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Well here's a challenge for you, we can easily put your viewpoint to the test:

Go on the NYT website right now and find me a single article currently on the front page that's negative about leftist policies or politicians, or a single article that's positive about rightist policies or politicians.

I bet you can't find any.

Repeat this experiment, any minute, any hour, any day, any year, for the last 10 years, and you will get the same exact results.




Just a quick look, here's one that plays into the mainstream narrative that Hamas is hiding out in hospitals and schools and therefore it's understandable to bomb them: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/world/middleeast/airstrik...


That's just a fact, its not a matter of opinion or leaning.


Regardless of whether or not Hamas is hiding out amongst civilians, those civilians are still entitled to human rights protections under international law. The comment section on that article says it all; a bunch of people largely agreeing that it's the Palestinians fault they are getting killed in their shelters.

But that is tangential to the discussion in this thread, which is that the NY Times is leftist. It's not. It, along with most of it's readership, is your typical establishment news organization in the US. Nothing status-quo shaking coming out of the NY Times.

Here's a quick search on how a leftist publication covered something like the bombing of al-Shifa hospital: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-gaza-propagan...


It's a fact that they've been using hospitals for non-medical purposes to some extent.

However, it's also a fact that the Israeli government has been attempting to milk these finds for far more than they're worth, to an extent beyond embellishment and closer to outright fabrication (c.f. the alleged "command center" under al-Shifa, the Hamas "shift schedule" that was really just an ordinary Arabic calendar, and so on).

In short: yes Hamas is bad, and all that. But for its own part, the Israeli government never seems to miss an opportunity to leverage available circumstances to undermine its own credibility.


Was that on the front page? I just checked and couldn't find it there.


It was, but it's fallen off at this point. Now most of the front page and editorial is about the US presidential debate that is about to happen, the coverage of which looks like any other mainstream establishment news publication in the US.

Compare that to an actual leftist publication like The Nation, where the second most popular article is literally about the enduring legacy of Marx's Capital (lol): https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wendy-brown-marx-c...

Or over at Jacobin where this is the top story: https://jacobin.com/2024/09/ruwa-romman-dnc-speech-palestine


Does that make a difference or are y'all just constantly moving goalposts to fuel the narrative that media is inherently left-leaning?

Because it's really not - especially not in the US. Go look through their articles. How many serve corporate interests? How many are fundamentally ultra-capitalists?

You guys act like these are commies. No, they're right-leaning, just not far right insane wackos (Fox News). You're right, they're not out here questioning how black Kamala is. No, that absolutely does not make them left wing.


> ...to fuel the narrative that media is inherently left-leaning?

Right around this time 8 years ago, the election was over... in the media. Clinton won, trump didn't, in like September of 2016. Like, the world was collectively shocked. Because, according to the media, trump was cooked.

How does that square?


A big part of why Clinton won in the media while her rivals didn't is because she was the least left-leaning Democrat president candidate since, well, Clinton. Clinton's' vast corporate support is because she would lean to the right of the average American on most economic issues and was business as usual, in vast opposition to her rival.

Compare for example media treatment of Sanders or even Warren when he opposed her and you can see that it's not her leftist tendencies that made her win in the media.


> Compare for example media treatment of Sanders or even Warren when he opposed her and you can see that it's not her leftist tendencies that made her win in the media.

Respectfully I don’t accept your premise here. You’re saying she was center of left? But still “left”, as it were? And you agree the media crowned her king months before the election?

So the media ordained her the winner. You do agree or you do not?


I am saying that the media was enamored with her because she represented a shift rightwards compared to her predecessors, and that her campaign successfully shifted the leftmost acceptable economic policies to be to the right of the electorate.

In that the media vastly prefered her over Trump, it was because she was pro-establishment and better aligned with corporate interests, not because she was economically to his left. The case of Warren and Sanders (where famously the media was happy to compare Sanders to Trump, reinforcing the idea that their opposition to Trump is not due to his right-wing economic policies) as well as the comparison to previous Democratic candidates is evidence I think is much more compelling than the assumption of leftwing/rightwing partisanship.


> … her campaign successfully shifted the leftmost acceptable economic policies to be to the right of the electorate.

Huh. If that were true she would have won. So it can’t be true. Unless your claim is “the right was too far right” in which case your “right-of-the-electorate” cannot be mathematically true.

Were you trying to make a different point? The current one doesn’t hold water.


> If that were true she would have won.

