[luma]

Journalists speak truth to power, meanwhile the NYT aligns itself with power at every opportunity. For example, they knew the NSA was spying on us but never ran the story to protect GW's chances at reelection. Presumably they didn't want to be seen as anti-establishment with the new powers and are reverting to their time-proven behavior. NYT will lick the boot when presented, same as ever.

[Lammy]

https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-...

“The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.”

[dmix]

You don't need employees anymore just anonymous sources from "government insiders" by journalists who gain social/work credit from being friends with intelligence officials. The quid pro quo is implied and unquestioned because it sells papers. NYT/WSJ/WaPo are the main vectors for that stuff (big journalist outfits get big juicy sources) and they do it proudly.

[michaelt]

I don't think "about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover" was a way to funnel CIA info into the NYT - which, as you say, wouldn't need direct employment.

It sounds more like CIA spies wanted to go poking around in foreign countries, interviewing people and photographing things, which being an NYT reporter allowed them to do.

[c22]

But what does the NYT get out of it?

[michaelt]

The journalists? Nothing, in fact it's a big negative.

The newspaper owners, though? The point of a newspaper is to obtain political power, both direct and through favours. The CIA was willing to overthrow a democratic government and replace it with a military dictatorship to help out a banana company - who wouldn't want to be owed favours like that?

[bigiain]

Tasty tasty boot grime.

[nextts]

Or a door revolves?

[chneu]

I'm not saying I disagree, but please see how dangerous your thinking can be.

That basically takes away a major tool of journalists and allows you to paint whoever you disagree with as wrong simply because they don't wish to go public.

Very, very dangerous way of thinking. Allowing sourcesto stay anonymous is a major tool for journalists.

[dmix]

An anonymous source from a whistleblower: practical and understandable. Anonymous sources from gov officials that just tows an established useful line that benefits them: way, way too common.

I'm a daily reader of NYT and I can't count the number of times I see them use it each year. It's become standard practice enough to not be just some edge case to protect people.

It's like how the government classifies everything because it makes their job easier.

Not knowing the person, agency, level of access, etc behind a quote makes it extremely difficult to take seriously. A ton of trust is being put on NYT that it's not just purposefully fed information or gossip.

[c22]

I think it's "toe the line", like lining up side by side with everyone else on your team.

[fsckboy]

>I think it's "toe the line", like lining up side by side with everyone else on your team.

right, but not quite: toe the line means for example standing on an athletic field right at the out-of-bounds line without letting your toes onto the wrong side of it; said about any rule-based situation, to purposely stay within the rules, indicating an individuals obedience with no implication of "testing" the rules.

[dingnuts]

"a source close to the matter reports" basically implies whatever coming next is bullshit

[KennyBlanken]

There's a difference between a source needing to be anonymous for their safety (physical, employment, etc) and someone in an administration or agency refusing to go on-record about policies and actions of an agency or administration because there's be a record, publicly, of what they said - and both they and the organization they're in could be held to that.

Or that administration/agency using "anonymous source" nonsense to gatekeep - wanting to reward particular reporters/outlets that 'play by the rules'.

You'll see a reporter ask something at a press conference, and there will be a refusal or non-answer. But then the press secretary pulls aside a few reporters after the press conference and gives them details.

Unfortunately because the press are willing to do this, more and more information simply does not come out through official channels, which means politicians, agencies, administrations, etc have accountability - their reputation simply isn't on the line.

[bee_rider]

The word of anonymous sources should be taken with a pretty big grain of salt, but they can point to verifiable information.

[blitzar]

That is why the standard is two (or more) independent sources.

[infamouscow]

You should count the actual number of sources in an article, it's virtually always singular.

[fsckboy]

>From 1950 to 1966

going back in time like that says nothing about the NY Times of today. In that same time period, the Democrats were the party defending racial segregation, it was your great+ grandparents

[reaperducer]

From 1950 to 1966

That was 75 years ago. If you're going to grind an axe, at least pick one from this century.

[Spooky23]

We asked 4 Jill Stein voters in this West Virginia diner what they feel about CIA employees at the New York Times. One weird trick was shared.

