NYTimes Launders Its Own Agency
After having scolded the President that he “should leave the race” that Democratic primary voters elected him to run.
And having ordered the Democratic Party to “speak the [NYT’s] plain truth to Biden,
And having ignored Trump’s own actions in the meanwhile (for example, NYT has no report yet on Viktor Orbán’s latest shenanigans, and they’ve only just reported on Trump’s attempts to disavow Project 2025, which they put in a both-sides frame and don’t cite NYT’s long focus on his Project 2025 aligned plans; Update, 10:09AM ET: NYT has now posted a cursory 7¶¶ 3-byline piece on Orbán.), NYT has now weighed in against Trump.
At least in its headline, the NYT doesn’t scold Trump. It doesn’t order the GOP to do anything.
It observes.
Once you click through to their actual op-ed, however, NYT does something else.
It launders agency it has been exercising all over its front page.
“The Democrats are rightly engaged in their own debate,” the paper that has supplanted every other kind of news to frame that debate says.
“The debate is so intense,” NYT says, not because reporters have engaged in conspiracy theorizing, lied, and (as Nancy Pelosi said of NYT’s overreading of her attempt to be subtle, “ma[d]e stories up.”
After which, NYT has relabled as “analysis” and done significant massaging of their story — though not without labeling Biden “defiant” again.
No.
The debate is so intense because, NYT says, “a compelling Democratic alternative is the only thing that will prevent [Trump’s] return to power.”
Which is to suggest that Joe Biden’s historic success — the policy stuff that, at NYT, always takes the backseat to Biden’s age — is not compelling at all.
Meanwhile, rather than bossing the Republican Party around like NYT did Democrats, NYT wrings its journalistic hands: “It is a national tragedy that the Republicans have failed to have a similar debate,” like the one NYT has forced down Democrats’ throats.
Rather than scolding about what Trump “should” do or ordering what Republicans “must” do, NYT simply “urges” voters here.
This is the op-ed page. It’s where NYT is supposed to exercise the omniscient narrator they’ve sicced on a non-stop flood of Joe Biden stories.
But it would be really nice if elsewhere, off the op-ed page, NYT would focus on reporting, including on the guy they claim is unfit to lead.
It seems Political Science, if it means anything, would have some faculty researchers trying to determine how effective NYT propagandizing is among the electorate. As in my views, their views, they’re wrong being a theme here. Where else, how strong? There is a lot of Putin’s influence being sounded, data methods unclear, but “NYT speaks, who listens” data seems missing. Surely polling among each party’s brain trust would be looking at whose influencing efforts work, whose fails. But that’s not public domain.
It seems there is much gaming in the processes happening now. NYT feeling a need to influence, beyond a need to report, where there always has been that tension but influence pushing seems more openly done these days. It is as if an NYT experiment is afoot, let’s see if we push, what moves, and then the Editorial Board, or whoever, can work on how to monitize it.
As Rayne has suggested several times recently, “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988),” by Herman and Chomsky, remains essential reading. The pair revised and updated the term, first used by Walter Lippmann in 1922. It was revised in 2002, with additional commentary in 2009,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Professor Robert McChesney’s “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” (1999) is equally worthy imo, although a bit dated now, as is Chomsky’s early material, including his “Current Issues in Linguistic Theory” (1964), a book I thought was an odd choice for my freshman “Special Problems in
English Composition” class in 68.
Robert McChesney’s “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” (1999) is also an essential read, or as Noam Chomsky said “a rich, penetrating study” and spoken with praise about by Bill Moyers and Molly Ivins, people who’s opinions I highly regard.
Approaching from a slightly different angle but with as depressing propositions, I can also recommend “All the News That’s Fit to Sell (2004)” by James Hamilton. Long story short, low info voters are currently under attack from every angle.
There’s no coverage of that horrific campaign rally Trump held at his Doral course two days ago. But there’s this right now on the NYT’s digital front page:
They crammed all their objections with pretty digital effects into one opinion column so the NYT didn’t have multiple negative op-eds about Trump at the same time. But they let anti-Biden op-eds flood the editorial section. Ridiculous.
They don’t even have to write their stuff. They take offerings, post the ones they like. Economical editing. Preparing for the next staff shrinkage?
And they’re exeperimenting with AI-written headlines:
https://theintercept.com/2024/07/08/new-york-times-openai-headlines-chatgpt/
And isn’t Nick Kristof *just* the person you want giving advice on Democratic candidates?
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You mean the former NYT OpEd writer who didn’t know he had to reside in the state in which he wanted to run for political office? That Nick Kristof? He’s as valuable a commentator on what Democrats should do as…James Carville.
I am often exasperated and frustrated by the New York Times. In its totality, it is clearly not a monolithic production. There are contradictions and inconsistencies, some profound and some really superficial horse-race, in the way it prioritize different aspects of the news. But in the end, it is only one newspaper. True, the media in the US have presented such a skewed view of reality for decades. They are largely responsible for the extremely misinformed citizens. But now is not the time to fight this. Let’s not loose sight of where the critical battle is: winning the next election, with or without Biden.
Can Biden win this next election? That is the question. Biden has been underrated for most of his career. But he has been as good a public servant that we can get in Washington. Some very smart people can see that. Obama chose him as his VP. Jim Cyburn endorsed him in 2020. Anti-Trump ex-republican consultants David Frum and Stuart Stevens say that we should stick with Biden. David Axelrod and David Plouffe are extremely skeptical and concerned. The democrat electors will support Biden, even though a good chunk of them (50-75%?) have had concerned about his age for the last couple of years. But the biggest worry is not the democratic electors, it is the borderline others, who need persuasion. Biden is old, he is not getting any younger. I will vote for him if he is at the top of ticket, but will they?
Personally, I don’t have a crystal ball. Politics is not fantasy baseball. Whether the race is more winnable without Biden at the top of the ticket depends very much on how graceful the change would be. Whether it is Biden or not, we must give all our energy to that race.
Dude. This: “democrat electors” should be “Democratic electors.” Lower case d combined with dropping the ic ending are the right-wing style label for Democratic Party members.
I’m at least 90% convinced that most of the freakout in the punditocrazy (“crazy” was a typo, but I’m keeping it) has to do with President Biden’s VP being a woman of color who isn’t in their pocket. They haven’t come up with an alternative who has anything like national name recognition among non-wonks. And seriously: if we can’t persuade the U.S. electorate that Biden-Harris is a much better bet than Trump and Project 2025, we’ve failed abysmally at protecting our aspiring democracy. The founders would be disgusted with us and with good reason.
[Moderator’s note: see your comment at 12:20 pm this thread. /~Rayne]
kamala harris is well educated. she has run for and won elective offices; she has been a public servant. donald trump had none of these qualifications when he became president.
