The New York Times - They're even more evil now

drummerboy said:

Peter Baker, and his editor, should be fired.

Why? They are just reporting the news

basil said:

drummerboy said:

Peter Baker, and his editor, should be fired.

Why? They are just reporting the news

Because they are doing a very poor job of it. Worse than that - they are being destructive. Did you click on my post with the tweet?

Part of why this country has many of its problems is because of false equivalencies that the major news organizations make all the time. They give equal weight to liars and truth tellers, to scientists and science deniers, as if they both have things of equal value to share. The old joke is that you might find a headline in the NYT that reads "Democrats Claim Sun Will Rise in the East, Republicans Disagree." Which used to be funnier before we had Trump in the White House and Mitch McConnell leading the Senate. 

Or, to put it another way, if one side says it's raining, and the other says it's not, it's the reporter's job to stick their head out of the window to see who is right.

But another problem is different than both-siderism, exemplified by the last article I linked to, about Trump's claim that an Obama decision was hampering CDC efforts. The claim is utter B.S., yet you don't find that out until something like the 4th paragraph.  You should find that out from the headline.  The headline should be along the lines of "Trump again attempts to deceive...".

Someone just scanning headlines and maybe the lead, will be left with the impression that there really was an Obama decision. And if they do have that impression, then the reporting has failed.

And they do this all the time. And it's a conscious decision - Dean Baquet and Peter Baker have already stated that they think this is the correct way to report.

A couple of thoughts.

Rare is the political or policy news that’s as black and white as where the sun rises or whether it’s raining outside. A few days ago, for instance, ml1 complained that the media weren’t letting everyone know that M4A would save the country billions of dollars a year. My replies tried to make it clear why reporting such assertions as fact would do readers and viewers a disservice. Even the veracity of the Trump complaint wasn’t absolutely cut and dried, for reasons the third paragraph explained. (Graf 1: What is known — that Trump said something. Graf 2: What he said. Graf 3: What could be wrong with it.) “Trump Again Attempts to Deceive” is a headline for people who don’t know what they don’t know.

Neither of you is shy about sharing your convictions on MOL, which is expected on social media. But I believe I’ve challenged them often enough, and rationally enough, to show why, in my opinion, certainty about some of things you’re so sure of would be a mistake for the news media.

DaveSchmidt said:

A couple of thoughts.

Rare is the political or policy news that’s as black and white as where the sun rises or whether it’s raining outside. A few days ago, for instance, ml1 complained that the media weren’t letting everyone know that M4A would save the country billions of dollars a year. My replies tried to make it clear why reporting such assertions as fact would do readers and viewers a disservice. Even the veracity of the Trump complaint wasn’t absolutely cut and dried, for reasons the third paragraph explained. (Graf 1: What is known — that Trump said something. Graf 2: What he said. Graf 3: What could be wrong with it.) “Trump Again Attempts to Deceive” is a headline for people who don’t know what they don’t know.

Neither of you is shy about sharing your convictions on MOL, which is expected on social media. But I believe I’ve challenged them often enough, and rationally enough, to show why, in my opinion, certainty about some of things you’re so sure of would be a mistake for the news media.

You picked quite an example to show something is not "black and white". Projecting the costs of something covering 300+ million people over ten years is not the thing you can calculate on a TI-2500. Of course there will be things that can be argued about.

Anyway, no one is actually complaining about the Times take on M4A costs anyway, are they?

But that is a completely different issue than the last Baker article I posted. They deliberately framed the piece so as to not forcefully criticize Trump and give credence to his lying. That's what they do. Constantly. And Baker is probably the worst at it, though Haberman is a close second.

And how about when the Times provides a completely ahistorical take, as they recently did in their "Bernie goes to Russia" article. An utter travesty.

The former US ambassador to the USSR explains that the @nytimes story on Bernie and Yaroslavl is “a distortion of history.” pic.twitter.com/WkebAWVvzi

— Laura Marsh (@lmlauramarsh) March 7, 2020

It's not at all rare these days that a story is black/white regarding whether or not it's true. Trump makes stuff up out of whole cloth several times a day. It should be pretty easy to put in a headline that the president made a baseless claim. And call it out at the top instead of five paragraphs in. 

drummerboy said:

Anyway, no one is actually complaining about the Times take on M4A costs anyway, are they?

