NY Times Tries to Untangle Analysts and Shills

twitter writes "The Register and others are examining a New York Times effort to eliminate bias from technology reporting by not echoing paid opinions. (Other coverage here.) They target Microsoft specifically. InfoWorld has an insightful summary of the two sides of this old debate. Fake think tanks, dubious sponsored research, and Astroturf are not considered but should be. Companies using these tactics deserve to be held at arm's length, but that's hard to do when the company is also a monopoly able to make or break any 'expert.' It would be refreshing to see the New York Times discover the FSF, opensource.org, EFF, and other sources of computing expertise."

Comments

EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Frosty Piss]

It would be refreshing to see the New York Times discover the FSF, opensource.org, EFF, and other sources of computing expertise.

Why? Aren't they biased, too? Maybe not in Microsoft or Oracle's pocket, but they have a definite point of view that should be taken into account as well.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[jcknox]

Complete lack of bias is nearly impossible to find, and that is not entirely the point. There are a couple of differentiators between organizations like the FSF and the other organizations in question:

1. They are not being paid to have the bias they have
2. They are not claiming to be an unbiased, independent third party

The problem with fake think tanks, astroturfers, etc. is that they are pretending to be an objective source when in reality they are being compensated to have the opinion that they do.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Malenfrant]

Everybody has a bias, because everybody has an opinion. What this article is about is reports which are not the writer's opinion, but poorly disguised adverts paid for by companies. When EFF and FSF write reports and articles, every reader knows where they come from, and can take that into account when judging them. Reports that claim to be from a newspaper or journalist but are instead payed for by someone are a different matter.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Qzukk]

Why? Aren't they biased, too?

It's the new Political Math brought to you by Fox News. If you take a raving lunatic from one side of an issue, and a raving lunatic from the other side of an issue, then you get two raving lun... err, I mean you get fair and balanced news!

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Petrushka]

By that argument, creationism should be taught in schools.

Yes, I know it's easy to modify your quotation to make it more nuanced and more sensible. All that means is that "enough said" often isn't enough after all.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[whereiswaldo]

Is this not censorship? I hate seeing the dodgy M$ "fact" campaigns like most of you, but I don't know if shutting them out is the answer. A balanced view of the major players in the market along with the positive and negative of each would be very informative and fair. A powerful way to present the data would be in simple tables:

Vendors supporting DRM
----------------------
Company 1
Company 2

Vendors against DRM
-------------------
Organization 1

Pluses of DRM
-------------
* [Company1] ....

Negatives of DRM
----------------
* [Company1] ...

Presenting in this form would help prevent the nonsense answers that someone like Steve Balmer seems to dole out. "Uh, sir, we need a checkmark for yes or no in this box. What can I put down for you?". You could boil down interviews to answering a non-anonymous multiple-choice questionnaire with comments at the end. I know most or all of this has been done by certain magazines on certain occasions, but as a standard I think it would work well.

Determining who are the major players would require some thought as well. I notice that companies under the top 3 often get overlooked in magazine reviews: it's as if they don't exist. However, their competing features can be just as good.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[tbannist]

Sometimes a little censorship is a good thing.

Companies hire these shillers to get quotes into newspapers and television, the only possible way to deal with them is to not quote them, anything else is giving them what they want. Because you see each citation of a shill, gets added to the shill's resume so that he can get even more citations. That's how crazy people like Jack Thompson get publicity. He starts by showing how many times he's been cited in the past to show his credibility.

Given those facts, it's entirely right that all news media identify and systematically ignore these people. An opinion that is bought and paid for is less than worthless to any news media. They're parasites who consume the credibility of whatever they're quoted in for the benefit of their masters.

Bah, reporters trying just to avoid responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Are you saying that nobody qualifies as a computer expert without Microsoft's permission, and they'll revoke your expert status if you don't say nice things about them? And the NY Times should be looking at badvista.org for a more balanced perspective?

If the problem of technology reporting is that reporters don't know a damn thing and just repeat the words of marketing folks, the solution simple: Hire reporters who actually have a technological background. Is that so hard?

Garbage.

[Skadet]

What a piece of utter drivel.

Secondly, the flimsy policy prohibits reporters from querying those analysts that would seem to know their subjects best. In a story about Microsoft, a reporter should apparently quote an analyst who covers LSI Logic or orange juice makers, not one who covers Microsoft.

That's known as a false dichotomy. It isn't as if the only choices for sources are 1) people taking money from Microsoft or 2) completely unrelated analysts.

A better policy might insist that the Times disclose the ties between an analyst and a vendor, leaving the reader to make the credibility judgement.

Shouldn't the reader be making this analysis anyway, no matter who the source? I mean, if we don't even trust our own President on his word alone (as we shouldn't), why in the world would we trust a newspaper implicitly?

Good for the Times, I say. It's a move in the right direction. You know all those movie posters that quote "reviewers" and give trash movies "four thumbs WAY up!!!1"? Remember when it was exposed that they were shills?

RS upfront in ideology

[rjdegraaf]

Especially considering Richard Stallman's FSF. Such organizations are even more biased as they're based on ideological reasons just as much as technical.

Nonetheless, Richard Stallman and the like are upfront/open on their (ideological) reasoning, therefor transparent, which make them very good experts.

Extend beyond just 'tech'

[spoco2]

My god I'm sick of 'news' articles in our local media which are nothing more than thinly veiled adverts for companies and services.

