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?

[rrohbeck]

Their's is a *good* bias.

Repeat after me:

Microsoft==Evil
Oracle==Evil
EFF==Good
FSF==Good

I'm glad we got this taken care of.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[stoolpigeon]

not that there's anything wrong with that.

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?

[umkhhh]

exactly for that reason. people have different biases coming from personal experience so it is refrashing to hear something else in main stream media. Alas it is probably too much to expect.

I am not pro anything and I do not care. I would prefer to have more open source because I belive competetion and choice are base for quality and reliablity of products. Alas I do not thing this will happen soon so the choice will be limited and if you work for big customer the choices are limited by bad ass we-always-did-it-this-way attitude. Merits do not count. Well most of the time.

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?

[h2g2bob]

As Matt Groening once said:

Things are a lot more interesting when you give both sides of an argument a voice

Enough said.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[wigaloo]

>> 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.

But this entirely misses the point. The FSF represents their viewpoint directly, rather than via paid shills. The bias only becomes a problem when paid shills pretend to provide independent opinion.

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?

[1u3hr]

Why? Aren't they biased, too?

Of course they are. Unlike "technology analysts" who are on a Microsoft retainers while pretendng to be impartial. There's too much PR masquerading as news, and not a little gets posted her, for that matter.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[napanap]

Of course they're biased, just as sources such as Microsoft and Oracle are biased. But the point is, their point of view should be considered by the NY Times as well.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Doc Ruby]

If "teaching in schools" were actually a debate, there might be merit to teaching Creationism in schools. Because it would be exposed by actual debate as BS and fake pseudoscience. But that's not how teaching Creationism works - or most teaching. Most is training.

Until we fix schools to train people to think and not just behave, Creationism has no place in that dictation environment.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[dangitman]

I'm not so sure. I heard reports of the "Defective by Design" campaign all over the media, including mainstream sources. It wasn't until a recent slashdot article that I discovered that the FSF was behind that campaign. I don't think these groups are beyond manipulating the media.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[dangitman]

Why do they have to be paid for bias to become a problem?

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[aproposofwhat]

Most is training.

Training is for dogs - people need education.

Part of education (once you reach the capacity for rational argument) is debate.

Having said that, the proper place for teaching creationism is in religious education lessons, not in biology lessons. It should rank alongside 'wearing the niquab' as 'one of the many things which some folks believe, but which have no grounding in reason'.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[vtcodger]

***By that argument, creationism should be taught in schools.***

It certainly should be. If it were, there would be a lot fewer literal creationists and most of those that remained would at least have read Genesis.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[vtcodger]

***Why? Aren't they biased, too?***

They are biased, but their bias is largely orthagonal to quality/usability.

That is to say that the FSF is perfectly capable of saying that Microsoft Fiasco is a wonderful and useful product, but is unacceptable because it is crippled by DRM. When you are assessing quality and/or usability the FSF assessment of quality may well be free of intentional bias.

OTOH, some Microsoft funded 'Mongolian Software Progress Foundation' that consists of an Ulan Bator taxi driver and two illiterate yak herders is unlikely to tell you that Fiasco is crap, even if the product is unstable, unusable, and likely to erase your hard drive.

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?

[CDPatten]

To that point. The New York Times is bias and is always going to be. Like all papers. But you certainly couldn't call the NY Times a friend to MS... they have historically and presentaly been anti MS almost as much as slashdot.

Why? Becuase that industry uses MACs. The fact they claim MS pieces are fluff is absurd, all we get from the NY Times 99% of the time is fluff pieces on MACs. Because the people who are typing the articles on, on a mac, and die hard apple fan boys. This is common knowledge... and slashdot has even covered the media's bias for apple.

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.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[hey!]

I think the ethical point is whether you are up front with what your biases are. If you claim to have one viewpoint (neutral) but have another (partisan), you are deceiving people as to how you select the information you present and how you interpet it.

It's a matter of ends and means. There is nothing wrong with the end of promoting Microsoft products, but doing so by deception is morally wrong.

Furthermore it is quite possible to pursue an end, but be open about information and arguments that contradict that end. It's not strictly required to be counted as "honest", but it shows real confidence that the ends you have chosen are right. Evasion shows less confidence, and downright lying shows you don't really believe in what you are arguing for.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Doc Ruby]

I agree. But I don't run the schools, and whoever does, disagrees. Or, more to the point, just does it differently, preferring training to actual education.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> ...tries to untangle analysts and shills

It's not that difficult. If they agree with you, they are analysts; if they disagree with you, they are shills.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[kthejoker]

No that argument does not suggset creationism should be taught in schools. Read the quote again, and ponder the meaning of the word "interesting" in Matt Groening's worldview.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[qkslvrwolf]

There is a difference between censorship and filtering misinformation. Quoting something that is demonstrably false or quoting all opinions regardless of their foundation in fact is NOT being equal.

As for yes/no answers, those are also insufficient. The world does not boil down to boolean algebra. I know we'd *like* it to boil down that far, but it doesn't. The best you can do if you want some kind of value on opinion is bayes'theorem.

Anyway, as a demonstration (and this applies to politics as well as technology), you have two people in a disagreement. First you have person A, who says that the moon is made of green cheese. Then you have person B, who says that the moon is made of a variety of minerals. You should not give both people equal credence. But that's exactly what anyone claiming to be "fair and balanced" is doing.

With the added benefit that person B is being paid to say the moon is made of green cheese by the Wisconsin Green Moon Cheese company.

Long story short: not all points of view have equal value, and the NYT is trying (probably unsuccessfully) to actually do a little research and assign value to the different POVs.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[qkslvrwolf]

Actually, with fox its "a raving lunatic from one side of the issue" and "some random guy no one has ever heard of who claims to be a raving lunatic from the other side, but actually are a moderate from the first side who just bashes the second side".

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[qkslvrwolf]

Because it disguises the bias. To pretend that anyone can tell a story (and all news is stories) without ANY bias is a load of crap. Doesn't happen. People's minds don't work that way.

The problem is when you attempt to A) hide the bias and B) give equal credence to bias that has no basis in any kind of evidence. Paid shills do A and B. Unpaid shills might do B, but that's easier to point out and notice when reading an article.

Opinions may be formed on evidence (controlled observation), empirical evidence (uncontrolled observation), and "faith".

When it comes to any discussion involving the real world, those three basis are presented in order of relevance, and by that I mean the first is "very relevant" (given reasonable controls) and the last is "completely irrelevant".

