The NYT Strikes me as an organization that would rather attempt to continue to exist under Trump than try to fight the rising fascist tide he’s riding.
They’ve always been that high on themselves, and they’ve always been pragmatists to the point of standing for nothing except their own gravitas.
They’re sort of like the old Italian man in Catch-22:
“I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he has been deposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American.”
The only difference is that, as you note, NYT’s focus is on their own gravitas. Their goal isn’t merely survival, but to maintain their image as an authoritative voice in national affairs. And they do that in large part simply by currying favor with whoever currently has the biggest coattails.
Yep, they see which way the wind is blowing, and they’d rather be the one interviewing the fuhrer than be dismantled for unflattering words during his ascent.
I’m sure they genuinely, self-masturbatorily believe they are the peak of journalism, but in abandoning the journalistic cornerstone of informing and serving the public trust, they’re anything but.
I’m old enough that for me the NYT lost a lot of credibility with their cheerleading of the Iraq war and WMDs and serving as a tool for Cheney to get revenge on a whistleblower and all that shit. The same organization that is now writing haikus to avoid saying Isreal massacred starving civilians in their headline, “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll”.
The simple fact is a second Trump term is good for the NYT. Trump does crazy shit, people are outraged, they buy newspaper subscriptions to read about it. The NYT monetizes doom scrollers, and Trump is a endless supply of doom.
So is it money, or is the NYT always just been a mouthpiece of neocons? Or both.
they’ve always been pragmatists to the point of standing for nothing except their own gravitas
Well said. Their reflexive need to “both-sides” even the most one-sided issues ultimately helps normalize the most extreme viewpoints. It’s what made me lose faith in them.
Also their headlines are consistently absurd, to the point of often being inaccurate. Remember around the 1 million mark, when they said Covid had caused countless deaths and then proceeded to tell us how they counted the deaths? Words mean certain things, and their meanings matter. Don’t use “countless” if the thing is countable.
Exactly.
objectivity ≠ equivocation
A murderer and their victim don’t both have a valid point.
not to nit pick but COVID deaths happened by way of COVID exacerbating other illnesses, so saying someone died of COVID is difficult when they really died of COVID exacerbated Pneumonia. So saying “Countless” deaths, and then giving a number of COVID associated deaths isn’t entirely inaccurate.
It’s even simpler than that. The paper is class aligned. It’s something run by something like a 4th generation rich kid.
Back when the stories broke that the CIA helped to fund itself for their Contra operations by smuggling cocaine into America they helped protect the CIA because they were angry that a small time paper and Gary Web broke the story instead of mainstream media.
There are declassified CIA documents talking about how helpful the LA Times and New York Times were on helping them cover up the scandal. They were worried about the continued existence of the CIA with everything coming out but mainstream media came to their defense unprompted.
Imagine how many lives would have been saved if we shutdown the CIA.
For sure. They’re pretty open about prioritizing access over truth.
It has less to do with “being (…) high on themselves” and more to do with the reality.
We have a former president who led a violent insurrection against the government in an attempt to lynch the vice president and anyone in congress who he didn’t like. The military actively ignored it and significant parts of the government are protecting him for it.
pretty much the next time republicans have power (trump or no trump), heads will roll: Literally. And if nobody is going to protect organization X on the way to that, why should organization X “fight the good fight” and paint a bullseye on their foreheads?
We see the same with a lot of branches of the government. When the best you can hope for is to have your career torpedoed (and the more likely outcome being you and your family literally getting torpedoed), why are you going to fight a losing battle?
Journalism is more important than any journalistic organization. The NYT has clearly forgotten that reality. The best journalists often put themselves in harm’s way to shine light on ugly realities, and their country doesn’t usually need to be falling to fascism to do so.
The NYT is good at protecting themselves at the cost of good journalism. Better to survive as a shiny brand than burn out as as journalists at a journalistic organization, I suppose.
So its their job to suffer and die for you?
Yes, the ideal is that Truth matters. And plenty of journalists still firmly believe that and are targeted by corporations and hate groups for it.
And you know what they get for it? Their employers have to lay them off because nobody is willing to pay for news and the response is usually “Fuck that, I refuse to look at anything with a paywall”. Or people start chomping at the bit to attack them for “being high on themselves”. And so forth. Anti-intellectualism is rampant throughout the world and journalism has been a target of that since long before fascists realized they could weaponize it.
