You may remember it turned out Sulzberger issued a special directive that Technology was Bad and the paper must crusade at all times. He plainly hasn't for Trump, so certain conclusions may be drawn

Mike Barnicle had a kind of amazing tirade against the media on MSNBC. I haven't been a fan of his, because he was forced out of the Globe in the late 90's for fabricating stories/characters. But everything he said about the media was true. Basically he said, if Biden hadn't been so bad at the debate, everybody should have commented how incoherent Trump is. But they don't report how bizarre the things he says are; instead they criticize Harris for not putting forward policies that are specific enough.

Ex recto 1: The NYT sees itself as an institution whose survival is an end in itself. The constitution might not survive another Trump administration, but The Times can* and should.** They act accordingly.
*Probably true.
**Probably false.

And the owners want a tax cut.

And editors feel threatened by trans-kids.

And the core motivation of Trumpism -- people don't want their grandchildren to call them racists (but instead of not being racist, they want the kids to never learn that racist is a thing you can call people) -- applies to a bunch of people in the NYT chain of command.

(The War on Christmas is a proxy for this.)

How's Tester looking Charley? Have heard of some scandal that may (hopefully) take down whatisface

Basically he said, if Biden hadn't been so bad at the debate, everybody should have commented how incoherent Trump is.

I am forever amazed that I literally witnessed Trump say, "Democrats believe in abortion after birth, up to 3 or 4 days after birth" and saw zero coverage of this statement ever anywhere.

That's because it's important people believe that lie if the Democrats aren't going to win.

I believe in abortion after birth up to 78 years after birth but only in a single exceptional instance

6 is close, but I think slightly off. The core motivation is people who want their children and grandchildren to treat them like they're in charge of their family ("respect"). Sometimes that's about racist nonsense, but often it's sexist nonsense, and often it's neither. Often it's kids who have gone no or low contact. It's rarely about the kids calling them racist specifically, a lot of kids know better than to engage.

Trump is also now claiming that kids are going to school and coming home with their genitals chopped off against their will. This is obviously insane and not remotely true and is a conflation of several right-wing talking points that are also not true, but in more subtle and arguable ways that have allowed them to enter into mainstream discourse. Trump doesn't do subtlety, though.

I remember very similar Olympian above-the-fray pronouncements from Sulzberger around the trans kids articles, but at least there was an obvious cynical motivation there; in addition to editors being personally Threatened By Gender, fearmongering gets eyeballs. The Trump reporting does seem more like a matter of pure ideology.

3 has it. It may be a good business decision for the NYT to maintain neutrality. (Then again, it may not be. Trump is not known for gratitude and the conservative movement has already made up its mind about the "mainstream media." But, fair enough, it's not crazy to think that Republicans' money is as green as anyone else's.) But that's a business decision. To the extent that they have any concern for the importance of a well-informed society or aspiration to journalism as a public service, they can fuck right off. I'll continue to not buy their stuff and consider pirating it because of this stance and I hope others do the same.

FTFNYT isn't maintaining neutrality. What they're doing has a name, and it is "complying in advance" [h/t Timothy Snyder].

The full-court press we saw over the past -year- (actually longer than that, but let's just stick to the past year) with sometimes >10 articles simultaneously in the paper about "Biden is OOOOLLLLLD!" has not even remotely been equaled by articles about the same issue for Trump, even though he is manifestly more incompetent. Instead, we get a rare "Trump is Unfit" editorial, along with dozens and dozens of articles that normalize Trump as a candidate.

This is complying in advance. Pinche Sulzberger anticipates Trump's reinstallation, and is ready to serve.

How big is the population that will be led astray by the NYT veering right and printing misinformation? Not a rhetorical question. I'm just trying to imagine it. The past decade seems to have been extremely good for the NYT in terms of income and clout, but in absolute terms I still don't have a good sense of the levers of power they wield.

I have that same exact question.

I think it's also about weakening liberal support? Like, a bunch of people who are still going to vote for Harris anyway will be much more kind and indulgent to the Trump supporters in their life than they should be. Less prepared to hold their own in an argument.

17: It's not the direct effect of the NYT, but the fact that the other media and opinion types who do influence others all read the NYT.

To the extent that they have any concern for the importance of a well-informed society or aspiration to journalism as a public service, they can fuck right off.