[owenversteeg]

Indeed. The Times is the mouthpiece of power. The event referenced in the GP comment [1] was a classic example of the NYT playbook when they get some information that goes against their narrative: 1) delay publication until they are absolutely forced to publish, 2) edit to play down the story, and 3) bury it as well as they can. They famously did this with the Holocaust [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_con...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_con...

[spyspy]

Disclaimer I worked at NYT but this is just unsubstantiated garbage. Say what you will about the company and journalism as a whole but you’d be hard pressed to find a better group of truth-seekers out there. waves hands at every other “news” outlet

[drweevil]

I don't see it that way. Not after years and years of noticing the pro-establishment bias. One example that still sticks with me is the coverage of the of the so called aid convoy at Cucuta, Venezuela. (As an aside, almost all coverage of Venezuela by the mainstream media is grossly deficient.)

The short of that story is this: Something happens. The mainstream media (including the Times) write about it in a way that is unflattering to the Venezuelan government (or whatever enemy du-jour is targetted). Weeks later, when it no longer matters, the Times prints a more accurate version, but still manages to be as uncomplimentary as possible. As the time itself said--two weeks later:

>"CÚCUTA, Colombia — The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger." (from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-...)

Independent South American journalists got it right. The UN tried to set the record straight about this aid convoy, the day after the event. But from the NYT, we got 'the narrative'. And that article that finally said Mr. Maduro didn't do it, came out two weeks later. By then the damage was done.

I've observed that same dynamic with other events as well, such as during the Bolivian coup attempt of 2019. The OAS manufactured a non-existent electoral crisis. No major US paper pushed back on that narrative, which was later shown to be an artifact of how the votes counting process--as the Bolivian government claimed all along, rather than any real crisis.

The Times simply can not be counted upon to give unbiased coverage in other situations either: Syria, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Ukraine, China, are all strongly biased with the official US narrative.

This is why I cannot subscribe to this paper. It is too often useless as a place where I can go to to get truth.

[ants_everywhere]

The propaganda outlets have really been pushing hard the line that you can't trust professional journalists, and people who get their news from influencers just seem to accept it uncritically.

[impossiblefork]

The actual solution is the Swish journalist, who you yourself pay directly for his stories.

[boredpeter]

It’s not propaganda, Noam Chomsky wrote a book about how media is used to advance otherwise unpopular government policies decades ago and the NYT is mentioned in it. If anything this post is propaganda.

[mmooss]

Why wouldn't they use social media to do the same? Why trust influencers but not professional media?

And then, where do you get information?

[jancsika]

Even Chomsky has said that you could read the NYT from back to front to partially counteract the bias toward cozying up to power. (I.e., the stories that show bias in favor of U.S. govt are the ones at the front that are most prominently placed.)

Toplevel OP, however, is saying some things that are more radical and less studious:

* "NYT aligns itself with power at every opportunity." Because the statement is totalizing it is trivially disproved. Off the top of my head-- see the "Pentagon Pundits" story by David Barstow[1]. It won a Pulitzer and was published while Bush was still president. It was also a front-page story IIRC.

* "never ran the story to protect GW's chances at reelection." IIRC Glenn Greenwald was the most vocal/detailed critic of Keller's cowardice on spiking the domestic surveillance story in the lead up to the 2004 election. But even he didn't claim Keller did in order to help GW win the election. OP made that up out of whole cloth.

I don't think HN comments like this are propaganda, but they are low-effort and apparently impulsively written.

At least nobody has yet used the pretentious terms "Gell-Mann Amnesia" or "Overton window" in this thread, so that's progress. :)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_military_analyst_prog...

[ants_everywhere]

Noam Chomsky the genocide denier who is most famous for thinking LLMs are impossible because you can't learn language unless it's hard coded?

I wouldn't consider him a reputable source on anything.

[g8oz]

The Times is especially pernicious because of the hallowed reputation it has. It lets it spin the narrative at crucial moments. Look back at Judith Miller and the Iraq war. Or in the recent case of the Gaza conflict - their false reporting on mass rapes in the debunked "Screams Without Words" article helped give Israel political cover during a critical juncture of the carpet bombing of the Palestinians.

