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keyanp | 3 years ago

Yes I know that traditionally media has been used for propaganda, but I'm surprised by the reactions in this thread and those who find what seems like fairly objective reporting as biased.

Can someone show me a story from the NYT world or US news sites that are deliberately misleading? If this propaganda is so rampant then where is it? (Note: I'm opinion articles excluded because they are uh opinions).

https://www.nytimes.com/section/world https://www.nytimes.com/section/us

discuss

order

myhorsehasworms|3 years ago

Given enough time - NYT will generally correct a deliberately misleading story - so tracking down these sorts of changes requires use of internet archive.

Here is one!

On a story about Joe Rogan and his covid treatment - the NYT said "he was treated with a series of medications including ivermectin, a deworming veterinary drug"

https://web.archive.org/web/20210901220929/https://www.nytim...

Later this was changed to "as well as ivermectin, a drug primarily used as a veterinary deworming agent."

https://web.archive.org/web/20221203221548/https://www.nytim...

The first version of the article, calling ivermectin a "deworming veterinary drug" is intentionally misleading as it is WIDELY used internationally in humans for all sorts of issues.

It is on the WHOs list of essential medications for HUMANS, it is the 420th most commonly described medication in the US for HUMANS, the inventor won the Nobel prize for how it helps HUMANS.

Luckily, the NYT changed it to be less misleading - but the point stands. They intentionally misled their readers.

marcusverus|3 years ago

> Luckily, the NYT changed it to be less misleading - but the point stands. They intentionally misled their readers.

It's telling that even when they issue a correction, the corrected language is always quite clearly still misleading.

They did the same thing with the 1619 project. One of the original articles stated:

>"...one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery."

Many prominent historians evicerated them for this fabrication.[0] The NYT responded in a manner scarcely discernable from lying[0 again], after which they were subject to a second eviceration[1], and only then did they issue a (weaselly) correction[2], which was presumably the smallest change they could manage.

>"...one of the primary reasons *some of* the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery."

Which, of course, is clearly intended to suggest the very same lie.

[0]https://archive.is/OC7xu [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/1619-proje... [2]https://archive.is/oHWLR

fundad|3 years ago

This is why some media outlets (I don't need to describe them) don't do corrections.

asdff|3 years ago

You don't have to be deliberately misleading. You can intentionally omit certain stories or pieces of stories, and focus the bulk of your coverage one way or another to the omission of perhaps the wider truth. You can find expert opinions going every which way on every topic, so who you bring in as an expert to give an opinion also has weight to the narrative you are creating. In fact you have to do these things in many cases, because you have a finite amount of journalists you can hire or experts opinions you can reasonably draw on to cover a limited set of stories; news orgs don't scale to infinity. Perhaps in some cases, good access to sources depends on maintaining a friendly relationship toward these sources in terms of what you are publishing about them. Maybe you also don't want to jeopardize your relationship with your advertisers.

Herman and Chomsky have written about this phenomenon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

manv1|3 years ago

Let's go Brandon -> this is probably the most obvious of the stories.

Pretty much all of the followup stories re: the Abbot formula factory in the NYT and WaPo say that the factory was closed "in response to the FDA investigation" instead of the reality, which is it was closed "because the FDA needed to investigate."

The difference? The factory wasn't closed due to an FDA finding, it was closed so the FDA could find something. Big difference.

Those two are pretty simple.

Another trend is calling pretty much everything "voter suppression." Is asking for an ID voter suppression? Apparently it is. What about not allowing random people to collect and deliver ballots? Yes. What about making rules and regulations about ballot drop-off sites? Yes, voter suppression. The guardian is notorious for doing this.

sixQuarks|3 years ago

There is so much. Any time there's a war, the NY Times manufactures consent, Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction for example, more than half of Americans thought Saddam had nukes.

Russiagate is a recent example:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/02/03/reveal...

Misleading can also be what the NY Times doesn't cover. For example, the Columbia Journalism Review published a scathing report on how the media misled on Russiagate and NY Times and other MSM just tries to ignore it:

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-p...

Watch this 10 minute video by Glenn Greenwald that goes over in detail how the NY Times misleads and lies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZB0jan4QSY

EricE|3 years ago

Yes, the utter malice that has been displayed by the NYT over the years is mind boggling - yet they still seem to have this reputation as "the gray lady" as if they should be held in upmost regard. I get it that people want to trust in our institutions - but seriously, people need to wake up and stop taking things for granted. At least display a slight does of healthy skepticism every now and then.

somenameforme|3 years ago

I don't think its individual 'truth failures' driving such a largescale change, but rather a gradual big-picture slide. For a softball example, an article on the front page of Hacker News right now is "Study Suggests Fructose Could Drive Alzheimer's Disease." See enough articles making such declarations and where they lead, and you gradually start dismissing them as probable junk without even opening them. It's not because you've carefully debunked past studies, but simply because what was implied (major breakthrough) and what happened (nothing) don't jive.

So a better example for your search might be to go back to the Internet Archive, and grab the NYTimes from a year ago. And start reading the articles, and see if things ended up logically leading where the articles imply they would. Beyond this I also don't think you can, in good faith, disentangle opinion from fact. Yes we SHOULD, but it's not like people carefully scrutinize a headline or article to assess whether it was categorized as opinion, and then largely disregard it if so. People treat opinion and factual reporting, more or less, the same. And sites intentionally interweave them in order to drive clicks. So you can't have your cake and eat it. Generate clicks by publishing junk, and people are just going to remember you publishing junk.

keyanp|3 years ago

(parent author) Thanks for everyone's responses. I think there are some solid examples that folks provided that definitely give me something to mull over.

EricE|3 years ago

>Can someone show me a story from the NYT world or US news sites that are deliberately misleading?

How about their "reporting" on the jews and certain activities with them in a European country before the US entered WWII? Just do a modicum of research and if you are not thoroughly repulsed by the character of the NYT...

fundad|3 years ago

Newspapers have a problem with quoting law enforcement as if it's fact. 2 Hugh examples:

NYT quoted a Russian asset at the FBI claiming Trump's campaign had no clear links to Russia. Then Trump's own kid released the "later in the summer" thread. Newspapers quoted MPD about George Floyd's "medical emergency".