Sulzberger puts it more politely, but this is his point. To the extent that one side prefers good information, advocating for good information is taking sides and is therefore wrong.

Taken out of context, he seems to be advocating for something else:

At The Times, we are committed to following the facts and presenting a full, fair and accurate picture of November's election and the candidates and issues shaping it.

But Sulzberger is crystal clear that "full, fair and accurate" requires not taking the side of fairness and accuracy when those values are rejected by one side.

Our democratic model asks different institutions to play different roles; this is ours.

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These aside ads proclaim "You Deserve to Feel Good" and it's so fucking obnoxious. No, I don't. No-one does.
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Very Calvinist.

Do people deserve to feel any particular way? Is desert the problem?

And the owners want a tax cut.

My post can be read as an effort to rebut this view. Suzlberger correctly regards Trump as a threat to his family's business. I don't think he's bullshitting about that at all.

19: So the NYT is the media's media. I'm not sure which people you mean here, but in theory I can believe that the paper of record gets laundered through various other mouthpieces to reach a wider audience.... and maybe that that's the primary role it plays in the media ecosystem.

This really does help make sense of what they do. Basically, if they publish things that are anti-authoritarian, the authoritarians will use that as evidence of bias, and the Times explicitly says that they want to avoid that situation, because it will be used to justify a crackdown on the press. One might note that the authoritarians are out of power right now, and doing reporting that is merely accurate, and not the neutered take-all-right-wingers-at-their-word whitewashing that the Times loves, might be a great way to keep them there. But apparently even wanting to keep them out of power is also forbidden to the truly neutral. What a moron. You can follow any principle into the grave; as a publisher you might exercise some judgment to decide when you shoot your shot and not preemptively cower.

Do newspaper publishers often write op-eds for other newspapers? That seems like a very weird thing to do.

The NYT is, in this context, a synecdoche for "the conscientious media."

The Sulzberger article wasn't only about how the NYT operates. It was about how the media views its responsibility, acting according to its best good-faith judgment. The Joel Simon quote -- from a serious-minded advocate for oppressed journalists -- was especially illuminating.

The tone of the reporting on the Suzlberger piece was basically about how he took an aggressive and unusual stand against Trump and in favor of press independence -- and not at all about how he was weaseling out of his professional responsibility. Here's CNN and The Hill and even Fox News.

This is particularly illuminating coming from CNN, which is owned by Time-Warner. The government, at Trump's behest, opposed the AT&T-Time Warner deal after Trump objected to CNN's coverage.

But apparently even wanting to keep them out of power is also forbidden to the truly neutral. What a moron. You can follow any principle into the grave; as a publisher you might exercise some judgment to decide when you shoot your shot and not preemptively cower.

I'm going to semi-defend Sulzberger here. It really is not his job to give 'em hell. It's his job to tell the truth even if they think it's hell. The plain truth is that nowadays, the plain truth looks indistinguishable from advocacy. Sulzberger's disdain for advocacy is appropriate. His distrust of the truth is not.

Sulzberger has gone to great pains to carve out an exception to the whole truth-telling thing, and I'm prepared to offer him some grudging semi-respect for his sort-of integrity.

27: Yeah, it's very weird. I think he wants it to be as plain as possible that his view of Trump doesn't influence his newspaper's coverage.

Here's what CNN reported about that:

Sulzberger thought extensively about the best way to publish the essay -- whether in the pages of The Times or elsewhere. He wound up placing it with the Post, an unorthodox move given the long history of competition between the two publications. The collaboration makes a clear statement about the importance of solidarity in the face of existential threats to press freedom.

"I'm grateful to The Post for running the piece, especially given the length (and the suspect institutional affiliations of its author)," he wrote in an email to associates on Thursday. "They've been a great partner on the cause of press freedom over many decades and it's great to see that tradition continue."

I will note that the times using the debate as its pretext, finally has this headline:

As Debate Looms, Trump Faces Questions About Age and Capacity
Donald Trump's rambling, sometimes incoherent public statements have raised questions about his cognitive health and stirred concern among voters.

