“will be banned”
ironic, isn’t it?
I believe that the NYT editorial board is moderate and is more likely than not to endorse Democrats. But the suits in the NYT penthouse and the stockholders are likely old guard old money Republicans who pressure the headline writers to spin every headline to be as favorable as possible for Republicans and as unfavorable as possible for Democrats. The people writing the articles may be neutral but the headline spinners are not.
This is literally a conspiracy theory.
Some of it can be checked. Here is the Board of Directors.
Nine directors are elected from class B stock held by the many descendants of Adolf Ochs. But the actual largest voting stockholder is Vanguard. Can I prove that they do not influence headlines? No, it is much easier to state a conspiracy theory than prove a negative.
Starting this thread is the biggest mistake I ever made on SDMB.
Having once walked through the offices of a local newspaper…
I honestly don’t believe the board of directors has any direct influence over headlines. Do you think they hire an editor in charge of headline slant? How would they implement this?
I’d like to see other explanations for the headline bias. The headline writers answer to somebody- if that somebody has a political agenda that’s one explanation. Another might be a corporate commitment to the sins of bothsidesism.
That’d be my guess. And a reluctance to post headlines that look like rants.
During the McCarthy red scare, the newspapers all knew he was full of shit, but didn’t feel it was their place to reveal that, somehow. This feels the same.
Or, they didn’t want to be next.
Unspoken but understood rallying cry in news media today:
“What do we need?!”
“Clicks!”
“When do we them?!”
“Now!”
Very few cancel their subscriptions over a negatively slanted headline; but many more of the D leaning audience click it than more of the same about another Trump lie or nativist racist authoritarian confused rant.
The mission is to keep their jobs. Their jobs are kept by their section’s articles driving traffic.
I am very confident that every article linked here as an example of NYT “pro Trump bias” had more than average traffic than other political articles of the site.
And let’s face it: the readers of the NYT are not going to be deterred from voting Harris by a negatively slanted NYT headline. They are mostly engaged voters with minds made up.
Yeah, that’s what I get. Heavily influenced by wanting to be seen as having been unbiased all along no matter how things finally do turn out.
The mainstream press suffers to this day from being scared witless of being accused of “liberal bias”. Here at the Dope we may say “reality leans liberal” but from the mainstream press’ point of view that just means surrendering half the market to the RW bubble.
And the Times in particular ISTM keeps clinging to the notion of being THE One, that is, how do I put it, “respected by everyone who is respectable” even if they disagree with their editorial line. That corporate Republicans down in the Financial District will read the WSJournal AND the Times, and value them both for what each does.
That this cohort of respectable Financial District Republicans are riding off into retirement and have been replaced as the agenda-drivers of the GOP by some, er, “interesting characters” seems to evade the management.
That’s the other part. Until and unless something comes along that does finally shut down and buries the Trump Cult AND the Christian Nationalists and the Project 2025 Committee, the mainstreamers are not going to take the risk of those factions getting the chance to make good on their promise to stomp on anyone who stood in their way.
From today’s NYT:
When Donald Trump proposes using the government to attack his enemies, many of his supporters assume it’s just an act.
They could have said this: “Donald Trump proposes using the government to attack his enemies” but they had to frame it to make it sound less outrageous. To me, that’s not bothsidesism, it’s whitewashing.
A classic example of “jittery” investors occurred recently when there was a very good U.S. jobs report, new jobs exceeding what experts had predicted. The stock market initially dropped, with analysts explaining that investors were fearful that the good news meant that the Federal Reserve wouldn’t cut interest rates as much as it had been planning to (didn’t happen).
It creates a warm, fuzzy feeling, knowing that these panicky jackasses are controlling what happens to my retirement funds.
Agree with DSeid that the Times using provocative headlines and especially contrarian op-eds is meant to drive traffic. Outrage sells.
They have convinced me. I was firmly of the view they were personally opposed to MAGA but ended up boosting him due to a combination of “if it bleeds it leads” (and Trump is the political equivalent of a chain saw massacre on main Street at prime time) and a misguided desire to be balanced.
But I think they’ve gone way beyond what can be explained by that in their recent coverage of the two parties. I am now convinced the people running NYT are actively pro Trump.
I don’t really buy other explanations like they are just trying to keep it competitive to sell papers, or think a Trump win is inevitable so want to curry favor and avoid the worst of his retribution. As that would, let’s face it, require the people in charge of the NYT to be really dumb (a Trump presidency would be far worse for the NYT than could possibly be counteracted by slightly raised sales in 2024, and anyone who thinks Trump is going be nice to you because you did something nice to him is literally deluded beyond measure)
In covering Trump, the Times has certainly been guilty of bothsidesism, sanewashing, and other kinds of poor judgment. But let’s not lose sight of their plainly stated position.
“Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead”
“He failed the tests of leadership and betrayed America. Voters must stand up to him in November.”
–July 11 editorial
“The Only Patriotic Choice for President”
“Kamala Harris has demonstrated care, competence and respect for the Constitution – the fundamental qualities necessary for high office.”
– September 30 editorial
Nah. That he does that is already well known by the readership. The bit the readers may not know is that his supporters are in denial that he actually means it: Trump lies and that, to them, is just another one.
Oddly, I can not find what political party A G Sulzberger, the publisher, belongs to,
Sure, but even if the undecided voters are a minority, the NYT has a massive readership (perhaps 20 million when the non-subscribers but read-it-anyway folks are included). Even if only ten percent are undecided, and half of those are registered voters, that would be 1 million undecided voters who read the NYT. Perhaps not enough to swing an election in their own right, but it will have a substantial effect.
That large of a number would shock me. I’d WAG less than 1%. Near zero. Undecideds are generally unengaged and not NYT readers.
I am aware of their plainly stated position I just consider their coverage of the 2024 election over the last couple of months, is incompatible with that position
This right here is a good example from yesterday:
Describing an obviously senile presidential candidate stopping an interview to stand in silence as music played for THIRTY MINUTES as calculated improvisation that would be more enjoyable for all involved!?! Seriously there is no explanation for that kind of coverage than the people ultimately calling the shots at the NYT want Trump to be the next POTUS.
The staff and management at the NYT are not stupid they have far more in depth knowledge of the implications of this coverage than anyone on the Dope. They know exactly what they are doing and that is attempting to get Trump elected (the regular reporters may not be, but someone in a position of power is). I didn’t used to think that but it’s really become an unavoidable conclusion
Even the Fox News reporter at least hint that this was something very weird not just Trump being “improvisational”:
When you are carrying more water for Trump than Fox News then you are pro Trump