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[Raul654]

Al Frankin (in Lies and the Lying Liars) said best. He took the 4 most common guests on Brit Hume's show (sorry, but I can't remember exactly who they were). 2 of them were ultra-conservatives and 2 were moderates. So, Frankin pointed out - "Imagine a game of political see-saw, with two people sitting on the extreme right end of the see-saw and two people sitting in the middle. See? That's how Fair and Balanced works on Fox News"

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[marcosdumay]

A company that goes to the public tell its opinion should not be censored. An independent individual that goes to the public to tell his opinion shouldn't be censored either.

Now, a company that goes to the public covered as an independent individual shouldn't be listened. That is a lie, and there is no point on a newspaper reporting lies.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[a.d.trick]

Is this not censorship

I'm not allowed to sit on the jury for my own court case. It's not sensorship. It's assuring a fair trial by filtering out people who have a high interest in the result. In this case, it's a finacial interest.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[dangitman]

The problem is when you attempt to A) hide the bias and B) give equal credence to bias that has no basis in any kind of evidence. Paid shills do A and B. Unpaid shills might do B, but that's easier to point out and notice when reading an article.

What's to stop unpaid advocates from doing A and hiding their bias? They do it all the time.

When it comes to any discussion involving the real world, those three basis are presented in order of relevance, and by that I mean the first is "very relevant" (given reasonable controls) and the last is "completely irrelevant".

By that logic, the FSF would have no place in public reporting, as their agenda is a matter of faith and philosophy - not one of fact or empirical evidence.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[qkslvrwolf]

Really? There have been no demonstrable benefits to open source and open standards? I think anyone that uses the internet may wish to disagree with you, since it was built on both.

To say that anyone has "no place in public reporting" is idiocy. My only point is that when any side comes to the table, they need to provide reasons. This doesn't exclude opinion. Opinion is still the meet of most policy discussions. But, as I stated, all opinions are not created equal.

On what basis do you claim that the FSF's agenda is a matter of "faith and philosophy"? What specific aspect of their agenda are you claiming that there is no evidence for?

If an advocate is unpaid, than there is basically no way for them to hide their bias. Without any sort of compensation for saying that Rold Gold Preztals are great, than all you are doing is presenting your opinion to the world. How would you even go about hiding that? What good do you do for you cause if you're trying to advocate for it without doing it openly? I'm really confused by that one.

Re:EFF and FSF unbiased?

[dangitman]

Really? There have been no demonstrable benefits to open source and open standards? I think anyone that uses the internet may wish to disagree with you, since it was built on both.

Open Standards are a different thing to Open Source software. Would you care to provide the facts (not opinion) which show that Open Source software is better for consumers than proprietary alternatives? Remember, facts, not opinion.

To say that anyone has "no place in public reporting" is idiocy.

You were the one who said that that "faith" was irrelevent to reporting. That's why I said "by your logic." Opinion certainly has a place, but the FSF's advocacy is purely in the realm of opinion, not the empirical evidence which you say is more important.

On what basis do you claim that the FSF's agenda is a matter of "faith and philosophy"? What specific aspect of their agenda are you claiming that there is no evidence for?

The way that they say that Free software is the only valid choice, and the only one that offers freedom. The way that they say proprietary software hurts people. It's all based on faith/opinion, not evidence.

If an advocate is unpaid, than there is basically no way for them to hide their bias

I just don't understand this contention. An unpaid advocate can claim they are all about freedom, while saying that other choices are wrong, while they promote a solution that they benefit from. There are infinite ways in which unpaid advocates can hide their bias. They are the exact same ways in which a paid shill can hide their bias. What stops unpaid advocates from hiding their bias? By this logic, there is also no way that a paid shill can hide their bias.

The FSF, not biased ?

[Tetard]

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, where a large number of players have a vested interest in developing, selling and supporting proprietary software. Same goes for a lot of pro-GPL organizations that see proprietary software as the enemy.

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[pnot]

The FSF has a clearly stated agenda of eradicating proprietary software, as it's immoral according to them.

Where is this agenda clearly stated? I can't find anything about it on their website. (That's a genuine question, not sniping: if they're explicitly stated this goal, I'm interested to see how they present it.)

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[LaughingCoder]

Young people have smelt the bullshit from miles away and refuse to read it because they've been exposed to so much BS in their lifetimes and have been hurt by it so many times they have a motivation to get away from it.

Nice try, but I think you are giving young people too much credit. While I agree with you that newspaper readership is much less prevalent in the younger generation, I think the reasons are a little less flattering to the younger set. I think mostly being accustomed to reading things on the screen versus in print is a big part of it. My proof is that younger people also read fewer books - have they been "hurt by" books also? I also think younger people, having grown up with the internet, are used to a more interactive environment where they can discuss the article, ala on-line news sites and forums. Lastly, and this is the most scary reason, the internet generation is much more accustomed to reading articles that align with their own beliefs. This is the one thing about the internet that really worries me ... the ability to customize your "news" in such a way that you only read things with which you agree. This tends to polarize people (seen much of that?) and cause huge rifts between the camps, because over time you forget you are only reading half of the story.

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[Tetard]

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
(yes, GNU is a project of the FSF)

Including: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Quote: " I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better."

or http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

"As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary (18k characters) program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. "
"A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software."
"The Free Software Foundation follows the rule that we cannot install any proprietary program on our computers except temporarily for the specific purpose of writing a free replacement for that very program. Aside from that, we feel there is no possible excuse for installing a proprietary program."

etc...

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[pnot]

(yes, GNU is a project of the FSF)

Well, it's a project principally sponsored by the FSF. Certainly they have a close connection, but they're hardly equivalent.

Quote: " I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software...

Well, that's hardly a "clearly stated agenda to eradicate proprietary software" as you claim, any more than a "get firefox" button is a clearly stated agenda to eradicate Opera.

"... using a proprietary (18k characters) program... make a copy... saying ``No'' to proprietary software."

Well, that certainly shows Richard Stallman's personal disapproval of proprietary software. But it doesn't look to me like a "clearly stated agenda to eradicate proprietary software".

"The Free Software Foundation follows the rule that we cannot install any proprietary program on our computers except temporarily for...

This is an internal policy concerning the office computers used by the FSF. It doesn't really constitute their "agenda".

http://www.fsf.org/about describes the FSF's "worldwide mission to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of all free software users". Is that what you were alluding to? It's the closest I can find, but it doesn't say anything about eradication.

