This should be the very last piece of journalism that any one takes seriously from the Washington Post.
Both them and the NYT have shown their asses when it comes to just being propaganda mouth-pieces.
We need to re-democratize our culture, and get away from this world of billionaire possession of our cultural expression. They didn’t make it, and its not something they can own if we don’t allow it. We need to stop taking outlets like WP or NYT seriously.
I’m not really sure what the New York Times has to do with this. WaPo is owned by a billionaire trying to hedge his bets if Trump wins and decides to take vengeance by breaking up Amazon.
Not sure what you mean with fully independent, but Wikipedia says "Though The New York Times Company is public, all voting shares are controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger Family Trust. "
That’s not even true. It’s a publicly traded company which means it’s owned by the shareholders. Over 90% of those shares are held by financial institutions, meaning diversified investors.
I don’t know how you could believe such a bald faced lie, and if you don’t believe it then that’s even worse.
The New York Times Company is majority-owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger family through elevated shares in the company’s dual-class stock structure held largely in a trust, in effect since the 1950s;[118] as of 2022, the family holds ninety-five percent of The New York Times Company’s Class B shares, allowing it to elect seventy percent of the company’s board of directors.[119]Class A shareholders have restrictive voting rights.[120]
What you’ve written here is very misleading, bordering on incorrect, but does this distinction even matter? Both a singular billionaire and a collective of rich owners will manage the business to enhance their personal wealth, not for the common good of ordinary people. If Trump creates an incentive structure where businesses are penalized for going against his will, I think both types of management are rationally going to choose to obey him.
There needs to be a completely different type of management structure if we want leaders in the press to weigh things like the health of our democracy in their decisions.
I read the times nearly every day. Not sure what you mean by this. Can you expand? I find their reporting on trump to be pretty real. Their interview with John Kelly straight up calling trump a fascist is pretty damning. So…
I can’t say for certain what they mean, but while their Trump coverage is solid, many people take issue with the way they are covering the Israel-Palestine conflict.
On another note, while I believe the John Kelly interview should be damning, if you believe it will make any difference you are living in a fantasy world.
The second point was an aside, but the first point was the likely answer to your question. You were talking about the NYT doing a good job reporting on Trump but the person you responded to was almost certainly talking about their less honest, more propagandized reporting. I was offering the example of this that is at the forefront of everyone’s minds at the moment.
Except news outlets get so caught up in being “neutral” and “fair” that they won’t accurately report on things when shit gets really fucking bad like now. As an example, NYT basically made no mention of the concentration camps when they were publishing during WWII, or it was relegated to back-page short articles, because they were afraid of being accused of “bias” if they reported the truth, which was “hey Germany is literally carrying out a genocide while waging this war.” You see it NOW with tons of media outlets going “Donald Trump suggests immigrants don’t belong here” when what was actually said was “we should unleash the military to drive them out by force.”
I always liked this quote from Hunter S Thompson, from his scathing eulagy of Nixon:
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism – which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
Someone needs to stand up and say that people like Nixion and Trump are scum human beings, are not worthy of the respect of objective journalism, and we should stop pretending otherwise.
Except news outlets get so caught up in being “neutral” and “fair” that they won’t accurately report on things when shit gets really fucking bad like now.
as the aphorism says, neutrality is not “five minutes for hitler and five minutes for jew”. if a fact is that the candidate for president is scum, that should be indeed reported. the problem in today’s journalism is the pseudo-neutrality, which in fact thwarts efforts for good reporting.
so i agree with you, but i still stand behind the fact that news should not take side. they should report facts and the problem is they are sometimes not doing that in the name of said pseudo-neutrality.
Do you think that’s what’s happening when you look out at the landscape of news reporting today? When the owner’s interests get in the way of presenting facts I believe it all goes out the window. If it was just about newsworthiness I think you’d have a point.
i see lot of problems, but “paying for news when it is on your side” is definitely not a solution. that just means you end up in some echo chamber like fox news audience.
This should be the very last piece of journalism that any one takes seriously from the Washington Post.
Both them and the NYT have shown their asses when it comes to just being propaganda mouth-pieces.
