Most people, including people on HN, don't grok that there's a difference between news and editorials. Especially with everything getting mashed together in endless digital news scrolling apps.
2020: If it's something they agree with, it's news. If there's something they disagree with, it's propaganda.
It's not entirely new, though. When I worked in television news years ago, the average person didn't know the difference between the news and the entertainment programs. I was introduced to this one day standing in the supermarket checkout line and two women were talking about something they saw "on the news." They were talking about the Maury Povich Show.
What I have observed is that NYT's coverage slants heavily towards supporting immigration, both legal and illegal. For illegal immigration, they run stories which tend to evoke maximum sympathy (DACA, impact on women / young kids / old people etc). Even for a story involving all sorts of people, they will use photos or anecdotes which will evoke stronger sympathies (example: [1]).
Also take a look at the kind of opinion columns they run - you will easily find someone supporting illegal immigration or asylum every few months. But you will rarely see them printing opinions from the other side of this debate, i.e. people opposing illegal immigration.
And this is an obvious slant on a topic where Americans are evenly divided, if not leaning more against illegal immigration [2].
That appears to be confirmation bias - the NYT also put out sympathetic articles on anti-immigration people of the "a day in the life of a friendly neighborhood racist" type.
I'm not sure how to assess or interpret what you're saying. What does it mean to "support immigration"?
I'm pretty sure you're not literally suggesting that absolutely zero people be allowed to move to the U.S.
It'd be helpful if you could explain what "supporting immigration" means to you in this context.
Otherwise it's all too easy for people to make their own (usually negative, often untrue) assumptions.
For the record, I'll say that I don't think folks illegally crossing the border should be treated the way they've been - especially with regards to the inhumane and immoral, and probably illegal camps that both adults and children were (are?) put in.
Obviously that's only one part of a much broader conversation, and, I want to give you the opportunity to explain what you mean, and not jump to conclusions.
Lastly, my own belief is "the view from nowhere" is impossible. We're all biased, consciously or otherwise, and I believe it's valuable to aspire to a self-awareness of that bias as I think "removing it" is a logical impossibility.
What I think is important for news organizations which aspire to trustworthiness to do, is, provide transparency, accountability, fact-checking, and overall thoughtfulness. Obviously some of these things are not easily quantifiable.
But, the humanities have centuries of experience in assessing and analyzing texts written by people. Philosophy is an example of one humanistic field which has its own procedures for analyzing more "qualitative" works, for example.
I'm a big fan of valuing expertise. Just as you'd want an experienced software developer making decisions about application development, I think it's valuable to turn to experts in written discourse - humanists of all stripes, the oft-maligned liberal arts - for direction in how to analyze texts.
Basically what I'm saying is if we're going to do this, let's do this for real ;). Otherwise, it's not reasoned, informed discussion/debate/analysis - it's just a reactive sharing of beliefs.
While the NYT has always had its share of bias claims, since Trump's election it appears that even the facade of balanced reporting is taking a back seat to their editorial agenda.
You have editorialized headlines[1] that incorporate common liberal phrases to invoke outrage. Other "How to Raise an Anti-Racist Kid"
Any story that mentions Trump will have a negative headline, even mundane stories about disaster declarations and normal government business.
The line between editorial and news content has grown increasingly blurry: scrolling through their app you'll need a second look to determine whether a storing is news or opinion - they're mixed together, often without delineation. For example in the app today you'll find an opinion piece calling for slavery reparations sandwiched between an analysis on Trump's reelection campaign and a story about a problem police officer.
As a long-time subscriber (and no fan of Trump), it's both frustrating and worrying to see the "paper of record" of my country begin to parrot leftist talking points in their daily reporting.
So, actually, I think it's interesting to examine the above headline empirically.
1. I think we all here agree that "anti-racist" is a good thing to be. Even if we're annoyed w/how the term itself may be used sometimes for effect.
2. The United States has an extremely well-researched and well-documented history of deep, systemic racism, which persists to this day. Redlining in Chicago is one example of less-obvious or less-known ways in which racism has been baked into the system.
3. Item 2) is also reflected in U.S. media and culture. It's getting better but mass media/culture industry portrayals of people of color (especially black men) are extremely problematic. I'd like to emphasize none of this is entirely unique to the U.S., but, the U.S. is the focus of our discussion right now.
4. I'm pretty sure research in social science and psychology proves (even taking into account all of the replication issues found w/studies in these fields, and in medicine, over the last several years) that we all are strongly and unconsciously affected by our environment, especially in our formative years.
4. Therefore all of us who grew up in the U.S. - including people of color - unless we were incredibly lucky w/regards to our family and community in our youth - have internalized racist outlooks and beliefs to one degree or another.
I think this is an extremely important point. Anyway ...
5. Therefore it makes perfect sense that, once we acknowledge the empirical truths of points 1-4, that people would be interested in raising anti-racist kids.
Sure, it's of-the-moment and eye-catching. On a deeper level, it's super-relevant to our current moment, and something important for people of conscience to think about.
Whether the article is any good or not, I have no idea and it's not relevant to this discussion ;)
So I don't think that particular phrase is a good example of an unhealthy bias for a news organization to have.
BTW I too have issues and concerns around politicized language at times. More so an irk or knee-jerk reaction that it serves more to virtue-signal than do good.
That said, I've been trying to examine my thoughts and feelings around politicized language (in this case what you're calling "leftist language") more analytically.
In part I think the immediacy of my reaction is itself an interesting signal. I wonder if that's true for you too, but of course I have no idea - just projecting here.
It's not even leftist. The NYT confuses reality with semi-classical liberalism. Trump is allowed to push their buttons (and, their readers') in the news articles. But they haven't grappled with the illiberalism of the average American, nor is there editorializing really for anything. It's purely reactionary.
There was a John Stuart interview recently where I was pleasently surprised he got this. NYT now calls lies lies, but they get so titillated from this departure from both-siderism they forgot they
a) Most people are used to being lied and gaslighted by authority constantly and no longer have that emotional reaction
b) the emotional reaction to lieing caused them to stop their analysis from going deeper, so we miss out on a complete picture of the reality vs the message
c) the emoting is the exact biases tone the both-siderism was supposed to prevent. The calling a lie a lie bit was something we all wanted because it wasn't actually in conflict with objective reporting.
Basically, they sound like they are miming the intercept's voice without the coherent ideology that makes reading the Intercept worth it.
And, do you mean with their news reporting, as opposed to their editorials?