In a perfect world? Yeah. Fight the good fight. And plenty of outlets still do that (often at great personal cost). But I have a real hard time getting pissy that people are deciding that they want to have a job, or a life, after November.
We’re not going to agree on whether it’s understandable to be a self-identified journalistic organization that prioritizes self-preservation over journalism.
I at some point tagged you as an apologist for capitalism, so we just have 2 very different world views and ethics on most issues. Have a good one.
How do you tag people on Lemmy?
I use Connect for lemmy on android, it’s on the Play store. It lets you add user notes that appear next to their name quickly and easily.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.lemmy_connect
It’s a feature of the app, not lemmy. Works perfectly though.
Thank you, I’ll check it out.
Do you feel the same way about the judges who are clearly responding to being threatened by giving reduced sentences? Because I don’t. Being a judge is sometimes a dangerous job. It’s a job that you should be aware may cost you your life to do right and people get to demand you do it right anyway. Just like a soldier.
Journalism is similar. You accepted a high risk high ideal career. It’s a wonderful calling, but part of the reason we respect it is this.
Like the soldiers who actively noped out of protecting Congress and the Vice President from the President? Or law enforcement who will actively refuse to enforce laws they don’t like?
Like anything, it is a social contract. Journalists are meant to serve The People. The “dream” is that a corrupt government arrests a journalist and The People protest until they are released. The reality is that the journalist will be disappeared. The article they spent years of their life in hiding to write will be immediately copied and posted across social media. People will say they are liars who write clickbait and blah blah blah. And they won’t even know because they are being beaten in a windowless room. And their friends and family will, at best, be harassed for the rest of their life.
I have MASSIVE respect for the people who fight the good fight regardless of how little support they have. I would like to think I am more on that direction than not but I also fully acknowledge that I am taking advantage of my privilege (that may not exist in a few months but…). But I am not going to be overly harsh on someone who doesn’t want to sacrifice their friends and family to stand alone and accomplish nothing.
Buddy, the soldiers went the second they were ordered to by the Civilians. Believe me, you do not want the military deciding to “protect” the capital all on it’s own. That’s the express route to dictatorship.
Buddy, the outging president of the united states, who had already refused to follow the law and uphold democracy, was openly supporting “good people” who were trying to lynch Congress. And the Vice President, who also had the authority to call them in, was cowering in fear because he had every reason to believe that Secret Service agents would murder him.
Rolling up and stopping the armed lunatics attacking the US Capitol Building is very much something the military can and should do.
This is the equivalent of saying “Well. Russia/China/whoever attacked us. But they blocked the cell phone jammers and might have murdered the POTUS and VPOTUS. So… I guess we just wait until someone tells us we can fight them off?”
But actively refusing to stop the outgoing POTUS from taking over the country with an armed mob because… the outgoing POTUS didn’t ask them to stop him? Hmmm. Why does THAT sound more like a route to a dictatorship?
Tell me the Times lost credibility without telling me the Times lost credibility
You could make the same argument about Soldiers. Or firefighters. Or cops. Or electric linemen. Or North Sea fishermen.
The job of journalism is to go find the truth and report it. Sometimes that’s dangerous. Just like any dangerous public good it does not mean they’re a sacrificial lamb.
pretty much the next time republicans have power (trump or no trump), heads will roll: Literally. And if nobody is going to protect organization X on the way to that, why should organization X “fight the good fight” and paint a bullseye on their foreheads?
In theory, we all hang together or we all hang separately.
The gamble that execs at the NYT appear to make is that they can ingratiate themselves to Trump for the six months to two years of his relevancy, and he won’t hold any grudges or notice the knife they’ve got waiting for him the moment his approval rating falters.
Maybe they’re right. Trump is notoriously easy to distract. But he’s increasingly surrounded by folks with better political playbooks, deeper pockets, and a longer memory.
The problem is that we have already made it clear that “nobody cares” if journalists hang. hell, the other guy outright thinks journalists should line up to die on our behalf. All while we condemn them for running a banner ad or having an annoying headline on the article that is the result of three years of investigative journalism.
Personally? I think all media is even more fucked. But it is the difference between being part of mass layoffs and literally being lined up against a wall and shot.
