There is something wrong at the New York Times | From presidential polls to refusing to report on Trump’s stumbles, things aren’t adding up at the Gray Lady
There is something wrong at the New York Times | From presidential polls to refusing to report on Trump’s stumbles, things aren’t adding up at the Gray Lady

There is something wrong at the New York Times

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:
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.
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.
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.
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.