With social media and modern communication/publication mechanisms, it is much easier for individuals who know the ground truth to bring their perspective to the fore and poke holes into a major publication's journalistic flaws. This wasn't possible just 10 years ago.

In the case of NYT, their political tilt is very clear (that's ok) but their journalistic integrity is being called into question more and more (that's problematic).

Being a partisan mouthpiece isn't itself a problem, the issue is when it pretends (and many of its supporters repeatedly and falsely claim) that items described in the paper are more objective and carries greater weight than those in your average political party's weekly newsletter.

Everybody is biased. You, me, and every journalist on earth. Of course, that's okay. The NYT also does not go out of their way to "...pretend they have no political bias."

What is important is to be able to understand the difference between news and editorials (including editorial decisions), but sadly more and more people seem to lose grasp of this basic distinction. This may be a sign of the negative consequences of the politization of many points.

Journalistic integrity is therefore critical when selecting which biased sources to pay attention to.

1. The arguer claims that negative consequences follow from the exercising of free speech, in this case NYT right to freely chose the topics they write about.

2. The alleged consequence is that people are made to believe wrong or false things (where "wrong" and "false" are defined by the arguer).

3. The arguer portrays himself at the same the victim of those media and the person who knows better than those media and therefore can decide between wrong and right, true and false better than the accused media.

4. The arguer presents no evidence of knowing better and when you ask them about their sources, they tend to be highly problematic, based on blogging and websites who often do not even employ journalists.

Paraphrase: "I know better than large group of people X but everybody else is mislead by X" - I don't think so.

If you write a blog post that doxxes a prominent figure and link to it from Facebook and Twitter, you are going to get banned from those platforms. The NYT can apparently do this with impunity, and calls for canceling other people and organizations who do this.

In US law, there is a different standard for libel against "public figures" than against other people. The NYT gets to take advantage of this much looser libel law whenever they write a hit piece because they can argue that anyone who does something "newsworthy" is de-facto a public figure.

As far as I have seen, the "cancel NYT" crowd is arguing that the NYT should be held to the standards that it pushes into others and obviously doesn't follow.

Political lean != acting as a mouthpiece.

Do also please note that your personal political leanings will determine whether you view the reporting of any publication as unethically biased or not. No matter which sides we're talking about, what one party reports as truth, another will hear as politically motivated.

There is always "a side that benefits politically" from literally every statement. What is clear, irrespective of the side that benefits politically from stating it: the NYT is willing to use its influence to distort the political opinions of its readers, using innuendo and cherrypicked facts.

Those who look to the NYT (and The Washington Post) for accurate facts are literally (mis)guided into holding a specific political opinion, and defending that opinion even against facts that would rationally moderate that opinion.

I am as certain as stone that most people who read the NYT will forever associate Scott Alexander Siskind with white supremacy, conservatism, and anti-woke ideology because of that hit piece; for these people, this will be a fact. For them "Never forget that there is a side that benefits politically from calling that article a 'hit piece'" is a statement that actually has meaning, and they will operate on that assumption. His Wikipedia page will be inundated with editors who insist that the NYT interpretation is "true" while Scott's blog is "opinion", and will dutifully and duly note these interpretations as facts onto his Wikipedia entry. For these people, reading and discussing Scott Alexander will be tantamount to supporting white supremacy, and so a whole encyclopedia of delightful, thoughtful inquiry will be foreclosed.

It is reprehensible, and I cannot in future take anyone who cites the NYT without caution as a serious person who actually understands their world.

There was a time when that culture was not just dominant among elite circles but often revered by everyday people as something to live up to. As much as the 80s, 90s and on were seemingly about the decline of that power nexus, the institutions retained a lot of mystique and fascination.

That ideal of American life is in a tailspin. Norman Rockwell is more a punchline than a comfort to people. The nation's opinions aren't filtered through New York TV personalities any more.

The paper has weakend and that has allowed the social agreement about it to change. Before if you expressed a negative opinion about such a paper it was mostly washed away in a consistent wave of accolade. If disagreement always meets reproach it is hard for it to spread. Agreement is an innoculatiom against criticism.

This. Housing associations in the Northeast are getting completely out of control. Whatever happened to people trimming their own hedges in the style they see fit?

https://www.hfsbooks.com/books/the-rising-clamor-hadley/

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

http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

"The Agency’s relationship with the [New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers" v(._. )v

The crowd is constantly crying foul. And often shouting noise for the sake of being noisy. As such, it is all too easy for any supposed side to claim that the crowd is intrinsically party of the other sides.

To that end, did this person make particular claims that others have to reveal who they are? If not, I'm not clear on how this was hypocritical. Are there inconsistencies in the crowd? Absolutely. But, they could be easily ascribed to the side you appear to be taking up, as well.

1) Your argument is whataboutism at its finest.

2) I'm not taking a side in favor of establishment journalism.

3) I'm showing that leaders of the anti-cancel-culture movement are themselves more than willing to intimidate, suppress and cancel the free speech of anyone who criticizes them.

4) Either you're in favor of unrestricted free speech for everyone, or you're not.

From all I have seen, which I confess is not everything, The blogger was asking for basic courtesy to not be named such that their practice could stay easily separate.

For my part, I care more for unpersecuted speech. I don't like the active screaming culture, but I can't bring myself to feel that someone should be able to have consequence free speech, either. Such that most of this debate is around gotcha moments that are people yelling at someone to reach the crowd.

It gets muddy, because I absolutely believe we have to allow people to be wrong. But I don't think we should tolerate active lying and gas lighting with deceptive rhetorical tricks that punish courage in openly exploring the boundaries of your knowledge.

- you oppose "cancel culture";

- you're okay with white supremacists having access to audiences via platforms, if someone is willing to provide them with that.

Intimidation and suppression cannot be avoided; they go hand in hand with having any sort of rules.

For instance, the law against stealing uses intimidation and suppression: people are intimidated against stealing with the threat of jail sentences, and offenders are suppressed with actual imprisonment.

You can't have guarantees of freedom of speech written in law without the intimidation and suppression being written into the same law: there have to be negative consequences for a law breaker infringing on someone else's constitutionally granted freedom of speech, which are written and enforced, in order for the law to have meaning.

You've built a strawman model of a free speech advocate and are focusing on that. There may be some real life personalities who call themselves free speech advocates who resemble that strawman, but it's still a strawman.