Speak No Bias: The Times Only Concedes ‘Insufficient Tuned-in-ness’
Could liberal bias be at play at the Gray Lady? Hoyt dutifully reports:
Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”
Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.
So the Times isn’t going to actually cover news unfavorable to Obama; it’s going to monitor others that do. And that’s not bias. Got it?
What is missing in all of this is any indication that because the Times doesn’t cover bad-news-for-Obama stories the paper is misleading its readers. There is nary a hint that its “analysis” pieces (i.e., the op-eds on the front page) are flawed because they omit storylines unfavorable to the side for which the Times is rooting. Hoyt never would suggest that because the Times studiously refused during the campaign to cover Obama’s radical associations that the voters received a false portrait of precisely who they were electing.
Indeed, with the departure from the pages of the Times of Bill Kristol — who in his once-a-week column would sneak in a bit of news here and there that the Times readers would otherwise have been unaware of, causing untold confusion at breakfast tables on the Upper West Side (“Reverend Who?”) — the Times acts as a perfectly sealed bubble for the Left elites. They can peruse its pages with no mention of Republican health care plans. (Republicans don’t have ideas, you know.) They can enjoy the ludicrously oversampled polls which mask Obama’s plummeting popularity. They can be reassured that town hall attendees are kooks and crackpots. It is pure bliss for the liberal readers.
It’s not news, of course. News is the complete picture of the world’s events, not a carefully sliced and diced version of it. Hoyt’s not going to get into all that because the public editor isn’t paid by the public but by the Times. And they have to keep up appearances. “All the news that’s fit to print,” they say. Unfortunately, Hoyt never tells us that the Times has long ago determined that what’s fit to print is whatever brings assurance and comfort to its liberal staff and equally liberal readership.
“But that’s a bum rap, don’t you know? The Times editors rush forward to explain that it was just that they weren’t ‘tuned in’ to what conservative media was covering. Left unsaid is that conservative media is covering what the Times doesn’t and won’t report — anything unhelpful to Obama or the Democratic Party.”
“Delay is the deadliest form of denial….There is nothing static in our changing world, and recent research has tended to show that the Abominable No-Man is being replaced by the Prohibitive Procrastinator. Instead of saying ‘No,’ the PP says ‘In due course.’” — C. Northcode Parkinson, The Law of Delay
A few years back, a Times ombudsman actually DID admit to rampant bias at “the paper of record” — and was soon thereafter shown the door. Excerpted from Media Meltdown ( http://emmeffemm.com/id47.html ):
“It would take many thousands of words to document all of the violations of the tenets of good journalism committed by The New York Times over the past few years. The paper’s own ombudsman recently stated that bias is rife throughout the publication, and that only a fool could miss it. (Though he did qualify his criticism with this amusing caveat: the bias is inadvertent. Har, har, har, dee, har, har. So they’re not really bad-intentioned over at the Gray Lady; they’re merely incompetent?)”
But, as Rubin points out, things have only gotten worse since then. These days, the Times is only good for wrapping fish (as Michelle Malkin asserts). Or perhaps for lining one’s bird cage.
With the credible sources of news and information that’s available these days why would anyone read; much less care about what the New York Times has to say?
It’s almost as if a strong case could be made that Conservatives / Republicans are it’s most religious followers. Do they think that the minds of the NYT readers would be purified if only the NYT cleaned up it’s act?
Could it be that the NYT has two primary functions? One; to serve up the garbage for the liberals to ingest and Two; plenty of lifeblood for the right wingers to peddle their own brands of religion with.
The truth; simple as it is on full display in this article.
I have no doubt that if awarded such a thing as a Joseph Goebbels award for journalism, The Times would proudly dispalay it on it’s masthead.
Well let’s see, if I operated a newspaper and only hired people who speak French, why would I be surprised that the paper was printed in that language?
The dog ate my homework, from the Times.
New York Times editors are intellectually dishonest(if they have any intellect left in them?), liars and brain dead – that describes them well!!! What would anyone expect from them – honesty and truth??? Nah!!! They can’t even admit their own bias to left. They have forgotten the first principle of journalism – honesty and truth in news reporting and they have become a bastion of yellow journalism what they accuse others of doing. My my, .. how times ahve changed in USA.
Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like the Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.
Somebody should tell ole Clark that that train left the station a long, long ! time ago.
…that they weren’t “tuned in” to what conservative media was covering.
