The New York Times - They're even more evil now

drummerboy said:

Don't mean to get picky, but this is not the best way to report this. The lie leads, and the truth is secondary.

The Truth Sandwich is better, though I'll admit it's a bit hard to do in this case. Not impossible though. 

 I think in this case you are being picky.  The lie is called out immediately after describing what the GOP is trying to do. 

Shared by an old friend last night.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/new-york-times-style-guide-substitutions-for-the-president-lied

Thanks for that link!

My favorites:

“The president once again found himself galloping ahead of reality’s leisurely pace.”

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and the president? The president took the one less truthful.”

“Mrs. Clinton lied. The president followed suit.”

DaveSchmidt said:

Shared by an old friend last night.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/new-york-times-style-guide-substitutions-for-the-president-lied

 that was pretty good

DaveSchmidt said:

Shared by an old friend last night.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/new-york-times-style-guide-substitutions-for-the-president-lied

The one about quantum theory is funny

I'll outsource this one:

https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-new-york-times-takes-republican-bad.html

THE NEW YORK TIMES TAKES REPUBLICAN BAD FAITH AND MAGICAL THINKING SERIOUSLY (AGAIN)

Headline in The New York Times:

Trump Suggests Virus Death Count Is Inflated. Most Experts Doubt It

So

there are experts who think Trump may be right? The story doesn't find any. Nevertheless, Republican bad-faith arguments and Trumpian magical are given the benefit of the doubt.

The Times subhead is:

Senior White House and health officials have sought new ways to find the extent of infections and deaths, questioning whether official counts are inflating the toll of the virus.

This makes the pursuit of alternative facts seem like a legitimate exercise in truth-seeking. It isn't. It's  clearly an exercise in persuading the public that the epidemic is not as bad as it's made out to be, as well as an exercise in mollifying our infantile president, who throws temper  tantrums when there's bad news for which he can be blamed.

The story tells us:

President Trump, eager to reopen the economy, has begun questioning the official coronavirus death toll, suggesting the numbers, which have hobbled his approval ratings and harmed his re-election prospects, are inflated.

In coronavirus task force and other White House meetings, conversations with health officials have returned to similar suspicions: that the data compiled by state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include people who have died with the coronavirus but of other conditions. The numbers, some say, include too many “presumed” cases of Covid-19 and too many Americans who were never tested for the disease.

So are there knowledgeable people

who agree with the White House, or even suspect that the White House may

be right? The authors of the story (Noah Weiland, Maggie Haberman, and

Abby Goodnough) didn't find any.

Most statisticians and public health experts say [Trump] is wrong; the death toll is probably far higher than what is publicly known. People are dying at their houses and nursing homes without ever being tested, and deaths early this year were likely misidentified as influenza or described only as pneumonia.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told lawmakers this month that the overall toll was likely an undercount. “I don’t know exactly what percent higher but almost certainly it is higher,” he said at a Senate health committee hearing.

Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is closely tracking the coronavirus pandemic, said that “the officially reported numbers don’t reflect the true level of illness and death that have occurred.”

“We very much feel the reported numbers reflect an undercount,” she said....

Robert Anderson, who runs the mortality statistics branch of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, said the federal government deployed two parallel, related systems to tally deaths, one based on case reports and one on death certificates. He said it was unlikely that there was any kind of overcount.

“The case reporting system asks: Did the patient die from this illness?” he said. “It’s not asking if the patient with Covid-19 died. It’s asking if they died from Covid-19.” ...

At least one senior White House official has mentioned that hospitals could be inflating their coronavirus patient counts, responding to financial incentives — Medicare offers higher payments to providers for treating coronavirus patients. Several senior officials said they were unaware of such talk.

An official with the American Hospital Association disputed that idea.

“There’s guidance around what you have to do, and the clinician has to say, ‘This is the diagnosis,’” said Nancy Foster, the association’s vice president for quality and patient safety policy. “They’re putting their professional reputation on the line to say that.” ...

Epidemiologists are also rethinking their tabulations, but not in ways the White House would like. They have increasingly compared recent totals of deaths from all causes, which provide a more complete picture of the pandemic’s impact than tracking only deaths of people with confirmed diagnoses. Fatalities in the gap between the observed and normal numbers of deaths are called “excess deaths.” A study of mortality statistics in New York City showed more than 24,000 excess deaths from March 11 to May 2....

Trying to separate the cause of death in coronavirus-infected patients is “ludicrous,” said Dr. Alicia Skarimbas, a physician in Bergen County, N.J., who has treated around 75 Covid-19 patients.

“I have yet to have anyone infected with Covid die from anything else,” she said.

It  sure sounds as if everyone with specialized knowledge relevant to this subject agrees that the counting has been done in good faith and has, if  anything, missed many COVID-19 deaths. But we're assured by Weiland et  al. that the White House pusuit of lower numbers is both sincere and worthwhile.

