The maddening need to ignore outrageous conduct for fear of being seen as biased is destroying American journalism. I don't know if they even intend this result or if they just can't see it. In my final year of undergrad I had a survey course where the professor would mark down any assignment they believed expressed a point of view. I recall arguing that a "just the facts" approach to the story of the Chicago Seven would report that they were all convicted of contempt and conspiracy but the charges were later overturned on technicalities. While accurate, that description perverts the significance and meaning of the actual trial and outcome beyond all recognition. The professor just threatened to fail me if I didn't stop "taking sides" in my writing.
If the Sulzbergers of the world were trained in that mindset they may truly believe their own nonsense. Trump has convinced so many people that the media is mean and unfair to him that the media can't help themselves in trying to appear unbiased. I'm sure they've convinced themselves that not reporting on Biden's cognitive decline would be carrying water for the Democrats while reporting on Trump's obvious decline would be a display of bias - especially since Trump has always acted like a rabid baboon. How can anyone truly say this is different? They're not psychologists after all.
Unfortunately, far too many people take their cues from the media. As long as the media acts like this is all normal they will believe it is normal. The media needs to start sounding the alarm. Soon enough it might be too late.
Well, there go Kevin Kruse's chances for a decent book review in The Times!
I neither want nor expect The New York Times to help elect a Democrat. I find it abhorrent that they are clearly trying to help elect a republican, and that republican is demonstrably a traitor to the United States.
Those parts of the NYT are siloed off, I'm sure, but that raises a funny point.
When we published Fault Lines, a history of America since 1974, the NYT assigned the review not to a historian who could evaluate our claims by the standards of the profession, but rather a conservative fellow at the Hoover Institution who spent the entire review complaining about how mean we were to conservatives.
I don't know how to think of this weirdness, Sulzberger feeling so urgently that he has to make this nuts case that he pens an op-ed and runs it in a paper not his own...what mean?, as Harold Ross used to scrawl on copy at The New Yorker. his piece contradicts itself in making at length a case for a free press being damaged around the world AND here but as you say again announces his dedication to an imaginary neutrality his paper has failed to demonstrate since at least 2016.
how can anyone say with a straight face that they refuse to engage in politics when they endorse candidates and stage relentless campaigns to force political outcomes (Biden quitting the race)?
Sulzberger's piece answers none of this, but it does place it in even starker relief bc by going to all the trouble to write it and publish it in another newspaper...why did he think he needed to do this, and what was it supposed to accomplish?
he has highlighted the impossible ethical contradictions in his position and demonstrated his utter blindness to them. it is depressing as hell.
I would love to see Sulzberger respond to this criticism.
The maddening need to ignore outrageous conduct for fear of being seen as biased is destroying American journalism. I don't know if they even intend this result or if they just can't see it. In my final year of undergrad I had a survey course where the professor would mark down any assignment they believed expressed a point of view. I recall arguing that a "just the facts" approach to the story of the Chicago Seven would report that they were all convicted of contempt and conspiracy but the charges were later overturned on technicalities. While accurate, that description perverts the significance and meaning of the actual trial and outcome beyond all recognition. The professor just threatened to fail me if I didn't stop "taking sides" in my writing.
If the Sulzbergers of the world were trained in that mindset they may truly believe their own nonsense. Trump has convinced so many people that the media is mean and unfair to him that the media can't help themselves in trying to appear unbiased. I'm sure they've convinced themselves that not reporting on Biden's cognitive decline would be carrying water for the Democrats while reporting on Trump's obvious decline would be a display of bias - especially since Trump has always acted like a rabid baboon. How can anyone truly say this is different? They're not psychologists after all.
Unfortunately, far too many people take their cues from the media. As long as the media acts like this is all normal they will believe it is normal. The media needs to start sounding the alarm. Soon enough it might be too late.
Well, there go Kevin Kruse's chances for a decent book review in The Times!
I neither want nor expect The New York Times to help elect a Democrat. I find it abhorrent that they are clearly trying to help elect a republican, and that republican is demonstrably a traitor to the United States.
Those parts of the NYT are siloed off, I'm sure, but that raises a funny point.
When we published Fault Lines, a history of America since 1974, the NYT assigned the review not to a historian who could evaluate our claims by the standards of the profession, but rather a conservative fellow at the Hoover Institution who spent the entire review complaining about how mean we were to conservatives.
They are supposed to be siloed. But I have a funny feeling ....
I don't know how to think of this weirdness, Sulzberger feeling so urgently that he has to make this nuts case that he pens an op-ed and runs it in a paper not his own...what mean?, as Harold Ross used to scrawl on copy at The New Yorker. his piece contradicts itself in making at length a case for a free press being damaged around the world AND here but as you say again announces his dedication to an imaginary neutrality his paper has failed to demonstrate since at least 2016.
how can anyone say with a straight face that they refuse to engage in politics when they endorse candidates and stage relentless campaigns to force political outcomes (Biden quitting the race)?
Sulzberger's piece answers none of this, but it does place it in even starker relief bc by going to all the trouble to write it and publish it in another newspaper...why did he think he needed to do this, and what was it supposed to accomplish?
he has highlighted the impossible ethical contradictions in his position and demonstrated his utter blindness to them. it is depressing as hell.
thanks for writing about it.
Cognitive dissonance in full display