If the NYT “is only one newspaper,” Babe Ruth was only one ballplayer.
Which brings up a bigger question by way of ye olde analogy, namely, is baseball as important in US society nowadays as the NYT’s pretends to be?
I read somewhere just today that the NYT employs 7% of all the newspaper employees in the US right now.
Annie Karni has long straddled the line between journalist and player.
In Alison Klayman’s 2019 documentary The Brink, which fly-on-the-walled Steve Bannon after he had been fired from the Trump White House, Klayman catches Karni (who at that time was writing for Politico) hanging with Bannon and giving him advice.
O_o
“…has long straddled the line between journalist and player…”
Perfect wording. This would make a great j-school graduate level study examining column inches of non-op ed articles for the use of editorializing that results in slanting a piece.
Journalist vs player. Need a third category for the propaganda agents because that MO stands beyond “player” and has the goal of causing damage, not influence.
Karni is in 3 snippets of the movie
https://youtu.be/vf74Jv9R3L4
0:40:40
0:48:00 et seq
1:25:00 et seq
I’m not sure that any of those segments bear the interpretation suggested, but obviously I could be missing something.
Your link is blocked for me (in the US and with the security settings on my browser), but an authorized one that works is on Tubi:
https://tubitv.com/movies/642347/the-brink
Between 45:30 and 47:35, Bannon is showing his [then] new film,
Trump@War, to Karni and a male reporter whose name I don’t know.
It’s mostly Bannon talking, but the bits from Karni do not exactly sound like hard-nosed journalism or speaking truth to power.
K: Outrage, Identity Politics. Is that what you’re moving into?
B: How would Leni Riefenstahl have edited it?
The fact of viewing the preview of the movie with colleague Alex Isenstadt
Is mentioned in https://www.politico.eu/article/steve-bannon-attempts-his-political-comeback-donald-trump/
AUGUST 16, 2018 4:37 AM CET
It looks like my previous comment did not pass the filters :/ I’ll sum it up in case maybe I made a mistake and not the moderation..
I watched the debate, it scared the shit out of me and I worry this place is becoming a feedback loop.
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Okay, you dumped your fears acquired from one debate. Now go get engaged at local party level if you want change instead of spending your time unloading your feelings.
ADDER: You also dumped this in a post about NYT’s crappy editorial about Trump’s unfitness to serve. Your two comments are not on topic for this thread.
ADDER-2: When a moderator tells you you’re off topic, do NOT add a third off-topic comment in thread. Find something more constructive to do.
I think most people here are feeling some existential terror, but they are trying to be productive about it by communicating what is happening and discussing it in detail that isn’t presented anywhere else.
I don’t blame anyone who feels panic right now – I do every day. But complaining that people who are trying to remain strong and push back against all of this are somehow weak for not posting diatribes about their feelings is a bit odd.
People here seem to be soberly presenting the facts that Joe Biden accomplished quite a bit during his presidency and that the media is completely overreacting to one performance. He may not be fit to be re-elected, but the situation is a shit sandwich – no one has the answer for this. If anyone did, you wouldn’t be watching feckless Democratic leaders and celebrity donors panicking and arguing back and forth four months before an election and weeks from the convention.
Get. On. Topic.
If there are more comments derailing away from discussion about the NYT I’m going to yank this entire section.
Let us not forget that the theory of journalism as taught in universities is completely wrong. The role of a reporter is to maximize revenues, I would think primarily from advertising. This, after all, is the foundation of the paper. All that stuff in the textbooks ignores the actual job a reporter has. And so this is why they made up a story about what Nancy Pelosi said, which any experienced person would have recognized as a politician offering no opinion at all.
Re: “ Let us not forget that the theory of journalism as taught in universities is completely wrong. The role of a reporter is to maximize revenues”
I’m struggling to understand your prospective. If what you mean is that the media landscape itself has changed, driven by consolidation, among other things, then I concur.
However, ethical Journalism, as “taught in universities”, should not abandon the foundational and essential SPJ Code of Ethics, just because media business models now value angertainment over fundamentals.
By that logic, Med schools should stop teaching anatomy and simply teach time management. Law schools should disregard all case history and simply concentrate on lobbying SCOTUS. Elementary schools should stop teaching math because…calculators.
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
Well said! My BA is in Communications, and we always were aware of the pressure to “sell”, but the job of journalism is to report, analyze and give readers a more clear picture of situations the readers can’t witness personally. Too many fields have been more slanted towards excess profits, rather than providing a good product for a decent price. We don’t have to be naive, but let’s not START students as cynical moneyhounds.
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Which all sound exactly like the coming attractions featured in 2025 for real.
Excellent.
Never seen/heard that, that I recall. I like explicitly clear, concise self-defining words. Like “apt”. It is just so… apt. Anyway, think I’ll incorporate it into my lexicon. Thx.
Several large law firms are already there, especially wrt environmental SLAP suits.
Once upon a time, reporters and newspapers celebrated the difference between publisher and editor-in-chief. One managed the business, the other decided what to print and why. The distinction helped lead to the reporting behind Watergate.
The reaction to that “excess of democracy,” spearheaded by David Rockefeller’s new, Trilateral Commission, and the ascendancy of Milton Friedman’s baseless claim that a corporation’s only duty is to shareholders, led to the ascendancy of the publisher. It’s new, but only by being so extreme. Nevertheless, tension remains between the two warring factions, which leads many reporters (e.g., Ezra Klein) to declare sides early in their careers.
“excess of democracy,”
LOL, good one!!! (I forgot about that one).
There was a massive clear cutting in the early 90’s on the (steep) mountain sides above human built structures in Hobart, prior to this a magnificently beautiful place. The logging company basically bribed local officials, and there was no public announcement before all the heavy equipment showed up. They sprayed the whole area with some deadly poison to kill all the wildlife, so their workers didn’t have to contend with unfriendly critters.
It was an environmental disaster. Mudslides after heavy rains ruined property below, staggering sea life death in the harbor below, and decimation of Hobart’s natural beauty.
A study was commissioned to determine the cause of this destruction (duh). It was funded and managed by the logging company. Their conclusion: excessive fresh water.
“Excess of Democracy” was the key phrase in a 1975 report (and 1976 book) co-authored by Harvard political scientist – and Henry Kissinger wannabe – Samuel P. Huntington, for David Rockefeller’s new Trilateral Commission (est. 1973), which was set up to combat it. It’s members were all “names” inside the Beltway and beyond. It did and does its work well, especially after Reagan succeeded Carter.