Inside the White House, doubts about the official numbers are pervasive, though they come in different forms. Mr. Trump is in search of good news to promote his administration’s response to the pandemic and to press states to reopen. Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, is a numbers obsessive and wants her own data to supplement information coming in from the states and the C.D.C. One official has even accused hospitals of potentially exaggerating their coronavirus patient counts to milk money from Medicare.

Top White House officials have even discussed appointing a “forensic” team to audit how some hospital systems and state health departments have been tallying infections and deaths, according to one senior administration official....

Dr. Birx ... has said publicly that the American health care system incorporates a generous definition of a death caused by Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

“In this country we’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality,” Dr. Birx said at a White House news conference last month. “There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the I.C.U., and then have a heart or kidney problem — some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a Covid-19 death.” ...

Dr. Birx was caught off guard in April when states began incorporating both confirmed and “probable” cases and deaths, senior administration officials said, a change that encouraged a deeper suspicion among those who have doubted the overall mortality figures.

But

if these arguments are all refuted by knowledgeable people -- see above  -- then why present this as a White House exercise in truth-seeking? Why not identify it as what it is -- an effort to cook the books, and to  distract from the strong evidence of an undercount by insisting there's  an overcount?

But mainstream media reporters have been letting Republicans get away with bad-faith exercises like this for years now.

drummerboy said:

I'll outsource this one:

https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-new-york-times-takes-republican-bad.html

THE NEW YORK TIMES TAKES REPUBLICAN BAD FAITH AND MAGICAL THINKING SERIOUSLY (AGAIN)

Headline in The New York Times:

Trump Suggests Virus Death Count Is Inflated. Most Experts Doubt It

Should have said:

"Trump Suggests Virus Death Count Is Inflated. The Opposite IS True"

or

"Trump Suggests Virus Death Count Is Inflated. As Usual He's Full OF ****"

or

"Trump Lies About Virus Death Count"

or simply

"Virus Death Count Likely Higher Than Reported"  With that headline the story could contain one sentence about what Trump said.

STANV said:

or simply

"Virus Death Count Likely Higher Than Reported" 

U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Is Far Higher Than Reported, C.D.C. Data Suggests

DaveSchmidt said:

STANV said:

or simply

"Virus Death Count Likely Higher Than Reported" 

U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Is Far Higher Than Reported, C.D.C. Data Suggests

 I guess you think that balances it out.

It doesn't.

drummerboy said:

 I guess you think that balances it out.

No, I thought it was funny. 

I am of the opinion that the media should pay less attention to what Trump says or does. The whole world already knows what he is already, so that is not newsworthy anymore. And he deliberately tries to divert attention from what is really important, and we should not let that happen. What is really important is how we fight this pandemic, testing, how we get back to our life in a responsible way, how we plan for the second wave in the fall, etc. We should be paying attention to doctors and scientists and competent governments such as our states and governors, and the WHO, and Europe, etc.

But IF they need to cover him, they should just say "Trump lied again". Period.

was it really necessary to give Tom Cotton an op-ed?

Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops 

The nation must restore order. The military stands ready.

Op-eds are a tougher call than what they do in straight reporting. On the one hand, it's not unimportant to know that one of our nation's leaders is basically a fascist. OTOH, presenting the op-ed by itself, with no counterpoint, tends to give it a credence that it doesn't deserve. For more extreme commentary, which Cotton's clearly is, it would be useful to provide an opposing viewpoint on the same day. 

Presenting it the way the Times currently does is bad, I think.

James Bennet, op-ed editor, explains his decision

I want to explain why we published the piece today by Senator Tom Cotton. https://t.co/GvWwf7i0Wu

— James Bennet (@JBennet) June 3, 2020

drummerboy said:

Op-eds are a tougher call than what they do in straight reporting. On the one hand, it's not unimportant to know that one of our nation's leaders is basically a fascist. OTOH, presenting the op-ed by itself, with no counterpoint, tends to give it a credence that it doesn't deserve. For more extreme commentary, which Cotton's clearly is, it would be useful to provide an opposing viewpoint on the same day. 

Presenting it the way the Times currently does is bad, I think.

 it's really extreme.  Are we now allowed to make the Nazi comparisons without it Godwining the discussion?

I read the article. There was also a Letter to the Editor not only criticizing it but criticizing the Times for publishing it.

Several Times reporters are objecting publicly to the Times running the piece.

I'll admit I don't know the NYT standards for op-eds, especially those submitted by people who aren't on staff.  But I read at least three questionable statements that don't have any substantiation as far as I know, as well as what I would consider a racist description of the 1992 LA riots as "race riots."  Are any of these statements remotely close to the truth?