Personally? I think all media is even more fucked.
As a vector for advertising, they’ve never been more lucrative. But I suspect we’re headed for a future of “Oops! All Ads!” wherein the NYT is - cover to cover - just another commodity plutocrats buy and sell. The WaPo is functionally already there.
NYT has been going to shit long before anything scary was happening politically. Deference to the political status quo has been their guiding light since at least the Iraq War.
I have a LOT of issues with the NYT. Not least of which is their ability to turn ANYTHING into “and this is why it is bad for Democrats”
But I think you, like many others, are very much forgetting just how strong bipartisan support was for the 2000s Iraq War at the start. And how it was actually moderately strong even for Desert Storm.
Politicians and pundits (and influencers) like to talk about how they were always above it all because nothing is worse than a flip flopper (rape? Boys will be boys. CHANGING YOUR MIND UPON RECEIVING MORE INFORMATION??? FUCK YOU AND DIE!!!). But in the late 80s/early 90s? There were a LOT of reasons to support military intervention in Iraq or, more specifically, Kuwait. Basically the exact same reasons to support military intervention in Ukraine.
And while we (rightfully) focus on the complete fabrication of WMDs*, there were still a LOT of humanitarian reasons to have intervened when we went back in the 2000s. Of course, we refused to do anything meaningful and mostly just created a power vacuum and plunged the region into chaos all while tricking people into cooperating with us and then leaving them to be murdered when we left but… we are talking about the start of the war. And that also ignores the nationalistic fervor after 9-11.
*: That actually gets a lot more complicated if you go by the actual definition of WMDs. But we were sold on nukes rather than “just” chemical weapons and the mechanisms to create nukes. Which were very much not believed to be there.
Reporting the truth is their job though. When the UN weapons inspectors are making the rounds telling everyone that the Bush administration is lying they should have run strongly worded articles.
When no evidence of a functional WMD program of any kind showed up they should have gone after Bush with a bucket of tar.
Instead the myth of chemical weapons is so pervasive that even now you hedge your post. But the only thing we ever found were some rounds so old and decrepit they were more likely to fall apart the second they were moved than anything else.
They completely abrogated their duty to bring truth to the people for the Iraq war. And then coverage turned so hard on the Iraq war people ignore the fact that the main thing was a success. The government and democracy there endures to this day.
Even in your comment you get annoyed that people are acknowledging the facts, rather than just the narrative you wanted. it is not “hedg(ing)” to acknowledge that: By the strict definition of the term, there actually were WMDs. And we would have known the scale if inspectors were allowed to do their job. They just weren’t the WMDs that were used to sell people on the war. That is nuance. That is Truth.
People don’t want Truth. They want people to fight their battles for them under the guise of “Truth”. Journalists are great right up until they say something we don’t like, at which point they are “just as bad as the rest”.
It is not journalism’s job to tear down a government. It is their job to provide The People with the information they need to make those decisions. Instead, republicans insisted that any journalist who acknowledged how much of a liar the bush administration was are traitors. And most of the left decided the thing they hate the most is sensationalist headlines/24 hour news/clickbait/whatever. And… after a few people got fire bombed and had to go into hiding, it just wasn’t worth the fight.
I have friends in journalism who literally had to go into hiding or flee the country. I have had to help one of my best friends store some data because one of the tech giants was pissed at them and they genuinely feared for their life.
And I’ve seen the outcome. The story they spent years writing and researching gets turned into a single editorialized headline on social media and the few people who even claimed to read it are arguing that it is toothless and was written by a boot licker. With the more common response being people who are genuinely proud of NOT reading it because it is “too long”.
Lmao, “we were technically correct” is not a basis for war. People fucking died. That’s not the time for edgy bullshit.
And nobody got firebombed for going against the Iraq war. Stop trying to conflate things. In fact journalists being killed in the US is extremely rare.
And it’s absolutely the job of journalists to expose the lies of a government. That’s literally why they’re the fourth estate.
You’re going so hard to defend stuff not even the journalists want to defend. Do you work at NYT or something?
Being a good reporter does not mean deferring to whatever is popular at the time.