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[Tetard]

> Well, it's a project principally sponsored by the FSF. Certainly they have a close connection, but they're hardly equivalent.

Ok, we'll have to disagree there. Otherwise point taken, there is no clearly stated agenda, other than Stallman's stance on proprietary software. I'll crawl back to my hole :)

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[rolfwind]

Al-Jeezera news has an audience here. So does Fox News. And CNN.

People already pick out TV/book/magazines that align with their beliefs. The internet is no different.

The only difference is that the "mainstream" (traditional) news can't define what "mainstream" as much as they used to. (If you really want to call the 11 o'clock even news on CBS/NBC/ABC mainstream instead of just corporate and mostly inane.)

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[LaughingCoder]

People already pick out TV/book/magazines that align with their beliefs. The internet is no different.

I agree, to a point. The difference with the internet is the granularity of those selections. The "mainstream" or shall I say "traditional" media is limited in how small a niche, or special interest group it can cater to, since there are only so many networks, radio stations, and newspapers, and each must appeal to a group that is large enough to support it. The internet, on the other hand, can be customized to fine-tune the news to virtually any niche or interest, however small.

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[dangitman]

http://www.fsf.org/about [fsf.org] describes the FSF's "worldwide mission to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of all free software users". Is that what you were alluding to? It's the closest I can find, but it doesn't say anything about eradication.

That's where the lies and manipulation comes in. They publicly state that they are all about freedom, but their agenda runs much deeper than that. So, the NYT can quote that they are all about freedom, while neglecting to mention that most of them also want to eradicate proprietary software.

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[pimpimpim]

This is the one thing about the internet that really worries me ... the ability to customize your "news" in such a way that you only read things with which you agree. This tends to polarize people (seen much of that?) and cause huge rifts between the camps, because over time you forget you are only reading half of the story.

Well you can stop worrying about that! People that read newspapers also select the newspaper that is in line with their opinion. As a businessman you'll buy a newspaper that will have a high coverage of financial news. A person interested in sport will buy a newspaper with more sport in it. They both might not even realize that they are biasing their sources of information. Would you read books about subjects that do not appeal to you? Even before I had the internet I biased my sources of information, and even with the internet, I will find stories that I didn't look for and that widen my general scope. That last part might even be bigger due to the internet.

However, if instead of my opinion you just want to have your statement confirmed, I advice you to start reading the blog of ESR and the comments therein.

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[LaughingCoder]

People that read newspapers also select the newspaper that is in line with their opinion. As a businessman you'll buy a newspaper that will have a high coverage of financial news. A person interested in sport will buy a newspaper with more sport in it.

Ahh, but there is a flaw in your argument. For example, I read the Boston Globe because it has a pretty good sports section. And even though I happen to be significantly more conservative than the Globe political editors/commentators, I still read their (in my opinion misguided) op-eds because that is the daily paper I read. Contrast that with the internet where I can subscribe to lots of "sports channels" for my sports news, and then refer to, say, Fox News for my political news. That way I am never exposed to the left wing opinions with which I disagree. In the end, it's a matter of granularity. I can finely tune my news sources to match my preferences with the internet, like an ala carte menu. With traditional media, it's more like ordering a full meal where I get to choose, say, the meat, but the vegetables, potato, salad and "soup-of-the-day" are whatever the restaurant chooses to serve.

For what it's worth, I make it a point to try and read both sides of every issue because in my experience the truth usually lies in the middle of the extremes, and it is very hard to discover the truth without at least exposing yourself to the two extreme viewpoints. As an aside, this is why I participate in /., which, in my opinion, defines one extreme in many "techno-political" debates, though I'm sure many on this forum consider /. to be "fair-and-balanced" :).

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[qkslvrwolf]

I'm sorry...I missed the deep evil agenda here. Where was it again?

Re:The FSF, not biased ?

[qkslvrwolf]

I see you've been watching fox news and reading the drudge report exclusively...

Decide for Themselves

[RAMMS EIN]

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

Maybe they should rather make up their own minds. Much as I agree with the EFF and the FSF, they do have their own agendas.

Re:Decide for Themselves

[thue]

Maybe they should rather make up their own minds. Much as I agree with the EFF and the FSF, they do have their own agendas.

There is a world of difference between asking asking the opinion of organizations like the EFF, who are open about where they stand, and a supposedly independent analyst who is secretly paid by Microsoft to say what he says.

The problem is hidden bias, not bias. The opinion of people with an acknowledged interest in a subject is often valuable; for example getting a comment from Microsoft in an article about a bug in Windows will often be relevant. Knowing Microsoft's bias makes you able to take their comment with the appropriate grain of salt, but still get useful information. The opinion of people pretending to be neutral but having hidden bias is designed to mislead you, getting the companies line present as the one and only neutral truth.

Re:Decide for Themselves

[pjrc]

Really, this appears to be policy regarding Rob Enderle.

Ask anyone who's followed the SCO lawsuit saga and they'll tell you about the major Microsoft shills. Enderle (his own "group", just him really), Didio (garner), Daniel Lyons (forbes), and Maurice (sorry, didn't follow that part so well).

These folks know how to work the media. They appear quoted over and over again. They have massive bias. Enderle is the by far the WORST.

Of the many Enderle stories, he gave a keynote speech at some SCO developer conference... after things had gone pretty far south for SCO and they were well on their way to being the laughing stock they are now. Enderle reportedly was cussing and swearing about the open source world, practically paranoid that someone in the audience was an open source spy or some-such.

Sure, the register likes to bash other more, er, established publications at any chance. And yes, the "policy" doesn't seem to make sense. But if you read the register article (yeah, I know, this is slashdot, but still)... it doesn't take a lot of reading between the lines to see this is probably the NYT finally getting fed up with Rob Enderle.

1: Here's how wrong Rob Enderle has been about Apple

2: More Enderle stuff

3: Enderle's take on SCO's lawsuit with IBM - yeah, right

4: Even Wikipedia has a Enderle entry, listing his poor prediction history, if only briefly

Rob Enderle is quoted VERY FREQUENTLY. If you read this little comment (likely to remain only +2 cause it's not posted in the first several minutes), please remember just one thing:

Whenever you see Rob Enderle quoted, read with skepticism.

Sadly, he's very good at getting quoted all over the place. Hopefully the NYT will no longer be among the rags that takes the easy way out and prints whatever convenient sound bite he's serving up that day.

Is this true?