• "Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants." (his evidence is that on CNN, Chris Cuomo said "Please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful."  Anyone can see that's not excusing murder or looting. The link for "radical chic" is from the June 8, 1970 issue of New York Magazine.)
• "On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes." (AFAIK, there is no evidence for this, although it hasn't stopped it from becoming a right wing talking point.  Cotton's "evidence" such as it is, comes from a statement by Attorney General Barr making such a claim with no evidence).
• "This venerable law, nearly as old as our republic itself, doesn’t amount to 'martial law' or the end of democracy, as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have comically suggested." (Who is suggesting it would be the end of democracy?  Cotton doesn't say.)

Should these statements pass muster with an editor, even in an op-ed submission?  I'd say no, but I'll admit I have no idea whether letting this kind of thing pass is SOP at major newspapers.

and I'll add that the NYT appears to have sunk Cotton's article on their website as far as I can tell.  It wasn't that easy to find, considering I think it was posted last night.

When I edited the national academic journals for a couple of professions, and their associated newspapers, I also edited the guest editorials each month. I can tell you that, no matter how prestigious and learned the masthead nor how respected the writer, that last bullet point wouldn’t be printed without a heck of a lot of fact-checking and rewriting. (Having read several other writers on this point in the last couple of days, I’d really want to see this writer’s research carefully laid out. I don’t buy the reasoning at all at this stage.)

ml1 said:

I'd say no, but I'll admit I have no idea whether letting this kind of thing pass is SOP at major newspapers.

Twenty or so years ago, I had some back-and-forths with the Pulitzer-winning chief of an editorial page. When copy-editing op-eds, I’d challenge inaccuracies, missing context and other misleading liberties. He’d usually make changes, but would argue that — flat-out errors aside — the art of opinion writing allowed for more leeway than I was willing to grant.

The SOP depends on the editor in charge.

DaveSchmidt said:

Twenty or so years ago, I had some back-and-forths with the Pulitzer-winning chief of an editorial page. When copy-editing op-eds, I’d challenge inaccuracies, missing context and other misleading liberties. He’d usually make changes, but would argue that — flat-out errors aside — the art of opinion writing allowed for more leeway than I was willing to grant.

The SOP depends on the editor in charge.

 I figured this was the explanation.  But I am surprised the antifa accusation made it through, given NYT itself had an article earlier in the week that contained this:

Antifa Misinformation

The unsubstantiated theory that antifa activists are responsible for the riots and looting was the biggest piece of protest misinformation tracked by Zignal Labs, which looked at certain categories of falsehoods. Of 873,000 pieces of misinformation linked to the protests, 575,800 were mentions of antifa, Zignal Labs said.

Misinformation About George Floyd Protests Surges on Social Media

ml1 said:

and I'll add that the NYT appears to have sunk Cotton's article on their website as far as I can tell.  It wasn't that easy to find, considering I think it was posted last night.

 It's not in this morning's print edition. There is a long editorial in the print edition, however:

In America, Protest Is Patriotic

The only justification I can see for running Tom Cotton's piece is if the NY Times decided they were doing the equivalent of giving him the gasoline, the matches, and a cleared space for him to light himself on fire in public.

If they do run it in print, I hope it is with a disclaimer, a fact check, and an informed counter-point.

[Edited to add] 

“Tom Cotton” sounds like the name of a bigoted Southern Senator in a dark satire about race. Hold up...

— jelani cobb (@jelani9) June 4, 2020

ml1 said: 

But I am surprised the antifa accusation made it through, given NYT itself had an article earlier in the week that contained this:

You aren’t the only one. 

DaveSchmidt said:

You aren’t the only one. 

 It's probably tough as an editor to know that if you change one word, a Republican senator is certain to whine immediately and incessantly that he was "censored" by the liberal/fake/biased media.

ml1 said:

It's probably tough as an editor to know that if you change one word, a Republican senator is certain to whine immediately and incessantly that he was "censored" by the liberal/fake/biased media.

Not really. Tougher are the ceaseless news cycle and the internet’s thirst for new material, which have significantly hastened the time to make decisions and present nearly infinite opportunities for a regrettable one.

DaveSchmidt said:

Not really. Tougher are the ceaseless news cycle and the internet’s thirst for new material, which have significantly hastened the time to make decisions and present nearly infinite opportunities for a regrettable one.

 I think Tom Cotton would be willing to wait, if the NY Times didn't get back to him right away with an "Okay" to run his piece without further editing.  And if he didn't, then it would have been in some other outlet(s) - and the NY Times' argument is that differing points of view need outlets.  Senator Cotton didn't need the NY Times to get his viewpoint out, but he *wanted* to be in the NY Times if he could.

When people react to a Governor's Orders concerning a Health Crises by invading a Government Building armed to the teeth with all sorts of Military-Style weapons that looks like "insurrection" to me. And someone tweeting "Liberate Michigan" is certainly evidence of insurrection.

When people loot stores and vandalize property that's just crime.