Live data from Hacker News

What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

savingjournalism.substack.com

141–150 of 266 posts

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#141
The death of Brian Sicknick by a fire extinguisher at the capital riots is false.

It is still uncorrected on the NYT.

It matters because it might have been due to irritants used inside the building and we need to know this stuff.

But NYT won't risk passing blame.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#142
post #51

Most educated people believe that premier news outlets are inherently trustworthy. And this is healthy, in a way. No it's not. The NYTimes engages in journalism, which is a particular way of gathering and presenting facts. Which to say, among other things, they rely on publicly available information, gathering facts on the ground and sources . Sources are people with information, often but not always powerful people.…

Welcome to postmodernism! Nothing anyone says can be taken at face value! Deconstruct everything! :-)

That attitude has always existed about news, post-modernism just tried to wrongly apply it to literally everything.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#143
post #79
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah it's a questionable claim for sure. This was a widely cited poll that asserted for the first time ever, the majority of Americans mistrust the mainstream media: https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-... You'll note that trust varies widely by political party, with 18% of Republicans trusting the media vs 57% of Democrats. So the post in the op seems to equate "educated" with "democrat" perh…

It surprised you that MSNBC, NYT, and NPR have primarily left-leaning audiences? Their coverage leans left like Fox News leans right, particularly MSNBC. If you asked the surveyed Republicans how much they trust Fox News specifically , I’m sure the stats would be a mirror image. Similarly, democrats trust a news industry which, outlet-for-outlet, is more aligned with what they want to hear. After all, it’s never “our…

I would have expected that these media have primarily left/right leaning audiences, but having the proportion be 95% of so is a bit surprising and even extreme.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#144

>Most educated people believe that premier news outlets are inherently trustworthy. The switch from printed to online distribution changed the game completely. If you are selling printed copies, you are physically limited in how much text you can cram into a single issue. So, publishers (in non-yellow segments) compete on the ability to create well-researched informative content that will be relevant to a large group…

> So, publishers (in non-yellow segments) compete on the ability to create well-researched informative content that will be relevant to a large group of readers. You want your readers to trust you as a reputable source, so they will keep buying your issues.

That is true to some extent, but it forgets the second half of the revenue of all newspapers, which has always been advertising, or direct injections of capital by a rich owner looking for a mouthpiece.

Which is to say, newspapers have always needed to be advertiser friendly, even if it meant avoiding certain topics. But you're right that this has become even worse in the move to the internet.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#145
It's odd to call out the New York Times and New Yorker here. Most news outlets have well documented systemic bias. Given the statement at the beginning which suggests otherwise, I would lump this piece into the same bucket as other media outlets : biased with an agenda.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#146

I wish the NYT would clarify or retract this piece/headline https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-... > Widely Used Software Company May Be Entry Point for Huge U.S. Hacking > Russian hackers may have piggybacked on a tool developed by JetBrains, which is based in the Czech Republic, to gain access to federal government and private sector systems in the United States. My company has banned Jetbr…

I agree there's a hint of yellow journalism afloat here.

> My company has banned Jetbrains now and received questions from regulators about it. Don't see them banning Microsoft anytime soon.

It was their collaboration software that got hit iirc. I also recall the delivery method being very smart, something along the lines of inserting code during compilation. While it's certainly reasonable to ask JetBrains to prove their releases are infection free among other things, banning all of their software seems excessive.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#147
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah it's a questionable claim for sure. This was a widely cited poll that asserted for the first time ever, the majority of Americans mistrust the mainstream media: https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-... You'll note that trust varies widely by political party, with 18% of Republicans trusting the media vs 57% of Democrats. So the post in the op seems to equate "educated" with "democrat" perh…

> Kind of makes me wonder what the trust numbers would be if the media outlets weren't increasingly becoming echo chambers. See also this: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-... Compare median Republican and median Democrat in 1994 (earliest year in the data, pretty close together) to where they are in 2017 (the latest year in the data).

Is that graph set to keep the republican median constant and the rest relative from there? The associated link tells a much more nuanced story that I don't think really results in "mixed" being a fixed center point. But the article and graphic do show a deeply disturbing divide.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#148
post #79
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah it's a questionable claim for sure. This was a widely cited poll that asserted for the first time ever, the majority of Americans mistrust the mainstream media: https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-... You'll note that trust varies widely by political party, with 18% of Republicans trusting the media vs 57% of Democrats. So the post in the op seems to equate "educated" with "democrat" perh…

It surprised you that MSNBC, NYT, and NPR have primarily left-leaning audiences? Their coverage leans left like Fox News leans right, particularly MSNBC. If you asked the surveyed Republicans how much they trust Fox News specifically , I’m sure the stats would be a mirror image. Similarly, democrats trust a news industry which, outlet-for-outlet, is more aligned with what they want to hear. After all, it’s never “our…

There’s a phenomenon quite similar to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: the bias of an outlet is quite obvious in the coverage of an event one is particularly familiar with. Of course then we flip a page and continue taking them at their word.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#149

If I want truth, I read or watch primary source material. Everything else is commentary.

Do you also cultivate a network of informants and leakers to find out what is happening in the corridors of power or secret organizations? Do you travel the world to find out what is happening in the major cities? Fly to war zones to get appraised of the situation?

Not to mention, primary sources are often far, far more biased than journalists. A competent journalist will not simply report on one primary source, they will research several sources, cross-check them, and produce a story that incorporates information from all 3. Even if they can't or won't control their personal bias, they are likely to have much less skin in the game than the promary sources on anything.

Re: What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes

#150
post #62

I wish the NYT would clarify or retract this piece/headline https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-... > Widely Used Software Company May Be Entry Point for Huge U.S. Hacking > Russian hackers may have piggybacked on a tool developed by JetBrains, which is based in the Czech Republic, to gain access to federal government and private sector systems in the United States. My company has banned Jetbr…

If your company bases security decisions on articles in the NYT then they’re beyond helping. Frankly that’s both laughable and incompetent. No professional (in any field) should base a decision solely on something written in any secondary source. Even if it was a specialist publication, a competent professional should do their own research, and look at the primary sources. Imagine if a doctor or civil engineer based…

I'm not sure I agree. I'd much rather that doctors base their decisions on what they read in publications in their field rather than do their own research.
Post reply on HN