The word “disingenuous” is wholly inadequate. They’re very tuned in, see their op-ed obsession with those ridiculous antics of all those insane right wingers, racists, whatever the word of the day might be to attempt to marginalize the legions of disgruntled Americans who are genuinely, and justifiably, worried about the survival of the Republic.
(and if the NYTimes finds those words melodramatic, tough toastfeathers)
They’re also tuned into the fact (when the veil of denial briefly lifts) that the Grey Lady “sets the standard for what gets reported” less and less every day.
So the Times isn’t going to actually cover news unfavorable to Obama; it’s going to monitor others that do. And that’s not bias. Got it?
Got it.
The MSM (morally superior media, Brietbart) seem to be going down with the Titanic. Fewer and fewer people hear their shouts that they’re not sinking.
The only consolation for the NYT is that they are just like all the other Dinosaur left wing, Islamophile, biased MSM on both sides of the pond. They are so far beyond irrelevance they are just a sick joke . But unfortunately one on which PC MC moonbat ‘libtards’ continue to rely on for “information ” and guidance which says a whole lot about ‘moonbat libtards’ and the state of Journalism in the West in general.
In this mondo-mega-multi-media world, can it be that there are people who rely solely on the Times for their news? Man, that would be a trip.
Those who subscribe to the Grey Lady, or pick up copies at boxes or news stands, or advertise in that propaganda outlet are accountable for their actions.
So what, they retort, we are entitled to holding ourselves to a lower standard than the unruly masses is held to. After all, we are the protectors of civilization from the barbarians.
Well, given their outlook, those who say “I am better than you”, and they base it on the status
quo, will continue to fool themselves into thinking they are broad minded; when, in fact, they are the most wretched of all.
The New York Times had an ACORN story, but decided to not publish it for fear of tainting then candidate Obama; however, after Bighollywood.com exposed ACORN for the inherently corrupt organization that it is, the New York Times is trying to save a face that has long had eggs on its face over the years. The New York Times–along with the other MSM–are irrelevant because they are no longer news organizations, but propaganda arms of the Democratic Party. The New York Times is wasting away in its own feces, yet calling it “news fit to print.” The people have decided otherwise. The New York Times is going down in either bankruptcy or a government bail-out. The bail-out will kill the paper just as much as the bankruptcy.
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”
— Mark Twain
From Clark Hoyt’s statement: “Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.”
When I was a teenager, my dad would dump a pitcher of water on me when I attempted to sleep in.
Could Hoyt just now be waking up to the fact a major segment of the public just might consider he and his “newspaper” to be clueless and partisan? If so, it would take much more than a pitcher of water to wake him from such ignorance and arrogance.
The NY Times is diseased.
Jennifer, the most important point of all of this is NOT whether leftists (I have a completely different definition of liberals, liberalism), BELIEVE that their worldview is the correct one…and therefore should be the ONLY position adopted by the country (or the world).
When one adopts a position so rigid, so cemented, so adhered to that it cannot be swayed by reason…or facts…it becomes dogma. So fervent is the belief, so vehement its defense, that any point of view that does not conform is attacked, by any means necessary.
If this sounds cultish, it’s only because it is.
Therefore, proponents of this dogma, members of the cult…think nothing of lying, distorting, hiding, burying, photoshopping, plagiarizing, staging…news, facts, pictures.
The problem with Hoyt is not that he makes ridiculous excuses for obvious transgressions. The problem with Hoyt is that he doesn’t see the excuses as ridiculous.
When you ask an insider to run “Internal Affairs” to go after crooked cops, you are going to get a whitewash of every act, every crime, every offense perpetrated against the public, without exception.
When you ask an insider to “betray” the cult, you are going to get a whitewash of every distortion, every omission, every disease within the information stream.
Anyone who takes the position of ombudsman and then undertakes an “inside job” of protecting the cult…is special brand of liar and coward.
His are lies squared. He is lying…about the lies even existing. He is distorting about the distortions. In fact, his could be lies, cubed.
The “stringers” or wire services lie and distort about facts on the ground. The cretin “journaliars” know these to be untrue and yet write “stories” that infuse the pollution even further into the information stream. The the “ombudsman” covers up the lies and distortions, full well knowing the whole process is diseased.
The “Gray Spinster” can’t die soon enough. She is rotting from a sepsis of the soul.
“…because the public editor isn’t paid by the public but by the Times.”