Two major issues in response to which the Commission was set up were Nixon’s pending demise and the nascent post-colonial period, when western extractive industries faced new difficulties extracting oil and other commodities at below-market rates from once traditionally colonial territories (e.g., Indonesia, the Middle East, the Congo). Its origins coincided with the first OPEC crisis. It’s interest in combating democracy was transnational.
“The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy
It’s subtitle could have been, “How to make old and newly independent states compliant with western economic interests, their own needs be damned.”
You are repeating the observation of H.L. Mencken that the person who determines the coverage is the paper’s business manager.
I was a newspaperman for 45 years, and I can tell you that that is at least two degrees of separation from reality.
Not totally separated, but distant, as the business history of PM demonstrates (and should be a cautionary tale to those who advocate ‘non-profit’ news organizations).
The clearest example I know is from England, where Beaverbrook owned papers of a variety of orientations, ranging leftward from the fascist Sunday Express. (Americans would be confused because the Daily Express was not pro-fascist.)
The best American example I know is related in Gilson Gardner’s “Lusty Scripps,” which explains how the very antilabor E.W. Scripps founded a series of pro-labor evening papers (notably, the Detroit News).
Personally, I can attest to what happened when I was hired by a paper that was owned by a man who controlled the largest business in the county, owned the most land and was on every local board.
I was just getting settled at my desk that first day, when he came up, said, ‘I’m Colin Cameron. I’m the publisher. You write what you want.”
I did, too. Never heard a peep out of him even when my stories got his business associates indicted.
The Times is a different beast than the paper I worked on, but I know a lot of people who worked there. The prejudices that operate to shape the news agenda there are complicated, more so than you’d gather from the memoirs of various Times news execs, but profits are not one of them.
I appreciate your observations and viewpoint. I was wondering if someone would post in your sector of opinion space. I note that klynn ( posting below at 10:43 am ) had a different experience. Raymond Wolfinger is said to have coined the aphorism, “The plural of anecdote is data.” As statistician, I’ll allow that… as long as you follow it with “but not necessarily information.” My professional (really) version of the DIKW hierarchy is Question/Design/Data/Description/Analysis/Knowledge/Communication with the rare addition of /Understanding/Prediction. As such, I end up at your “The prejudices that operate to shape the news agenda there are complicated” and no farther because the question and (data )design steps are a little murky here. The initiation and evolution of this thread being a lovely example.
(Apologies if I have provided an inconsistent name. I have not posted in years.)
After ‘Knowledge/Communication’ comes Decision/Action, or it should. Without being a statistician, I follow your line, using intelligence as the cautionary model: Stalin had some of the best spies but he disbelieved them and paid a heavy price.
With that editorial, the NYTimes, perhaps, is responding to the many voices who have criticized them for banging the drum about Biden’s age but not about Trump. It is more comprehensive than just a “Oh yeah, Trump is unfit, too.” But it has a bit of that flavor.
And while the laundry list is long, NYTimes still seems to be shielding Trump from criticisms of his cognitive issues and from the legal cases establishing Trump as a clever business fraudster. And why no mention of the photos from the documents case that reveal Trump as someone recklessly negligent with national defense secrets.
Thank you for this post. This really needed to be stated in writing.
“But it would be really nice if elsewhere, off the op-ed page, NYT would focus on reporting, including on the guy they claim is unfit to lead.”
In another world long ago, I was suppose to be an investigative journalist for a respected newspaper. Then the owner sat young, naive me down for a lunch and told me he owned me and that I would not be doing investigative journalism. He said he had no interest in it unless it benefitted him.
I’ve concluded, based on my personal experience, journalists at the NYT’s do not have the capacity to do reporting on “the guy they claim is unfit to lead” and fill the other pages. It might be that, like my experience, the owner sat them down and let them know they are owned.
If they want to challenge this observation with actions and articles, please do! It would be a miracle and a beautiful power dynamic to witness in print at this vital time in history.
I think A.G. Sulzberger has an obsession that has filtered down to the rest of the staff. He considers himself a kingmaker, and is angry that Joe Biden never gave him that exclusive interview he demands
“Filtered down,” seems too passive a construction. More like a mandate from Sulzberger and Kahn. I also think the motivation is broader than pique over Biden not paying sufficient homage, whether to Pinch or Dash Sulzberger.
I don’t remember how they covered Obama and his campaigns, but they definitely didn’t like the Clintons.
Rayne could give you chapter and verse on how the NYT and WaPo covered Obama during his campaigns and presidency. Pretty sure they thought he was uppity and shouldn’t use the front door.
The doom and gloom press. The doom and gloom Democrats who only have themselves to blame.
A true supporter Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters, “We’re ridin’ with Biden,” Excellent catchy slogan.
One reason I was never freaked out about Biden’s age, aside from the fact that he is doing an amazing job, is that we have an extremely prepared VP in Kamala Harris and the administration has an impressive team. Harris has been deeply involved in foreign as well as domestic policy and has made many foreign trips which the media chose to ignore. She meets regularly with Biden. If anything happens to Biden or if he has to step down the transition would be smooth — far smoother than when a new administration comes in with all new personnel. Harris and the current team are more than capable of carrying on.
Excellent analysis, excellent piece!
Thank you!
The Sulzbergers, once again, are talking out of both sides of their corporate mouth in order to maintain their current seat on the Trump Gravy Train that Trump is desperately trying steer into the White House Station this November.
Democrats need to sabotage the Trump Gravy Train by this October.
Two words, being picky over usage, existential and consequential. This election will be consequential, more so than others, but each is. Existential is a cut higher, and IMO not merited as a usage for Biden/Trump/2024 and down ticket. (started as a comment to something not kept)
On topic, NYT past navel gazing – 2015: – https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/m/Our-Path-Forward.pdf — aimed at NYT planning to prosper in a digital world, reaching the phone as the media lens, and building a big digital PAYING SUBSCRIBER NETWORK – a quote:
“In less than five years, The Times has succeeded in doubling its digital-‐only revenues to roughly $400 million last year. To put that figure in context, that was about as much as four of our highest-‐profile digital competitors — Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Vox Media and Gawker Media — reportedly earned last year combined.
“We’ve done this by prioritizing digital growth, while also carefully managing our print operations and reducing costs throughout the company without sacrificing excellence. And we’ve done this by building the largest audience of readers — we are visited on over 140 million devices around the world each month — and paying subscribers in our history. This combination of mass reach and a large subscription base is unique in our industry.”
Then, telling/selling people what they want to hear/read -no quote-
“BUILDING THE NEXT NEW YORK TIMES RECOMMENDER ENGINE”
about tracking user history to shape things thought best to suggest as “You might also like” whether titled that or not. a/k/a Micro targeting.
