(1/X) I wanted to do another quick thing about the NYT's sane-...
NYTPitchbot@DougJBalloon
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Oct 20, 2024
~4 min read
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(1/X) I wanted to do another quick thing about the NYT's sane-washing of Trump and how it relates to similar things I have seen at work. I want to restrict to the Times here because while other outlets sane-wash too...
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(2/X) The Times is the worst offender and some other outlets have obvious motivations to do it (e.g. the big boss at CNN is pal of Elon Musks's who openly speaks of moving CNN to the right and has said he cares most about the next president allowing more M&A)....
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(3/X) I don't think there's a good reason for the Times slant its coverage to favor Trump. Sure, sucking up to Trump might help Maggie sell books and subscriptions were up under Trump, but...
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(4/X) the risks of. a Trump are tremendous for journalists and newspapers and the Times' readers are mostly anti-Trump and would like more fair coverage of the campaign....
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(5/X) there's a natural tendency to look for a silver bullet that explains why it makes economic or strategic sense for the Times to sane-wash Trump, but I don't you'll fin such a silver bullet....
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(6/X) I think what is going on is their system isn't built to deal with a narcissistic sociopath, they don't want to change their system, so they're just hunkering down and sneering at what they see as their resistance lib wine mom critics....
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(7/X) When my university administrators started taking the side of the narcissistic sociopath in my department, I assumed they had a good reason for doing so that we would eventually uncover...
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(8/X) The more I saw, though, the less good reason I could see. Then I spoke with someone involved with a similar situation (that cost the university well into the eight-figures in the end) and he told me had thought the same thing....
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(9/X) that he would eventually understand why the university was taking the side of a toxic abuser, that it made some kind of strategic sense once you knew more. But he also never found a good explanation for the university's behavior beyond...
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(10/X) the system wasn't built to deal with toxic abusers, they don't want to change the system, so they hunker down and take the side of the toxic abuser. It really was that simple, as I had thought with my own situation..
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(11/X) There is one other related thing here in both the Times' situation and my university's situation. At a certain point, after some extremely inexplicable behavior by deans, a friend said "Occam's razor says these people just aren't good at their jobs".....
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(12/X) And indeed many of them were fired or "resigned" partway through their terms (for things unrelated to our situation).
Which brings me to the Times. Who runs it? A nepo baby. And not even a nepo baby who is the child of someone who accomplished something.
Which brings me to the Times. Who runs it? A nepo baby. And not even a nepo baby who is the child of someone who accomplished something.
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(13/X) A. G. Sulzberger is the nepo baby of a nepo baby (A. O. Sulzberger Jr.). You have to go back two generations to find anyone who accomplished anything.
Occam's razor says he's bad at his job. And has likely hired editors who are bad at theirs.
Occam's razor says he's bad at his job. And has likely hired editors who are bad at theirs.
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(14/X) Not to say there aren't lots and lots of great journalists and editors at the Times. It pays well and it's tough to get good jobs in journalism, so they can certainly hire lots of great people..
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(15/X) But I suspect that on the really big decisions, ones where Sulzberger himself or people near him weigh in, the fact neither Sulzberger or the people near him are very smart or competent plays a big role.
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(16/X) So I don't think there's some exciting explanation for all the pro-Trump coverage that's going to be revealed. It's just dumb, incompetent people sticking to a system that doesn't work because they're too lazy or dumb to change the system.
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(The big boss at CNN is David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD has bigger fish to fry than CNN. The NYT is mostly just the NYT. There isn't some larger conglomerate that benefits from a Trump victory. Tho it should also be noted that Zaslav seems incompetent.)
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I really do wish the Times well. If you want to be a true friend, you have to be honest, and unmerciful. (My favorite Lester Bangs quote that he didn't say in real life.)
