Relevant to the top-down nature of NYT coverage: https://twitter.com/DaCaveOfWonders/status/13661682776769208...
NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
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Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not but a basic Google search should show some of the more clear examples of the NYT using aggressive spyware for ads, AB modifying stories in real time to drive engagement, and subscription policies that are virtually impossible to back out of for people outside of California.
Therefore they're not allowed to report on malfeasance in the technology sector?
Logically no, but there are good reasons to distrust and despise hypocrites.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#143I don't get why this seems like a big deal or a negative thing. Why wouldn't you want reporters to be critical? Isn't that like the whole point. That's even why we have freedom of press in the 1st amendment, so journalists can be critical.
“Critical” in this context is a synonym with “negative”.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leak why? This isn’t exactly controversial to say hey this sector that’s becoming insanely integrated into our society and economy deserves a critical lens. In fact I’d argue that’s exactly their job.
Critical in the sense you’re using is being skeptical and investigative. Critical in the sense discussed in the tweet is monotone complaining.
Sorry yes. I didn’t read the tweet, you’re right. I thought it was the tweet that this one referenced which wasn’t so negative.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#145The NYT basically IS a tech company at this point. They have gripes with the competition.
Exactly. They've got great investigative journalism when focused on direct competitors, who they assure us are all peddlers of misinformation.
It's also laughable to watch them do the daily Meta hit piece, pretending they're the good guys and were never advertiser funded. A gate-keeping, deeply-embedded mono-culture of an institution funded by 5M well-off subscribers, going after a platform that 2.9B people use on a daily basis to connect with each other.
It's not that they are doing it, it's that they do it and pretend they are taking the moral high ground.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's a thickly veiled ad, if it's an ad at all. It's legitimate news that some parents do it. It's business news that Apple's trying to make it kid-friendly. The article doesn't extoll the virtues of giving a smartwatch to your kids. I guess you wanted them to trash the whole idea? They do say in the first paragraph, "The smart watch cost $279, and he worried that its recipient would immediately break or lose…
Ads often mention the price of the product. The article goes on and on about the supposed benefits of giving your kid a smart watch, specifically the Apple brand of smart watch, contrasting it favorably to buying them a phone instead. At the very least, it's not negative coverage of Apple. Even if you think it neutral coverage (I don't), it's a counter-example to the supposed directive that all tech coverage have a n…
OK, $279 is actually a negative for a lot of parents, but I guess not for you.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#147I don't get why this seems like a big deal or a negative thing. Why wouldn't you want reporters to be critical? Isn't that like the whole point. That's even why we have freedom of press in the 1st amendment, so journalists can be critical.
I don’t really get how people keep misunderstanding the point that it’s not that journalists are being critical, it’s that they’re being selectively critical to propagate their own interests. The absurdity of the NYT crying over big tech for practices the NYT uses all the time ( dark patterns, user tracking, algorithmic curation, etc. ) should not go unnoticed.
I don't get the impression that the NY Times is all that guilty of dark patterns, but I also read it like I do most sites; with javascript disabled, so I could be missing something. But really it seems like one of the better journalistic institutions remaining after decades of generally lowered standards and capabilities for the US writ large. I think Ezra Klein is one of the most thoughtful writers/interviewers in the world today, for instance, so I follow his work there.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#148I don't get why this seems like a big deal or a negative thing. Why wouldn't you want reporters to be critical? Isn't that like the whole point. That's even why we have freedom of press in the 1st amendment, so journalists can be critical.
Directing the tone prior to the articles being written is the weird thing.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#149This should not be a surprise to anyone who has been reading the New York Times' technology journalism for the past several years. In fact, I'd argue that even before any such "directive" was made, the bias in high-profile papers was already predominantly anti-tech, except in rare circumstances where praising a technology sector or tech company served the overarching political narrative of the moment (e.g., then-nasc…
> the bias in high-profile papers was already predominantly anti-tech As opposed to what? Publishing tech companies' press releases verbatim? Advertisements for apps? Journalism exists to speak truth to power - you say "anti-tech" but the reality is that tech companies have been trying to convince us for years that what they're doing is some exercise in advancing humanity, "disrupting" industries (read: breaking laws…
Journalists have also propagandized in favor of every expansion of the state and every every war western democracies have chosen to engage in. Journalists deserve to be mistrusted.
Re: NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical
#150I would like to see more proof for this than just one guy saying he heard it from others. It may very well be true, but it would be far more convincing, to me, if some one with actual direct knowledge commented publicly. Surely, if it was so widespread, and unambiguous, it would not be be difficult to get clear evidence of this directive from NYT leadership.
There's two people claiming it. This one and the one discussed yesterday. Hopefully more will come out, but at this point I'm inclined to give them the benefit of believing it.
Or maybe we just run every NYT tech story for the past 24 months through a sentiment analysis