Not who you're discussing with, but Hillary did win the popular vote by about 3 million votes.


Fair point.


70% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton said that they voted against Trump, not for her. And people don't vote for whatever candidate is closer to them on the left-right spectrum, they care about personality, about how the candidate makes them feel. In those terms Trump was extremely polarizing, many people whose policies were closer to Trump than Clinton voted for Clinton because Trump was, as a person, unacceptable.

Besides, there are people who just don't vote if your platform or personality is not engaging. That was a big phenomenon with Clinton and is generally what decided whether or not Democrats win: the higher the turnout, the higher their chances. If a Democrat runs to the right, they lose turnout from leftwing voters who stay home, they don't (just) win votes from the center.

Also, Clinton did win the popular vote, despite all of this.


[flagged]


This would have been a much better comment without the last sentence.


The person I was responding to said I thought Harris is a communist. Where did he get that from? Nowhere. He invented it out of whole cloth. He also implied that I am a supporter of "far right insane wackos" for asking for a basic confirmation.

He formed an entire narrative about me from asking a simple question. A question that nobody sane could really come to the conclusions that he came to.

Perhaps it would be better if I didn't word my response the way I did, but I am just so tired of being accused of all sorts of things just because people think I am opposed to what they believe for asking for clarification. He doesn't know what I think and instead of asking he went on a rant about what he perceived my views to be. It is utterly ridiculous and it is so tiring.


I didn't, and I said nothing of the sort.

I said the NYT, and other media outlets, are not "far right insane wackos". Some people then run with that and say they're left-wing. That's not the case.

NYT is center-right, maybe center, and absolute worst-case slightly center-left. Our perception is warped, because we compare it to the likes of Fox News. Which is so unbelievably far right, that just about anything looks left-leaning in comparison.

> went on a rant about what he perceived my views to be

This didn't happen. Please, reread my comment and you'll notice I said absolutely nothing about you or your beliefs. I spoke of extreme right-wing beliefs. Whether you identify with that or feel shame about that is not my problem. If you're privy to creating personal attacks to fuel a sense of victimhood, that's on you.


Funny how you are now actually moving the goal posts. Originally it was "they're right-leaning". Now it is "absolute worst-case slightly center-left". You are admitting they may not be right wing and yet you accused me, who was simply asking for clarification, of moving the goal posts.

There is no point in continuing a conversation when you are just projecting exactly what you are doing on me.


You managed to ignore the rest of my comment, so appreciate the honesty.

I mean by "worst case" you could form an argument that says something like NYT is slightly center-left. And that's the best you can do.

The propaganda that the media is left-wing or left-wing extremists is just that, propaganda. On a related note, there are exactly 0 communist democrat candidates in the US.

In reality, most of our sources and policies on a federal level are strictly right-wing. This only gets more right-heavy when you consider that the US is the most right-leaning first world country.

What we, commonly, perceive as "right wing" is actually far-right politics. For example Fox News is not right-wing, they're far right. Trump isn't right-wing, he's far right. Biden isn't left-wing, he's center, etc.


Find me a single article currently on the front page that's negative about leftist policies or politicians,

Found on the front page of the NYT website, just now, after a few seconds of skimming:

  Kathleen Kingsbury
  The Question Kamala Harris Couldn’t Answer


Let's just assume you're right, and this experiment is true a majority of the time... wouldn't another possible explanation be that that's a perfectly fair representation of things? Both sides aren't always equal. Weighing the coverage of both sides to be equal would be misleading.


If the unbiased view is leftist then an unbiased newspaper would be left leaning.


I'm pretty sure that's what I just said, yes.


When I visit now the screen fills with headlines that are sympathetic to Harris and seems to support her candidacy.

Obviously not a leftist bias.


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/opinion/kamala-harris-dem...

This was on the front page a couple of weeks ago


Ross Douthat is still employed so your assertion falls flat on its face.

Aside from that, right now I see an item claiming Harris has flip-flopped on progressive policies.


> Ross Douthat is still employed so your assertion falls flat on its face.

I have no idea who that is.

> Aside from that, right now I see an item claiming Harris has flip-flopped on progressive policies.

I have no idea if this is true. Has she? Who is the authority on that?


Then go read the NYT front page and find out? He’s always there because he’s pure clickbait.

Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. “Flip flop” is an insult in politics.


Uh, no? Why the hell does anyone read mainstream media anymore?


find anything about gaza




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