Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

huffingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 110 posts

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#51

Post by scott_s »

kobeya wrote: post #23
matt4077 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nate Silver has done some good work on what exactly went wrong, and it was a combination of factors: - (some) polls were systematically off, mostly because they underestimated white non-college turnout and overestimated black turnout. Note that poll errors were actually lower than for any other election–only this time they actually got the winner wrong. - Most of the poll aggregators operated under the assumption of…

2X% actually (I remember watching it in real time), but the point stands as it was way higher than anyone else thought.

And Nate Silver got a lot of flak for that in the week before the election.

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#52

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

Before I start, Disclosure: I'm neither a Trump or a Hillary supporter and I don't mean the following to be political. I'm just very dissatisfied with the sad reality of how I cannot trust anything online anymore.

For me, the moment all my trust in NYT died was the election day. The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent that that's opposite of the truth. People kept questioning "where the hell is this data coming from?".

I believe Newspapers should try to play as much neutral role as possible, but throughout the entire election cycle the narrative was NYT vs. Trump. News organizations and journalists should report stories but should not become the story.

As someone who just wanted to learn what REALLY is going on, I had (and still have) hard time believing anything they say anymore. Other conservative publications at least don't claim to be neutral. A publication shouldn't claim to "tell the truth" and do a whole TV ad about it if they are clearly biased and they're also aware of this.

I know they're being provocative because this sells, and they need to make money, and it's getting harder to make money with newspaper. But they've crossed the line.

People keep talking about "fake news", but what's really dangerous is not some viral website that write some funny photoshopped story. What's really dangerous is influential news organizations like NYT doing deceptively objective-sounding pieces with narratives that mislead the public.

By now I think a lot of people know it's very possible to take a same piece of reality and write completely different versions of it, just by framing them differently. Because of that I have hard time believing anything online anymore, especially the influential ones. This is sad because it used to be the job of journalism to fight against injustice, but nowadays it's more about generating more page views and getting more subscribers, which led to people losing faith in journalism.

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#53

Post by rdtsc »

matt4077 wrote: post #15
rdtsc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't be surprised if in a few years there will be studies about the "Russia" propaganda campaign. How first it was very effective, everyone repeating the same things, the infamous "dossier" with sexual allegations, communication via mass marketing emails and so on. How it was beautiful and effective, and then everyone went too far and it ended up as a very expensive, counterproductive and embarrassing affair. Als…

Did you read what you're replying to? The New York Times didn't buy into some sort of "propaganda campaign", nor were they part of it. If anything it proves that journalism is doing quite well at the NYT, and the narrative of "bias" and "propaganda campaigns" is undermining civil society, and unfairly accusing people doing the best they can and mostly succeeding.

> Did you read what you're replying to? The New York Times didn't buy into some sort of "propaganda campaign", nor were they part of it.

I was replying to gp's comment about Liz Spayd criticizing Times

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#54

Post by wonderous »

"For the past three years, my assignment has been to try to help this newspaper live up to its own high journalistic standards as it covered a historic presidential election, two wars, the Great Recession, violence in the Middle East and more. I have deplored the overuse of anonymous sources, warned against the creep of opinion into news analysis and worried about the preservation of Times quality on the Internet. But, in truth, I have sometimes felt less like a keeper of the flame and more like an internal affairs cop."

- Departing NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt

SOURCE: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13pubed.html?r...

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#55

Post by cylinder »

>“There is nothing more important to our mission, or our business, than strengthening our connection with our readers,” Sulzberger added. “A relationship that fundamental cannot be outsourced to a single intermediary.”

This is a disturbing statement. Shouldn't a serious newspaper's mission be to investigate and report facts without regard to the "connection" it creates or dissolves with the reader? I'm sure Infowars has a deep connection with its readers.

This is a profoundly ridiculous statement but I think it represents what the NYT has always been quite accurately.

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#56

Post by lr4444lr »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #52

Before I start, Disclosure: I'm neither a Trump or a Hillary supporter and I don't mean the following to be political. I'm just very dissatisfied with the sad reality of how I cannot trust anything online anymore. For me, the moment all my trust in NYT died was the election day. The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent th…

It is my understanding of history that most newspapers used to have open political biases; they were even on the take from the party bosses, and it was written into their mission statements. You knew through what lens to filter the content, and they were happy with smaller, more limited readerships. This aim for objectivity in printed reporting was a recent 20th century development.

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#57

Post by dominotw »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #52

Before I start, Disclosure: I'm neither a Trump or a Hillary supporter and I don't mean the following to be political. I'm just very dissatisfied with the sad reality of how I cannot trust anything online anymore. For me, the moment all my trust in NYT died was the election day. The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent th…

One of my friends sold all his stocks buying into nytimes predictions of imminent stock market crash worldwide post trump election.

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#58

Post by theseatoms »

mason240 wrote: post #46
specialist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurer's response to ACA reminds me of a Frank & Ernest comic, which I can't find right now, sorry: Two USPS workers. Package label says "Do not bend, fold, mutilate." One says to the other "Doesn't say anything about crumple!" Har har har. --- I had high hopes for ACA. I believed the 15% medical loss ratio was the poison pill that would eventually drive insurers out of business, and therefore lead to Medicare for A…

I believe the ACA itself was a poison pill that would make the system so inefficient to drive it to collapse and bring about single payer. The failure of Republicans to implement an alternative has pretty much guaranteed it.

I think this is right. If not a deliberate poison pill, implementation of the ACA was a strong "foot in the door" technique for those who want single payer. Though, even before the ACA, the government is deeply involved in the system (employer based tax incentives, Medicare, etc)

I don't find that surprising though. I think Obama himself said that ACA was just a start and would have to be revisited. (Citation needed, I know.) What's amazing is just how bad conservatives have been at articulating the free market case for health care and insurance.

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#59

Post by iamacynic »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #52

Before I start, Disclosure: I'm neither a Trump or a Hillary supporter and I don't mean the following to be political. I'm just very dissatisfied with the sad reality of how I cannot trust anything online anymore. For me, the moment all my trust in NYT died was the election day. The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent th…

for 2 weeks leading up to the election, nearly every single article on nytimes.com front page "above the fold" was like this.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161101110545/http://www.nytime...

https://web.archive.org/web/20161115000000*/nytimes.com

Re: The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role

#60

Post by jasonlotito »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #52

Before I start, Disclosure: I'm neither a Trump or a Hillary supporter and I don't mean the following to be political. I'm just very dissatisfied with the sad reality of how I cannot trust anything online anymore. For me, the moment all my trust in NYT died was the election day. The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent th…

> The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent that that's opposite of the truth.

I don't remember that at all. I remember the chances of winning, but that is not in any way a claim that she is winning by a large margin. In fact, reading the articles during the campaign and during election day, there was a lot of talk about even though polling data read one way, Trump wasn't out of it.

But yes, if you just read the headlines and didn't actually read the content, I could see why you'd say this.

Post reply on HN