[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.