I’ll just quote ml1: ”In an ideal and rational world, people would have been well-informed by our political media. They'd learn the reality of what M4A would cost, compared to our current system and the other proposals.”

ml1 said:

It's not at all rare these days that a story is black/white regarding whether or not it's true. Trump makes stuff up out of whole cloth several times a day. It should be pretty easy to put in a headline that the president made a baseless claim. And call it out at the top instead of five paragraphs in.

I’ll just note that none of the experts in the article stated flat out — as you would have liked the reporter and headline writer to have done anyway — that Trump was lying or just plain wrong, only that they weren’t aware of how he could be right. Which readers learned in the third paragraph.

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

Anyway, no one is actually complaining about the Times take on M4A costs anyway, are they?

I’ll just quote ml1: ”In an ideal and rational world, people would have been well-informed by our political media. They'd learn the reality of what M4A would cost, compared to our current system and the other proposals.”

ml1 said:

It's not at all rare these days that a story is black/white regarding whether or not it's true. Trump makes stuff up out of whole cloth several times a day. It should be pretty easy to put in a headline that the president made a baseless claim. And call it out at the top instead of five paragraphs in.

I’ll just note that none of the experts in the article stated flat out — as you would have liked the reporter and headline writer to have done anyway — that Trump was lying or just plain wrong, only that they weren’t aware of how he could be right. Which readers learned in the third paragraph.

Third paragraph? Not everyone makes it that far.

Since the actual story is that he's LYING, shouldn't that be in the headline? Suppose someone is just scanning headlines - what will they get from this story?

“He’s LYING,” said neither Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, nor Dr. Luciana Borio, who was the acting chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration under Obama, nor Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who was the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner under Obama.

drummerboy said:

Suppose someone is just scanning headlines - what will they get from this story?

If someone got what I got from the headline, it would be this: Coming under fire, Trump cast blame elsewhere. 

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

Suppose someone is just scanning headlines - what will they get from this story?

If someone got what I got from the headline, it would be this: Coming under fire, Trump cast blame elsewhere. 

Exactly - with no indication that he falsely did so. Therefore, people will, at best, come away that the accusation may be legitimate. Which is false.

When you do this everyday, you legitimize abnormal behavior.

You do see this, right?

DaveSchmidt said:

“He’s LYING,” said neither Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, nor Dr. Luciana Borio, who was the acting chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration under Obama, nor Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who was the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner under Obama.

 Yeah, I'm not getting your point here at all. Are you saying he wasn't lying? Is that your argument?

drummerboy said:

Yeah, I'm not getting your point here at all. Are you saying he wasn't lying? Is that your argument?

Why would I argue with you? Three experts who were there won’t say it, but you know Trump was lying. A headline says a president points to someone else when the heat’s on, and you’re sure readers who have seen normal people behave that way all their lives will take legitimacy for granted.

Why would I argue? You’re dead certain, and I’m no Henry Fonda.

Saying someone made a baseless claim is not the same as accusing them of lying. 

Nobody said they were. DB wanted a “he’s lying” story, so that’s why my reply mentioned lying.

Note that the experts didn’t even confirm that Trump’s claim was baseless. They left room for the possibility that he might have been referring to something they weren’t aware of. That’s what careful professionals do.

DaveSchmidt said:

Nobody said they were. DB wanted a “he’s lying” story, so that’s why my reply mentioned lying.

Note that the experts didn’t even confirm that Trump’s claim was baseless. They left room for the possibility that he might have been referring to something they weren’t aware of. That’s what careful professionals do.

You replied with this, so I figured I'd respond. 

DaveSchmidt said:

ml1 said:

It's not at all rare these days that a story is black/white regarding whether or not it's true. Trump makes stuff up out of whole cloth several times a day. It should be pretty easy to put in a headline that the president made a baseless claim. And call it out at the top instead of five paragraphs in.

I’ll just note that none of the experts in the article stated flat out — as you would have liked the reporter and headline writer to have done anyway — that Trump was lying or just plain wrong, only that they weren’t aware of how he could be right. Which readers learned in the third paragraph.

DaveSchmidt said:

Nobody said they were. DB wanted a “he’s lying” story, so that’s why my reply mentioned lying.

Note that the experts didn’t even confirm that Trump’s claim was baseless. They left room for the possibility that he might have been referring to something they weren’t aware of. That’s what careful professionals do.

 This is (partly) why Trump will get re-elected.

I'm pretty sure that if a president makes an accusation against a former president and none of the known experts in the field can confirm the basis for that accusation, it can best be described as a baseless allegation. 