An outside journalism lab looks at NYT as a going business –
https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/01/this-is-the-new-york-times-digital-path-forward/
The upshot is getting phone user subscriber loyalty, and serving the new market big niche with new ways of packaging story telling. Getting fans to pay while other outlets give it away free. In that context I can see rolling the dice, “Let’s try making the news beyond reporting it, and see how that sells – old Biden is too old,” and do follow-up analytics on how that whole approach fiew. But I tend to be skeptical to a fault. It’s “All the news fit to print,” not “Make all the news fit to print,” isn’t it?
Missing link, earlier comment: https://archive.nytimes.com/open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/building-the-next-new-york-times-recommendation-engine/
When considering the consequences of an entirely new bureaucracy, and the secretive institutions and billionaire backers behind them, fully implementing Project 2025, this election does present an “existential” threat.
Project 2025 is meant to institutionalize its goals. It aims to make them a permanent part of the American experience, well beyond the violence, frailty, and whimsy of Donald Trump.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Americans will be SHOCKED at how quickly things will change, dramatically. If Trump wins our nation will be very different a year from now. And it has already started with immunity setting the table and anti-administrative state rulings already starting to bear poisoned fruit-like the district court decision on overtime-overruling the Dept. of Labor’s definition of exempt EAP workers. I wish MAGA types would see the direct connection between their vote for Trump and the attack on their income.
I don’t think that existential is the wrong word when SCOTUS has given the president the power to assassinate enemies with impunity. In the court case, Trump’s lawyers explicitly said that he had that power, and SCOTUS agreed. Trump has made statements like “Article 2 means I get to do whatever I want”. All of that is entirely within Trump’s character. Nobody should be surprised if there’s a fascist state within a year if he’s elected.
Democracy itself is on the ballot. I’m not normally a doomsayer, but doom is looming over us now.
EP, George W. Bush, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barak Obama, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hilary Clinton, and Joe Biden never represented an existential threat. Had any of them been presented the opportunity of a guaranteed electoral victory at the cost of America surviving only as a broken republic, I have no doubt none would have taken it.
There’s also no doubt that Donald Trump would have jumped at it in an instant—indeed, it remains his stated and demonstrated intent. As a sitting President, he sought to prevent a successor chosen by the American people from taking office, tried to turn our elected representatives into sycophants pledging loyalty only to him, strove to replace our representative democracy, our Democratic Republic, with his own Trumpian Plutocracy. He was and remains an existential threat to our nation.
America prevailed, proving resilient enough to survive this persistent Presidential perfidy—this time. Yet Trump tried, to the best of his abilities. Do not give him credit for trying but failing, for rehearsing his next attempt. Donald Trump—a would-be caudillo unfit to be the leader of a free people—must never again be allowed the opportunity to subvert American democracy.
What we’re now doing is working through substantial disagreement, trying to determine the best way to do that. But, yes, the threat is that great. Don’t try to downplay it.
Bush/Cheney WAS an existential threat to our democracy. If the Iraq war had been a success, they’d still be in power.
Ummm, OK. But I think EP’s point applies far more easily to George W than The Donald.
“He was and remains an existential threat to our nation.” Trump may lose but his followers will be around for some time to come.
Zombie Fourth Estate is owned by oligarchs. They WANT the fascism. People need to stop criticizing all of this failure as negligence and mistakes. It is DELIBERATE. You don’t fail so often, repeatedly and consistently by accident. At a certain point, it crosses the line into intentional and we are way beyond that line. As is always the case, when the fascism eventually pops up as an option (generally with the oligarchs’ efforts as a major contribution in the first place), the extremely wealthy, who already enjoy plutocratic power and influence in a post-capitalism monopoly-riddled hellscape, have decided that they can profit even more from straight up corporate feudal warlordism, enshrining of open plutocratic rule and the reduction of the labor class to functional serfdom, all managed and maintained via a culture war that renders the public incapable of organized rejection of it. And just like their oligarch masters, the zombies of the Zombie Fourth Estate have also decided they can probably profit from the fascism.
This is what 60 years of Southern Strategy, calculated symbiosis with white Christian nationalists and the NRA, the trickle-down lie and kicking everything into end game as of November 4, 2008 was meant to achieve. The MAGAt KKKult’s widespread violence is inevitable…and in many ways, has already started. The only question anyone needs to ask themselves is whether they want them (to continue) committing it with the federal government as their weapon.
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People are comparing this to “but her emails”, but personally, this is WORSE. Even at the height of the emails hype, the Times was reporting on other important stories, but this one?
“Biden is old and should withdraw” has bumped the damage and complete failure of Texas to handle Hurricane Beryl, Project 2025, the NATO summit, more deranged Trump proclamations, the Gaza situation and EVERY OTHER MAJOR STORY off the front page. You’d have the impression that the Biden story is the ONLY important story on the planet right now; nothing else matters at all.
So, true, nary a peep about immunity or reproductive rights either.
Opportunity costs are going through the roof. Trump should be getting slammed, repeatedly
The press is busy waiting with bated breath for the President’s press conference. They’re going to play “how many ways can we ask if you’re stepping down in 15 minutes?”.
And then afterwards, they’ll find all the spots where he paused to think or got confused and those’ll be the only clips from the confernece anyone plays.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/project-2025.html
July 11, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET
This factual presentation starts with it not being Trump’s directly tied agenda. It is as if Trump people are not but a quite limited part of it, and Christian Nationalism goes unmentioned.
They did better earlier:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/opinion/project-2025-trump-administration.html
A poster child compare/contrast exercise in ways to say things. These look as if from two entirely different news outlets. As if NYT fears Trump, has come to fear Trump since the Feb. 2024 item. Now, not wanting to rock his boat. Not at all. As if the Trump “I am your retribution” slogan to the MAGA base got heard by NYT. “No need for retribution against us, boss.” It is galling, but educational.
To my mind, part of this media behavior, is Timothy Snyder’s reference to this phenomenon as “obeying in advance”, #1 in his Twenty Lessons…”.
Trump is normalized and ‘oh it’s just him, why bother’? And yes it is fear based at it’s root.
Ruth ben-Ghiat on the NYT’s treatment of Biden:
https://lucid.substack.com/p/us-media-and-the-2024-election
Thank you.
She also links to the enlightening Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard University: Democracy Summit
(I won’t link to YouTube. It’s imbedded in her last paragraph.)
There’s also this really awesome study that Ruth linked to, which is worth checking out, becuase it studies the EXTREME bias the Times has shown pretty much since 2024 started:
https://css.seas.upenn.edu/new-york-times-a-case-study-in-inconsistent-narrative-selection-and-framing-that-tends-to-favor-republicans/
It’s a nice quick reminder of how this cycle works; the Times prints a bunch of articles about Biden’s age being a problem for a week or so, commissions a poll, then points to the poll results that say “people are concerned” as concrete proof they NEED to talk more about this. But they never stop to ask if the possible reason “people are concerned” is because YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT THE NEED TO BE CONCERNED.
