> NYT's recent decline from paper of record to race-baiting propaganda
Good newspapers must always speak truth to power. In a country where white people hold virtually all of it, sometimes that means speaking truth to white power.
You’re sort of telling on yourself if you find that offensive.
The NYT calling others out for fake news is itself propaganda: the NYT routinely engages in fake news, but is fighting to portray itself as reputable while others engaged in the same aren’t.
Like when the NYT completely blew the Covington story, due to its institutional animosity towards white people:
> The New York Times, sober guardian of the exact and the nonsensational, had cannonballed into the delicious story on Saturday, titling its first piece “Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March.”
They were forced to print a retraction less than 24 hours later when facts contradicted their racism.
OP has a point. The NY Times recently began a process of shedding their ideals of objectivity too. They claim the views and inclinations of whiteness are accepted as the objective neutral.
> And to be fair, almost everything the NYT says about the US is negative, too.
Not the same way that the NYT portrays India. They repeatedly reuse racist stereotypes in their coverage - even in their headlines. I've never seen anything quite so appalling in their coverage on the US. It's a whole new level. It's gotten a lot worse since 2013/2014, which is when Barry and Baquet took over.
And sometimes they can't even be bothered to do the most basic fact-checking or even issue corrections to online articles about India, the way they almost always do for US coverage or coverage of other regions. It's really awful.
> How did this article make the New York Times? It’s awful.
The NYT is widely regarded to have turned a corner in the early 2000's, with the decision to put a color picture on the front and, in 2003, the cringe-inducing drum beat of the Iraq War.
"The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present."
My very limited personal interaction with the press boiled down to this and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, kind of a deep rooted cynicism.
Growing up in this world, we tend to accept what's in print as 'truthy' at least, it's an incredible form of power. Their job is to keep an eye on more institutional power, so it's kind of a paradox we are stuck in.
> The NY Times has devolved into a political pamphlet and as such has - at least in my eyes - lost nearly all credibility. This is a shame, the paper used to represent the best of what journalism had to offer, "all the news that's fit to print" and all. Now they actively engage in revisionism - the '1619 project' - and push forward the narrative of 'white guilt' and other such divisive nonsense.
This is exactly what happened, and it is very sad to watch. The downfall of an institution. What is also sad to see is such a comment getting downvoted, on HN of all places. You‘d expect people to have read a history book or two, but apparently not. None of this woke stuff holds up to any intellectual standards, and is terribly damaging for everyone involved. Why the supposed „coastal elite“ falls for it I don’t know.
> imagine something called the NY times to be somewhat skewed to NY.
That's not the reputation they sell when they call themselves the "Newspaper of Record"[1]. They also cultivate themselves as internationalists. They do not represent themselves ala NY Post (i.e. "hizzoner")
> Many opposed to the growth of populist, right-wing movements in the US (and to a degree abroad) see the NYT as emblematic of a news media more interested in humanistically profiling far-right extremists, including self-avowed white nationalists, than in highlighting their evils.
Many opposed to the growth of populist, right-wing movements in the US would like their newspapers to provide reporting and understanding, which can include "humanistic profiles" of people we don't like. The last thing I want from journalism (outside the opinion pages) are stories selected to highlight or build support for a particular opinion, as justified as that opinion may be.
> On the other side of the American political divide, many have found the 'failing' NYT to be unrepresentative of their experiences as Americans, and have begun to dismiss it's coverage as partisan and often distorted. The paper's attempts to introduce balanced coverage, especially in the editorial pages, has been met with vitriol from both liberals and conservatives.
IIRC, the NYT has long been regarded the voice of liberal orthodoxy. Any attempts change that (if they are in fact happening) are going to be painful but also needed and welcome (by me at least).
you can still find some good investigative journalism at nytimes here and there, but most of the daily news pieces are full of opinion and partisanship. the editorializing over corona/covid, blm, and the election provide the most obvious examples, but you can see it across world news, cultural pieces, and everything in-between.
the cotton piece was published exactly to generate outrage and partisanship, not to be informative, and it backfired--a lack of editorial integrity, not an issue with the offensive content itself.
It's so disturbing that "integrity in journalism" and "not political" (as an adjective) has become synonymous with advocating causal relationships between behavior and race/sex.
Assuming that all of those relationships are absolutely true, and would hold in a world of equal opportunity that didn't reward conforming to certain stereotypes, or punish deviating from them; even in that world, you'd assume that there'd be far more important issues at all times than these tiny postulated differences.
NYT is awful, but just in the way all corporate media outlets are awful; they cater to the powerful, and protect an encourage industries in which they are also invested.
> NYT feeds off of bipartisan hatred and conflict in order to make money
This is how every newspaper that is reliant on ad views for revenue operates. You'll notice the ones that depend more on subscriptions, like Financial Times and WSJ, are noticeably less clickbaity or intentionally provocative.
Also, I'll go out on a limb and guess that you work at Facebook - aren't you guilty of the same thing? Sowing ideological division to increase "engagement"?
It's the New York Times, an esteemed institution in the advertising industry. I'm sure they have done their journalistic due diligence in accurately representing the myriad of individual opinions and zeitgeist of these broad demographic groups.
They are after all a left-leaning publication, and thus are woke to the dangers of making overly broad generalizations.
> The NYT has lost a great deal of trust from it's readers in recent years
We need some evidence of the level of trust and its change over time. I've read such things about the NY Times since I first learned of its existence. It seems to be the nature of journalism, telling people uncomfortable, undesirable things about red-hot issues.
Good newspapers must always speak truth to power. In a country where white people hold virtually all of it, sometimes that means speaking truth to white power.
You’re sort of telling on yourself if you find that offensive.
reply