And I should add that the president's history of tens of thousands of lies while in office should provide the context for concluding that he's lying once again. It's not like these incidents occur in a vacuum with no history to inform us. 

Yeah, I'm not saying the headline should be "He lied again", but maybe they could squeeze in "baseless allegation". The problem is that they chose to put the allegation in the damn headline in the first place, without the proper context.

I heard something on NPR a week or two ago, which basically repeated a false claim by Trump, and then said of it - "which has been widely debunked". "Widely debunked" is a very unclear statement. Debunked by whom? It still leaves the possibility that what he said could be true.

It should have said it was a "baseless allegation". Or "for which there is no evidence".

The weaker expressions serve to normalize grossly abnormal behavior. The Times does it constantly, as does NPR.

drummerboy said:

Third paragraph? Not everyone makes it that far.

Since the actual story is that he's LYING, shouldn't that be in the headline? Suppose someone is just scanning headlines - what will they get from this story?

 Well that seems to point to a problem in news literacy. Or perhaps just literacy in general. I'm not sure what the solution is supposed to be here, but I don't think dumbing down articles to cater to people who can't be bothered to read three paragraphs is the answer.

PVW said:

drummerboy said:

Third paragraph? Not everyone makes it that far.

Since the actual story is that he's LYING, shouldn't that be in the headline? Suppose someone is just scanning headlines - what will they get from this story?

 Well that seems to point to a problem in news literacy. Or perhaps just literacy in general. I'm not sure what the solution is supposed to be here, but I don't think dumbing down articles to cater to people who can't be bothered to read three paragraphs is the answer.

I think you're missing the point. It's not a question of "dumbing down". It's a question of making the essential facts readily apparent.The headline should not imply that there was any credence to Trump's allegation.  That's the real mistake here.

And for the Times, only needing to get to the 3rd paragraph is an improvement. Those important factoids that essentially say "never mind" are often a lot more buried than that.

At some point, The Times changed the deck under the headline from this (as it appears in the tweet that drummerboy posted):

The president said a “very detrimental” decision adopted under his predecessor initially hampered the ability to enact widespread testing for the virus.

To this:

But health experts and former Obama officials said they were unaware of any policy or rule changes that would have affected the F.D.A.’s response.

I'm totally ok with a newspaper not feeling the need to bludgeon me over the head with obvious points. If a reader truly can't grasp the implications of "but health experts and former Obama officials said they were unaware of any policy or rule changes that would have affected the F.D.A.’s response", well, I guess I'm both surprised they're reading the NYT in the first place, and impressed that they're making the effort anyway. I commend them for trying to improve their own reading ability by engaging with something more challenging than videos and tabloid headlines.

PVW said:

I'm totally ok with a newspaper not feeling the need to bludgeon me over the head with obvious points. If a reader truly can't grasp the implications of "but health experts and former Obama officials said they were unaware of any policy or rule changes that would have affected the F.D.A.’s response", well, I guess I'm both surprised they're reading the NYT in the first place, and impressed that they're making the effort anyway. I commend them for trying to improve their own reading ability by engaging with something more challenging than videos and tabloid headlines.

it would be nice if people consumed news that way, but the reality is that most people don't.  They scan headlines, or hear a mention on TV, without getting the full context.  And other news services like Reuters or AP are the more likely sources for the typical American, and they tend to do the same things as NYT political beat reports.  And it's not new, it's just that Trump's habitual lying makes these tendencies more obvious.  This is from Stephen Colbert at the at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2006:

The President makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!

Bush and Cheney and Rove were taking advantage of this tendency and it got us into a war because so few members of the press corps fully questioned the rationale.  And now we've got Trump using that tendency to spread propaganda to his base.  

ml1 said:

it would be nice if people consumed news that way, but the reality is that most people don't. They scan headlines, or hear a mention on TV, without getting the full context.

You know that most people who see Times headlines (or headlines from The Washington Post, WSJ, or other subscriber publications) don’t read further how?

Granted, such headlines may also appear in Google searches, but who searches for a topic and then stops at the list of results?

Cross-posted with PVW, who does bring up a way that headlines could be shared for scanners beyond subcribers.

And upon further thought, I can see the logic behind the idea that few subscribers click on every headline, so most would only scan it. Then we’re back to the idea that they were left with the impression that this was one of those times when “points to” under pressure was legitimate.

ETA: At least until the deck was changed.