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

81–90 of 110 posts

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

#81

Post by sp332 »

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.

Healthcare costs grew under the ACA, but the rate of growth slowed. I don't think it was more inefficient than continuing with the old system would have been. Right now though they're working to defund as many parts of the ACA as they can, so even if it doesn't get repealed, it's going to be in bad shape from now on.

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

#82

Post by sp332 »

thinnerlizzy wrote: post #74
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not what I describe? You just described exactly what I described. Everyone was wondering (both pro-trump and anti-trump) where the "90%" came from. Because it was pretty clear the race was not that obvious. People keep saying nobody saw it coming, but that's their emotion speaking. People just didn't want Donald Trump to win because they thought he's a joke, but objectively speaking people knew clearly that…

I don't recall the New York Times reporting a 90% chance of victory on election day. I recall her chances according to the Times decreasing several percentage points (down to the high 70s IIRC) during the last few days leading up to the election. If the interactive graphic you are talking about was the 'paths to victory' graphic that I'm thinking of, it probably reflected the most current polling data - which was pro…

http://web.archive.org/web/20161108070757/http://nytimes.com... "Hillary Clinton has an 84% chance of winning"

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

#83

Post by travmatt »

pvnick wrote: post #48
cwyers wrote: post #6

On one hand, having an ombudsman (whatever you want to call it) is a good thing for an institution like the Times. On the other hand... having Liz Spayd in that role is pointless, so this isn't a loss. The past year has shown us how the New York Times has let false equivalence and the need to sell newspapers to both sides of the aisle has severely damaged the quality of the paper's coverage, and Spayd has continually…

> false equivalence and the need to sell newspapers to both sides of the aisle What does that mean? Are you saying you would prefer the paper take a more hardline stance in favor of one side because you perceive that side to be objectively superior in some manner?

Case in point: in the Washington Post story regarding Jared Kushners attempts to bypass government oversight of diplomatic negotiations with Russia, both WaPo and NYT both received comments from Kushner confidants alleging these contacts were intended to facilitate cooperation of military actions in Syria. WaPo refused to publish these comments unless they could specify that they were Kushner confidants speaking in his defense. NYT had no such qualms, instead allowing these partisans to be presented as anonymous neutral parties, in exchange for their continued access.

Allowing Kushner to present his spin as neutral is a de facto false equivalence and shifting the 'objective' reality, which other organizations (WaPo) who practice investigative journalism, as opposed to access journalism, refused to allow themselves to be used for.

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

#84

Post by travmatt »

rdtsc wrote: post #13
makomk wrote: post #12

Unfortunately, the thing that will always stick in my memory about Liz Spayd is her criticism of the New York Times for refusing to give more credence to the claim that junk emails about Trump hotels were a secret communications channel with Russia: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump-russi... (Seriously. Every single piece of evidence pointed to the communications being mass marketing emails, from…

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…

You mean that same dossier of which broad swaths were verified by the intelligence community to have been correct?

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

#85

Post by joshuamorton »

tmaly wrote: post #80
joshuamorton wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polling data wasn't even wrong. It was almost spot on in measuring popular vote totals. The mistakes were solely with some state level polls (and really not even mistakes, just high uncertainties) and poll aggregators. Really, I think most of the incorrect predictions came from one error: assuming a higher level of independence between state results than is actually the case. Nate Silver/538 talk about this some, and…

Polling can be incredibly hard. If you ask the wrong type of questions you introduce a bias. If you ask the wrong types of people you have sampling error. All of these things could have occurred, but something definitely was wrong with the polling data. Nate Silver just like NYT gave Hillary a 90% chance at the start of the day, and this was all based on using the polling data as inputs to their models.

>Nate Silver just like NYT gave Hillary a 90% chance at the start of the day

He didn't though, and that's my point. What you're saying is factually untrue, they haven't updated their prediction since election morning, and it sits at 71% Clinton [0] (Updated Nov. 8, 2016). If you don't believe that, then you can take a look at archive.is, which provides timestampped copies. This [4] is an archived copy from well before polls closed (3:30 PM), there are others from earlier in the day.

I don't know what led you to believe that it was a sure clinton win, but that just wasn't the case.

Clinton won the popular vote by somewhere between 2 and 3%. National polls from just before the election (also per 538, [1]):

    +4, +2, +3, +4, +4, +4, +4, +4, +2, +3
An arithmetic average of those gives C + 3.4.

Take Florida, a state trump won, here's polls taken in Novemeber [2]:

    +1, -3, +0, +2, +1, -4
An arithmetic mean gives -.5, Trump won by about a percent.

Take Pennsylvania [3], another close state. November polls again

    +1, +2, +4, +6, +3, -2, -2, +0, +0, +2, +2
An arithmetic mean gives Clinton + 1.18, Trump won by about .7, so this was perhaps the greatest polling blunder, and its still a margin of under 2%, which isn't unheard of.

