Attitudes to the New York Times?

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David_Paul:
I read the Times everyday to see what the anti-Christian, pro-abortion, pro-higher tax, pro-centralized control main stream left is putting out.
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Fine. As for me, I read the Times everyday because it is an excellent source for news in depth. Lest I be seen as biased, I also read the Wall Street Journal, and my local (right-wing) Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
 
Coworker of mine landed a job at the New York Times right out of college. When he came to the paper I was on he liked to say, “I worked my way down from the top.”

Actually he worked his way up. Not financially, of course, but in being able to report honestly.

The Times had eased him out for not fitting into the chi-chi party apparatus. But our paper didn’t kept its integrity for long after he arrived (it had for over 150 years before then). Today it’s just another liberal rag. A large rag but still a rag. Little in house reporting. Mostly stuff cribbed from the LA or NY Times.
 
It’s interesting so far how many people believe the Times is liberal, but don’t actually read it. I wonder what their opinion is based on? As Thekla pointed out, my poll options pretty much assumed that most people believe the paper is liberal and don’t give an option for those who think it’s conservative. Given that the center of gravity on these forums is on the conservative/right wing spectrum, I hadn’t thought to make that an option, but Thekla’s right in that the poll is incomplete by not including this possibility.

Another question that comes up is bias vs reliability. I’m not sure anything is ever “unbiased.” For instance, I’m Catholic, and that determines how I view the world, consciously or not. Is it even possible for me not to have a “Catholic” bias? There’s a saying that in Spain, even the atheists are Catholic - in other words, Catholicism is so much a part of their culture that even non-practicing Catholics are still working out of a “Catholic” framework.

But does a new source have to be “unbiased” in order to be reliable and a good news source? If the Times has a moderate-left tilt, is this the same thing as saying it publishes lies? For those who find the Times both biased AND unreliable, care to expand on what you base this on?
 
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Fitz:
I don’t read it as a rule, but when referenced I sometimes read specific articles. Last night Drudge reported that the Times was going to have an article today that said only 21% of it’s readers think the articles are accurate or correct. I guess most people don’t believe what they read there. I wasn’t sure if the article would be considering that much of this is due to BIAS, and left leaning politics of the writers. Either way, I don’t waste my time on the Times.
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Please read this book about the NY Times’s journalistic fraud–It is a lawyer’s detailed analysis of the NY Times’s interjection of its opinions into the news and outright deceit in news reporting.

amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0785261044/002-5298387-9754439?v=glance
 
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swampfox:
Please read this book about the NY Times’s journalistic fraud–It is a lawyer’s detailed analysis of the NY Times’s interjection of its opinions into the news and outright deceit in news reporting.

amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0785261044/002-5298387-9754439?v=glance
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Yes and there is a new book about the founding family who managed to save some of their own relatives during the Halocaust but apparently had the opportunity and ignored the chance to assist other Jews in escaping the Nazis.

Philip when you say people base their opinions on ‘not reading’ I suspect most of us interpret this as not being regular daily readers. I get bits and pieces of the NYT in other media. Plus their articles are reported on by other journalists. So even if people like me are no longer willing to pay to subscribe, we are not isolated from the paper.

The Atlantic Monthly article about the Times’ corporate culture said that the Jayson Blair situation was neither a surprise nor the only such scandal at the NYT. The writer said the people have become very lazy, not doing their own investigation but simply lifting from wire services and adding their own spin. Further the number of completely made up stories is enough to make me an eternal skeptic about its future credibility. Again, they need to totally clean house.

Lisa N
 
It’s very difficult to write poll questions to truly capture the info you are hoping to get (and in any case, an online poll like this can’t be representative, as it’s self-selecting). Does “read the Times” mean regular readers, as Lisa N suggests, or does it mean never reads at all? Difficult to say, though those who actually do read it from time to time but voted that they don’t read probably noted as such in their comments, as Lisa did.

The larger question behind this poll, though, is not simply the Times, but attitude toward media in general. I wish more of those who voted that they don’t read the times would say what the do read.

For instance, LisaN has pointed out that while she does not read the Times, she does read a variety of publications (e.g the Atlantic and others. BTW, I think the Atlantic’s a great magazine; I’m a regular reader myself). I also find that on the whole I can actually have dialog with Lisa. As she commented earlier, we often disagree without being disagreeable. I suspect that it’s not coincidental that we also read some of the same publications.

Yet there are also people on these forums that I have a very hard time engaging in discussion. I wouldn’t be surprised if our reading habits also have very little in common.

The issue is, with media fragmentation, and people selecting only media that reinforces their predjudices, dialog becomes increasingly impossible. If we lose our common ground, upon what foundation can discussion take place? Or is the very idea of dialog antithetical to some ideologies?
 
