> WaPo and NYT aren't trash but they have fallen mightly.

As a Indian, I disagree. The reportage on anything India is the usual mix of patronizing caste-curry-cow (and now 'Hindu terror') BS. The morons in-charge of international news at every one of these outlets (incl. Intercept, Twitter, Google..) think that just because they are white, their imagination of the world is the reality.

The "media" isn't optimizing for clicks or engagement. The media is optimizing for advancing the democratic political party. It blocks stories that cover topics where the political right may be correct.

Proof: Stories like the one they are hiding can drive a lot of traffic. They are hidden to advance one political party over another. The stories aren't killed because they want traffic.

That's interesting. It's not just India and it's not about race. The NYT has a problem with Britain too, believe it or not. This article goes into some examples but they aren't the only ones:

https://unherd.com/2020/01/what-has-the-new-york-times-got-a...

As an Indian who reads NYT's international coverage, I disagree with your comment. NYT's India reports have been excellent and evidence based. The right wing extremism is indeed on the rise[1].

Any report I see, they are presenting their statements with ground report backed by statistics, usually by Govt. data.

[1] https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/umass-economist-fin...

If their "ground reporting" had any kernel of truth to it then they would not be covering up the rise of islamic extremism in India using bogeys of "right wing extremism".

NYT also helped sell America into Iraq.

That one factoid, namely that two of their writers were of the wrong persuasion almost 20 years ago, seems to be the extend of criticism people can actually come up with when put on the spot. Even though they had plenty of opposition against the war on staff and on paper, and very few of their readers were likely to change their opinion on that topic. And, not being having the presidency and Congress at that point not being neccessary for a declaration of war, their mostly Democratic audience had little to no influence on events.

It's noticeable that nobody ever faults the Republican Party, which actually made the decision to invade Iraq. And also to lie to the world, its citizens, and, yes, those people at the Times that were naive enough to believe them.

The Bush administration offered the choice, and a bipartisan majority of congress took it. No need to invoke tribalism and blame an impersonal mass of people--we know the names of the specific individuals involved.

The Bush administration controlled the information used the inform congress (and the media while we're on the subject of the parent posts).

Congress and the media deserve some blame for not digging hard enough... but when assigning blame here, surely we ought blame the liars and misleaders more than the lied to and the misled?

> Congress and the media deserve some blame for not digging hard enough...

Except that the Bush Administration story was on several key points, including the nature of the “winnebagos of mass destruction” a lie, and that the US knew it to be a lie, and that, they were, in fact, associated with a weather balloons used in artillery spotting and had been sold to Iraq by the UK, was reported, in the media, at the time the story was being presented by the Administration.

The media did not fail to dig hard enough. Neither really did Congress. The media reported the truth, Congress and much of the population had the truth in front of them and choose wilfull pretense of ignorance, and the former gave Bush the authority to decide to go to war—sure, there were factual determinations that had to be made first, but the Administration was already known to be lying about the facts to get authority to go to war, so it was predictable they would lie to exercise that authority.

That the bush administration controlled the information is the failure of congress and the media.

Why would we give congress war powers if not as a specific check against a commander in chief who would otherwise start undesireable wars? It is congress' job to specifically not just go along with what the administration tells them. They have their own investigative powers, and 59 congress members voted against the invasion so clearly it was possible for congress people to question the validity of the administration's argument.

As for the media, accepting the government's narrative without question is the most heinous sin. That is not journalism, that is propaganda. Of course the government is going to massage the truth, just like any other institution. Most people take it as a given that politicians lie. However when the media, which is supposed to have an antagonistic relationship with the government, reaffirms what the government is saying, then it holds substantially more weight. It would be like if a prosecutor claimed the defendant was guilty and the defense attorney agreed.

You don't get any slack for having been lied to when your entire job is to identify lies.

I think the criticism of media comes down that they only dig if politically favourable and recent behavior made that more transparent. People will loose their conscience at one point because mistakes are repeated.

The more divided a country, the more the media has to pander for the extremes. People expect to get dirt only on the other side so the media has to take sides, or be left hated by both.