[tyre]

Their coverage of Gaza and Israel has been the deepest hit to their reputation.

The ratio of “college hate speech” to coverage of Israel’s targeted and mass war crimes has been unbelievable. I’d be deeply ashamed if I worked there.

(Putting aside that this apartheid has been going on for far longer, of course, without consistent coverage.)

[nouripenny]

Consider Bob McChesney's 3 biases of professional journalism: reliance on official sources, fear of context, and "dig here, not there".

https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-rise-of-professional-jo...

[dmoy]

Robert Fisk kept writing and talking about that wrt NYT right after 9/11: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2003/fisk-i-think-...

[4509Hg]

No it isn't garbage. During the Biden regime they ran every culture war story that was expected from them. During COVID they ran a hardliner policy for two years. Then, when they were told about an imminent policy reversal around December 2021, they suddenly started manufacturing the new consent with questioning if lockdowns hurt school children etc.

They had been Iraq hawks, they are Ukraine hawks now.

The NYT most closely matches Chomsky's media analysis of all outlets, and unlike other outlets the NYT hides it well.

[dralley]

"Biden regime"

[mixedCase]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regime

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime

Relevant quote: "In politics, a regime (also spelled régime) is a system of government that determines access to public office, and the extent of power held by officials. The two broad categories of regimes are democratic and autocratic."

It is true that as a term it has accrued some negative connotations due to the frequent use of the all-encompassing "regime" to speak of governments where their exact denomination tends to fall on the autocratic side of things. From a journalistic point of view, it is better to use a neutral term than a charged one; which unfortunately as you've noticed yourself it can taint the term to readers who are not familiar with its exact scope.

But it is correct to call it Biden's regime, just like the current administration (perhaps a better term given its popularity in the US) is part of Trump's regime.

[5zqewR]

With respect to culture wars and firing the "vaccine" hesitant it was a regime. Trump is now establishing a regime of a different kind. One can be unhappy with both.

[PhasmaFelis]

I'm excited to hear why you put "vaccine" in scare quotes.

[bigstrat2003]

I'm not the same person. But a vaccine which doesn't actually provide lasting immunity is a really shit vaccine. And while I wouldn't say that means it doesn't deserve to be called a vaccine at all, certainly many people think that.

[davidw]

I found this story pretty enlightening

https://css.seas.upenn.edu/new-york-times-a-case-study-in-in...

It's certainly not that they come up with outright lies. They have a ton of good people who work there. But there's something rotten higher up in the way they put their finger on the scales.

[Auracle]

That article makes awful conclusions.

Biden’s age was a bigger factor because it was absolutely clear he was in rapid cognitive decline. No doubt it’s also happened to Trump at his age (as it does to everyone), but Biden essentially hid from any unscripted press the entirety of his Presidency.

Trump does the opposite. We can all judge his actual cognitive faculties because he’s constantly tweeting or in front of cameras. It’s pretty clear to anyone with a brain that most of the things the Biden administration did, Biden himself had very little to do with. Trump, again, is the opposite.

The NYT honestly should have been covering Biden’s decline more. It bordered on a coverup. The fact that people were surprised at his debate performance points to that.

[davidw]

But once he was out of the race and there was only one old guy, age ceased to become an issue.

That's what makes what they're doing kind of insidious. They're not making things up - Biden is indeed old. It's how they weight things and how much they push them.

There's a reason the "NYT Pitch Bot" account is so popular - it's poking fun at a real phenomenon.

[allturtles]

Are you claiming that the NYT is biased in favor of Trump? That's so hard to take seriously that I don't even know what to say to that.

[riahi]

It is. Their editor in chief sanewashed trump out of spite because Biden would not take an interview with them.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-t...

[davidw]

I only know what I see.

Obviously the editorial page is not in favor of Trump.

The organization as a whole... IDK, I have a suspicion that they kind of view the chaos as good for business and exciting, rather than 'boring and dull' like Biden.

It's not a blatant bias, it's more subtle than that. It does not involve spreading falsehoods. More things like 'both sides!'.

[Spooky23]

Biden has severe spinal arthritis and neuropathy in his feet. The guy walks around in pretty severe pain and suffers from a stutter.