I still hate that every one seems to feel the need to invoke the concerns of "voters" to cover these utterly clear observations. WaPo also recently had a headline about his "press conference" after the NY E Jean Carroll hearing which accurately described it as a rambling grievance fest. This is in contrast to their usual fare from which one would not even get a glimmer of appreciation of what his appearances and social media postings were like even one little bit. Per some of the "considerations" that Sulzberger covers. More on that below.

I will note that the times using the debate as its pretext, finally has this headline:

As Debate Looms, Trump Faces Questions About Age and Capacity
Donald Trump's rambling, sometimes incoherent public statements have raised questions about his cognitive health and stirred concern among voters.

I still hate that every one seems to feel the need to invoke the concerns of "voters" to cover these utterly clear observations. WaPo also recently had a headline about his "press conference" after the NY E Jean Carroll hearing which accurately described it as a rambling grievance fest. This is in contrast to their usual fare from which one would not even get a glimmer of appreciation of what his appearances and social media postings were like even one little bit. Per some of the "considerations" that Sulzberger covers. More on that below.

Oops, and speaking of debates where did they end up on the mic muting thing? Not that I would watch in any case.

33: Looks like mics will be muted when it's not their turn.

Somehow I find it impossible not to watch debates. Speeches are easy to ignore but debates feel like a harrowing national spectacle that I am compelled to join.

Ogeed has it pretty right in 26>

Also pf in 20: To the extent that one side prefers good information, advocating for good information is taking sides and is therefore wrong.

To me this is the main societal "hack" that has brought us to this precipice (in the press, but even more so in the general discourse). Rs/"conservatives" have been increasingly incorporating bold lies and alternate realities into their shtick for decades. From Regan through Whitewater, GW, Obama, and Trump of course. It has increasingly broken the discourse. The paper of record in an information space which has accommodated that development will invariably suck eggs in terms of political reporting. And it is a chicken and egg problem re:press and the masses. A self-affirming back and forth of reality denial. In his totally crap interview with Ben Smith a few months back NYT editor Joseph Kahn mentioned how Trump was likely to win a free and fair election. What he did not even mention was the warped and damaged information space in which that would occur and which NYT political coverage has manifestly helped create over the past 30 years.

I have tiresome volumes of words on this of course, but will just point out what I consider a couple of the milestones:

1) Whitewater/impeachment--just a shitshow of misinformation, and one for which the NYT* did lead the charge among the mainstream press. The greatest unaddressed journalistic scandal of the 90s.

2) In 2009 or 10 both the NYT and WaPo said they were assigning "editors" to follow stories of interest on the right because they missed their "importance."** The story that really led to this was the Philly Black Panther at the polls thing which Megyn Kelly pushed so hard on Fox. And I think maybe ACORN as well. In both case, more scrutiny may have been warranted but mostly on examining and exposing the lies and gaslighting, but instead the new coverage was aimed at credulity and addressing the "concerns" of conservatives. I think the positions themselves were short-lived but the approach basically got melded into their mainstream coverage.

*WSJ Opinion too, but it is not of course "reporting", but it did get sane-washed bu it being in the Journal. And it was beyond crazy.

**Am forgetting details will get some details and correct if I am misrepresenting.

35: OK, well watch one for the Gipper then.

I will say Sulzberger seems more thoughtful here than Kahn did in his loathsome interview. A smart guy rationalizing his cowardly choices by eschewing the "political," but he at least does it with some thought.

And I do have a little sympathy on the "democracy" thing; there are alternatives. But maybe be clear in your own publication that you are agnostic on that.

I've lived in Ohio and I can say with 100% confidence that only those born in Ohio eat cats.

I think that's on topic.

This is why I love WGBH's Radio Boston. Jim Braude asked Chuck Todd, why, in the course if reporting facts about Trump, the media don't constantly write"convicted felon Donald Trump"?

8 Sheehy is showing some pretty thick teflon. Lots of stuff that would be disqualifying for a Democrat just rolls off. On the R side, they don't care about anything but winning, and empowering McConnell's successor. It's still about turnout, and even if Sheehy wins, he'll run well behind Gov. Gianforte. So I'll be knocking doors a lot in October.

What the NYT does is give permission to vote Trump.

In the spirit of better "understanding our rapidly warming world," at the Times' 3rd annual Climate Forward Summit this month, you can enjoy insights from Kevin D. Roberts, President of The Heritage Foundation recently featured in the Times for being responsible for dissemination of fraudulent election propaganda!

https://www.nytimes.com/events/climate-forward-2024

What's the rationale with the debate mic thing? ISTR that in 2020 muted mics were thought to have hurt Trump; but this time apparently Trump wanted muting and Harris didn't?