[perkr]

Not that I doubt the influence of analysts but I couldn't find a single reference pointing to the NY Times website. Does anyone have any link from NYT about this issue? Or how else are we supposed to know there is a real story here?

Re:Is this true?

[evw]

Key quote being "had The Times known of Mr. Enderle's work for Microsoft, it would not have sought out his opinion on the product". I don't know if this link will work for everyone, since it's a search result link, but doing a search on the nytimes.com main page for "enderle" turns up this as the first result.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990 DE1DC1F3FF933A25752C1A9609C8B63

Editors' Note
Published: November 10, 2006

An article in Business Day on Tuesday described a decision by Microsoft to offer movies and episodes of television shows for downloading through its Xbox Live online service in the United States.

The article quoted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, discussing the features that set Xbox Live service apart and its position in the market.

But the article did not note that Mr. Enderle had Microsoft as a client, a fact later pointed out by a reader. Mr. Enderle does consulting work for several of Microsoft's product groups, though not for the one developing the Xbox; still, had The Times known of Mr. Enderle's work for Microsoft, it would not have sought out his opinion on the product.

Fair and Balanced

[poptones]

Who's the more balanced? FOX News, or the EFF?

It seems quite unlikely to me that any organization trying to eliminate such bias in its reporting would leap to consider the opinions of an organization that paints everything about as black and white as your most zealous televangelist.

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?

Re:Garbage.

[zaliph]

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?

That never happens.

Pot calling kettle black

[NineNine]

I like how The Register is trying to slam the NYT for not being impartial. I have read some of the absolute worst "articles" on the Register (most of which, are surprisingly posted on Slashdot). I wouldn't trust The Register to correctly report the current weather conditions outside of their office.

Re:Pot calling kettle black

[DECS]

A recent example being Andrew Orlowski's iTunes Sales Are Collapsing Myth.
-

The iTunes Vendor Lock In Myth

Re:Pot calling kettle black

[slashbob22]

You had to bring weather into this...

Seems like El'Reg has been correcting the BBC's weather recently:
London Heatwave
Snowy 20C Weather
Belfast Hurricane

Re:Pot calling kettle black

[TheRaven64]

A recent example being Andrew Orlowski's iTunes Sales Are Collapsing Myth. The apostrophe, and everything after it in that sentence, is superfluous. Orlowski is the reason I stopped reading El Reg regularly, and I am not the only one. I don't know whether he has had a net positive or negative effect on their readership, but he has not been good for their reputation.

Re:Pot calling kettle black

[that this is not und]

The irony is that the tone a The Register is far more similar to that at the New York Post than the New York Times.

Not the particular bias. Just the tone. It's a screeching tabloid.

The problem isn't just with tech stories

[MarkusQ]

From the article:

The funny - or sad - thing is that the paper doesn't come close to following its own advice.

What everyone seems to be missing here is that the problem isn't just restricted to tech stories; their track record is just as bad when it comes to real world news. Remember Judith Miller and the "proof" about Iraq's WMD--the one they wound up apologizing for, years after we'd gotten mired in Vietnam II? Of course, it's a step up from citing totally made up sources (e.g. Jason Blaire's "composite" sources), but not by much.

They used to be the paper of record, but now they're just another waste of dead tree pulp.

--MarkusQ

Re:The problem isn't just with tech stories

[TheOriginalRevdoc]

Yeah, the NY Times sucks because one of their journalists did a bad job 4 years ago.

Thank god neither of us screw up, eh? That'd mean we suck, too.

Unbiased research doesn't exist.

[WiiVault]

I think technology is alot like drugs in this instance. Most of the "experts" in the area are paid shills working for a group with vested interests. With pot for instance there is the governemnt data which shows alot of negatives. On the other hand there are the advocacy groups who have data which shows the exact opposite. To me the job of a paper like the NYT is not find the unbiased experts, (who frankly don't exist) but instead to be fair and balanced.

Re:Unbiased research doesn't exist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving up on the prospect of objectivity and resorting to "balancing" biased opinions is lazy journalism.

Example: On any given political issue, a lazy journalist will get the official Democratic perspective and the official Republican perspective, regurgitate these, and consider the topic thoroughly reported. On any local environmental issue, they get the Sierra Club perspective and the local chamber of commerce perspective, regurgitate those, and consider it a job well done.

What's the problem? Well, your choice of sources biases your reporting, even if your two sources disagree. Let's say there are (shocking!) more than two opinions on the matter (!), and that the two sources you choose, combined, still represent a minority view (example: when reporting on free trade deals, which both Democrats and Republicans support, but most US citizens are against, etc)

Or look at the FOX News method. You get the extreme right-wing Republican view (Hannity) and the moderate Republican view (Colmes), and this is presented as the national dialog. That's "balance". Or even worse, knowingly reporting false information because pointing out that one side is lying would suggest bias from the news source (FOX News won a lawsuit in which they were sued for knowingly reporting fiction as fact, they argued they were not legally obligated to attempt to be truthful, and they won).

Objective truth exists, even if we can't ever know it. News organizations can never be called truly objective, but those who do not even make an ATTEMPT at objectivity are hardly even journalists--they are just as much shills as their sources.

Re:Unbiased research doesn't exist.

[qkslvrwolf]

Oh, please, please link me that story. The lawsuit. I have so many people to rub that in that faces of....

Who then ?

[Joebert]

I imagine it's rather hard to find anyone to report on somthing, who has some sort of knowledge on the subject, that isn't one of theese three.

1. Involved with the product or the company producing the product.
2. Involved with the companies competition.
3. Being paid to do it.

If it's someone from the company, the competition cries foul stating the rep is only trying to make the product look good, which, if you work for a company that makes sense if you want to eat.
If it's someone from the competition, the company cries foul, again, if your competition is eating all the cake there's obviously going to be none left for you.
If they're being paid to do it, nearly everyone else cries foul, because they hadn't been informed there was going to be cake.

Who's left to report on theese products, who is also someone that would actually use them ?

Re:Who then ?

[_Sprocket_]

I imagine it's rather hard to find anyone to report on somthing, who has some sort of knowledge on the subject, that isn't one of theese three.

I don't see bias in itself as being the issue. In fact, sometimes I'd rather see opinions coming from people who have enough conviction in their opinion to stake a personal outcome on it. The problem is whether that bias is genuine or not.