The media reaches a lot more eyeballs than the average person, even in the social media age, but they frequently like to fall back on this pretend belief that what they say is disconnected from what people are thinking.
Add to that…I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen various MSNBC anchors asking questions of the pundit-du-jour in front of them…starting with “How afraid should we be about x, y and z”? It’s like trying to calibrate the level of alarm about a given topic by “just asking questions”. And the usual response: pundit A says “I’m very alarmed about x and y but not so much z and here’s why”. And pundit B says “I’m not nearly as concerned about x and y (as pundit A seems to be) as I am about z” etc. etc. A particular flavor of both-sides-ism on display, I guess. Maybe slightly less blatant than what CNN does these days. But still…
Seems like some smart editor would assign reporters to write a piece comparing the cognitive decline of Biden and Trmp. What are the signs that trained observers use to determine how bad the situation is for someone in their late 70s and early 80s? Who is demonstrating which of those signs and to what degree?
That would be useful information for the voting public (about 2/3rds of the eligible USAmerican population, if we’re lucky) and, just maybe, “news that’s fit to print.”
Nah, I’m only fooling myself. It probably will never happen.
Pretty sure a few psychologists have done this already (not that the NYT would metnion any of them). The universal consensus is that Biden’s slowdown is the expected result of aging, but Trump’s mental breakdowns are a sign of worsening dementia.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/dr-john-gartner-on-a-tale-of-two-brains-biden-s-brain-is-aging-trump-s-brain-is-dementing/ar-BB1iKXQ2
That’s getting tossed around quite a bit. I think its better described as the unavoidable result from decades of extreme, deliberate amoral behavior. People can only hold that “all is well” act together for so long, then in begins eating them up from the inside out.
Shamelessness, and utter unwillingness to admit and correct mistakes/wrongs are quite reliable indicators. They may come up with pills that help or correct various conditions of dementia in the future, but I doubt they’ll find pills to fix people like Trump. That’s just asking too much.
It could be, but Dr. Gartner notes a few very obvious things that suggest dementia. Here, I’ll do a quick quote:
“I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It’s a major issue that will affect some people’s votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.
What evidence do you have for that conclusion?
“Phonemic paraphasias” —the substitution of non-words for words that sound similar—are not normally seen until a patient enters the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s.
Some examples of Trump’s non-words: Beneficiaries becomes “benefishes.” Renovations become “renoversh.” Pivotal became “pivobal.” Obama became “obamna.” Missiles became “mishiz.” Christmas became “Crissus.” Bipartisan became “bipars.”
This is a fundamental breakdown in the ability to use language. If you were talking to your father on the phone and he did this you would think he is having a stroke. There is no healthy older person who speaks that way.
Trump also engages in what we call “tangential speech.” He just becomes incomprehensible when he engages in free association word salad speech that is all over the place. Again, that’s a sign of real brain damage, not being old, not being slow, not losing a step not being, but of severe cognitive deterioration. What I don’t understand is why those clips aren’t replayed over and over in the mainstream media. Isn’t Trump babbling incoherently the most newsworthy part of his rally? You can be sure it would be if it were Biden.
Biden has been excoriated for forgetting names, which can be a normal part of aging. But Trump isn’t just forgetting names, he’s forgetting and combining people. Trump believes Nikki Haley is Nancy Pelosi. He has said repeatedly that Obama is still president. He said his father was born in Germany when that was his grandfather.
There is also a person’s baseline. This is an essential tool for evaluating a person’s mental decline. If you look at Trump’s interviews and speeches from the 1980s for example, he may have always been a bit of a jerk, but he was articulate and polished. Now if you look at Trump there is great deterioration. By comparison, Biden has never been the most articulate person; he always had a stutter. He always made gaffes. But Biden has a good heart and good judgment. Over the decades we have not seen much evidence of deterioration in Biden’s speaking.”
@DarkPhoenix
I fully acknowledge everything you quoted, cited as evidence of dementia.
For the purposes of discussion on EW, maybe the distinction I make doesn’t matter. But, maybe it does.
I’m 68. About 18 years ago we brought my wife’s parents to live with us. 3 years later we brought in my parents. More the merrier!!! I had one parent who was for some years, evil. The other, close to a saint. My wife’s folks similar, but distinctions not as clear. After taking this on, wife and I suddenly had friends doing same things with their folks. We all got close, shared stories and… what “worked”, and what didn’t. This “work” took on laser focus both of us never had consciousness of prior. With our folks, doing everything to make their lives full in those years was a mission. There was wonderful, almost miraculous successes, and some hellacious “happenings” as well. I’ll just share 1 for brevity’s sake.
My wife’s father was never an alcoholic, but had many years of heavy drinking. As I was told, he was angry but never violent. During WWII, he was a B-52 navigator of distinction during bombing of Germany. Last year or 2 of the war, they made him head trainer for all the new recruits doing that same job. He was in charge, so we all believed he served well. It was hard to square with the guy they knew as Dad.
War was over, he came home. They (he and wife) opened a restaurant in midwest and did ok for 20 years. Moved to SF, he worked as bartender in the airport and his wife, a server in nearby country club restaurant.
My wife had 3 brothers, they were all close. They often talked with some pain and (hard to find word) “dislike” of their dad due to heavy drinking and quick-to-anger personality.
Fast forward to their last 2 years with us. I saw those things in him, but liked him none the less. He no longer drank, was about 82 then. A cousin of my wife sent her a letter, saying her Mom (Marie) had affairs while her husband was fighting in Germany, and that both my wife and one brother had other unknown fathers. This, after all these decades her “dad” was always there and raised my wife as his own. My wife asked her Dad if this was true (I was there), and he started to nod then just fell to his knees sobbing like a little baby. Uncontrollable. Did this for almost 45 minutes.
I was there, my wife and Dad, and 2 of my wife’s brothers. Nobody needed experts to explain any of this, it was completely clear to everyone. This old guy just cried out an entire lifetime of pain from a broken heart. And it changed everything that mattered.
He had been diagnosed with dementia twice. After this good cry, his eyes were clear and focused like an enlightened individual. My wife started her big cry, hugged him and said “I’m sorry daddy”. What she meant was he did not understand then was, she was sorry that all those years she had judged him incorrectly. Her mom never talked about it, but her dad was absolutely a wonderful guy those last 2 years. And my wife and other brother who similarly judged him fell in love with the guy. Even my dad teared up.