All those risks and flaws were evident in the build up for war (Bush Jr.'s). Maybe many people believed the bullshit, but that’s not an excuse for the people who are supposed to be calling bullshit bullshit rather than cheerleading the march to war. I am very much not forgetting the bipartisan support for war. I was there marching against it and calling it bullshit at the time, along with many more diligent reporters than the NYT. People rightfully didn’t trust the Bush Jr. administration.
When institutions fail in big world altering ways that kill a lot of innocent people, hold them to it, don’t pretend they did the best they could and no one could possibly expect better.
The Wordle people have a journalism outlet???
Games like that are a key part of how they pay to run the news outlet.
I save my hate for Joel and whoever does Connections.
hey now James Burke is a treasure
Connections is a New York times puzzle in this context
It took me a while to start solving the connections, but now I’m disappointed when it is too easy.
Lmao it’s pretty good too as long as you remember it’s class aligned to the wealthy.
You really do have to get into the mindset of a yuppie NYC writer who went to Brown to get the full experience
They aren’t “the wordle people”, they are the people who purchased wordle, an existing good idea gaining popular traction. Same as musk is not the “tesla or twitter people”.
This is why I always LOL when some far right (or some kind of “moderate” NPC) person starts up with the “liberal media” in reference to the likes of NYT.
Seriously, people need to POINT and LAUGH at such things being taken for granted. Exactly how is NYT in any meaningful way “liberal”?
The one thing that communists and conservatives have in common is that everyone they don’t like is a liberal
And they don’t like democracies.
What’s even better is that liberals are usually right. Source: am liberal
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Neoliberal is not the same as a liberal btw.
Liberals are more closely related to an egalitarian. I refuse to acknowledge it as a dirty word because, at the root of it, it’s something everyone wants. While others argue about economic systems a liberal knows that human rights are the most important and that the economy will always be run by assholes especially if we continue to let psychopaths rule us. Power corrupts and that power must be checked with brutal opposition.
Neoliberals are sometimes like you said though. Wealthy and high ranking, they may share the ideas of a liberal but they are part of the status quo. Well off and comfortable they typically don’t push as hard as is needed to effect change, but that is due to outside forces that are against doing anything beneficial for the people. You essentially need a ton more neolibs to gain ground from behind some of the good ones
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egalitarian
Unfortunately that’s just not true, but I admire your optimism.
Fair enough, but I would go as far as to say those kind of people are subhuman. Yes I get the irony
I’m pro liberty. Hope that helps
They are in fact liberal, just at the other end of the spectrum to what right wingers mean.
Maybe this isn’t the place for this but, I do pay for their website, and some stuff is quality. However, even as a paid user, I’m subjected to CONSTANT, and I mean CONSTANT aggressive ‘upgrade’ offers. I was even thinking to post to mildlyinfuriating about it. I did the math a bit back and it was something like every 3-4 days since 2022 that they send me emails pushing me to upgrade from their least expensive plan. Not to mention forcing me to reject it anytime I clear my browser cache and have to re-log in. Also when I’m on the site I’m subjected to it. It’s frankly disgusting. When it comes to marketing they are only marginally better than Condé Nast 🤮🤮🤮
Weird. I’m a paid user and I’ve never once been encouraged to upgrade anything.
I’ve got just about the lowest pay option too, so you’d think I’d be a prime target.
I use the app and a desktop browser (but with adblock). Where do you see them?
Yeah I don’t get anything either. I normally always just try to cancel when my subscription is up and they offer me an even lower deal than normal, like $1 per month or something.
I appreciate the detailed link, but I do understand profit chasing. They’re just super aggressive about it. 🫠
This is a great article. I was skeptical at first, because I used to consider the NYT one of the best journalism outlets in the country. But the author here does an excellent job of laying out the evidence for why I get more and more of a bad feeling from my former gold standard.
The polling issues are just inexcusable and nonsensical. Their sample seems highly unrepresentative of the population, to the point that it makes me wonder if it was on purpose.
Would’ve been nice to have people speak up about this when they were spreading lies about trans kids, or WMDs in Iraq, or Iran Contra, or any of the other million and two instances of them abusing their position to protect the powerful and oppress the powerless, but yeah, the New York Times sucks. Not as bad as a Wall Street Journal or a Fox News, but they’re just as stupid and shallow and sensationalist as CNN, and definitely below reputable outlets like NPR/PBS and the Guardian.