It's easy to check on facts. You can keep an expert honest by doing so. The problem is, there are so few simple facts. Most issues involve a wide degree of interpretation of facts, or even conflicting methods to generate facts. How this is done is often about what the person believes or wants to happen. Now add to the mix professionals who aren't just in the Industry, but who's profession is to push an agenda. Suits are back all over again. This passes the point of a biased professional and becomes the profession of bias; deception.

The point of all this is not to remove bias. The overall goal is to filter out "facts" that are little more than a marketing department's fond wish. It is to decant the opinions and biases to produce the few resonably undisputed facts and then differing opinions on the issue at hand. Granted - this doesn't lead to a nice, neat story that tells you how you should view an issue. But then, the point is to inform - not sell something.

As an aside - yes... the overall business of a newspaper is to sell something. I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that it sells information.

Fake think tanks

[Anonymous Coward]

These clowns give themselves grand sounding names so people will take them seriously. It even works once or twice but then people catch on to them.

My favorite example is the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. It appears to be one guy, Ken Brown. When people were still paying attention to the 'SCO' thing, he wrote a book in which he called into question the paternity of Linux. It was really a lame effort. The result is that whatever credibility his institute had vanished in a puff of public indignation. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/followup/

The problem for such people is that, if they wish to continue in business, their credibility is all they have. Gartner did some questionable things, again during the early days of the SCO 'thing'. Later, a company who wanted to sell us a bunch of stuff quoted Gartner. My reaction was that Gartner would say anything they were paid to say. No sale.

It looks like

[Oddster]

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

Somebody needed to try out the search engine on their front page.

I know the Reg bias...

[NevarMore]

...just as well as I know the bias of the NYT.

One of the basics of journalism is understanding that as a journalist you can't elminate your bias. What you can do is try to minimize your bias and in cases of opinion and analysis declare your bias as well as the bias of your sources. The Reg said it best in this case, "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." . So if I see a Microsoft enginner quoted I'm told he is an MS engie and when I see TurdFurgeson quoted I'm told he's Linux zealot.

Thats really the best the NYT can do as a responsible organization, if you eliminate all bias you remove your writers humanity and create a lie. While removing bias your own mind will fool itself and think you've removed them when really you've magnified them. Biases are what lead to needed critiques, so long as those biases are dealt with openly and honestly we should be ok.

*Note I'm not a journalist, but the points here have been beaten into my head by several close journalist friends. The bias question was also material for an elective journalism course for me at college.* - There see. I declared my bias. I like and trust most journalists because I know some good ones. I've also pointed out that I lack formal training in the area, so I might know enough to contribute but I shouldn't be quoted as an expert source.

Everyone is biased

[delirium of disorder]

Every organization is biased. You can't report on any event without a point of view. Even if you try to be neutral, you will express your biases through what facts and events you choose to cover and which you leave out.

The FSF is biased towards promoting freedom of speech and improving software quality. Microsoft is biased towards crushing competition and dominating the market in order to maximize profit. The Bush administration is biased towards gaining strategic influence in key oil producing regions and will abuse human rights in order to achieve these goals. Amnesty International is biased towards exposing human rights violations. A decent newspaper aught to quote Microsoft, the FSF, the White House, and Amnesty International and hire columnists from which ever organization they feel best represents their editorial bias. The New York times is very pro corporate, so I could see them employing writers with ties to Microsoft and Bush, but they're also somewhat left leaning, so I would expect some more decent people to write for them from time to time.

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!!!").

Re:Everyone is biased

[delirium of disorder]

...many people think the New York Times is anti-corporate, and the Wall Street Journal is pro-corporate.

Both are pro-corporate. I also said that the NYT is somewhat left leaning. The Wall Street Journal is the leading publication of the Business press; they directly represent the largest earing organizations on earth. The New York Times is the leading publication of the literate elite, a group with is mostly comprised of the same professionals and leaders that run corporations, but which also includes some academics and other intellectuals.

Both publications are far to the right of the American people. Most Americans support greater unions representation, more government funding of personal health care, higher taxes on the wealthy, and a withdrawal from Iraq. You have to turn to more obscure publications to find these issues even discussed. Most Americans, however, don't read newspapers. They get their news and opinion from TV. Television marginalizes real issues even more than the press does. It's just infotainment.

There's still a small Socialist and Communist press in the US, but it just prints party line propaganda for the most part. You have to turn to something like Z magazine, if you're looking for a articulate anti-corporate reporting.

Re:Everyone is biased

[delirium of disorder]

...were you trying to be neutral and failed, or did you simply give up on any chance of neutrality from the start?

I titled my post "Everyone is biased". Why would you suggest that I started from a neutral position!?

Re:Everyone is biased

[qkslvrwolf]

Salon doesn't seem to do too bad, either.

Enderle

[fritsd]

From the article:

Just days after banning Enderle from discussing Microsoft because he has Microsoft as a client, ...

I think that's an understatement.. is there a policymaker or journalist warning website for the likes of Enderle, DiDio, syscon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Technol ogy_Leadership(ACT, CGW), etc.?

Re:Enderle

[fritsd]

(replying to myself here) Read this and weep: http://ipw.scofacts.org/ipw-2004-11-4-193122-475.h tml

Re:100% in agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

The ideological bias theoretically shouldn't be a problem for the NYT since they deal with it on a much grander scale each day in politics. Not that I'm saying they are particularly successful, but at least they have an idea what to look for.

As far as the technical aspects go, I think the big problem that any media organization has is that they have journalists writing about subjects they don't have a clue about--so they take the advice of experts like Microsoft and echo them in their articles. This is sort of a tricky problem to solve because the obvious solution of hiring technically educated persons probably isn't going to work (because they will be significantly more expensive than ordinary journalists). It is sort of a gamble. They can hire expensive people who have a strong education in science and technology and print much more thorough and unbiased articles or they can go cheap and hope the lack of quality doesn't hurt their sales.

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.

Re:RS upfront in ideology

[theshowmecanuck]

So what are you supposed to tell your readers? Here are some guys opinions, but he is very left wing and hates proprietary software so everything he will say about it is negative? But don't worry, he will give a good review on open source material? That is a crock. So now the reader will read a bad review on a potentially good piece of proprietary software that would solve the readers requirements for a software package. And he might read in the same article a recommendation to use instead an open source [quote]equivalent[unquote] piece of open source software, even if it doesn't even remotely meet the requirements of the reader for some reason. But the reader won't know any of this. Who cares if I know the reviews are biased against proprietary software, I just want an accurate review.

