Former NYTimes editor on policy of matching coverage to predetermined narrative

"It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line."

Somewhere, Moldbug is wearing a shiteating grin.

I'd be shocked, just shocked, if 'The Narrative' was functionally identical to 'The Cathedral' in every way.

Forget vote rigging, millions of people have their reality rigged on a continuous basis.

You know the Japanese get a lot of criticism from Westerners for being a collectivist society, but I now believe we've reached the point we've outstripped them and they have become more individualistic than we are.

The policy of predetermining a narrative and looking for news that will support it is virtually guaranteed to produce a non-representative sample. You have a giant bin full of balls that is so large that it contains at least a little bit of every possible color and decide you want to report that the bin is mostly red balls, so you tell your reporters to look for red balls and report anytime they find one. You then use your sample as evidence that in fact the population of the bin is mainly red balls.

It's hard to imagine that Ivy League grads who pride themselves on being so much smarter and valuing science so much more than the rest of us would accidentally mistake this process for actual analysis of evidence in search of the truth. It's almost as if that wasn't their objective.