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Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

reich.hms.harvard.edu

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Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#101

Post by jimmy1 »

TomMckenny wrote: post #82
_bxg1 wrote: post #65

"I have mixed feelings about the NYT piece -- on the one hand it has a lot of valid criticisms and brings sorely needed critical eye to _________; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to _________ -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece." I cancelled my subscription to the NYT because I felt this way about many of their pieces.

May I ask, do you have many specific examples?

For numerous others in recent times see the coverage of the Covington Catholic situation: misreporting and sensationalism at it's finest. I wonder sometimes if some of these traditional media behemoths even bother to follow basic journalistic practices like

1. cross referencing your sources 2. seeking the other side of the story / opposing viewpoints 3. asking those involved for comment

because it seems glaringly obvious to me in the Covington Catholic case, none of that was done until 48 hours when some high profile twitter names started actually pointing out the glaring errors.

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#102

Post by wolco »

burger_moon wrote: post #81
burlesona wrote: post #10

I heard it this way once: You open the paper and read an article about your field. “This thing is crap, they got all the details wrong and are drawing ridiculous conclusions!” Then you click to the next article, about something else. “Wow, this is really fascinating. We need to do something about this!” ... I think this idea has a name, though I don’t remember it.

This idea has some legs but it also needs to fit context. When I come here and see comments on a subject about programming I know there will be people here who are very smart and knowledgable. However I also know to skip any thread about nutrition, fitness, politics, or anything not tech related basically on this site. If I said well the people who comment on here and the articles submitted here about fitness are mos…

You would be surprised by the level conversation around certain health topics.

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#103

Post by baby_wipe »

rayiner wrote: post #92
crazygringo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this is a lot of journalism in a nutshell, and the NYT tends to be far, far better than most. If you cancelled your NYT subscription, may I ask what other daily newspaper you find to be as informative but more objective? Or have you given up daily news altogether?

I don’t read daily news or long form articles at all. At the end of the day, I don’t need to have an opinion on most things. I’d rather be ignorant than cultivate opinions based on journalists who are peddling narrative over facts. Every now and then I’ll deep dive into an area for whatever reason. E.g. when Trump did his tax proposal, it directly affected us because of the reduction of the marriage penalty. So I loo…

Not sure why you got downvoted. The world would be a better place if we all didn't feel a need to have an opinion on every hot-button issue.

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#104

Post by dominotw »

_bxg1 wrote: post #65

"I have mixed feelings about the NYT piece -- on the one hand it has a lot of valid criticisms and brings sorely needed critical eye to _________; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to _________ -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece." I cancelled my subscription to the NYT because I felt this way about many of their pieces.

sorry but I flagged this because I felt like this comment would derail this thread into an unrelated flamewar.

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#105

Post by _bxg1 »

bdamm wrote: post #99
_bxg1 wrote: post #65

"I have mixed feelings about the NYT piece -- on the one hand it has a lot of valid criticisms and brings sorely needed critical eye to _________; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to _________ -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece." I cancelled my subscription to the NYT because I felt this way about many of their pieces.

It was NYTime’s outstanding coverage of Ergodan’s entourage beating of protesters outside the White House that cemented my decision to subscribe to The NY Times. As a journalism company they’re often good and occasionally brilliant, which is a rare quantity these days.

Hence the mixed feelings. They have a track record of breaking really huge and well-researched stories. It's a shame they muddle it up with sensationalism.

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#106

Post by scabarott »

jimmy1 wrote: post #101
TomMckenny wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask, do you have many specific examples?