[0]: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ [1]: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/... [2]: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/... [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/pennsylvania [4]: https://archive.fo/4EQGB

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

#86

Post by cwyers »

humanrebar wrote: post #20
cwyers wrote: post #6

On one hand, having an ombudsman (whatever you want to call it) is a good thing for an institution like the Times. On the other hand... having Liz Spayd in that role is pointless, so this isn't a loss. The past year has shown us how the New York Times has let false equivalence and the need to sell newspapers to both sides of the aisle has severely damaged the quality of the paper's coverage, and Spayd has continually…

I'd feel more able to agree with you if the NYT didn't carry water for some whoppers ("you can keep you doctor", "insurers will compete for your business", etc.) back when the ACA was passed in the first place.

I'm not carrying water for the ACA, which I think is not-very-good law, and I remember back when even congressional Democrats thought it was "the stupid compromise we can get Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman to allow to pass the Senate" and not a hill worth dying on.

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

#87

Post by soundwave106 »

rhino369 wrote: post #76
mtberatwork wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and could benefit by hiring a conservative just to function as devil's advocate They do hire conservatives (Brooks, Douthat, Kristol, etc) and they just hired Bret Stephens. > (like Fox News did with Alan Colmes) You make it sound as if Alan Colmes, during his time at Fox, was there to give an equal voice to the liberal side of an issue, but in reality he was just marginalized to be the token "lefty" punching bag f…

One issue is that the token conservatives brought on for intellectual diversity are almost always the same sort of conservative. The elitist think thank crowd that formed the Never Trump movement. It's pretty clear that outside of Northern Virginia, those guys don't represent mainstream conservative thought. But even putting someone like Douthat on the editorial side doesn't impact the news side of the Times. I think…

What is "mainstream conservative thought" to you, may I ask?

From where I sit, the Republican party (often called "conservative") is divided into several factions right now. The think-tank side traditionally caters to three of them: neo-conservative / "law and order" type causes, libertarian causes, or business interests. The Republican party also is the home of both a religious / fundamentalist wing, and a cultural-identity / white nationalist wing; these sides are generally not well represented in the think tanks.

Maybe the later two are what you consider "mainstream"? The issue with the later two camps is that the representative media can be very populist in nature. And populism can be very us-vs-them / emotion driven, sometimes with disregard for facts. This probably would not fit well at all with the current editorial stance of the Times, even if the populism comes from the left.

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

#88

Post by hsod »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #77
untog wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said: "The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning" I said: "it absolutely wasn't showing false data that indicated Hillary was winning when she was not" They're pretty clearly contradictory. That data, at no point, showed Hillary "supposedly" anything. You're making my point about readers not understanding statistical probabilities. 90% doesn't mean she's winning. It m…

I see what you're saying now. But I don't think you got my point either. The detail doesn't matter. Whatever that number was about, it was pretty clear that 90% was not the right number, I'm not even pro-trump and I was confused, imagine what others thought. Also, it is not ok to be irresponsible just because you're using a "scientific method". This is what cigarette companies did to fund research that "prove" that s…

> Whatever that number was about, it was pretty clear that 90% was not the right number

Was it? Maybe 90% didn't match up with your intuition, but NYT wasn't making that number up out of whole cloth. That's what the polls were saying, as analyzed by the NYT polling staff.

Maybe they were wrong (maybe they weren't-- things that have a 10% chance of happening happen all the time), but you certainly haven't demonstrated, or even really attempted to demonstrate, bias. All you've really said is:

* Trump won

* Your intuition told you he had a greater than 10% chance of winning before election day

> throughout the entire election cycle the narrative was NYT vs. Trump. News organizations and journalists should report stories but should not become the story.

It's important to remember that this narrative largely came (and continues to come) from Trump, and he benefited greatly from it.

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

#89

Post by rdtsc »

travmatt wrote: post #84
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…

You mean that same dossier of which broad swaths were verified by the intelligence community to have been correct?

What was verified? Once they stuck the golden showers bit and the blackmail, other stuff to be credible would need some solid evidence/ Have you seen any? I haven't.

It's a bit like having a conversation with someone and as soon as they start talking about chemtrails it's an uphill battle to take anything from them seriously after that.

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

#90

Post by travmatt »

rdtsc wrote: post #89
travmatt wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean that same dossier of which broad swaths were verified by the intelligence community to have been correct?

What was verified? Once they stuck the golden showers bit and the blackmail, other stuff to be credible would need some solid evidence/ Have you seen any? I haven't. It's a bit like having a conversation with someone and as soon as they start talking about chemtrails it's an uphill battle to take anything from them seriously after that.

The mayflower meeting happened pretty much as described in the Steele dossier. Seth Abramson made a nice tweet storm summary. There's even pictures of the individuals there in question: https://theintellectualist.co/reporter-makes-convincing-case...

Also, its odd to me that people intentionally try to misrepresent raw intelligence. Raw intelligence is so named because it's an amalgamation of different sources and even possible rumors that were deemed pertinent to include. Intelligence officials regularly deal with these, so there are established procedures to verify its contents independently. So to hear you say that since one thing may be wrong, then everything is wrong, therefore it's fake, seems deceitful.

Lastly, we have the curious fact that most every Russian implicated in cooperating with the Steele dossier had been murdered, found dead, or arrested by the FSB shortly after its existence became known to Russian security services.

Id also suggest it's odd for a sitting president to repeatedly obstruct an investigation that he steadfastly maintains will find nothing.

Post reply on HN