There were a few other episodes along the way of similar import, but this one makes my point as well as any. Things are not always what they seem. That one, for all of us, was life re-defining moment in the most wonderful of ways that I am forever grateful to be a part of. Enriched us all in ways words cannot describe, and the wonderfulness of it persisted well past all the parents passing away.
He had dementia one moment, had a really good cry, and bye bye dementia.
From what I”ve seen, some people with dementia are clearly failing. The wiring just doesn’t work anymore. AFAIK that’s the bottom line, and it’s sad and heartbreaking. There are others that are so diagnosed that have moral (or amoral) components, and people let clues slip out. There’s been plenty written about this as well. And then like this guy, and who knows how many others with “big hurts” that seemed to have no solution… without finding what drives it or anything else, they call it all dementia. I see now they have all kinds of qualifiers. I have no idea how valid that stuff is.
Like most other professions, there are really good and some really bad mental health professionals. The really bad ones, like in other professions, don’t think so. I’d hold up guy Marcy dug up who was giving Hunter Ketamine treatments as not so good. Having been through this up close, I caution people to not take mental health people as absolute authorities on anything, at least until they prove themselves. It is very incomplete science at this point in time.
Over and over again, Trump lets little hints what he’s really thinking but he’s smart enough to know he can’t say it out loud. So he makes up stuff. ALL THE TIME. “Stand back and stand proud” comes immediately to mind. In my view, its this stuff that makes him evil. He hides a lot, but hints of it come out of his mouth… often. The stuff he hides is… dark. His mental health problems are not broken “machinery”, AFAIC its self evident he has chosen darkness and hides it… covers it up with his act. Or to put it another way, the word “dementia” alone does not make these distinctions, but those distinctions make all the difference in the world.
I’m much more inclined to run with Mary Trump’s explanations, as she too is a mental health professional and has a lifetime of experience with the guy. I think she’s got the most cred. And she says a lot of what I’m saying here.
One other thing. Across almost all the mental health disciplines in both psychology and psychiatry is a common understanding that Trump’s type of pathology… eg. derived and caused by amoral choices, is progressive. It always gets worse unless fully acknowledged and corrected.
And as we’ve seen increasingly lately as he and other MAGAs come out of the closet, they intentionally and deliberately want and plan to hurt a lot of people. He’s said so now, explicitly. Women need to be punished for abortions. Liz Cheney for Treason. On and on. Its just evil.
The progression of his evil intent is pretty self-evident. Observable.
What troubles me more than knowing who/what this guy is, is that +/- 1/2 the voting public right now supports him. In a healthier society, Trump would be a poster child for what kind of an ass hole a person can be when taking the low road for a lifetime. It shouldn’t need to be explained to a public. But a lot of people not just support him, but share his grievance and hear/see no evil and double down. That’s what I have no idea how to fight. Even if Biden wins, this is not going to go away.
I let this comment through but I need you to tighten up your composition and narrow your focus because at +1200 words this comment is *extremely* overlong.
@Rayne
Thanks for letting it through, and thx for comment.
You are right.
Community members: I want to point out that we have had a recent influx of new commenters or commenters who have infrequently commented — generally folks with under 25 comments here to date.
There’s a trend among them which is to vent or complain about Biden’s candidacy, no matter the topic of the post. Some of these brand new commenters have not been cleared to publish because they’re sockpuppeting to try and get onto the site. The consistency is concerning; it may be a form of DDoS intended to derail other discussions and influence opinion at the same time.
If folks are ignoring the topic in order to vent or complain about Biden’s candidacy, I’m asking you not to respond to them should they make it onto the page.
Above all, stay on topic of the post unless the post clearly indicates it’s an open thread. Thanks.
Apt comment. I’ve noticed that, too, within the past week.
Thank you for the reminder, the lens for future comments/replies, and your diligence.
I apologize for all exacerbation on my part.
After reading Dr Wheeler’s analysis, following one good night of sleep in a long time, and perusing other sites for the Biden-too-old-to-run-and-serve dribble which seems to be petering out, the NYT Editorial, in ominous Black with white print, was just what I would expect from that pontificating Publication. The publication of such a visually-dramatically presented editorial after all the days of contra-editorializing in articles about Biden’s age, etc., was the newspaper editors/owners/? weak attempt to stem the flow of cancellations of subscriptions, while trying to maintain a posture of “fairness.” The reportage of the past week was not “fair and balanced.” It was a hit job by the rich who don’t want to pay their fair share.
As an old lady, I have witnessed the erosion of ethics and honesty over my lifetime (conceived on the cusp of World War, childhood under Roosevelt and Truman, Atom bombs, adolescence under Eisenhower, the Army-McCarthy Hearings, Martin Luther King’s marches, Kennedy, who was assassinated on on the day before my wedding, The Pill, Viet Nam, and all the social and political fallout, Nixon (especially Nixon) desecrating the dignity of the Office of President, the bromide of Gerald Ford, the Trilateral Commission, Jimmy Carter, Regan (the Hollywood star), who ushered in the Media-friendly image vapid benign behavior, George H.W. Bush and the New World Order, Clinton’s penis, and all the rest, which is so recent in time, most will know of), there has been a decline, visible to anyone with a brain and memory, of the qualifications and expectations for the Presidency.
Regan showed we could elect image over substance. Trump is just the extreme of that idea carried to its most horrible conclusion: TV flattens thought; lulls people into mental stupor, and provides the Orwellian means to manipulate people into buying things to fill up the spiritual vacuum which is left. The Internet, bots, and AI have perfected that so well, that the “New World Order” people (formerly, the Tri-Lateral Commission gang), i.e., the extreme wealthy, have decided that it is time, now, to abolish democratic government.
Well, that’s my ancient mind’s view of where we came from and where we are headed.
I’m not too excited with positive enthusiasm that the NYT has “seen the light and is repenting.” But, I am hopeful that, as the pendulum of righteousness sways, back and forth,
it will sway in favor of Biden and the Democrats. In order to do that, the willy-livered leaders of the Democratic Party need to create ads, print labels, extolling the things Biden helped make possible with a Democratic-led Congress. Anything less than that is a capitulation without a fight.
Mara Gay, who works for both NYT and MSNBC as a consultant, swears up and down, when asked directly if this editorial was a reflexive response to complaints about their constant Biden-bashing of the last 2 weeks, that this editorial has been worked on for months, and was started before the debate debacle happened. Hmmmm….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSpo-999CkQ&t
She herself engaged in Biden-bashing yesterday on Deadline White House.
Well, apparently the NYT has the luxury of holding “never Trump” and “never Biden” positions simultaneously.
