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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

#91

Post by hopler »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #86
kauffj wrote: post #60

Perhaps there was a time when the New York Times could be trusted, but that era ended at least several years ago. Off the top of my head: - The New York Times fired Quinn Norton basically for being willing to talk to weev ( https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-n... ) - The New York Times fired Razib Khan for reporting on facts that are basically consensus opinion among geneticists and intelligen…

I thought this admission/apology from NYT after the 2016 election was interesting. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/elections/to-our-reade... we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to…

It's been 2 years and they haven't changed yet.

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

#92

Post by rayiner »

crazygringo wrote: post #88
_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.

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 looked at how it compared to tax laws in other countries. My conclusion was that the main effect of the proposal would’ve been to move is closer to the tax regimes in Germany, etc. Much of the Western world is following a trend of lowering corporate taxes, e.g. Sweden. But reporting that Trump’s tax policy follows a global trend is not consistent with how journalists today report the news (on both sides), where every story has to have identifiable villains or heros and support some broader narrative and agenda.

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

#93

Post by hopler »

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 catering to replacement readers.

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

#94

Post by icebraining »

Kadin wrote: post #46
pcstl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would be perfectly fine, except that digital newspapers have a pesky habit of putting "Opinion" or "Editorial" in very tiny font on the piece's header, with no other indication that the piece being read is, in fact, an opinion/editorial piece.

I think part of the blame is also on aggregators like Google News; I've noticed that GN mixes opinion/editorial content in with real news articles, especially on the sidebar (e.g. "Spotlight" section). It also seems like the ratio of opinion content to actual news has been increasing lately. In the print version of the NYT, opinion pieces were generally only found on two pages, sometimes maybe overflowing a bit, but…

> It also seems like the ratio of opinion content to actual news has been increasing lately.

Well, sure. Now that everyone has access to 24h news for free, the facts become commodities and lose their value, and therefore the reference publications start giving more space to the product over which they have some market power: the analysis of news by picked columnists.

If you just want an event log, you're better off skipping the uninterested middleman and just going to AP or Reuters or similar.

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

#95

Post by sgustard »

_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.

The press as "enemy of the people" is one of the primary memes in the US right now. Are you comfortable with the side you're taking on that?

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

globeSpin wrote: post #75
kauffj wrote: post #60

Perhaps there was a time when the New York Times could be trusted, but that era ended at least several years ago. Off the top of my head: - The New York Times fired Quinn Norton basically for being willing to talk to weev ( https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-n... ) - The New York Times fired Razib Khan for reporting on facts that are basically consensus opinion among geneticists and intelligen…

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…

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by wolco »

sgustard wrote: post #95
_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.

The press as "enemy of the people" is one of the primary memes in the US right now. Are you comfortable with the side you're taking on that?

It is not always binary. Liberal's read the nyt and if readership feels like they are being tricked into a false truth by canceling they can express any distaste without automatically becoming a conservative.

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

#98

Post by cperciva »

smacktoward wrote: post #71
taude wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem I have with it, though, is that often all the most popular articles in their site, are the opinion pieces. I'm still a subscriber, but there's a strongly "promoted" bias, IMHO, and it requires reading news from several sources with an open mind to get the complete story. Also, NYT isn't immune to click-baity titles, where the meat of the story isn't necessary correlate with the title.

> often all the most popular articles in their site, are the opinion pieces It turns out people like to read other people's opinions. Who'da thunk? > I'm still a subscriber, but there's a strongly "promoted" bias, IMHO If you want a balanced overall view of the day's news, the place to start is the front/home page, not the "Most Popular" list. Newspaper editors spend extraordinary amounts of time agonizing over exact…

It turns out people like to read other people's opinions. Who'da thunk?

Except that they don't like to read other people's opinions. They like to read their own opinions.

The most popular opinion pieces are overwhelmingly those which play to the prejudices of the majority of readers, not those which challenge people by presenting unpopular opinions.

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

#99

Post by bdamm »

_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.

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

#100

Post by sangnoir »

whatshisface wrote: post #39
snackematician wrote: post #37

I've worked in the ancient DNA field but left (at least for now). I haven't worked with David but have with competing labs. 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 this hyped field; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to David -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece. The industrial anc…

> The industrial ancient DNA publication machine is real. A few giants control the vast majority of ancient DNA samples behind a wall, and these giants decide when and where to release these samples. Who controls the samples? That sounds like a sci-fi thriller plot in the making.

Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi) is that sci-fi thriller. Granted, it's not about ancient DNA - but about dystopian corporate control of crop seed DNA (think Monsanto/Roundup writ large).
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