"The paper is in the midst of an evolution from the stodgy paper of record into a juicy collection of great narratives, on the web and streaming services."
A little odd as the author is writing about the Times in the 3rd person. Threw me off a bit.
People seem to think that every news outlet is red or blue, and furthermore that the journalists have absolutely no autonomy. This is not true. Part of the reason the Times is a reputable source is because they publish things that tow the red/blue line along with self criticism and corrections like this....unfortunately people can’t stomach nuance and alternative view points, just consider the outrage the Times faced a few moths ago for publishing the (admittedly stupid) opinion of a republican politician who was advocating for federal response to the Gerorge Floyd protests.
Inability to have rational argument and not get immediately heated in the face of an opposite opinion is a major flaw of proponents of both the right and left....the one thing that vindicates the left in America is that its at least the arguably more humanitarian and ethical side.
The internet helps us all live in our own personal realities and not have to ever deign to have a civil conversation with someone who disagrees with us.
Some of his work is pretty insightful, especially the time when the gov't leaked to a reporter, who wrote a story, and then the gov't got a search warrant by pointing to the article and saying "see, there is something here!".
The irony of this statement is astounding
Care to spell it out?
Why wouldn’t consumers of the news think that? The siloed Fox News model of outrage journalism has been adapted by the left, as it generates clicks and advertising dollars.
That's superficially true of the left everywhere and probably why it appeals so easily to young people. It's main purpose is to stand up for the poor which makes it appear humanitarian and ethical. But it only feels good on the surface because the left is generally also opposed to market freedom and property rights that benefit everybody, including the poor, in the long term. The right wing's humanitarianism comes as a long term consequence of wealth creation rather than something they want directly.
How much is this patently true and how much of the left in the US is really against market freedom? What are you encompassing with "the left" here?
Social democracies here in Europe are nowhere close to opposing market freedom and property rights. The opposition is mostly to complete unregulated markets, nothing much further than this at the moment. Even here in Sweden, which the media and people in the US like to paint as "socialist", is very far from being socialist... To the point where it's more a market economy with socialist ideas tackled on (welfare, comprehensive healthcare, free education, etc.) to disrupt markets that are inefficient or monopolistic in nature.
The left don't even exist in the US, whenever I hear an American repeat what I quoted I laugh a little bit inside, it's a strawman based on thin air and fears for the most part.
You’re correct that Sweden, etc., are market economies with welfare states tacked on. Sweden is cutting corporate taxes and investment taxes, partially privatizing its social security, etc. That was the model on the American left from Clinton through Obama. But that approach is pretty much dead ideologically as far as I can tell. Political candidates on the left don’t talk about markets anymore. One was booed during the primaries for supporting capitalism.
Seem quite left by the optics of the US, but:
Tracker:
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Status of Legislation:
Introduced Agreed to in House
> You’re correct that Sweden, etc., are market economies with welfare states tacked on. Sweden is cutting corporate taxes and investment taxes, partially privatizing its social security, etc. That was the model on the American left from Clinton through Obama.
This wasn't an effect localised in Sweden, the whole Third Way [0] on social democracies trying to embrace some neoliberal policies (be it for some kind of compromise or for true belief that this was the way forward). It happened across whole Europe, from the UK with Blair, to France and the US, its effects are still ongoing.
In my opinion this was a failed experiment which the repercussions are still showing up. We can't have "ifs" in history but we can analyse the effects of these policies and the picture doesn't look pretty, both economically when viewed with the eyes of social democrats of the 70s (which I don't say would fare well in a contemporary society, those policies had its time and place and need updates) as politically when you see how much power the centre-left social democrats across Europe have lost. They tried to embrace where the pendulum swung and ultimately lost that race and also lost their own base.
Political candidates on the left don't talk about markets anymore because neoliberal policies took over a lot on the previous 3 decades, from welfare to education, to healthcare. I only talk about these policies' negatives but I don't necessarily hold the opinion that it didn't have positive impacts in society, just believe its time is due. It's too ideological to be practical in the face of empirical evidence.
https://www.city-journal.org/california-race-coding-criteria...
Public health authorities in California have unveiled a “Blueprint for a Safer Economy” that requires counties to meet new “health equity metrics” in order to emerge from the current Covid-19 lockdowns. It’s a broad experiment in social justice. Under the plan, counties must reduce “disparities in levels of transmission” in “low-income, Black, Latino, [and] Pacific Islander” communities before they can move forward with reopening. In effect, local businesses must remain closed until local bureaucrats are satisfied that ill-defined racial quotas have been met.
The American left can't normally push too hard against free markets because they lost that argument conclusively and completely when the USSR collapsed (really, a long time before). But now they see an opening, so suddenly businesses and markets are being held hostage: implement the left's current social agenda or else your businesses will be kept closed indefinitely for "health reasons". These are not the actions of people who see value in private enterprise.
Not sure the left is vindicated for "ethical" stances or actions. Pro abortion, assisted end of life, corrupt unions, free speak, gay marriage, larger government waste are things traditionally seen as things associated with the left and unethical by some.
Traditionally the right was the party of values and the left was the party of freedom.
I presume you're talking about the US so I'll offer a European perspective: whatever about traditional standpoints, in recent times the "left" (democrats) are the party of values, lying somewhere right of center, while the "right" (republicans) are starting to toy with fascism but are currently merely quite far to the right in the region of oligarchy. You guys are in sore need of an actual left leaning political party to balance things out.
If the left parties are right of centre are they still left leaning parties?
> Traditionally the right was the party of values and the left was the party of freedom.
I dont know about that, but the definition of right and left (and freedom) change over time and geographic location. Nonetheless both sides are routed in values, just different ones ("freedom" is a value)
What is "freedom" here?
Could you provide some kind of support for that? I've never heard anyone in the US or in any Western country claim the left was particularly focused on "freedom".
Free speech may be on the way and replaced with right speech but traditional free speech was a plank in the 60s-90s.
Those things are rarely argued on "freedom" principles and instead are argued on the issue of progressive rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism. And no major left wing figure outside the US has ever argued strongly for unrestricted free speech. Freedom of movement doesn't seem something that is strongly one way or the other, but I'd note that the requirement to carry identification is something that was kept in left leaning countries after WW2 but abandoned in right leaning countries.
Libertarianism seems - in principle - more like what you are describing. And in the US Libertarianism is generally seen as a more right-wing view (primarily because of economic issues rather than social though).
People on the left think this because they don’t understand the social value of the things the right cares about. They look around at a world where people seem ragged and unhappy, and think we got here because we don’t have enough of this or that government benefit. They assign zero weight to all of the other things that make for a humane life.
A news organization which issues retractions and mea culpas is trustworthy, one that cannot reflect on itself may be propaganda or worse.
Just surprising coming from the NYTs.
The most famous recentish (2004) example was their problematic reporting and editorial stance around the second Iraq war: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/09/new-york-...
This story gets to the main point a lot faster, and is somewhat more critical of the Times.