To be blunt—the public editor is paid by Pinch Sulzberger. The world of the New york Times revolves around this man. He is almost certainly the number one reason why this once great newspaper is doomed.
I’m not a big fan of the “stick your head in the sand and hope it goes away” strategy but in the case of the MSM, it works. When you write any article, no matter how critical, of any MSM outlet, you are giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Just ignore them. Consider the entire MSM to be nothing but large, ugly trolls.
Scroll and ignore.
Doing nothing is an accomplishment anyone can achieve.
When it is time for your nees fix, google. Any topic that is headline worthy has thousands of articles available.
Scroll the N.Y.Times, WahPo, CBS, NBC, Etc.
That leaves you thousands of other places to go.
Remember ALL news is opinion in the 21st century. There are no more media sources that give you “the facts mam’ and just the facts”.
The age of Journalism is over. Cronkite killed it. We are now in the age of Propaganda.
Journalism and propaganda have been at war for the last several generations. Propaganda won.
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Mark Twain, (attributed)
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 – 1910)
Ms. Rubin, there is a book there. I’m to old to write it, but you aren’t.
What comes to mind the most was how, during the ’08 election, how many libs (leftists) posting on this site were complaining how biased to the right the MSM was in their opinion.
Laughable!
The disease comes from a deeper level:
universities produce brainwashed halfwits
…but the disease comes from a deeper level:
nihilism has become the leading philosophy of the world.
You cannot have anyone pursuing the truth, when the same concept of Truth has been rejected.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment
13. EnemyoftheState: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” — Mark Twain
I would take it a step further and say, “If you read the NYT, you’re DIS-informed.”
Meaning the NYT is actively trying to deceive its readers.
I’m of the opinion that all members of the media should have to wear a large button showing who they last voted for. Truth in media, indeed.
No Ideas from the Party of NO.
H.R. 77; H.R. 109; H.R. 198; H.R. 270; H.R. 321; H.R. 464; H.R. 502; H.R. 544; H.R. 917; H.R. 1086; H.R. 1118; H.R. 1441; H.R. 1458; H.R. 1468; H.R. 1658; H.R. 1891; H.R. 2520; H.R. 2607; H.R. 2692; H.R. 2784; H.R. 2785; H.R. 2786; H.R. 2787; H.R. 3141; H.R. 3217; H.R. 3218; H.R. 3356; H.R. 3372; H.R. 3400; H.R. 3438; H.R. 3454; and H.R. 3478
Nope, NYT is right, there are none at all.
jd
Things tend to happen on Friday afternoon. At one time the Times said they didn’t have a reporter to cover such things on the weekend..good thing we weren’t nuked on a weekend. Pooooor pooooor excuse for a failing lib rag.
NYT is irrelevant, and will be out of business within 2 years.
At least I don’t have to pay for the New York Times.
I do have to pay for National Public Radio.
The last time we saw this kind of willful ignorance of the larger world was in 1917 and it involved a certain family. Anyone remember the Romanov’s? The same thing that happened to them literally is what is going to happen to the Irrelevant Media in the metaphorical sense.
I feel sorry for the Romanov’s, not so much for Irrelevant Media. They both share something in common though. They ignored the “common people” to their own peril. They both helped to bring down their own houses through their own arrogance and greed.
At this point, we are wasting our breath on castigating the MSM, including the NYT. They are dying, unnecessary to expose a scandal, and will never be shamed into being fair.
Articles like this were necessary reality checks for years, but now they seem like a waste of time. If the MSM doesn’t want to cover a hot story, it’s their loss. They lose the eyeballs and resulting advertising to blogs, radio, and Fox.
the public editor of the NYT reminds me of Baghdad Bob
It really doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out, if readership is going down, and readership/viewers are going up elsewhere, triple digets, then Houston we have a problem! The Times reporters are a bunch of brain dead bias reporters. I thought journalism would be much more fun and rewarding breaking investigative news stories, which was sorely needed on the Obama background. Oh well, it just must be me… loving Fox News!
Charlie Gibson tried the same misdirect. He wasn’t biased, he just wasn’t sufficiently attentive and had never heard of ACORN before. Selective Integrity disguised as Selective Incompetence. Do these guys coordinate their many ways of evading basic journalism duty. Maybe there’s an underground course on preserving plausible deniability regardless of how biased your journalism is practiced.
