I don't get why this seems like a big deal or a negative thing. Why wouldn't you want reporters to be critical? Isn't that like the whole point. That's even why we have freedom of press in the 1st amendment, so journalists can be critical.
I don’t really get how people keep misunderstanding the point that it’s not that journalists are being critical, it’s that they’re being selectively critical to propagate their own interests.
The absurdity of the NYT crying over big tech for practices the NYT uses all the time ( dark patterns, user tracking, algorithmic curation, etc. ) should not go unnoticed.
It’s not but a basic Google search should show some of the more clear examples of the NYT using aggressive spyware for ads, AB modifying stories in real time to drive engagement, and subscription policies that are virtually impossible to back out of for people outside of California.
But when the proverbial kettle calls the pot black, what no one seems to admit is, the kettle is not wrong.
Statements are, in the most fundamental sense, either write or wrong. Whether they’re insensitive, irrelevant or hypocritical are entirely orthogonal concepts. People tend to focus on the latter when listening to people speak, and often disregard the for former.
> it’s that they’re being selectively critical to propagate their own interests
Nobody ever claimed they were doing it "to propagate their own interests." The original tweets say this: "Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair."
Ok, define "unfair." Yeah, having all your problems pointed out is "unfair," but that's exactly what journalism is about? Speaking truth to power.
There are plenty of outlets whose only coverage of tech is critical. This sounds like the NYT wasn't interested in articles fawning over tech, which happens all the time and are basically just advertisements.
it’s that they’re being selectively critical to propagate their own interests.
So?
In a republic we need checks and balances. I want all the power centers in the country at each others' throats. I want bankers being critical of oil men. And oil men being critical of big tech. And big tech being critical of politicians. And politicians being critical of judges. And judges being critical of the cops. And cops being critical of the press. And the press being deeply critical of everything. And on and on and on.
NYTimes being critical of big tech is good. We need more of that sniping in all directions. That's what keeps us safe.
The only time we need to worry, is whenever they all speak with one voice. When that happens, I can guarantee we're getting screwed somehow.
Let big tech and the press go at each other, that's only a win for every regular American. In fact if the press is not doing that, then they aren't doing their job as the fourth estate.
I don't get the impression that the NY Times is all that guilty of dark patterns, but I also read it like I do most sites; with javascript disabled, so I could be missing something. But really it seems like one of the better journalistic institutions remaining after decades of generally lowered standards and capabilities for the US writ large. I think Ezra Klein is one of the most thoughtful writers/interviewers in the world today, for instance, so I follow his work there.
If you take a look, its not doing investigations. Its just talking about cool places. Tech used to just be talking about cool gadgets.
I believe them when they say it was "top down" but also it was self-evident that this would happen if tech companies went to a small part of the economy to the biggest in the world.
You can talk about the rivalries between NYTimes and FB/Twitter - but ultimately it just seems like they decided to treat it like a serious matter which was predictable/good. If overnight the airline and hotel companies became the most powerful in the world, then I think the travel section would be more critical and it would have nothing to do with NYT trying to get revenge.
There's an ambiguity between 2 uses of the word 'critical'. Journalism should by default be 'critical' in the academic sense (questioning, probing, analytical). When reporting on powerful entities who throw resources into media management (governments & corporations), journalists should be particularly careful not to parrot PR.
It's clear to me from the context that the Piper & Yglesias are not talking about this - they're saying there was top-down pressure on journalists to be critical in the popular sense of tone or judgement: ie. negative, carping. That's entirely different. The NYT claims to uphold the traditional news media distinction between reportage and opinion. Directives of the type Yglesias & Piper claim would clearly violate that distinction.
Yes and no, it's important to have critical reporting, but imagine say that all reporting on medicine could only be critical, no articles about breakthroughs in cancer treatment or curing disease, all malpractice and ballooning costs. That wouldn't be wrong, but it'd be incomplete?
No. "Critical" (in the defensible sense) reporting of breakthroughs would involve checking of the science behind the breakthrough, probing the ethics and finances, etc. Ideally this should always be how tech journalism is conducted, otherwise it actually isn't journalism at all, it's just PR or trade writing. With fast news cycles this may not be practical for every single column cm, but it must be the default.
"Critical" in the pop sense (making a worthiness judgement) is not altogether avoidable, but it should be marginal in journalism. This is what Opinion is for.
What Yglesias & Piper are saying, in effect, is that the NYT made a top-down directive that tech coverage should be negatively-slanted Opinion.
I wouldn't really argue about that now, personally, but I know a lot of people who are still on Facebook for whom have compelling reasons to stay and I think that was much more true in the past.
That said, Meta isn't the only tech company. Twitter, for example, a place journalists love for the direct-to-consumer style reporting.
> from an editorial integrity perspective there's a big difference between 'it's good to write hard-hitting exposes' and 'it's good to have a top-down editorial directive about the tenor of coverage'.
Being critical when the facts warrant it is great. Deciding in advance what the tone of coverage will be before you know any facts, and forbidding ipso facto any positive coverage, is not the whole point. That's an appalling abdication of journalistic ethics actually.
It's the difference between a movie critic who carefully critiques movies honestly and one that decides to write a negative review before even seeing the movie. Both of them are being "critical", but in very different ways. I think the NYT probably wanted to be the former but drifted into becoming the latter.
> decides to write a negative review before even seeing the movie
Nobody claimed this was happening. Just because the NYT says "we're only doing investigative pieces on tech," doesn't mean that they start fabricating lies. It just means they don't do fluff pieces. This is the preferred approach - for example, I don't want coverage of the cuddly PR that the oil industry puts out, I want investigative pieces that uncover malfeasance.
You may have mis-parsed what the poster was saying. Imagine going to review the Ghostbusters reboot, but even before stepping into the theater, you decide you are going to write a negative review. That doesn't require fabricating lies, but most would say its an unfair/dishonest way to do movie reviews.
That's not the whole point in my mind. What I'm looking for from journalists is a balanced, accurate, and objective reporting. That does involve being critical, but it also involves reporting on the positive aspects. A directive to cast an entire industry in a negative light regardless of the actual issues at play is NOT good journalism.
There is no such things as objective reporting. Everyone recounting an event be it journalists or historians will inject some bias in its récollection.
What you should want is journalists to be thorough in their fact checking and open about their editorial line and where their interest lies.
What’s annoying me here is that it’s both top-down and covert.
I understand that's the current thinking in journalism, but I actually disagree with it. I think giving people free license to editorialize is harmful. Even given that it's true that it's impossible to be bias free, I think it's important to try to be bias free. When you stop trying things get even more biased which is exactly the problem with journalism today.
It is highly biased and inflammatory and actually encourages people to be more tribal rather than try to come together and compromise despite their differences. I'm ok with not agreeing with the journalism industry here. I think they had it right 20 years ago.
Just because journalists are human and as such can't be completely objective, doesn't mean they shouldn't strive to be objective. This is what civilization is built on, constraining our base impulses and acting with logic and empathy.
I wish more journalists would be critical, especially where it counts (e.g. interviewing politicians). But for a top-down directive to be negative, regardless of the truth, no - that's unacceptable.