The story of the cognitive decline was pushed aggressively by the Trump people because it’s good TV. Just like they neutralized Desantis with the weirdo campaign.

It’s pretty obvious that Trump is a turnip. I’ve heard him speak in person… the sound bites sound cogent on TV, but the dude is like a drunk monkey he can’t string sentences together. The reactionary policy isn’t out of Trump’s head, its from a little army of fascist attorneys.

Both are odious Presidents… it’s ridiculous that a country as large and powerful as the United States is led by 80 year olds.

[Auracle]

Oh, come on. Are people still using the "stutter" excuse? Go look up a video of him from 2000 or whatever. His stutter sure did get worse!

The story of cognitive decline was pushed because it was true. That's why he basically did no press, and why he used a teleprompter during times no other president would: https://archive.is/C60uH

When he did speak without one, he regularly said stuff like "they don't want me to talk about that."

I don't disagree that they're both way too old. However, the Trump we have now seems to be basically the same Trump we had in 2016. He rambles about as much as he did then. He could quickly deteriorate though - we'll see.

[davidw]

And once the race was no longer between two old guys, age ceased to matter much to a number of news outfits.

If you look at old Trump interviews, from say 20 years ago, he has absolutely degraded, and not by a small amount.

[bee_rider]

Hey what is up with Biden’s rapid decline nowadays, anyway? I guess considering the rate he was apparently declining when it was a hot-button political issue, by now he must be a vegetable by now, right?

[milesrout]

It wasn't a rapid decline. The media ignored it and covered it up but there were signs of serious cognitive decline even before he was elected.

[mmooss]

The conclusion of the research linked earlier in the thread is that the NYT covered it too much.

[sonotathrowaway]

Their comment is vastly more substantiated than your feelings are. We all know that NYT suppressed a story about unlawful mass surveillance, then published it to avoid being scooped.

This is besides the mountains of bullshit they pushed to promote the Iraq war - propaganda they have never, and will never fully admit to.

[dangus]

I don't really disagree with you but at the same time I wouldn't expect any run of the mill employee to know about this sort of conspiracy if it were real.

[croes]

> to find a better group of truth-seekers

Pretty useless if those who need it the most can’t read it.

[dataf3l]

ok put your money where your mouth is, call your coworker and lets see they revert the onion service then...

[spyspy]

The key word you missed in my comment is “worked”.

[MrMcCall]

Seeking the truth and reporting it ALL are two different things.

Telling 90% of the truth means telling the least important 90%.

The love of money corrupts all but the noblest of people's hearts.

[oefrha]

Often times I hear a fairly important piece of negative news about <group>, then look up which MSMs have reported it. Chances are I can find it on CNN, but it’s completely missing from NYT, or only one tangential sentence/paragraph in a related piece. Lying by omission is powerful.

[mmooss]

> they knew the NSA was spying on us but never ran the story

They did run the story; they withheld it for awhile.

> to protect GW's chances at reelection

Is there evidence of that? I've never heard it and I promise that no Republican thinks the NY Times actively helping them.

[andreygrehov]

The answer is ad revenue. If you go against what your subscribers believe in, you lose money. If you lose money, you might lose your job. If you lose your job, you can't pay your mortgage.

[londons_explore]

I suspect plenty of government money directly flows to newspapers as part of various campaigns to sway public opinion on certain politically important topics.

Perhaps moreso outside the USA where just a handful of paid articles can sway some topic important for US foreign policy.

[throwaway48476]

Middle East governments are huge newspaper advertisers. The Chinese government has a propaganda page in the wsj.

[spyspy]

But then you introduce a subscription model and people decry how the good news is paywalled…

[c0nducktr]

When the paywalled model is just as unwilling to go against its advertisers as the free model, it not surprising people aren't happy with the change.

[spyspy]

Ok so there's nothing they can do. Got it.

[skwirl]

If you went back to 2004 and told people the NYT was trying to help re-elect George W Bush they would nervously back away slowly from you.

[rediguanayum]

Consider that technology may have moved on, and there are other better ways to communicate with journalists: https://www.nytimes.com/tips e.g. Signal and to read NYTimes e.g. high quality VPN.