Pinch Sulzberger needs to pinch himself to perhaps come back to Earth to live among the mortals he disdains; it is only a matter of time before the New York Times implodes due to the newspaper’s corruption thanks to its own Leftist propaganda & attempts at disinformation. The paper of record is no longer the case.
25. Valerie wrote:
At least I don’t have to pay for the New York Times.
Peter writes: …Yet! They’re talking bail-outs for newspapers, and just guess which name will top the list?
“The Times editors rush forward to explain that it was just that they weren’t “tuned in” to what conservative media was covering.”
Whew. So the NY Times’ “journalists” aren’t malfeasant? That’s a relief.
Has the NY Times yet explained whether their lapse is due to deliberate negligence, or merely incompetence?
Any newspaper government bailouts will just act as a catalyst for them; in effect, the government will subsidize them for the Democrats & continue to have no real audience anymore. With Obama’s plans imploding, a government newspaper bailout will also likely implode given the public does not want anymore bailouts. Doesn’t the New York Times also getting money from a millionaire at 15% interest??? The New York Times is deep doo-doo, but this is a creation of its own making.
A related editorial from Investors.com:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=507377
If the Times closed down, how would Charlie Gibson do the news?
Left wing people don’t identify themselves as being left wing versus being right wing. They identify themselves as being good versus being evil. For a left wing person “Right wing” is merely a synonym for evil. And who in their right mind would consider goodness as being biased? When a right wing person tells a left wing person, he’s biased, the left wing person sees it the same way, as you would see it when a despot like Ahmadinejad says the west is biased against Iran. Why would you change your position and give a fair voice to people that are clearly evil? So considering that’s the mindset behind the bias, one should conclude, it is a futile task to convince them with logic. Just realize that left wing people are instinctive creatures acting purely on emotions and treat them accordingly. Just do the right thing while you distract them, the same way you would with a toddler crying because he can’t get more candy. Cut taxes(candy for lefties) and say “look there is a red fire truck” or “look there is Bono” or something.
I heard Glenn Beck discribe the Times best. “The Times is not biased, it’s complicit”.
It seems to me that the media establishment (MSM or whatever you want to call it) has not yet realized that they are largely irrelevant now. There was a time when we needed them to gather the news and report it to an audience that did not have direct access to the events that became the news. For a time the media establishment did this just fine. Flush with a sense of their own importance, they began to see it as their role to promote an agenda or point of view to their audience of the great unwashed and uneducated masses.
With the advent of modern communication technology, the great unwashed now have nearly as much access to news sources as the media. This allows us to decided for ourselves what is important and how we feel about a particular issue. We no longer need the traditional media as a filter. We are as able, and probably better able, than they to judge the credibility and reliability of information.
This access has also allowed anyone who paid attention to discover the bias, intentional or otherwise in the old news sources.
Bottom line is that we no longer need them, and they either don’t realize it yet, or do know it and haven’t figured out what to do about it.
End of soap box time.
A harmless lack of “tuned-in-ness?” My, those liberal “journalists” sure do go easy on themselves.
Ah, if only it were a simple case of “clue-less-ness.” But the problem runs way deeper than mere ignorance (which in the reporting world, equates to incompetence) — and we all know it.
Members of the mainstream media are so close to Obama that, when the prez gets a headache, they all take an aspirin. Which makes the proposal floated by Congressional Dems (and supported by Obama) to bailout out newspapers a very bad idea.
See: Critically Speaking, Freely http://emmeffemm.com/id176.html
Clark Hoyt has the same job Robert Gibbs has.
Spokesperson, rationalizer & cheerleader in chief for the employer, not especially bright or convincing, but that’s the job.
It’s as silly when Hoyt says someone at the Times will now monitor what those crazies over at Fox etc. are saying (to explain that the nytimes will now try to stay abreast of all those crazines who happen to be out-reporting them) as it is crazy when Robert Gibbs stands on his head at the daily press briefings to spin the latest Obama gaffe, misstatement, the Obamateurism of the day.
tanstaafl
I like you, you seem like a great person, so I don’t find myself disagreeing with you very often…however,…perhaps just this one time.
Gibbs has a job to spin the administration’s position, cover for their foul-ups and to over exaggerate credit, while deflecting blame.
The NEWS media, is a quasi-public trust…it is the lifeblood of our information stream. They should NEVER feel that it is their job to take on the role of distorting the FACTS in order to make one political party the favorite on EVERY major issue of the day.