That all being said, this poll was likely pretty accurate considering it parallels what a bunch of others are saying (archived)
A day after Democrats dragged a New York Times/Siena College poll that showed the president falling 4 points behind his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, in a general election matchup, Sunday brought an additional three major surveys also showing Trump leading amid broad and deep dissatisfaction with the incumbent.
Don’t worry, the democrats are going to turn this around by telling you it’s your fault for being unhappy with them! 🫠
Yeah. They are the news of the New York coastal elites. That’s not to imply that New Yorkers are elitists, they are, but this isn’t the random New Yorker who thinks they’re better than some bitch in Cleveland. They’re the newspaper of the sort of people who the left hates having to share a party with. The ones who would rather discuss “the trans issue” with “respected academics” like Janice “eradication” Raymond and Ray “doesn’t believe in bisexuality” Blanchard than with actual trans people even philosophers and academics like Natalie Wynn, Janet Mock, Julia Serrano, or even the late Leslie Feinberg. These are the people who get whipped up into frenzy and go to war because capital was attacked and still are uncomfortable praising John Brown’s methods. They’re the ones who will say they resisted all they could while kissing asses and risking nothing, but occasionally wagging a finger and tutting, but if it comes to socialism or barbarism they will always choose barbarism and blame the socialists for their choice.
Thank you. My first impression was: “wait, do these guys side with capital and leave it at that?” I suppose that’s nothing new, but it stings a little to see it displayed so openly.
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It’s not even good toilet paper.
Well not since they fired Judith Miller for lying about the Iraq war
Sorry, we replaced all the actual journalists at the NYT info desk with Ross Douthat, a junior officer at the IDF, and six copies of the latest ChatGPT software.
The place that Judith Miller called home is a cesspit of misinformation and bias?!?
This is my complete lack of surprise. I have no clue why anyone takes the NYT seriously.
The problem is that they have huge distribution and much of what they publish is in fact an honest attempt to get things right
Judith Miller who worked at Fox News after leaving NYT? Damn that’s scathing, what does Shapiro think of NYT??
Maybe you want to look into the damage she did in her tenure at NYT.
Wait so she was a part of the problem? That also doesn’t sound credible smh
The premise of the article is that no one here was alive and could read in 2016.
Yeah. NYT is effectively a pro-trump spin machine. No shit. So is every other corporate news sewer hole.
A lot of current voters were too young to vote and not paying attention in 2016.
Like 15%, sure.
I’m sorry, no mention of the following re genocide in Gaza?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piDVPUicgKo&t=1358s
Fuck that rag
Y’all need to vote for Trump this year so we don’t have to do this again 4 years from now. He’ll have hit his 2 term limit and will simply retire to his estate.
Bold of you to assume Trump would limit himself to two terms and step down at the end of four years.
Or hand it down to one of his failsons, Uday and Qusay.
Y’all need you sarcasm detectors repaired, if you wanna survive the next 4 years.
Respectfully, you need to work on your sarcasm. Your comment didn’t have enough hyperbole to clock for most people.
Should full-throated support for Trump qualify as hyperbole, especially on Lemmy? Yes, but the reality is that isn’t the first time we’ve seen things that read like genuine support around here.
No
But…think of the memes…and Jon Stewart was retired for some fucking reason last time. It’ll be the funniest show in the history of forever…If Biden wins Stewart will just retire again. You don’t want that, do you? The last guy replaced him sucked. Maybe Colbert will start being funny agai…no nevermind, that didn’t happen last go round.
One thing is for sure, you’ll never be funny.
Enjoy the next four years.
I will enjoy the next four years with President Joe Biden at the helm.
He will win as he is the only candidate that isn’t a verified thieving lying traitor rapist.
Lol. It’s cute you think that’ll prevent anything, or that Biden is clean.
I’ll take Last Week Tonight and no Trump over Stewart Daily Show and president Trump, thanks.
All yall have the comedic sense of modern colbert.
who the fuck is the “grey lady”? Never heard that before
It’s a nickname for the New York Times.
Sorry the NYT’s centrism isn’t left-leaning enough. But, that’s kinda the point.
When Republicans and Democrats disagree about whether it is sunny or raining, I don’t want a news outlet to split the difference; I want them to look outside and see what’s actually happening.