They need to find someone who can or has established a reputation for trying to be unbiased. Granted, easier said than done. In the modern American (and Canadian... and probably any of the top industrialized nations), honesty in business is not a priority. Only maintaining a feigned image of ethics is (which makes me want to vomit when companies force their employees to take ethics training... but that is another story).

Its not just Microsoft

[Timesprout]

JBoss, the 'professional open source' company are notorious for astroturfing on Java forums.

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:Extend beyond just 'tech'

[Fear the Clam]

called the MX which is provided at train stations

I suppose its editorial page is called the Peacemaker?

Sorry, '80s joke there, kids.

Re:Extend beyond just 'tech'

[starkravingmad]

If you take anything Murdoch owned as real news then that's your own damned fault.

The weather

[EmbeddedJanitor]

As any of the Reg hacks would openly tell you, they are very seldom in their offices and prefer to spend time down at the pub.

Expertise from the opposition?

[D4C5CE]

It would be refreshing to see the New York Times discover the FSF [...] and other sources of computing expertise.

Who have been so much less controversial recently, meticulously avoiding to cast any shadows of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, haven't they?

The achievements of these organizations are commendable, but portraying the FSF (or e.g. the EFF) as entirely neutral on technology issues probably wouldn't be "entirely accurate" either. ;-) And indeed neutral they shouldn't (even need to) be - journalists ought to be able to see (i.e. find and expose) the truth behind the whole range of different views, rather than exclude the ones with the most obvious bias (some of whom might be right nonetheless)...

Science publications solved the problem

[Colin Smith]

You simply need peer review and reproducible results. The level of ojectivity in most computing journals is abysmal.

Re:Science publications solved the problem

[perkr]

No bias in scientific publications... right. Have you published scientific papers yourself, and if so, in what field? I am just curious.

Re:Science publications solved the problem

[Colin Smith]

Any one article may contain bias, but the point is that bias in one article is subject to peer review and the results are reproduced by someone else under similar conditions. It's part of the process, bias and systemic error are eventually removed.

If the IT, computing profession want to be taken seriously, then they have to take a leaf from science, engineering and start taking a more rigorous approach.

Re:Science publications solved the problem

[perkr]

Actually an entire field may have a bias. I doubt most work is every reproduced, of course, for different scientific fields and traditions, this may be more or less severe.

OK, media companies, keep your bias...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just give me transparency about your sources, and I'll make up my own mind.

Good ideas validate themselves

[banerjek]

There are plenty of technical articles written by people who have ideological axes to grind, even when there is no financial benefit to the writer. Most of the endless general debates about operating systems, standards, technologies, philosophical approaches, etc fall into this category. Hearing the same arguments rehashed over and over is tiresome regardless of whose "side" the writer is on.

Better to just let people write what they will. If they consistently write interesting things, others will listen. If they're consistently schilling, that will also be obvious. Besides, you shouldn't believe everything you read.....

So what has changed?

[schon]

Interesting. So, in the past 5 years, what has changed at the NYT?

I find it odd that an organization the size of the Times would go from one extreme to another in just 5 years.

Maybe my tinfoil hat is a little tight, but I think something smells a little fishy here.

hear that sound?

[alexhard]

It's the joke whooshing over your head

Re:100% in agreement

[cp.tar]

A.k.a. the least common denominator.

As far as I can see, it's a major problem of journalism everywhere.
And it's not going away either.

People who want thorough and unbiased articles read the specialized magazine of their choice.
Clueless people read whatever their newspaper of choice serves them. (Several years ago, a Croatian magazine for women[1] printed an article about buying a computer. It said that 256 MHz RAM was... well, whatever.)

And when someone informed reads the crap they printed and decides to react by, say, sending them an angrily-worded e-mail, so much the better.

The lack of quality will never hurt their sales because their primary topics do not lie in the realm of technology, but everyday news and politics.

[1] Housewives, actually.

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.

Softwarechoice.org

[Anonymous Coward]

The most eggregious FUD site I have ever seen is this one.

The site advocates that people should "procure software on its merit" -- which sounds fine on the surface -- but it turns out that they refuse to recognize that free licensing could ever be considered a "merit".

It's quite amazing to see such a large and pretty site devoted solely to trying to convince customers that they are wrong to care about free licensing, and that they should evalute software ONLY on the basis of its functionality.

The message is: "Customers are wrong to think the way they do. They need to think the way we tell them to."

Re:Softwarechoice.org

[fritsd]

That's old, this is what the Register had to say about them in 2002: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/09/ms_softwar e_choice_scheme/ :-)
It's a good article to read actually, I recommend it.

Re:Softwarechoice.org

[petrus4]

The message is: "Customers are wrong to think the way they do. They need to think the way we tell them to."

Yep...and as I keep saying to anyone who will listen, that's exactly the same message as the one that gets promoted by the FSF...As I heard it put once, "Free as in do as I say."

My own definition of freedom includes the freedom to tell Richard Stallman exactly where I think he should go.

As If /. & The Reg Are Perfect?

[WaltFrench]

As if somehow, the Register talking about a waste of dead trees is any less a waste of bandwidth?

If this is important to Register readers (and Slashdotters), then the NYT, and specifically its attempts to get the best accuracy/timeliness/depth IS important, too. No? I never see exposès of Digg, the idiot stepbrother of /., which channels fake news, outright lies and such, all the time.

I always get a laugh when sources like the Huff'n'Puff Post waste our bandwidth sanctimoniously decrying the MainStreamMedia while citing stories that the HnPP could never come close to covering independently. Same story here: The Reg (which I like) is trying to claim superiority to a "paper" (I read mine online; my wife likes the hardcopy) not by scooping the NYT about MSFT, but by talking about the Times' efforts at getting the balance right.

The NYT recently has stepped up its efforts to distinguish between reviews/editorials and news. The only way you can tell the difference on the Reg is when it's merely snippy as opposed to being sneeringly sarcastic. And you have to be almost a full-time slashdot reader before you have any clue what axe any particular writer is grinding.

Ideal Sources of Information, When Used.

[twitter]

Maybe they should rather make up their own minds. Much as I agree with the EFF and the FSF, they do have their own agendas.

That agenda makes those groups ideal sources of information for newspapers. Newspapers ultimately serve their readers or perish. The FSF, EFF and Opensource.org all have the user's freedom and prosperity as their goal. They are expert and impartial to industry interests.

The agenda of FSF and friends has little to do with pushing a specific program or platform. The FSF, for example, recognize BSD and Linux distributions as a free OSs, despite having their own kernel. They don't care who's tools you use, so long as they are free.

