NY Times Fails Two Days In A Row

Sometimes you have to wonder whether the New York Times prints articles simply to fill space rather than educate the reader. There are two prime examples in both yesterday’s and today’s paper that are just striking.

Yesterday, the Times had an article entitled “Who Hates Free Trade Treaties? Surprisingly, Not Voters“.  Despite the headline of the article, the third paragraph of the article states, “National polls continue to show that Americans either narrowly favor international trade generally, and the so-called T.P.P. specifically, or are split.” This total mess of an article keeps on providing statistics about “trade” and the “TPP” as though they were almost interchangeable. The article seems to be surprised by the fact that most “Americans by 50 to 42 percent said trade agreements had been ‘a good thing’ for the United States” and “even 55 percent of Sanders supporters said trade agreements had been good for the country”, as though that is supposed to be meaningful. I don’t think anyone has suggested that the US should simply stop trading with everyone – that’s just ridiculous on its face. The argument is whether certain aspects of trade agreements have hurt American workers and overly benefited big corporations. The article then goes on to cite a poll that shows Americans support TPP by a 40-35% margin, hardly an overwhelming margin and I would guess probably nearly within the margin of error for the poll. But even that number is misleading because, as the Times also notes, another poll showed that “56 percent of voters were either unfamiliar with it [TPP] or neutral.” It is hard to say a poll is meaningful when a majority of the population doesn’t even know what the question is about. And I have to say that even I, someone who pays pretty close attention to the news, does not really understand all the particulars of TPP, although it is clear that there are commercial protections that once again simply benefit big corporations and patent owners. Perhaps that indicates a failure by the media to properly inform the public of the details of the pact. This article certainly does nothing to address that failure.

Today, the Times is apparently shocked to learn that Democrats use social media to support Hillary Clinton and pressure the media on its coverage of the election. In an article entitled, “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Outrage Machine, Allies Push the Buttons“, the Times focuses on two media monitors and now Clinton supporters, David Brock and Peter Daou. Despite the implication in the headline, none of the people mentioned as being responsible for this “outrage machine” works directly for the Clinton campaign. The article seems shocked to think that organizations supporting Hillary would be out there on social media repeating the memes of the Clinton campaign and pushing their readers and followers to do the same. Of course, right-wing media outlets have been doing this for years, but apparently it’s news if Democrats do the same. And, maybe it’s just me, but there is an underlying tone in the piece that implies that what Brock and Daou are doing is just not “kosher”, for want of a better word. The article describes one of Brock’s publications defending Hillary after her near-collapse at the WTC memorial by saying that her holding a national security meeting, a press conference, and attending the memorial while having pneumonia shows just how strong she really is. Despite Liz Spayd’s claims that the Times does not and should not editorialize within its reporting, the next line in the article is, “It [Brock’s story] was roundly mocked as a blatant example of Pravda-esque spin.” But even more ironic was the article’s example of the “outrage machine” going into action over the illegal Trump Foundation donation to Pam Bondi. The article states “Mr. Daou and his website incessantly demanded coverage of the Trump Foundation story. ‘We just have to start the fire,’ Mr. Daou said in an interview last week. Many liberal columnists, Democratic operatives and members of the Media Matters family reached the same conclusion, excoriating news outlets and individuals for grading Mr. Trump ‘on a curve.'” Not only was the Times one of the last papers to actually focus on that scandal, it has still only run just one story, on page A18 at that, on the latest Trump Foundation scandal that involves using Foundation money to pay legal expenses and buy paintings for Trump himself. Maybe, if the Times spent a little more time actually reporting the news, they wouldn’t have to write fluff stories about how people are outraged about how they are covering, or not covering, the news.