Good one, especially this line of yours:
“Regan (the Hollywood star), who ushered in the Media-friendly image vapid benign behavior,”
Nancy and Ronald Reagan and Michael Deaver first introduced to the presidency the practice that a president could treat and use the press/media like the Hollywood studio heads did in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, i.e., rewarding loyal press/media writers and talking heads with exclusive scoop and gossip stories aimed to help the president to the detriment of the president’s political opponents.
Roy Cohen and David Pecker, not Nancy and Ronald Reagan, taught Trump the tricks of this specific trade and practice.
And Roy Cohen, Lewis Rosentiel and Meyer Lansky taught J. Edgar Hoover the tricks and practices of this trade, too, during the 50s and 60s.
By the 1950s, Jedgar Hoover was a post-graduate student in such things. As you say, the 50s and 60s were his heyday, but his tutelage began earlier. His tutors included Roy Cohn, Cardinal Spellman, top mobsters, and Texas politicians and oilmen.
He wielded immense power during the McCarthy era and for a decade and a half afterwards. He enjoyed long, uninterrupted vacations in La Jolla with Clyde Tolson, all expenses paid, and betting at the nearby Del Mar racetrack. He always won.
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2002/jul/18/unfrogettable-del-charro/
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/jan/05/cover-oil-politics-la-jolla/
I agree.
He was a very, very dangerous person who had enormous power.
I am slightly younger than you and endorse much of what you say.
But I take a somewhat different long-term view, inspired by the joke that ‘condo politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.’
Before you and I were born, there were some deep political disputes: slavery, woman suffrage, imperialism, rights of labor, Jim Crow, paper money, food safety.
Most of those were settled so definitively that I will bet that not one American in a thousand knows there was ever a national issue over the existence of paper money.
The ones that have not yet been resolved, like labor rights and Jim Crow, have been changed out of recognition.
Until the appearance of trump, I had often said that the reason our politics was so splintered was that there were no big issues left to concentrate on. Now there is — fascism — but for reasons I cannot easily explain, we are not concentrating on it.
Women thought they had bodily autonomy for 60 years too. Gay people know what maybe others didn’t. The fight can never stop.
Great prose…march of history…five steps forward..three steps back
Does the NYT et al have any concept of what will happen to press freedom should Trump get re-elected?
Have they heard him utter the phrase “Enemy of the people”?
Do they have any concept of what Trump will do now that he has immunity and a direct pipeline to the DoJ to fabricate crimes against perceived opponents?
Do they think they will be immune to Trump’s grievance and revenge?
One would think a sense of self preservation would kick in.
Oligarchs like Dash Sulzberger tend not to care about such things. They are already on top. They assume it’s their rightful place – mistakenly, because they deserve it rather than because they won the birth lottery – and that they, like the ancien regime, will always be on top.
People will be surprised at how power does not protect them from an autocrat’s whims. Ask anyone who has worked for Trump in the decade who has been thrown under the bus, ask any Republican politician who has not bent the knee.
This also applies to SC justices. Why they think they can control Trump is beyond me. One thing they have going I suppose is Trump’s lack of any core beliefs, which is a double edged sword at best, he may not care about anything allowing room to maneuver, but he does not care about anything so who knows where the minefields lay and you will end up beholden to him in unexpected ways.
They’re still pretending like this is a regular election and the results of the Republicans winning will be the regular tax cuts and deregulation (CEO of CNN’s parent company even said that the results were irrelevant; all that mattered to him was media deregulation and the Republicans are the party for that).
Trump talks economics like 10% of the time and that is tariffs, immigration monster coming for you, and I guess tax breaks. The balance of what he talks about is setting up a dictatorship in one way or another. How the powerful can be blind to that is beyond me. I suppose if you are rich, you will benefit, but the assault on freedoms, suppression of protests through violence, destroying independent news, attacks on minorities, corrupt use of the DoJ are the concepts that consume Trump’s black soul
I think they figure Trump 2 will be like Trump 1, where people will keep him undere control and with the exception of the ignoramus shooting his mouth off and giving them something to cover in the news that day, it’ll mostly be a bog-standard Repubulican administration. They’re flat out ignoring the many, many signs that this isn’t going to be anything like a normal administration; this is going to be the fall of democracy.
Perhaps there is a failure of imagination or ignorance of historical dictatorships on their part.
I watched an interview with Congresswoman Lofgren last week on Deadline White House on MSNBC. Nicole Wallace asked her if she had concerns for her personal safety if Trump becomes President. She said, no, because she has protections as a Member of Congress. Why would that stop Trump?
Same with business leaders – you either are Trump’s friend or his enemy and you don’t want to be an enemy. So, when he asks you to jump, your only response better be “How high?”. And just be prepared to jump even higher next time. And, unfortunately, because Trump is deranged, friendship today can changed to hatred tomorrow without rhyme or reason.
Dark Phoenix, a second Trump term will look NOTHING like his first term. ALL of the guardrails that kept him in check-traditional republicans, normal republicans, the administrative state, the DoJ, even normal Congressmen, the military higher ups, the courts, even his own ignorance and incompetence, are ALL radically different. He will march in with an army of competent devoted fanatic radicals and there will be little in his way. Even a Dem controlled congress will have little sway as he is already touting his “authority” to mess with spending (Impoundment)-gee will that be used to punish blue states?
Yep, but the media don’t see that. They only see the money they think they can earn if Trump gets back in and they can run another daily “Look at what stupid thing Trump did today” feature…
When Trump was POTUS, he couldn’t handle the Daily Briefing at the level that it had been composed/presented in the past for a POTUS. So they “Dumbed It Down” for him.
Based on the current chatter about
* Sharks
* Electric Boats
* Hannibal Lecter
* Etc
Trump has made no progression since 2017 and apparently has slipped some more. So if he gets back to the WH, I would expect the Daily Briefing to be “Dumbed Down” again. So much finger pointing at Biden while not enough is being said about Pudding Head Trump.
“It is a national tragedy that the Republicans have failed to have a similar debate” sets up a staggering false equivalence. The question about Biden is whether he has the capacity to lead. A legitimate organization can have a debate about that question.
The issue with Trump is not that he lies sometimes or has weak morals. As they state more clearly when putting the burden on voters, he is a criminal and a danger to democracy.
A legitimate political party would not have a measured debate about whether to be led by a criminal who seeks to undermine our form of government. A party that chooses to be led by a criminal is a criminal organization. Those in the party supporting Trump seek to gain from his criminality. Those who tut tut occasionally about his style or are eager to speak off the record about how uncomfortable they are with Trump are complicit.
If the NYT had actual standards rather than seeking some mirage of balance, yes, they could encourage a debate among Democrats about Biden’s capacity. But they would have to also point out that the entire GOP, even more than Trump by himself, is responsible for the threat to democracy as long as he is their leader.