That perspective does not make them ignorant, or even impractical. All groups, to one extent or another, bow to practicality. GNU was written on non free software at one point because there was no other available. The opensource.org group are especially flexible in this regard and generally worry about performance before freedom.

The problem, from my perspective, is not that "mainstream" journalists can't make up their own minds, it's that they have not been talking to everyone they could. Making up your mind in ignorance is worse than doing nothing. The discussion of "alternate" operating systems never seems to get further than a brief mention of Apple. GNU is rarely mentioned, even though Apple, Sun and others use the GNU toolset. It's not even an ideological problem, if you buy into the "Linux is Communism" nonsense, because there are plenty of commercial Linux distributions ready to sell you non free software as addons the same way Michael Dell does. Informed decisions come from knowing the options. Something is clearly missing when a search for:

• Linux, Vista, OS X, BSD returns all of one result.
• Vista linux OS X returns 100 results
• vista linux gnu returns eight results
• Vista OS X returns 288 results
• Vista linux returns 947 results. This would be encouraging if the first page were not stories about what Bill Gates said recently. You might imagine results more like the next one if it were not for this.
• GNU Linux returns 611
• OS X returns 2,500 results.
• Linux returns 7,500 results.
• Vista returns 29,000 results

... from a site built on and friendly to gnu/linux. Cheaper and better software is simply not being

Thanks.

[twitter]

Thanks for taking time to use the NYT search tool. Twenty three stories mentioning the free software foundation since 1981 is not bad for a newspaper. They even found out by 1989, that's impressive. I applaud the steps they are taking and can see they are working to represent the interests of their readers.

At the same time, not much is being written about alternatives to Microsoft by the news industry at large.

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.

Re:Who's side are you on?

[Andy Gardner]

It seems kind of irrelevant when you take into consideration how organizations like the NYT are funded...

If they truly stopped printing the opinions advertisers expect them to print there wouldn't be an NYT for very long. Or, more accurately, there would be a New York Times with a fresh new executive editor.

MSM's only assets: Integrity and credibility

[shanen]

Not just the NYT, but all MSM is pretty much asset free. Their only assets are integrity and credibility. Do they write the truth? And does anyone believe anything they write, regardless of the truth value.

Unfortunately, there is a fundamental dysfunction when advertising is introduced as a revenue source. Advertising agencies have *NO* integrity, though they're eager to fake sincerity. They want to rent the MSM credibility, but in so doing, they have succeeded in dragging the MSM down to their own level. First they destroyed the credibility of their own advertising platform, and then with venues like Fox (AKA FAUX) News, they destroyed the integrity, too.

So when was the last time you bought a paper? When was the last time you believed a newspaper ad?

Re:MSM's only assets: Integrity and credibility

[that this is not und]

I don't get what the credibility of Fox News has to do with bias by their advertisers.

Fox News has a clear conservative bias. It comes from their choice to pander to a conservative market. It has nothing to do with who advertises on the channel.

I'm not saying this in defense of Fox News, btw.

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.

At least the NYT is trying....

[postbigbang]

Blogosphere....blogorhea.....astroturfing by Sony.....analysts bought off by vendors (oh my!).

There isn't one truth, and never will be, as long as there are two people left alive. Yet, there are those that try, both in the blogodesert and in print-- (and The Online Edition)-- to get it right. Just the facts. No pre-judged bias. No orthodoxy. No guilt-driven blather.

Let's encourage them to be as truthful as we can, because as seen in too many places, bullshit just doesn't work well.

And it smells.

At least the NYT is trying...

[guruevi]

The columnist trying to prove that Vista is not a rip-off from Mac OS X - I wonder who paid him to have his opinion...

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=d14603c1e23e 6ce37920a8134a2e27b1405a4991&rf=bm

Check those URLs!

[zaliph]

Doh, broken link.

Good News!

[GaryPatterson]

Excellent news!

I look forward to The Register's Andrew Orlowski explaining his utter hatred of iTunes, Apple and many other things some time soon. It could be that he's being paid by Microsoft, or maybe his bias has another source. It'd be nice for him to come clean and explain himself.

Of course, that's what he's going to do, isn't it? He wouldn't be wanting others to do something he won't try, would he?

Re:Good News!

[GaryPatterson]

Not really.

Everytime a love-fest starts over Apple or Microsoft here on Slashdot, there's a significant group that fire back. Even the biggest love-ins for Linux are hit by people who don't like or find faults with it.

Slashdot allows user commentary. The Register allows none - it's a soapbox for Orlowski to vent his spleen, and he obliges whenever he can. There's no dissent, and my original comment stands.

False: They are not being paid to have the bias...

[ObligatoryUserName]

1. They are not being paid to have the bias they have

This is nothing against any of the organizations that are mentioned, but just a note about non-profits in general. Having worked at a non-profit I know that the people who work at them are better off (financially and social status-wise) the more people agree with them. Thus, they do have a vested self-interest in promoting their point of view. These days non-profit only really means "without shareholders" - it's naive to assume that non-profit status implies anything beyond that.

See also, Charity is Selfish

The NYTs reporting on bias! ROFLMAOL

[RhettLivingston]

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

Re:The NYTs reporting on bias! ROFLMAOL

[OGmofo]

ok..I'll bite:

ROFLMAOL! RhettLivingston is accusing the NYT of bias! Maybe he should take the Sequoia trunk out of his own ass first.

Your bias is showing.

[Erris]

So if I see a Microsoft enginner quoted I'm told he is an MS engie and when I see TurdFurgeson quoted I'm told he's Linux zealot. ... The bias question was also material for an elective journalism course for me at college.*

"Linux zealot," What is that and why would you bother to interview one? I'm getting tired of seeing that meaningless insult slung around.

Of course, that's not what the NYT is complaining about. They are bothered by their sources pretending to be things they are not. Microsoft in particular has troubled them and this little tiff is about that.

Re:Your bias is showing.

[Tim C]

"Linux zealot," What is that and why would you bother to interview one?

You're new here, aren't you? Read any story here about Linux, OS X, BSD or Windows and you'll see plenty of ill-informed, poorly-reasoned, frothing at the mouth comments from people either supporting Linux or denigrating Windows, all based on incorrect supposition, out of date information that is no longer true, logical fallacies and a hefty sprinkling of FUD.

Not to say that you don't also get Windows zealots, OS X zealots, BSD zealots, Java zealots, C zealots, PHP zealots, perl zealots, Ruby zealots, and so on, all of whom act in the same way about their chosen irrational obsession, but you asked specifically about Linux zealots.

