[indubitable]

Thanks for the article. Let's look over this since I see it rather differently.

The article states, "there are hundreds if not thousands of contract soldiers in Syria whom the Russian government has never acknowledged." According to whom and why? And if their estimate is so unreliable as to have an error margin on the order of magnitudes would it not be more accurate to state an unknown number? Anyhow, they not only take their controversial statement as a given, but then go on to offer a completely bizarre explanation for why they were deployed. According to the article, "They were deployed both to help keep the official cost down and to avoid reports of casualties, especially with a March presidential election in Russia fast approaching.". Again according to who? And idea that these secret soldiers are because of an election seems dubious, at best. Putin's approval rating is around 75% with 0 substantial opposition. His reelection is little more than a formality regardless of what happens in Syria.

Let's now look at some of their named sources for which you reference "lots of evidence." One bit of evidence was literally what a source, described only as "a woman from central Russia", said in "a brief online chat." And then they reference what they, again literally, describe as "investigative bloggers." And on top of all of this the article originally stated Russians were killed in the airstrike, when the source actually said Syrians. Regardless of whether or not that was a genuine mistake, it really should make you question their editorial standards for such a key fact to be night and day wrong.

There are many other such issues throughout the article, but let's stop there since I think the point is more or less clear. Look at it this way. Imagine this article was discussing an issue for which you had less personal biases, and from an outlet you also had no biases of brand recognition and trust towards. You would consider it to be dubious, at best. When we read things from sources we trust or that confirm our own biases, we turn off our ability to think critically.

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Granted the above is a tangential issue to bias - reporting quality. But the two tend to be strongly connected. When you want to push a story but the data to support such a tale isn't there, you have a choice of either moving on or turning to lower levels of support for your view. And in times past I think the choice there would have been dead obvious for the New York Times. Citing what somebody, who is again literally described as "a woman from Russia", wrote online is insulting the intelligence of your readers and instills a sense of incredulity for the article in the mind of anybody who's not taking what you write as beyond reproach. Nonetheless, they chose (and have regularly chosen now a days) to go down this path. And this is something new.