If the lie was one that warranted an invasion sure.

If I tell you that some guy called you fat and you go kick the shit out of him, I'm at way less or even no fault. If I tell you that some guy diddled your kid, sure that's on me.

The whole world knew there was no WMD, only the American convinced themselves.

Not true. The Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee has plenty of power to call witnesses, but its chairperson, one Joseph Biden, would not call anyone critical of the administration's position.

Plus, regardless of that - Congress had, at the very least, the information available to the public, which includes what the UN was saying, what weapons inspectors were saying etc. So they didn't need to "dig" anywhere.

>The Bush administration offered the choice, and a bipartisan majority of congress took it.

And later it came out the administration lied extensively about that, including some in-retrospect ridiculous assessments about how long the war would take (what was that quote, doubt it would take 6 months, doubt it would cost much at all).

> No need to invoke tribalism

Oh yes there is, especially because after that complete and utter fiasco of the worst foreign policy decision by the US ever, was there any honest introspection or learning by the administration and/or Republicans in general? Nope, it just was completely ignored.

> It's noticeable that nobody ever faults the Republican Party

2008 brought a Democrat president along with an increased Democrat majority in both houses, so if they weren't faulted at the time (and they were) then they were certainly faulted just a few years later.

Both for continuing the military intervention and for not bringing anyone to trial, nor even a public accounting, for cooking up the false claims used to justify the invasion; nor for the torture; nor for the killing of civilians; nor for the use of depleted uranium and white phosphor; etc.

>It's noticeable that nobody ever faults the Republican Party,

most people I read seems to fault the Republicans, the Democrats who went along and the Media who reported uncritically in that order.

You also seem to fault the Republicans.

I fault the Republicans, first.

So it's not noticeable to me I guess.

> That one factoid

Not one. Russiagate in its many variations was and still is happily peddled by NYT. Coverage of Syria is also straight from warmonger 101 textbook. There is likely more, but I stopped reading them regularly after 2003.

> nobody ever faults the Republican Party, which actually made the decision to invade Iraq

Both parties happily voted to invade. Both bear the blame.

In a democracy public perception of reality directly correlates to your ability to perform as a politician. The Bush administration used the full thrust of the office to knowingly foster false perception of reality in huge swaths of the population. Rendering objections moot. The ultimate blame lays with the deceiver. Even though representatives of all parties votes for the invasion, they acted in a reality manufactured by lies and they represented the will of their supposed voters. You may accuse them as spineless, but there's still magnitude difference between deceiving the public, and failing to convince the public it's all lies. Losing this distinction just makes the crooks stronger.

What is the proof that one party did it against the will of the people, while the other went with the will of the people? Given how much ongoing violence was continued and expanded even once the democrats has a president and congressional majority, it seems like both parties were and are happy to perpetuate imperialist violence in the name of a fictional protection.

The "moot objection" included over 5 Million US residents who attended anti-war protests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

What the lies manufactured was not a "reality", it was an excuse.

Yeah, that grand conspiracy to make up a story about your opponent, and then leak it to the press after the election.

> namely that two of their writers were of the wrong persuasion almost 20 years ago

It was the editorial board, or perhaps I should say the organization at large. And it wasn't just Iraq, it's US interventions in lots of places that are supported and/or positively spun. Also - AFAIK, there was no process undertaken to try and avoid this occurring again.

Well you know you fuck one horse and you're a horse fucker for all of eternity

No, that’s not the extent of the criticism of the NYT. Here’s stratechery from a week ago quoting Columbia Journalism Review (https://stratechery.com/2020/twitter-responsibility-and-acco...)

> In light of the stark policy choices facing voters in the 2016 election, it seems incredible that only five out of 150 front-page articles that The New York Times ran over the last, most critical months of the election, attempted to compare the candidate’s policies, while only 10 described the policies of either candidate in any detail.