Moreover, Hoyt’s role…is the TRUSTEE…of the public trust. That is, …in what should be a RARE instance that the media outlet (in this case, the Gray Spinster)lost its objectivity and began to intentionally distort the facts…such that, we lost our ability to believe in our own information stream, he is all the more the moral coward.
Gibbs spin is in the job description. The NY Times spin is a violation of their mandate. Hoyt’s cover-up is a conspiracy to defraud America.
Relative to everything else going on, the ACORN stuff ranks somewhere between Lindsay Lohan’s troubles and metal theft.
Those of you waiting for the M.Y. Times and other prominent members of the MSM to drown in their red ink need to go sit in the corner with those that think the Mad Dog Mullahs will be overthrow by the Iranian mobs. You can share kool-aid while waiting for never to get here.
Either the politicians will arrange a public bail out ( unconstitutional, but that hasn’t stopped them with Health Insurance) or one of the Socialist Billionairs will step up to the plate. Gates is keeping MSBNBC afloat. Both of it’s viewers appreciate that.
I don’t think Soros has that sort of money, but Lewis does. Ayer’s family is in the billionaire range, IIRC.
New York Times, a newspaper. Well I’ll be. I thought it was just sold at pet stores to line the floor of birdcages… at least that is where I saw one once.
Lets get to the root of the problem shall we. Colleges and Universities staffed by left wing, radical Islamophile professors have been churning out brainwashed students since the 60′s on both sides of the ‘pond’. Europe fell to these Socialist/Communist/Fascist Islamophiles a long time ago now it is the turn of the USA. You now have your first over promoted inexperienced, unqualified, RACIST, Document HIDING, Affirmative Action, LYING, Mohammedan, usurper President Milli Vanilli (ooops sorry Barrack , you can call me HUSSEIN now I WON, Obama). The hordes of other left wing, Islamophile brainwashed students produced over the years are now ensconced as Judges, Congressmen, Senators, High Ranking Military Officers and Policemen etc etc. One and all working to bring down and destroy America. Wake up America there is a COUP taking place the unelected CZARS mainly Black and drawn from the left wing CORRUPT Unions and ACORN are already in place your children are being indoctrinated in to the CULT of Obama at school and the INTERNMENT Camps are ready.
We need to back off and give the gray lady a break-
She missed the ACORN fiasco because of her weeks of devotion to culture and art exhibits for the elite.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iowahawk_blog/3961870121/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iowahawk_blog/3961869881/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iowahawk_blog/3966129742/
“insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.”
Not “we ignored a hot story about appalling corruption in ACORN” but “no-one was paying attention to the (distasteful) preoccupations of the right-wing media”. In other words, the story was “what the right are chattering about”, rather than ACORN’s corruption.
There is no hope for the NYT. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
At the end of the day, does the NYT’s employees not have family, children and Grandchildren who will also be forced to live with the damage put forth by Obama and the Democrats takeover of our lives?. Just a thought. It’s not just us lowly flyover peasants who live in this Country.
#49 Brenda G – Yes, they have family. However, these people think the elites should rule. The elites are those who went to the right elite schools. (Of course they are the elites. They went to those schools, didn’t they?) The elites are those who move in the right circles and hold the same beliefs and champion the same causes. They put themselves into that category of elites. They believe they themselves will rightly rule as one of thelites. Their family is, therefore, taken care of, and the world will be as it should be.
Aristocrat wannabe’s. Useful Idiots. Doomed to carry water forever, or doomed to be carried off to the camps. But, hey, they at least get to bask in the glow of the reflected glory of others. They get to move in the circles of power, although as mere lickspittles. Still, they can then claim to be above the hoi-polloi. Such an existence is far to be preferred to standing on one’s own with dignity. That is just too scary. Where’s the security in that?
The rich in broken countries do not compare in wealth to the rich in our country, but they are richer than all all those around them trapped in abysmal poverty. However, they get to lord it over the others, and there is no price too great to pay for that particular prize.
That is their motivation: the desire to lord it over others. There is no greater prize than this stroking of one’s own ego. They are Liberals. They are the self-anointed elite. Nothing else matters. They went to the right schools. They run in the right circles. They live in the right neighborhoods. They eat the right foods. Drink the right beverages. Listen to the right music. Hold the right political views. They are the elite. And it just feels soooo goood.
What a coincidence. I’ve been suffering from “insufficient tuned-in-ness” to anything the NYT has to say for quite some time now…