For numerous others in recent times see the coverage of the Covington Catholic situation: misreporting and sensationalism at it's finest. I wonder sometimes if some of these traditional media behemoths even bother to follow basic journalistic practices like 1. cross referencing your sources 2. seeking the other side of the story / opposing viewpoints 3. asking those involved for comment because it seems glaringly obv…

Unfortunately this happens a lot but I don't entirely blame the media companies. In the age of twitter and social media, some news moves fast and they have to decide quickly whether to publish something about a trending news item or wait to do proper reportage and lose valuable page-views to more sensationalistic outlets which they have to compete with. I've come to accept this is the new reality and not get too bummed about it as long as we still occasionally get the usual well reported long-form investigative pieces we're used to and that you only get from these outlets

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#107

Post by scabarott »

hopler wrote: post #93
rossdavidh wrote: post #40

As someone who has (once) written an opinion piece for the NYT, I wonder how much the published piece resembled the author's original text. My experience: https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...

The NYT is called liberal, but more correctly it's pro-establishment/pro-government left-of-American-center. They are personified by the Clinton family, yet are more pro-Bush than say pro-BernieSanders or pro-GaryJohnson. With Trump's alternate-establishment weirdness and the extent polarization of modern US politics, the right wing is rejecting the NYT and thus pushing them farther left to maintain readership by cat…

This is astute and quite accurate (imho).

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#108

Post by smithsenn »

magicalist wrote: post #80
globeSpin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s not forget the 98% “chance of winning” estimate of the 2016 election. For months ahead of the election, the election was never called by The New York Times as being below a 90% certainty. They were basically declaring a winner up front, and contributed to the spectacle of total upset. Now as an outlet, it just spews shit on a daily basis. And I mean shit . It’s been unreadable since then. The last time I observ…

> Let’s not forget the 98% “chance of winning” estimate of the 2016 election. > For months ahead of the election, the election was never called by The New York Times as being below a 90% certainty. It's trivial to verify that neither of these things are true[1][2], so...just adding to the garbage, I guess? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/f…

Still, so laughably bad are the predictions, that you kind of prove the point being made.

They were, more or less, calling the election, and in retrospect, trying to drive results.

Perhaps it’s debateable to say no one really wanted Trump to win, given what we’ve now seen, but this points very seriously to the fact that The New York Times is not at all an objective news source, which makes them as worthless as their rivals.

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#109

Post by jononor »

burger_moon wrote: post #81
burlesona wrote: post #10

I heard it this way once: You open the paper and read an article about your field. “This thing is crap, they got all the details wrong and are drawing ridiculous conclusions!” Then you click to the next article, about something else. “Wow, this is really fascinating. We need to do something about this!” ... I think this idea has a name, though I don’t remember it.

This idea has some legs but it also needs to fit context. When I come here and see comments on a subject about programming I know there will be people here who are very smart and knowledgable. However I also know to skip any thread about nutrition, fitness, politics, or anything not tech related basically on this site. If I said well the people who comment on here and the articles submitted here about fitness are mos…

The the level of "bikeshedding" friendliness needs to be taken into account. "Everybody" feels they can have an informed opinion on fitness or nutrition, not the same for specialized technical topics. Some tech topics can be similar though when kept on the general level, like programming languages, editors/IDEs, and testing practices...

Re: Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

#110

Post by ALittleLight »

scabarott wrote: post #106
jimmy1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For numerous others in recent times see the coverage of the Covington Catholic situation: misreporting and sensationalism at it's finest. I wonder sometimes if some of these traditional media behemoths even bother to follow basic journalistic practices like 1. cross referencing your sources 2. seeking the other side of the story / opposing viewpoints 3. asking those involved for comment because it seems glaringly obv…

Unfortunately this happens a lot but I don't entirely blame the media companies. In the age of twitter and social media, some news moves fast and they have to decide quickly whether to publish something about a trending news item or wait to do proper reportage and lose valuable page-views to more sensationalistic outlets which they have to compete with. I've come to accept this is the new reality and not get too bumm…

It's difficult to trust the reporting of an organization that misrepresents or gets wrong an event that is entirely recorded on video from many angles. I agree that the New York Times publishes some great articles, but I'm deeply concerned about the bad articles they publish.

If their editorial standards permit them to rush to judgment as they did in the Catholic school incident how can I trust their editorial standards in more nuanced areas where I don't get to see the full story on video for myself?

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