I think both sides agree that unmuted mics would tend to make Trump's antics more alienating to the audience. There's some speculation that Trump himself doesn't like the implication that he needs to be muzzled for the good of his campaign, but that's what his staff wants.

I keep coming back to the idea that the NYT does not instinctively see its job as reporting the news. It sees its job as deciding the news.

In normal newspapers and magazines, you have news meetings in which the editor says "OK, what do you have for me?" and the journalists take turns to say "I've got an engineer who says that bridge collapse was because of poor quality rebar" or "I'm talking to Giovanna diPalacio about her autumn collection" or whatever, and the editor says "OK, let's put that on page seven" or "you need to talk to someone from the university civil engineering department" or "no, too weak, can we stand that up a bit more?"

But the NYT doesn't have news meetings like that. It has, according to people who work there, news meetings in which the editor says "OK, here's what I have. The new traffic management scheme is a failure. Now go and write stories about why."

And that explains what's happening here. The NYT staff believe, deep down, that Trump can only be an authoritarian maniac if there is a NYT article saying "In New Twist, Local Maniacs Mull Admitting Trump To Their Circle". That's how reality works, for them. Denying that Trump is an authoritarian maniac is not a disgraceful abdication of journalistic ethics; it's a heroic effort to save America, by refusing to use their power over reality to turn him into an authoritarian maniac.

"All the Heaven that's Fit to Lathe", basically.

Heh, I somehow thought the debate was last night* so watched a movie and went into online quarantine mode. Back on this morning I thought I'd ease into via comments here and was initially struck by how no one had a thing to say about it.

*So it's tonight; but who can remember the dates of things without something memorable providing a clues?

48: Nice.

Way back in the early '80s one of the first times I really appreciated this was when I saw some polling* that the number one concern of people in the US was the threat of Communism in... wait for it... El Salvador (before Nicaragua became the bogeyman). Sure, Jan. Now, of course one needs news reports to even know about such a thing, but in the even there had been a press tizzy over it,. and of course fed and amplified by Reaganite fear-mongering,

*Also file under Issue Polling, things that have sucked forever but maybe even more so now.

I do have to check myself on whether things have materially changed on this front. There have always been these factors in the discourse, and some of them very pernicious in the past. But the stark alignment of sane-washing along the current US partisan divide seems newish (also the "need" for it given the lying criminal organization that is the current Republican party).

This spring, there was a podcast with both Josh Marshall and Peter Baker (NYT) on it. Marshall very mildly mentioned the seemingly disproportionate coverage of the Comer/Jordan craziness on Hunter/Joe/impeachment. Baker retorted that in a 2020 debate Joe had said in response to a Trump attack re: China that it was Trump's family who had gotten a lot of income from there yet it turned out Hunter had gotten income from there so it was all fair game*. It just seemed to me so disproportionate, and a pretty sketchy reason to treat the obvious lies and exaggerations of the Jordan/Comers as news (which to be fair were often exposed as such deep within the articles, but it still was dominating news cycles).

*IIIRC in the event Josh only said he needed to understand the context of Biden's remark and let it go (they were both guests on someone else's pod). It is in fact not entirely clear whether Biden knew fully of Hunter's income at the time, or whether he was answering specifically about what happened when Joe was actually VP instead of after. So probably a bit of a dodgy thing from Biden. But yeah D dodginess == R utter motivated bathshittery.

49: Even more embarrassing/concerning, I thought today was September 11th. Am ready for that closeup, Mr. DeMille.

I will use this occasion to re-recommend Timothy Crouse's excellent book on the 1972 campaign The Boys on the Bus. It does not feel as dated as you would naturally expect. (He was sent by Rolling Stone to mostly babysit HST, but came out with his own very estimable book.)

Vaguely on topic:

The Harris campaign said it was booking television ads worth $170mn between September 3 and November 5 nationally and in key battleground states, and a further $200mn in digital ads, saying it was "on pace to spend more on digital persuasion media than any political organisation ever". "These reservations are centred around early investments in the most sought out publishers and platforms like Hulu, Roku, YouTube, Paramount, Spotify and Pandora,"

||

"Deflation does not and will not exist in China," Fu Linghui, a National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson, said last month.