“The issue with Trump is not that he lies sometimes or has weak morals.”
I take issue with this. He lies most of the time and is amoral.
If you consider the whole sentence, it’s fine, though I would say both concerns are true and equally important.
You could say, and people did, that Bill Clinton was immoral, a liar, and temperamentally unfit to be POTUS. Trump is in a different category, obviously. The key point is that the danger to democracy he poses, responsibility for which the NYT lays at the feet of voters, is exactly what the GOP wants him to deliver.
They’re not circling the wagons to protect a flawed candidate (tragically). They want him to lead the charge against their enemies.
It’s not just their own agency they’re hiding.
When George HW Bush won in 1988, one of the Republicans declared that the future of the US was permanent Republican rule (part of the reason they hated Bill Clinton is that he shattered this bullshit claim). They circle the wagons around Trump because they’re hoping he’s the instrument they can use to finally complete the permanent Republican rule they’ve believed since the 80’s should be theirs because they are smarter than the average Joe.
Sen. Michael Bennet’s younger brother, James Bennet, was the editorial page editor of the New York Times from May, 2016 until he was forced to resign in June, 2020.
After two weeks of carpet-bombing Biden, the Times puts up an editorial denouncing Trump. It’s as if the ref gave Joe Louis a smack on the head while counting out Max Schmeling.
I don’t know how many people know this, but there’s an entry in the Boxing Hall of Shame where a ref did EXACTLY this. Both boxers landed a shot to the other’s jaw at the same time and they both went down. The ref stood there confused for a few seconds, and then picked up the champion with one arm and counted out the challenger with the other. By amazing coincidence, the ref and the champion were good friends.
I expect anyone looking forward to the party conventions is in for surprising coverage more pronounced than presently packaged. My earlier expecting Biden would be wedged out, it looks as if he has delegates and funding and is determined to stay. How a convention setting that in stone may alter NYT and derivative post-convention coverage seems guesswork. Things could get better, once the Biden push fails. The mood seems to be locked that the situation is unprecedented. Republicans 100% on the team or pushed aside, (How much reporting of Mike Pence is happening now? As much as for Liz Cheney.) Dems possibly are open to speculation which sells NYT online clicks. Less so with Trump-world. Then the algorithms, the analytics constructed by on payroll data wonks, suggest people WANT more of the same, so provide it, Biden on the rocks yet two different ways not thought of before. Things seem driven by anything but common sense about how to discern and report news. Then on topic, what is the current NYT experiment? To do a modest trial balloon on Trump; see how clicks go? Things will likely get worse when more NYT people are let go and AI writes the coverage, runs the analytics, and modifies accordingly. Looping blindly but generating output. Cash must be flowing, or you’d expect changes. Or management deluded by being too trusting of technology and too slow to wake up.
As a follow-up to a recent comment suggesting misunderstanding limits of technology and trusting it too much vs. human judgment, I asked the Microsoft bot: “I need help via summarization. A half-year old NYTimes item, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/opinion/project-2025-trump-administration.html – seems interesting but is way, way too long, so could you please capture the gist in summary paragraphs, six or fewer.”
The bot did it in two paragraphs. Marcy would show real anger if I quoted, so suffice it to say “shallow” would be too complimentary. (I think the summary was highly weighted to the first few paragrauhs, and the bot added if I needed more I could read the original.) Microsoft sunk $13 billion into its OpenAI arrangements and has pushed chipmakers to incorporate more specialized hardware into next generation product so that Microsoft’s Copilot can be promoted. Bad thinking, sunk costs misdirecting tomorrow, but suppose proofreading at NYT moves to a reporter’s draft being fed to a bot by a supervisor, and then the output handed back to the human with the comment, “Why can’t you write like that?” Another quit, no need to fire.
Keith Starmer apparently hasn’t drunk the NYT kool aid:
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cxw2k33l89do
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
The Constitution and its amendments provide a solution. Re-elect Joe Biden. Biden later resigns. Ms. Harris becomes President and forms a national union ticket by nominating a conservative as VP, probably another female person. Not exactly my preference. I’d prefer a former Congressman from Texas, but these are tough times,
No conservatives on a Dem ticket, please!
And TX isn’t “conservative”, it’s fascist.
Is this an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton contest?
As a serious suggestion, it fails outright, if Democrats don’t control majorities in both houses of Congress, which would be required to name a new VP to replace Harris. It also fails to contemplate that Trump’s GOP is not Ike’s or Nixon’s GOP. Trump would veto any vote or other move that makes government work. He’s done it already.
Let’s assume the first two steps are the re-election of President Biden and his serving long enough to be satisfied that the job is complete. We can speculate on what he means by that, and consider alternative Congressional majorities.
“Control guns, not girls!” – President Biden 7/11/24
Yah, that was a good one. I thought Joe was… excellent. A little slow, but sharp. Very, very reassuring.
Anyone who can argue THAT was the performance of a man in serious mental decline is either a troll or is trying to sell something.
They’ll be hawking the idea that Biden is unfit to be president, but somehow Trump is.
That constitutes trolling WHILE selling something in my book.
Apparently, the media plan is to cut a 50 minute press conference to a two second gaffe partway through.
Even though it’s a standard gaffe that most humans make while speaking, they’re going to make sure the only thing people here is “Vice President Trump”.
And that asshole reporter shouting “Trump says!” at the end? Fuck you too, asshole.
But sharks threaten to electrocute us all!
I would bet twenty bucks that “Ladies and Gentlemen – President Putin” gets repeated five times more than the line Harpie quotes. Despite the former being an obvious impossibility and the latter being a clear stance on two important issues representing in one sentence a more coherent platform than the TFG has demonstrated in months.
Buried lede in Guardian
“Biden spoke for 58 minutes, including 50 minutes of unscripted question-and-answer. He appeared most comfortable and cogent as he discussed thorny foreign policy questions”
@ paragraph 17 (sigh)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/12/joe-biden-press-conference-today-election-nato-putin-harris-trump
The irrepressible Digby highlights this LA Times editorial that is a must read:
That’s just for starters. But, the NYT might ask, what about Joe’s occasional stutter and that he’s three years older than Trump the Fascist?
https://digbysblog.net/2024/07/11/oh-look-a-grown-up-editorial/
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-07-11/la-trump-unfit-for-office-biden-election
Replying to earlofhuntingdon
July 11, 2024 at 10:36 pm
Indeed.
And the lede on that LA Times Editorial Board piece:
“Editorial: One candidate is patently unfit for the White House. It’s not Biden”
Mary McNamara’s piece regarding George Clooney’s letter was hilarious and apt.
the NYTimes works for the uncouth billionaire class, which includes the convicted Felon, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo and Putin’s pet oligarchs. nuff said.