Lisa N:
Yes and there is a new book about the founding family who managed to save some of their own relatives during the Halocaust but apparently had the opportunity and ignored the chance to assist other Jews in escaping the Nazis.
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The NYTs did draw back on coverage of the concentration camps during WWII. But, to defend the paper for once, there was heated debate among the Jewish community and elsewhere over whether more publicity would accelerate the slaughter or not. No way to determine that now. I suspect it would have.

At the paper’s 150th anniversity, Pinch Sulzberger was asked what was the worst mistake his family’s paper has ever made and he said drawing back on that coverage tops the list.

A flat out falsehood and Pinch knows it.

His paper lied when it denied 7 million Christians were being murdered in the Holodomor. The Times barely reported the over 1 million, mostly Catholics, who were shipped from Poland to Soviet concentration camps during the German/Soviet nonaggression pact.

The Times knew the facts. They had reporters in tight with the tyrants who committed both atrocities. That is why the Times covered them up.

The Time also routinely neglects to mention the number of Poles killed in Auschwitz and other camps.

Far as I know, the Times has never mentioned the 30,000 Poles who fought the Nazis and were murdered by Jakub Berman, Hilary Minc, Helena Brus and other Polish leaders installed by Stalin after WWII.

Distorted coverage seeps into popular thought. Last night Ollie North on FOX reported that 6 million Jews and “hundreds of thousands of others” were killed in the Polish concentration camps.

No Ollie, 3 million Polish Christians were killed in those camps.3 million others were killed either fighting both the Communists and the Nazis or murdered for simply being Polish.

We just don’t hear about them much.
 
When I was growing up & even on into my college years, the Times found its way into our house several days a week including Sundays. Of course, I was too young to evaluate it for bias, etc. although it formed my conception about what an intelligent, well-written newspaper should be. Again, perhaps I was too young to know the difference or it couldn’t help comparing favorably to the lousy local papers at the time. Years later, a classmate of mine served as an interpreter in Bosnia during the war and told me how Times reporters (among others, to be fair) deliberately slanted their news stories and conveniently left out facts, neglected to do research, etc. He was told that it was their policy to engage in journalism that went far beyond merely reporting facts in an objective manner. I read it occasionally for a while after that revelation, but then its biases were out in the open and I just got disgusted with it and most American news sources in general. Now I get my news from skimming a few websites just to keep myself informed on a very basic level and I refuse to buy newspapers or watch the news channels on TV because there are so very few who are halfway objective or trustworthy.
 
Philip: But does a new source have to be “unbiased” in order to be reliable and a good news source? If the Times has a moderate-left tilt, is this the same thing as saying it publishes lies? For those who find the Times both biased AND unreliable, care to expand on what you base this on?
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Bias is fine, just admit it to be so. The NYTimes news stories are almost editorial in its “reporting”.

Sloppyiness and laziness are unacceptable, and the NYTimes have shown to be both.

Very very slow to correct mistakes, and bury good news for the GOP and bad news for Dems on A22 or something. (When reading the NY or LA Times, ALWAYS read or skip to past paragraph 10 of each article to get the full picture.)

Problems: Frank Rich, Nicholas Kristoff, and Maureen Dowd. I can always agree to disagree, but many of their columns are bigoted and loose with the facts regarding religion and politics.
 
I read the Times online rather than in the print edition, so the whole “burying stories” problem isn’t as readily apparent to me. When I do read the print version, it’s generally when I’m at an airport waiting for a transfer, or some other situation where I have lots of time to kill. I tend to read articles in their entirity, but perhaps my reading habits are atypical.

I don’t believe the Times publishes outright falsehoods (with of course the big black eye of Jayson Blair, etc., which is a factor but I’m not sure how big of one). The problem with bias, in any news source, tends to be what’s NOT reported more than what is. For instance, I noticed people on this site getting all worked up about Marymount Manhattan being disaffiliated by the NY archdiocese - what their news sources apparently left out is that Marymount hasn’t been officially Catholic in quite some time, a relevant fact which changes the story.

However, simply on number of stories covered, the Times does seem to do a decent job of catching important stories. For specialized issues, it makes sense to go to new sources devoted to that specific issue. Bottom line - best to get your news from multiple sources.

Also, I’m not sure how fair it is to site Editorial Writers as proof of bias - they’re SUPPOSED to be biased, it’s their job. But just for fun, my take on the Time’s regular columnists:
Dowd - The Anne Coulter of the Left. Shrill, sometimes entertaining, but of limited value.
Kristoff - Moderate left. I don’t always agree with his conclusions, but I appreciate his actual engaging in reporter work by travelling to places. I especially admired his articles on the tragedy of the SE Asia sex trade
Friedman - mushy left. Rarely has anything worth reading.
Brooks - alternates between mushy right and actually interesting columns
Herbert - no strong feelings on him one way or the other
Krugman - enjoy his columns. Provides facts and figures that I can actually check and compare against other facts and figures.
Tierney - He’s no William Safire. I miss Safire.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot Rich in columnists. I’v enjoyed a few of his columns, and found others obxnoxious and somewhat reductionists (viz. conservatives). Also, they’re too long.
 