Ex recto 2: I'll just go full Succession* and adapt jms's excellent take on that show: The Sulzbergers live in the same Copernican world as the rest of us, revolving around DC, but they don't know it. They think they live in a tiny Ptolemaic world revolving around The Times.** In that imagined world politicians are just actors on a stage, coming and going; what actually matters is the affairs of those in the box seats, like the Sulzbergers.
From that point of view the Sulzbergers can look at the Trumps and think "We were here before, we'll be here after",*** failing to realize that Trump if elected ceases to be Trump, tryhard conman, and becomes Leviathan.
*Which I think is actually not ridiculous, because that show was written by smart people based very closely on actual media dynasties (not just the Murdochs).
**Or, IDK, "The Establishment", or Manhattan polite society or something.
***Which, again, is likely true.

I don't remember if I have an beans to sell China this year. I've been moving into seed corn.

Rather serendipitously, here is a NY Times writer relying on exactly one source - himself:

https://x.com/MarkJacob16/status/1832890844921102714
The New York Times' Michael M. Grynbaum writes that moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper "won praise for their even-keeled style" in the previous debate, and he links to a story by Michael M. Grynbaum in which the only person praising their performance was Michael M. Grynbaum.

What this fails to understand is that an article in the NY Times is the only source you need. That's why NY Times staff don't feel guilt about stealing stories from other papers without attribution (which normal journalists would regard as a breach of ethics). If a NY Times writer steals a story from, say, Vanity Fair, he is doing Vanity Fair a favour: he is making their article real.

Like how scarlet fever made the velveteen rabbit real.

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Bskyers: did something happen to the "following" feed? Suddenly today it's no longer an option for me. At the top I see just two tabs: "discover" or "feeds"
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It's still there. There are just glitches because of the influx of Brazilians.

60: You've tried swiping the tab list over? Sometimes it swipes itself over and I can't see "Following" on the left. But if there's nothing after "feeds" that would all fit on one screen without swiping, so more likely a glitch as Moby says.

OK, thanks, will wait it out.

56: revolving around DC

Guy's an utter asshole, but I do find myself thinking about James Carville's "Washington always wins" quote*. (In reference to the Clintons I think but also applicable to his own career trajectory.) But I do sometimes think it might be amended with "but in the end, New York actually wins."

But re:Washington winning, if you want to read one story that presages so much of the next quarter-century of politics and media it should be Sally Quinn's from 1998: "NOT IN THEIR BACK YARD: IN WASHINGTON, THAT LETDOWN FEELING" (gift link) re: Starr and Clintons. I think it was Digby who called it the Rosetta Stone. Many, many lowlights, but my favorite is David Broder** with two of the most insulting and revealing quotes ever:

1) Somewhat famously: "He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."
2) Less well know, but even more fatuous: "The judgment is harsher in Washington," says The Post's Broder. "We don't like being lied to."
Or I can't help myself here's Joe Lieberman if you want to throw up in your mouth a little: "This is our town," says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president's behavior. "We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton's behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general."

*Which Logan Roy's "Money wins" echoes.

**For an early taste of Broder see Crouse's book above. You see him as better reporter, but as the seeds of his trajectory to total dickdom. (BTW, I should mention that Couse's book is a *fun* read as well as informative.)

Are you saying that there weren't a lot of articles about Joe Lieberman and David Broder feeling that letdown feeling* over Iran-Contra?

*so are we talking about breastfeeding here? I can remember the letdown feeling viscerally.

I don't remember anything about when I was breastfeed.

65: Yeah, the whole article is almost a parody of pompous assholes justifying their assholery.

In general I like the guy, but Michael Beschloss takes it beyond parody (and brings it somewhat on topic re: what and how yhe press covers things: Presidential historian Michael Beschloss sees this scandal not only from a historical perspective but from a resident's. "There's never been a sex scandal affecting a president while in office,"

Because the fucking press covered them up!

The Fucking Press sounds like something Edward VII used in Paris while he waited for the throne.

65: excellent pedantry. Yes, a letdown feeling would indeed be something to do with breastfeeding. Disappointment would be a let-down feeling.