[mmooss]

> to read NYTimes e.g. high quality VPN

I don't see how an ordinary non-technical user could obtain access to a "high quality VPN". I'm not sure a technically skilled user could without a lot of work to setup some sort of chain of anonymous proxies.

[basedrum]

Lol, that tips page uses tor?

[starik36]

Your post is nonsense. NYT has endorsed a democrat for every election in recent history. Why would they "protect" GW's chances at reelection???

Endorsements

    2024: Kamala Harris (Democrat)
    2020: Joe Biden (Democrat)   
    2016: Hillary Clinton (Democrat)   
    2012: Barack Obama (Democrat)   
    2008: Barack Obama (Democrat)   
    2004: John Kerry (Democrat)   
    2000: Al Gore (Democrat)   
    1996: Bill Clinton (Democrat)   
    1992: Bill Clinton (Democrat)

[luma]

I take them at their actions, not their empty words. Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_con...

> In an interview in 2013, [NYT Executive Editor] Keller said that the newspaper had decided not to report the piece after being pressured by the Bush administration

Bush told them not to run the story while he was running for president. As always, the boot was presented and they licked it clean.

[darkhorse222]

Your excerpt is a bit misleading, here's a wider cut:

When it published the article, the newspaper reported that it had delayed publication because the George W. Bush White House had argued that publication "could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny." The timing of the New York Times story prompted debate, and the Los Angeles Times noted that "critics on the left wondering why the paper waited so long to publish the story and those on the right wondering why it was published at all." Times executive editor Bill Keller denied that the timing of the reporting was linked to any external event, such as the December 2005 Iraqi parliamentary election, the impending publication of Risen's book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, or the then-ongoing debate on Patriot Act reauthorization. Risen and Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006.

In an interview in 2013, Keller said that the newspaper had decided not to report the piece after being pressured by the Bush administration and being advised not to do so by The New York Times Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman, and that "Three years after 9/11, we, as a country, were still under the influence of that trauma, and we, as a newspaper, were not immune."

[rsingel]

And the NYT only published when Risen's book was going to come out, meaning the reporting that they paid for was going to get published in a book and embarrass the hell out of them

[luma]

The question of facts are clear and admitted by their executive leadership. That the Bush admin gave them a bunch of scary stories isn't relevant - they knew the NSA was illegally spying on all Americans and, under pressure from an administration running for re-election, made the conscious decision to keep Americans uninformed of what power was doing to them.

That's the old grey lady, same as she ever was. Take a gander at the rest of that Wiki page, this isn't an isolated incident.

[ranger_danger]

A newspaper that is scared to post a story... what does that tell you about them?

[mmooss]

What says they were scared?

[ranger_danger]

> decided not to report the piece after being pressured

[user3939382]

I definitely see it as a mouthpiece for the establishment and three letter agencies, my interest and trust in it is pretty much 0.

[setgree]

> [The NY Times] knew the NSA was spying on us but never ran the story to protect GW's chances at reelection

This is a really strong claim -- the part about the 'why'. Strong claims generally require strong evidence. I'm perfectly willing to believe they spiked the story for other, more plausible reasons, but come on, their editorial endorsing John Kerry is right there for everyone to read:

> There is no denying that this race is mainly about Mr. Bush's disastrous tenure...When the nation fell into recession, the president remained fixated not on generating jobs but rather on fighting the right wing's war against taxing the wealthy. As a result, money that could have been used to strengthen Social Security evaporated, as did the chance to provide adequate funding for programs the president himself had backed...The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management.

So what exactly is the theory here that they spiked an NSA story to help this guy win re-election?? [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/john-kerry-for-pr...

[throwaway48476]

I know PBS frontline did a documentary on this.

[jancsika]

They did, it is worth watching, and it most definitely does not make the claim that Keller scuttled the story because he wanted GW to win the election.

I've never heard anyone except user Luma at the top of this HN thread make that claim.

If anything the time and energy devoted on this thread to disputing an apparently hastily-written and not fact-checked claim is evidence for why serious journalism (and a good editor!) is worth its weight in gold.