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

Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

nymag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 152 posts

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#121

Post by wonnage »

torben-friis wrote: post #5
samspenc wrote: post #3

This is a good question: should news media like NYT report news without any political biases? Or is it OK for them to pick a side while reporting (progressive, liberal vs conservative etc). If it is OK for media to report news with a bias, then will that accelerate the echo chambers across the political spectrum where news media only report on angles they favor? Just wanted to raise this for discussion.

People in media will usually tell you that there's no such thing as unbiased reporting; even the act of choosing which stories are important enough to report is a biased act. However, I must say that I'm not subscribed to any newspapers, and the main reason I've chosen to do so is that newspapers can: - Work for political and business moguls by offering crowd manipulation as a service - Work for ad buyers by trying t…

You could consider donating to a nonprofit news org like ProPublica, then.

Also you are throwing out the baby with the bath water, just because news is funded by the rich doesn't mean every little mundane article they publish is biased. Oftentimes the facts are there, but the analysis or framing is biased. It's still probably more accurate than trying to get all your news via Twitter or something.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#122

Post by _0o6v »

damnencryption wrote: post #24
ianmobbs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? The Times now employs more people than it ever has and is doing better financially than ever.

Yes I did. It didn't mention anything about more employees (mostly policies to encourage more POC). Although it does mention the expansion of their digital media. That seems fine to me but what about total employees from both digital and paper? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times...

You obviously didn't read it very carefully then.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#123

Post by wonnage »

colinmhayes wrote: post #41
samspenc wrote: post #3

This is a good question: should news media like NYT report news without any political biases? Or is it OK for them to pick a side while reporting (progressive, liberal vs conservative etc). If it is OK for media to report news with a bias, then will that accelerate the echo chambers across the political spectrum where news media only report on angles they favor? Just wanted to raise this for discussion.

I think the times does ok at having some conservative pieces to balance out. They got a bit unlucky in all their republican columnists, Brooks and Douthat in particular, being never trumpers, but they try to throw in some pro trump op-eds.

I never understood this particular viewpoint. The Times is fairly centrist to begin with, and we have to balance that out by inviting the occasional fascist to write a column? What does anyone gain from that?

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#124

Post by mantap »

Veen wrote: post #44
samspenc wrote: post #3

This is a good question: should news media like NYT report news without any political biases? Or is it OK for them to pick a side while reporting (progressive, liberal vs conservative etc). If it is OK for media to report news with a bias, then will that accelerate the echo chambers across the political spectrum where news media only report on angles they favor? Just wanted to raise this for discussion.

We all have bias and there is no point in denying it. But that shouldn't stop people in professions like journalism aiming for independence and neutrality. People can be honest and intellectually honest, follow the evidence and logic impartially, in spite of their biases. The problem comes where they see their role as something different; then they become propagandists and political partisans who hide behind their su…

The problem is when one side lies a hell of a lot more than the other. Just look at the present situation where the US President is claiming to have won an election that he has very clearly lost.

If newspapers try to push back on those lies they get accused of being biased. At that point it is a very thin line between publishing the truth, and pushing one side of the story.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#125

Post by Thorrez »

Anon1096 wrote: post #106
duxup wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The New York Times is as partisan That article talks about the reader's partisanship, not the actual content or particular news org.

Seeing as the article is about the NYT newsroom, it's not limited to the readership. And the article directly says it's not just the readers: "a large portion of the paper’s audience, a number of its employees, and the president himself saw it as aligned with the #resistance."

Just because the NYT newsroom is partisan doesn't mean it's as partisan as those of MSNBC or Fox.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#126

Post by jariel »

ajay-b wrote: post #86

I Was looking at a newspaper from the 1940s and the difference in content presented then, versus even now in large print newspapers, is astounding. There was so much more information conveyed back then, less opinions more information that people could use. It makes me think that our definition of news has gotten away from its original meaning

1940's? Try using the wayback machine to see CNN from 2000.