We need to re-democratize our culture, and get away from this world of billionaire possession of our cultural expression. They didn’t make it, and its not something they can own if we don’t allow it. We need to stop taking outlets like WP or NYT seriously.
NYT at least made the endorsement, the LA Times were the other cowards.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/opinion/editorials/kamala-harris-2024-endorsement.html
It’s a bit weird that it’s behind a pay wall
I’m not really sure what the New York Times has to do with this. WaPo is owned by a billionaire trying to hedge his bets if Trump wins and decides to take vengeance by breaking up Amazon.
NYT is fully independent.
Not sure what you mean with fully independent, but Wikipedia says "Though The New York Times Company is public, all voting shares are controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger Family Trust. "
It’s owned by a wealthy family, and it’s reflected in what they choose to report, and more importantly what not to report.
That’s not even true. It’s a publicly traded company which means it’s owned by the shareholders. Over 90% of those shares are held by financial institutions, meaning diversified investors.
I don’t know how you could believe such a bald faced lie, and if you don’t believe it then that’s even worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Organization
What you’ve written here is very misleading, bordering on incorrect, but does this distinction even matter? Both a singular billionaire and a collective of rich owners will manage the business to enhance their personal wealth, not for the common good of ordinary people. If Trump creates an incentive structure where businesses are penalized for going against his will, I think both types of management are rationally going to choose to obey him.
There needs to be a completely different type of management structure if we want leaders in the press to weigh things like the health of our democracy in their decisions.
Heh.
I read the times nearly every day. Not sure what you mean by this. Can you expand? I find their reporting on trump to be pretty real. Their interview with John Kelly straight up calling trump a fascist is pretty damning. So…
I can’t say for certain what they mean, but while their Trump coverage is solid, many people take issue with the way they are covering the Israel-Palestine conflict.
On another note, while I believe the John Kelly interview should be damning, if you believe it will make any difference you are living in a fantasy world.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with either of your points, neither of them have anything to do with what I was responding to.
The second point was an aside, but the first point was the likely answer to your question. You were talking about the NYT doing a good job reporting on Trump but the person you responded to was almost certainly talking about their less honest, more propagandized reporting. I was offering the example of this that is at the forefront of everyone’s minds at the moment.
Not bickering, by the way, just clarifying.
Didn’t come across as bickering at all. I appreciate the clarification.
They platform bad people with op ed, legitimizing the ideas
I don’t know why people would pay for the news when they aren’t on your side.
News are not supposed to take sides, they should present facts regardless of who (dis)likes them
Except news outlets get so caught up in being “neutral” and “fair” that they won’t accurately report on things when shit gets really fucking bad like now. As an example, NYT basically made no mention of the concentration camps when they were publishing during WWII, or it was relegated to back-page short articles, because they were afraid of being accused of “bias” if they reported the truth, which was “hey Germany is literally carrying out a genocide while waging this war.” You see it NOW with tons of media outlets going “Donald Trump suggests immigrants don’t belong here” when what was actually said was “we should unleash the military to drive them out by force.”
I always liked this quote from Hunter S Thompson, from his scathing eulagy of Nixon:
Someone needs to stand up and say that people like Nixion and Trump are scum human beings, are not worthy of the respect of objective journalism, and we should stop pretending otherwise.
as the aphorism says, neutrality is not “five minutes for hitler and five minutes for jew”. if a fact is that the candidate for president is scum, that should be indeed reported. the problem in today’s journalism is the pseudo-neutrality, which in fact thwarts efforts for good reporting.
so i agree with you, but i still stand behind the fact that news should not take side. they should report facts and the problem is they are sometimes not doing that in the name of said pseudo-neutrality.
Do you think that’s what’s happening when you look out at the landscape of news reporting today? When the owner’s interests get in the way of presenting facts I believe it all goes out the window. If it was just about newsworthiness I think you’d have a point.
i see lot of problems, but “paying for news when it is on your side” is definitely not a solution. that just means you end up in some echo chamber like fox news audience.
this my reply to another comment covers the rest, so i am not going to copy and paste it - https://lemm.ee/post/45874842/15772730
OK. I’ll check it out. Thank you for your reply.
There is always a bias in what gets published and what doesn’t