In Melbourne, Australia we have a free daily 'newspaper' called the MX which is provided at train stations. It is created by the news outlet that creates the largest circulation paid for newspaper in the city (the Herald Sun) and shares a large amount of its content.

Every single issue there are at least 4 or 5 'articles' about 'surveys' or 'studies' which have discovered some new and exciting 'fact' about our populous. They headline and lead into these articles speaking as if the results are fact ('Australian workers love working longer hours', 'Women want more pampering'), and it's not until you read into the article that you find 'according to a web survey of 300 by recruitment company X', or 'says a study done by cosmetics firm Y'.

And people read the guff as fact, and reiterate it over and over.

And the number of ridiculous celebrity pieces of trivial shite that is reported that just so happens to be about some star of a movie that just so happens to be coming out next week...

These two types of 'news' really do account for about 50-60% of the content of this rag.

And the big brother of the MX, the Herald Sun... yeah, not so much better.

Sigh... will teach me for being a cheap bastard and not buying a real newspaper I suppose.

Re:Everyone is biased

[DECS]

Bias is opinion. Opinions are useful if you are aware they are opinion and can "consider the source."

Many news sources have an obvious political leaning, but the fact that their bias is obvious means that their bias can openly be considered when evaluating what that source is saying.

Anyone reading my stuff is also aware that I similarly have strong personal views on technology. Bias is only deceptive when it is hidden. The Wall Street Journal doesn't pretend to be liberal, and the NY Times doesn't pretend to be conservative. I enjoy reading both, because both offer viewpoints and interesting information without pretending to be something they are not.

Hidden bias is used by writers such as Paul Thurrott - he suggests he really likes Apple stuff, only to spin everything he says in a deceptive and negative way.

Microsoft is behind a huge wave of fraud marketing, and has a history of these tactics, from its attack on Linux and its affiliation with SCO, to its regular FUD comments against Apple - including Ballmer's suggestion that the company is not interested in selling Windows for Macs because they only care about "Real PCs." The Zune campaign is a new example.

Being biased can be entertaining and engaging - consider Jon Stewart. Even Rush Limbaugh, when he's not making fun of the handicapped, is fun to laugh at; however, pretending to not be biased and stating opinions as uncontroversial facts is misleading and slimy.

--

One interesting effort in ranking news is NewsTrust, althought it could conceptually be subverted by astroturfing.

It seems that people are far more gullable in believing anonymous hearsay than they should be. Facts can be "called into question" by the most rediculous claims, and those nebulous claims are given equal airtime. It happens in science ("global warming is only a theory!!!") in software ("vaporware vs a real product, we say wait to see how this vapor turns out!!!") and in politics ("global warming is only a theory!!!").

They are open about their bias

[Per Abrahamsen]

And they don't work through straw men to appear unbiased.

Asking Microsoft why they think people should upgrade to Vista is fine, and I hope New York Times will continue to do so. Microsoft is openly and obviously biased with regard to their own products, and getting their side of the story is valuable.

The problem is when you ask some "independent analyst" for their opinion on a possible upgrade, and that analyst happens to be funded by Microsoft.

Bias is not a problem, hidden bias is a problem.

Who's side are you on?

[twitter]

The FSF has a clearly stated agenda of eradicating proprietary software, as it's immoral according to them. How is that not going to constitute a biased approach when debating industry topics ...

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. Standing up for your rights is a bias but isn't that the one you want in your news? Would you prefer some kind of industry shill to tell you what's good for you? How can you even begin to equate these two diametrically opposed things?

The New York Times has decided it's not in their reader's best interest to pass on advertisements, aka paid opinions, as legitimate reviews. Good for them and good for everyone. As someone else pointed out, they are indeed discovering better sources of information. The Registry's hostility to this is as difficult to understand as your hostility to the FSF.

The NYTs reporting on bias! ROFLMAOL

[RhettLivingston]

Maybe they should take the 2 by 4 out of their own eye first.

Re:MSM's only assets: Integrity and credibility

[shanen]

I didn't make that part clear enough. Fox News is just turning things completely on their heads. The old MSM was based on integrity, in that they wanted to find out and report the truth, and they also had to build their credibility, which is what the main article is actually focused on, in that the NY Times realized that their credibility was being destroyed by biased 'reporting'. (Not to imply that they had much credibility left.) However, Fox News never made any pretense of having any impartiality except for their bogus motto/logo. Fox just created something that looked like a news network and expected people to think it automatically had some credibility. Certain advertisers are willing to support the scam. I haven't checked, but I'd assume they're the same companies that support Rushbaugh.

Actually, the more interesting assault on reality involves the destructive redefinition of the linguistic modeling of reality. A very prominent example is that the word "liberal" has been completely redefined, but I actually received an interesting example in my email yesterday. Any form of disagreement with Dubya means I'm a Bush-hater, and my correspondent (a wealthy neo-GOP) insists that he gets to define my mental reality for me. He even included a list of new equivalences for "hate", stuff like disdain or disapproval or disrespect. Me, I think such word games are fundamentally intellectually dishonest. If I actually hated Dubya, I even think I'd be the first person to know it. The meaning of existing words should be respected, and if you need to describe a new concept (such as BushCo, Rushevik, Bushevik, and Rushbaugh), then you should go ahead and make it clear why a new term is needed--and then you should attempt to be consistent in how it is used to convey clear meanings, not to destroy old ones.