> In this context, 10 is an interesting figure because it is also the number of front-page stories the Times ran on the Hillary Clinton email scandal in just six days, from October 29 (the day after FBI Director James Comey announced his decision to reopen his investigation of possible wrongdoing by Clinton) through November 3, just five days before the election. When compared with the Times’s overall coverage of the campaign, the intensity of focus on this one issue is extraordinary. To reiterate, in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election (and that does not include the three additional articles on October 18, and November 6 and 7, or the two articles on the emails taken from John Podesta). This intense focus on the email scandal cannot be written off as inconsequential: The Comey incident and its subsequent impact on Clinton’s approval rating among undecided voters could very well have tipped the election.

——

But here’s the real kicker. It’s not that the NYT made a mistake about prioritising the wrong coverage and convincing undecided voters to break for Trump or stay home. People make mistakes and we should forgive them.

The real issue is that since then the NYT has convinced people that it was the Russians and Facebook and Cambridge Analytica that got Trump elected. Their breathless coverage of the email non issue had 0 influence, it was entirely the fault of everyone else.

And it worked! No one blames the NYT now for their mistake in 2016. Which is why Greenwald thinks it’s the right thing to do to start emails 2.0.

I don't know why you got downvoted, this is pretty much on spot without any counter indications.

This was typical elite-orientated journalism that articulated ideas to spread election talking points for Clinton. It was certainly no journalism, it was probably for rubbing some friends in Washington.

It’s actually easy to see why I was downvoted.

If you believe what is being said about the NYT it challenges a couple of core beliefs that many people (especially on this forum) might hold

1. Freedom of speech is not always a good thing. A free press reporting on topics like “but her emails” can have negative consequences, even if those journalists are acting in good faith.

2. People in the aggregate can’t be trusted to make sound judgements, even if that means democracy is built on shaky foundations. Give them all the information and let them take a call is a strategy that can backfire. Flat earth, anti vax, qanon are all ideologies with vast following online, regardless of how stupid they are.

When you challenge people’s core beliefs, it hurts them. They respond with downvotes.

> Flat earth, anti vax, qanon are all ideologies with vast following online, regardless of how stupid they are.

True, but I think that doesn't matter. On the contrary, would be boring if we all believed the earth was some ball, wouldn't it.

The op-ed page is not the same as the news, which is what I remember Bill Kristol being hawkish in.

Nope, not op-ed. This is a reference to Judith Miller, and others, that published false information in the New York Times about Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction on the front page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War

Oh no. So that's how the aluminum tube information spread. Thanks for pointing this out, I stand corrected.

The two part PBS documentary[1] is a terrific source of information. From the events leading up to the war until the origin of ISIS skirmishes.

They explicitly cover the aluminum tube and how the government used a news paper article to justify their stance. It also covers the famous 16 words from Bush [1].

I found it fascinating to learn about all the internal politics during this period and the war state shapes the opinion of the masses. How does one go about justifying a war that has left millions dead, maimed, and traumatized for life, that has cost (and continues to) trillions of dollars, and continues to shape the world we live in today? Highly recommended.

[1] https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/frontline/frontline-bushs-...

https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-bushs-war-part-2/

[2] https://www.factcheck.org/2004/07/bushs-16-words-on-iraq-ura...

Judith Miller wasn't an op-ed columnist.

OTOH, ISTR that she was at least accused of actively deceiving her editors.

Op-ed is still part of the paper's message, considering they do not just publish a random sample of letters received, and editors can be fired for allowing the wrong op ed to run.

Apparently this is something that has totally stuck with the NYTimes. I respect them (for a mainstream media publication), but no one can get over the fact that they lied blatantly at the time.

Right that's who to blame not the party/President that actually executed it.

Good thing events can only ever be blamed on one single individuals actions.

This was supposed to be a joke but it's actually how people here talk about racism.

Not just that, they chose to support the Bolshevik regime in Russia while their own correspondents knew about the massive starvation in Ukraine causing millions of deaths but that was not the narrative they want to push to the whole world. They wanted Communism to be a shining star and not report the facts. NYT is as biased as you can go.

So they were wrong 20 years ago, and another 80 years before that?