Philip the Jayson Blair situation was not the only one where the NYT was fabricating stories. Did you happen to read the Atlantic article? The writer, who had worked at the Times said the entire corporate culture fostered laziness, sloppy editing, and a failure to do basic fact checking. I write free lance for a couple of magazines and believe me, I have to provide facts and figures so the editor can check my work. Apparently they’d become complacent and smug in their position. Perhaps the housecleaning after Blair will change the paper.

As to bias, one of the most annoying IMO was the obsession with the Abu Ghraib story. I understand it was front page news for something like 48 days in a row. It seemed like they were more interested in providing a ‘teaser’ for what’s his name’s (Hirsch?) upcoming book than the actual news. That’s the kind of thing that makes the paper uninteresting to someone like me who used to be a subscriber. It’s insulting to the readership to be hit over the head with what was a significant story that was hardly an expose’ I mean what do people think happens in prisons?

Lisa N
 
The Blair incident was disturbing, and a huge black eye not just in itself, but for the larger problems at the paper, as you pointed out. Personally, I haven’t found it sufficient reason to stop reading the paper, but it does serve as a good reminder to read everything with a critical eye, especially your news.

Also, the problem I run up against is that there simply doesn’t seem to be any competition that can take on the NYT. From what I hear, the LA Times is not run too well, and has far greater problems with reliability. The Washington Post seems decent, but too Washington centric (and since I live in NY, I prefer NY centric to Wash centric as it’s more relevant to my life). The WSJ is subscription only. All the other news outlets I’ve come across are insufficiently broad in their reach, though for specific issues there are news sources that I use for greater depth.

Abu Ghraib - personally I felt there was not enough coverage of it, and not just of Abu Ghraib, but of the larger dismissal of the Geneva Conventions. I think the role of the media is to challenge power always, especially in war time, not to cheerlead. If Kerry had been elected, I’d want the media to be critical of his presidency as well.
 
And that story on Augusta National really really really needed to run day after day after day after day…hard-hitting journalism…NOT.
 
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jlw:
And that story on Augusta National really really really needed to run day after day after day after day…hard-hitting journalism…NOT.
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Right, and frankly Abu Ghraib was in that same mode. Repeats of the same story over and over again. If there had been some kind of connection to the top eschelons or if the President had been involved it would have been front page news for six weeks. It was not. A couple of losers, ill trained and unsupervised reverted to disgraceful behavior. It was not the Halocaust, something the NYT buried in the back…

Lisa N
 
Yeah, it’s a bit liberal. What do you expect. But as you mention, the important thing is the depth. For this reason, I’m also a big fan of the Christian Science Monitor.

If I’m just scanning the news, and don’t care that the story’s a bit shallow, I find the BBC site is excellent because they have much broader international coverage than other sources I’ve seen.
 
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Digitonomy:
Yeah, it’s a bit liberal. What do you expect. But as you mention, the important thing is the depth. For this reason, I’m also a big fan of the Christian Science Monitor…
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Agree, the CSM often has very good articles. As to what I expect? I expect the paper to slant to its market but don’t bother to try to fool us that what the produce is hard hitting journalism. There is a clear agenda. So admit it.
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Digitonomy:
If I’m just scanning the news, and don’t care that the story’s a bit shallow, I find the BBC site is excellent because they have much broader international coverage than other sources I’ve seen.
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The BBC is beyond biased. There was a time it also had a proud name in journalism. Now all of them are bottom feeders fighting with the Star and National Enquirer.

Really would be nice to have a reporter who was smart, ambitious and unbiased. I can’t say I’ve seen much evidence lately.

Lisa N
 
Lisa N:
The BBC is beyond biased. There was a time it also had a proud name in journalism. Now all of them are bottom feeders fighting with the Star and National Enquirer.
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One big difference is that Star and National Enquirer provide mostly personality-driven news coverage. I’ll grant the BBC does this as part of its product, but the difference is that the news is from much more diverse points.

For instance, is today’s story about a call to arrest Kenya’s first lady really legitimate news and a real freedom of press issue, or is it just tabloid journalism dishing dirt about a personality, who the BBC opposes because of sympathy for the other party, a news organisation? I can’t say for sure, but I’d sure rather read about that than the latest Brad Pitt scoop you’d find in the rags you mentioned.

Also, several people endorsed FoxNews. It’s ok as far as it goes, but unfortunately I haven’t found the coverage to be particularly deep compared with NYT or CSM, and I think the scope is quite poor. As an example of the latter, I found no mention of the no-confidence vote which passed against the government of Canada yesterday.
 
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