wing in any context, other than one a segment of the US inherited from Glenn Beck some time in the 90s. It is an establishment paper, and energetically capitalist and interventionist.

> They're probably anti-union in this case because they're on tenuous financial footing

Why does your link say that their profit is up 60%(!) since 2020?

-----

edit: tbh, I think people think the NYT is left-wing only because they associate NYC with Jewish people, and they're still steeped in conspiracy theories of "Judeobolshevism." So I guess that's on the Dreyfus affair (through Ezra Pound, Eustace Mullins and the Birchers.)

The NYT is a paper owned by a rich family that has always praised every dictator the CIA has praised, and passed on any lie they were asked to.

[nickff]

They've suffered a massive contraction in revenue and already had to cut back hugely; you're ignoring that, and focusing on the bounce-back.

[pessimizer]

So what you're saying is that the NYT was doing badly, then had a massive bounce-back. I am supposed to ignore the bounce-back, and accept the contraction that ended at least a half decade ago as an explanation for what is happening today. Why would I do this?

[uoaei]

Public opinion has little bearing on the decisions that NYT makes, until a critical threshold is passed. The aim of the union is to bring that critical threshold of displeasure into focus and to approach it until NYT relents.

The politics of the median voter in the US is not relevant for this discussion.

[mc32]

The NYT has been liberal since I can remember; however, up until relatively recent decades, it was respected by conservatives as well as liberals. Now it reflects liberal and progressive povs.

[klyrs]

On the other hand I have recently seen George W. Bush being described as a progressive because he wouldn't say who he's voting for. Left/right determination seems to be made purely on loyalty to a single individual in today's US politics. So if that's where we're at, NYT is liberal because it won't endorse Trump. That's fine, but let's just say that.

In the world outside of petty dictatorships, though, left/right determination is made on the basis of alignment with various policies and philosophies -- so increasingly, people within the US are losing credibility when it comes to any conversation about left/right politics.

[mc32]

The neocon thing is weird. Bernie and others used to compare Cheney with pretty unsavory characters in history, but now he’s lauded by progressives. This shit is getting weird. Some weird realignment is happening where former enemies are bedfellows now with a new enemy. In very loose terms, Republicans are subverting previous Democratic issues and the Democrats are subverting previous neocon issues. The Dems now get most of “big money”, new Republicans are now the populists. Broad strokes of course, but that’s how it’s shaping up.

If anyone remembers, in the eighties the Repubs were into importing foreign labor (i.e. cheap; hence “no uvas”) and Bernie used to protest against dumping refugees in his state. This has reversed!

[Izkata]

> Some weird realignment is happening where former enemies are bedfellows now with a new enemy. In very loose terms, Republicans are subverting previous Democratic issues and the Democrats are subverting previous neocon issues. The Dems now get most of “big money”, new Republicans are now the populists. Broad strokes of course, but that’s how it’s shaping up.

People underestimated how many Bernie Sanders supporters switched to Trump when he dropped out in the 2016 election. Some of us have been seeing this realignment coming for that long.

[Clubber]

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

>Cheney with pretty unsavory characters in history, but now he’s lauded by progressives. This shit is getting weird.

We've always been at war with Eurasia.

Ok I'm done with the clichés.

[klyrs]

I haven't seen Cheney being lauded for anything other than maintaining his stand against somebody he has been calling a criminal, coward, and worse for years. I haven't seen a single democrat show excitement over policies supported by Cheney, except when he says that the law should apply to Trump as well as the rest of us. So, again, what you're calling weird is largely a result of loyalty to a person instead of actual policies.

And, yes, the world remembers Bernie's about-face on policy -- there's been quite a lot (e.g., [1]) written on the topic. But it's pretty normal for politicians and even political parties to change their minds in issues over a span of time as long as Bernie's career. This should be expected of politicians: they should be willing to change their minds and adapt their policies to new facts gained over time. Moreover, they exist to represent We The People, so when we change our collective minds, politicians who fail to keep up are replaced! Bernie is still around despite his change of heart precisely because it followed that of his constituency.

Do you remember when Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Progressive Party ticket? That party, founded by a lesbian, was eventually folded back into the mainstream Republican party back when Democrats were conservatives. There's nothing weird about parties and politicians changing their minds on stuff.

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/b...

[mc32]

Well, for one Kamala herself said she was proud to be endorsed by Dick, one previously deemed the be(s)te noir of the left.

[klyrs]

That's entirely in line with how I characterized the Democratic response to Cheney's endorsement. They still don't like him, but Democratic policy has been to reach across the aisle for most if not all of my lifetime -- so they'll accept that endorsement with aplomb.

[bee_rider]

I’ve always thought of NYT as pretty liberal too. Not leftist, those are two totally different philosophies. In the case of union organizing, they might be vaguely on the same side, but only after jumping through a couple hoops.

I think leftists are basically in favor of unions in the US because leftists are generally in favor of labor protections, and unions are the best we can get inside the capitalist system. More extreme leftists might prefer some kind of socialist system, but that’s not on the table in America really.

Liberals are, of course, typically market oriented (that’s what liberal economics are). A liberal point of view would be “of course people have a basic right to associate with people of their choosing, negotiate contracts, and a union is just a vehicle for doing that.”

A union is about as much collectivism as a liberal can stomach, more of a stop-gap for a leftist.