Even ignoring how these accusations oversell some supposedly uniform position of the the paper, that sounds like a pretty good batting average.

Ignoring how these accusations oversell some supposedly uniform position of the the paper, some countries have not completely recovered from either communism or the invasion, so it's not like it's some minor thing.

Greenwald fully supported the Iraq War as well.

Greenwald didn't become a journalist until 2005

Yes. But relativelty that mighty fall makes them reek like trash. At that point, it's a duck.

What's worse is they continue to leverage their once-stellar reputations to sell second-rate "stuff" as "news". They've lowered to bar for the accepted definition of journalism.

They might not suck, but they're intentional pursuit falling has broad societal and cultural implications. Perhaps not 100% tabloid, but they use that tool enough to make it more and more legitimate.

To have a healthy and proper Democracy requires a coherent, honest and transparent Fourth Estate. That ship has sailed, and it was prior to Jan 2017.

Well the film Network deals with this theme and it came out in 1976 so I'd say that ship has sailed around the world a few times by now.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

NYT is not an objective publication, they have a heavy bias.

Same with Wall Street Journal - the bias is ridiculously bare.

> WaPo and NYT aren't trash but they have fallen mightly

I would imagine its probably because their advertising revenue has been falling down because of the internet. You have to be flexible with your standards when your revenue is declining.

It's getting harder to buy this line as their financials keep getting better and better. They have nearly 5 million subscribers and aiming to hit 10mil by 2025. The advertising revenue isn't growing much, but subscriptions are.

https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2020-02-06/ny-...

It supports the OP's point. NY Times has switched from a revenues model to a subscriber model, which means they're strongly incentivized to publish articles that reinforce the worldviews of their paying customers. Before, when they were dependent on advertising, they needed to be objective and represent all viewpoints because they needed to reach as large an audience as possible.

Why would subscriptions over advertising change their target audience? It seems that either way they are trying to get as many eyeballs as possible. Getting repeat subscriptions versus repeat page views (or whatever the ad revenue metric) seems irrelevant to me.

Because of the publish something that does not say Orange Man Bad they will loose a bunch of their subscribers. Getting subscribers is much harder then loosing them.

Let’s say they covered Hunter Biden scandal. How much would that cost them? Quite a bit I bet

If that's the case there is no way to save the US. Everyone will keep screaming at each other based on the propaganda they buy into until the guns come out.

There has to be a way to present alternate ways of interpreting facts without immediately getting accused of partisan censorship. US media can't even agree on what the facts are without the partisan accusation coming out.

How to rebuild institutional trust once it's gone?

Not under the current paradigms for media and news. Other countries do somewhat better (Germany) but they too face rising nationalist movements.

The issue, amazingly, is Fox News and it’s ilk. Yet, the conversation here is the NYT.

This is a problem on two grounds

1) people talk about what they know. So like many discussions people nerd out on what they have information on.

2) The issue of Correlation vs causation in Fox’s impact on its viewers is pushed away for another day, when things are worse.

Is conservative pandering media causing a break from reality, or are they simply doing what they need to when dealing with their audience. Or perhaps both?

Is having someone like Rupert Murdoch and his children running the show a good thing ?

How could this be prevented ?

> The issue, amazingly, is Fox News and it’s ilk. Yet, the conversation here is the NYT.

That is because practically everyone on HN agrees Fox is bad, biased, etc. Therefore the debate is going to be implicitly about how bad the NYT is in relation to Fox.

A related factor is that it's hard for an educated person to get suckered by Fox. There are too many garish infographics and obvious nutjobs. It just does not give even a superficial impression of being Legitimate and Unbiased and Supported by the Best Experts. But the NYT does, and that's what makes it more dangerous.

If I go into "Uncle Cletus's Homeopathy Clinick", I kind of deserve whatever I get. But if another con man has a convincingly faked (or even real) Harvard M.D., then sets about poisoning lots of people through incompetence and apathy and greed, then everyone insists it can't possibly be his fault because he has an M.D. from Harvard...

