…The New York Times is a bastion of bad writing that is a reflection of bad thinking…because that is how journalists are trained to write (and think).
P.L. Thomas
- Both-sides journalism.
- Press-release journalism.
- Crossing the Big Foot Line.
- Peddling stereotypes.
- ◦Lacking historical context and crisis rhetoric.
- Taking an objective/non-political pose (and fearing the “liberal media” label).
First, at a superficial and practical level, the NYT simply represents that mainstream media and journalism are in serious decline…even major newspapers have been firing editors and journalists for many years.
The field of journalism has contracted significantly, and one of the great costs has been a reduction in editing and editorial oversight as well as shifting the workforce from veterans with full-time, well paid positions to younger (read: cheaper) and even part-time (or freelance) journalists….
◦ Both-sides journalism. The NYT is certainly among almost all journalism in this flaw, but, again, the outsized platform that is the NYT makes their impact far greater, and more harmful. Journalists are taught to look for and present “both sides” of issues to give the appearance of not being biased (see more on this below). First, presenting any issue as a “both sides” argument is lazy, the sort of thinking I would not allow in my first-year writing students. Next, by presenting “both sides,” journalists often give the impression the sides are equally valid (and they often are not).
◦ Press-release journalism. As a result of the contracting industry, journalists have ceded investigative journalism and research to aggressive think tanks and advocacy organizations. Too often, articles in the NYT and across mainstream media are simply repackaged versions of press releases, regardless of the credibility of the information or perspective. Readers are left with deeply biased information presented as credible and unbiased “news” coverage of a topic.
◦ Crossing the Big Foot Line. Press release journalism is one aspect of a larger shift in journalism. At one point, tabloid journalism and the type of credible journalism found in the NYT were distinct. The example I use is Big Foot. The National Inquirer (tabloid) used to run when I was growing up repeated stories about someone seeing Big Foot. The scam was that the tabloid simply covered that someone made the claim (there was no effort to verify the claims of the source). Just because a tabloid printed a story that Bob claimed the world was going to end in October didn’t mean the tabloid actually was reporting the world would end in October; the article was about Bob claiming the end of the world. Not to be nostalgic or to oversimplify, but mainstream media at that time decades ago would not have touched that sort of story. Yet, during the Trump era and again because the field is contracting, more and more mainstream media simply covers a topic without seeking verification of credibility of any claims (see the many years of Trump when mainstream media simply reported Trump saying false things but refusing to label his claims as “lies”).
◦ Peddling stereotypes. One of the most insidious flaws with the NYT is grounding journalism and commentary in stereotypes and “common sense” thinking. The NYT perpetuates stereotypes about people living in poverty, public education, policing, race/racism, and essentially every topic they cover. The NYT is absent any critical interrogation of assumptions—mostly because journalists and commentators have little or no background in the topics covered.
◦Lacking historical context and crisis rhetoric. Journalists tend to have backgrounds in journalism (a problem as noted above). Without expertise in a topic, journalists and commentators are often trapped in presentism, and the result is Christopher Columbus journalism—the delusion that you have discovered something new and the failure to realize there is a history and likely many experts on the topic to draw from. This is common in coverage of education topics. Because of the lack of context, the coverage often frames topics in crisis rhetoric. Over the past few years, the media coverage of reading is a classic example of misreading a topic, failing to offer historical context, and misidentifying an issue as a “crisis.”
◦ Taking an objective/non-political pose (and fearing the “liberal media” label). The journalism especially, but the commentary also, at the NYT is mostly discredited by the relentless effort to take an objective pose. That is inherently a lie since everything is subjective, and political. By simply choosing to cover a topic, journalism is biased; by deciding which “side” of “both sides” to present first, journalism is biased. As I have noted before, when I interact with journalists and challenge them for framing “both sides” as equally credible (when they are not), those journalists have often retorted, “It isn’t my job to determine if the position is credible or not.” Yet, in fact, that certainly should be their job. Since journalism and the NYT are often slandered as “liberal media,” the NYT seems determined to prove otherwise—resulting in a constant gaze into the minds of conservative America. The key point here is that the NYT (and any media) cannot be unbiased, objective, or non-political; instead, the NYT could make a much greater effort to be biased toward nuanced and valid claims about the topics they choose to cover.
Suffice it to say, don’t write like the NYT.
Connect the Dots 101 
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