You will see instantly how opinion/intersectionalist/narrative it is now relative to then.

It used to be Cable News, now it's Cable Opinion.

The article points to this: there is an ideological war in the NYT that speaks to their bottom line:

"There’s still this huge gap between what the staff and audience and management want. The audience is Resistance Moms."

There's also a huge gap between editorial and news at the NYT, apparently, they don't like each other.

There are also different editors for each side - there is effectively 2 'Top Editors' so it's a weird dynamic.

To be fair though - historically, papers were always very biased, usually in the names of their owners. Rich dudes would buy papers to slander their political opponents. So a mix of crude facts and the polity stabbing each other in the back.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#127

Post by Grazester »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #51
greggturkington wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's mostly losses related to ad revenue. Subscription revenue has increased steadily over the last decade. https://investors.nytco.com/news-and-events/press-releases/n...

That hasn't come close to replacing lost ad revenue. In 2000, total revenue was $3B+ [1] In 2019, total revenue was $1.8B [2] [1] https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2020/06/2000_Annual_Report.... [2] https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2020/04/Final-2019-Annual-R... Helps explain why they dislike Google/FB so much.

It's NewsCorp that hates Google.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#128

Post by 0898 »

I've observed the NYT's recent drift with dismay. Here's a recent example I noticed: https://imgur.com/a/uST4zE0

Somebody was murdered at a protest, and two bullet-points the NYT splashes with are "blame the victim" context hits because the deceased was on the "wrong" side.

It should not be necessary to visit a toxic site like Breitbart to get a balanced diet, but at the moment as an NYT reader I feel it is.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#129

Post by sleepysysadmin »

>Gang, it would be great to shift the tone of this discussion,” Baquet jumped in to say during a fight about whether “Opinion”-section provocateur Bari Weiss’s description of a “civil war inside The New York Times

Right message, wrong person.

Journalism is in crisis but it's not money, there's more journalists today than there ever has been. More budget than ever before. More journalistic freedom than ever before. This freedom isn't the problem. The problem is that political activists are becoming journalists, this occurs at the same time where a political ideology is in their death throes.

USSR collapsing was a huge blow to the left-wing but worse China's free trade zones success is undeniable. Shenzen went from tiny town to over 10 million people because of capitalism. The free trade zones in China resulted in hyper globalization and all the 'problems' from China is because they adopted capitalism. In 2004, China made a huge change, they recognize private property.

Communism is dead, China has been shifting toward capitalism. Obviously you can't immediately switch to capitalism. Who are the remaining communists? Cuba? North Korea? Vietnam? Laos? Venezuela? Spain? Greece?

Not only is communism as dead as ever and it's leading to communist political activists taking over some journalistic positions and pushing communism. The problem is that they keep getting caught and rebranding. Marxists, collectivists, communists, socialists, postmodernists, etc. They go by many names and all propose the same thing.

The conflict in the NYTimes is that journalism tends to lean left and they certainly dont have any right-leaning viewpoints. So the conflict arises where moderate left-wing collides with the communist journalists.

Why is everyone a racist? Because communism requires a classless society and intersectionality demands this.

Why is Russia the big bad evil people trying to ruin everything? They are the ones who are anti-communist.

Re: Times Change: Inside the New York Times’ Heated Reckoning With Itself

#130

Post by AtlasBarfed »

shard wrote: post #101
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic and political clashes are not reality. Like the great houses of Game of Thrones fighting a huge civil war, while an unstoppable army of wights readies invasion from the north. Perhaps one can throw around accusations of bias in economics and politics easily, but our own world squabbles in internecine insular conflict while Global Warming, Species Depletion, and other major threats loom. If your "side" denies…

What are the White Walkers and wights but another nation with a different economic system and political agenda?

Sigh, they're a force of nature. Winter for a generation? Remember?
Post reply on HN