...you can see why "Uncle Cletus is the real problem here" can seem nonresponsive. It is not even especially obvious to me which is "worse", "Uncle Cletus" or Fake M.D., even if we grant that Fake M.D. is somewhat better at medicine. I know I personally could get suckered by the latter but not the former, making the latter more dangerous to me.

> A related factor is that it's hard for an educated person to get suckered by Fox. There are too many garish infographics and obvious nutjobs. It just does not give even a superficial impression of being Legitimate and Unbiased and Supported by the Best Experts. But the NYT does, and that's what makes it more dangerous.

So, same reason why scam emails are rife with spelling errors.

They might actually face more criticism if they don't turn away the part of the audience with half a brain first.

US already had a civil war. It is sort of remarkable just how stable the republic been since founding.

Maybe US is due for another go. Unfortunately this time there will be no neat geographic divide and it will probably resemble Russian civil war. That scares the shit out of me, I am Canadian btw. Delegitimization of the elections, stuffing the court, non-stop riots, armed militias. Good vs Evil narrative.

This Pandemic has not been that bad, imagine if this thing was more deadly.. there is no unity, republic verges on the brink

>If that's the case there is no way to save the US. Everyone will keep screaming at each other based on the propaganda they buy into until the guns come out.

You say that like it's hyperbole but there's a hell of a lot of people who think we're on that track. What not everyone agrees on is whether it'll be a problem next Wednesday morning or a problem for our great^N grand kids.

From outside it looks like you have an media establishment that is keen of pitting people against each other.

I don't think removing information can work. You can however provide more plausible information. If you remove anything you might as well give it up because it will always be seen as paternalism not fitting a democracy.

In 2005 we already had insane conspiracies on the net. Instead of using them to elevate yourself to a mundane level, you better ignore them. People will get bored quickly.

The democrats greatest failure was probably not championing freedom and free speech. You don't give such a precious thing to your political enemies.

It is refreshing to see conservatives arguing for it. You shouldn't believe them, but liberals arguing for speech codes should reorient themselves. Best start would be yesterday.

It's not, you can safely ignore anyone so untethered to reality that they either a) parrot "orange man bad" to deflect any criticism of Trump or b) actually believe yet another emails story.

It's like there's this collective cultural shrug of acceptance whenever someone does something that 1) makes a profit 2) is technically legal.

And people just jump in with explanations of how it totally makes sense to act like that in the given the profit motive.

It sets a pretty low bar for expectations. Also, it gives a lot of power to individuals whose modus operandi is the above.

But why is this the expectation? You could also subscribe to and support a publication because they make the hard choices, also publish the unpopular news. Because you think this is important. However, if you do this, support the publication, but the publication starts chasing profit instead of truth, then in the US, joke's on you! Of course they would chase profit instead of truth, everybody will tell you.

It kind of reminds me of the Ferengi in Star Trek sometimes. Does the Star Trek universe perhaps offer any insight how they run a society when the entirety of this society is doing nothing but chase profit?

> Before, when they were dependent on advertising, they needed to be objective and represent all viewpoints because they needed to reach as large an audience as possible.

No, they needed to represent viewpoints that were palatable to their advertisers.

A US-centric, neo-liberal world-view does not really 'represent all viewpoints'.

Their revenue isn't declining, so the argument can't be based on their survival as a company. They are growing and there's multiple ways to grow. There's no excuse for being 'fallen' anymore.

I think it is the other way around. There are fewer advertisers than subscribers, so the publication's strategy tends to get optimized towards keeping those few(er) people happy.

Which could also mean that whatever they are doing when they "fell down" is working for them.

You don't have to, at least if you're private. There's the option to actually stop. That's not necessarily a horrible thing, even if some people think it is.

What we're really seeing is the difference between those that actually want to "provide the best X possible as a business" and those that "want to make money in the market for X".

Everyone says they are the former, but the difference is that those that actually are sometimes go out of business rather than compromise too far. Those that are the latter may not want to compromise too far but, well, "the goal is to make a profit, right?"