About the one good thing you can say about a zealot is that they make their own bias inescapably clear.

Re:Your bias is showing.

[NevarMore]

My bias showed, and someone caught it and sevewral people spoke up. Thats exactly how I would like it to work, unfortunately in the mass media there is no time/space for a proper rebuttal or critique.

disclose the ties between analyst and vendor

[quixote9]

That's what's missing. It's downright dishonest to present a report without citing sources and any financial connection. So long as that's out there, and the reader can make their own judgment, there isn't really a problem. Unless, of course, all reporting comes from the same source(s), but if they're cited, then at least that fact will be obvious.

That's also where EFF and the like are ahead of the corporate pack. Regardless of what you may think of their biases, they're up front about them, and up front about their sources. That's often a symptom of not being afraid if the truth comes out.

Astroturf vs. astroturf

[RealGrouchy]

In searching for the meaning of this term in TFAS, I discovered that the capital A is improperly used.

"Astroturf" is the green stuff.

"[An] astroturf [campaign]" is what gets 'the green stuff' (umm...money, not weed).

- RG>

NYT Shills

[Doc Ruby]

How about the NYT just never publishes John Markoff again, because he's a shallow liar who just likes what Microsoft likes?

Read the Article, Responded.

[YetAnotherBob]

Here is what I responded.

"I've been watching the analysts in the IT field for about 7 years now. On Microsoft areas, they usually give the vendor the benefit of the doubt, frequently just parroting marketing blurbs. Even when as Cairo and Longhorn played out it became increasingly obvious that there was no product there, and never had been. The analysts still don't admit they were had. Neither do most of the press. And it's still going on.

The same analysts were constantly predicting things for Linux that were about 2 years behind where the systems really were. That's why the server surges cought them so much by surprise. It's now repeating on some desktops. Is Linux ready for the desktop? Yes, for about 3 years now. No, If you want Microsoft total compatibility, you still can only get it from Microsoft. That won't change, as Microsoft is a moving target that never has really defined the file formats. The new XML 'standard' still doesn't. How is that an advantage as we are constantly told? Why is having my data a hostage to a vendors product plans a benefit to me? That is never even addressed. It's just assumed and glossed over.

Apple has it's boosters, but the 'mainstream' seems not to care. Wham, Ipod hit when they least expected it. Do they even know what Apple is up to now?

The BSD's don't seem to even be on the analysts radar, even though when Microsoft's servers get overloaded, that's what they use. No stronger testimonial can be found. For anything.

In all, both analysts and the press that uses them seem to have a very poor track record.

You could probably beat it by flipping a penny. Heads the trend will increase, tails it'll decrease. You'd average 50% right, which is better than the industry average.

Like weathermen, it's just hard to predict the future. Honesty about past results would be a nice change. That might destroy the industry though. It'll never happen."

Re:False: They are not being paid to have the bias

[Doc Ruby]

More people agreeing with a point of view can be obtained most cheaply by being honest and correct.

Promotion is an expensive way to compensate for being wrong. Real nonprofits don't have the extra cash to pay to be wrong but popular, unless they're fronts.

Re:Bah, reporters trying just to avoid responsibil

[japhering]

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?

Yes, it is hard... considering the reading level of the average person and the dearth of writing skills amoungst the technical folks.

par for the course

[Scudsucker]

It's worse when it comes to politics, like when the NYTimes published an article a few years ago by one Adam Nagourney that anonymously quoted some Republicans talking about how Kerry "looks French." This helped get the media narrative rolling that Kerry was privledged, out of touch and alof, which is funny when you look at who he was running against.

Re:Gray Lady = Mr Magoo

[aproposofwhat]

Old media / new media?
What sort of pseudo-zeitgiest trendy bull is that?

Old as in printed? New as in unresearched, inane, badly spelt ungrammatical bloggy scandalsheet?

Fuck off back to your winebar and drown in the cesspit of your inanity, mofo.

Re:Gray Lady = Mr Magoo

[dangitman]

They have old-school instincts and corruption, which contrast with the fresh feel of new media sources.

yeah, you'd never get bias or an agenda in a blog. They always report impartially on the facts, and always thoroughly do their research and cite all sources.

They're just looking for new stunts by which to sideswipe the market in an attempt to keep themselves relevant.

Yeah, trying to improve the standards of their tech reporting is such a stunt. It's sure to be glitzy and appeal to the lowest-common-denominator, and not cost a single cent in extra work.

Re:False: They are not being paid to have the bias

[dangitman]

More people agreeing with a point of view can be obtained most cheaply by being honest and correct.

Uhhh, no. Look at how popular religion is. Look at how many people believe political lies, and distrust scientific fact. Look at how many people believe common myths. Being honest or correct does not guarantee popularity. In fact, it usually means less popularity.

There is a big difference.

[jotaeleemeese]

And it is called profit.

Organizations promoting an agenda but not profitting from their activities can be taken serioulsy since theri biases are born out of conviction, not interest.

On the other hand, commercial organizations will go to strenous lenghts to show you black is white if doing so will increase their profits. The tobacco and alcohol companies and their paid for studies and lobbyists are the better known of examples of this.

Fundamental difference.

[jotaeleemeese]

Non profit:

1.- Believe in a cause or idea.
2.- Spread the idea, convince skeptics.
3.- ???
4.- Profit (in social status certainly, I have not seen Richard Stallman's Ferrari, but I am sure he lives in hope).

Commercial company:

1.- Have a bussines, make lots of money.
2.- Identify ideas that harm profit, combat them with astroturfing and lobbyists pretending to be unbiased.
3.- ???
4.- Profit, of the monetary kind that allows for those Ferraris.

Cappice?

Fake think tanks, dubious sponsored research, and

[Shivetya]

"Fake think tanks, dubious sponsored research, and Astroturf are not considered but should be"

Sounds like this applies to many areas of interest today, whether its politics, the environment, or terrorism.

Replying to sarcasm with facts is not a troll

[MarkusQ]

Replying to sarcasm with facts is not a troll; nor is it flamebate.

But modding something down because you don't like to have undisputed facts injected into the discussion because they sink an otherwise appealing emotional argument is moderation abuse.

I'm just saying.

--MarkusQ

Re:False: They are not being paid to have the bias

[Doc Ruby]

I offered no guarantees, only economics. Religion and politics spends a lot of money to be popularly wrong. Science is cheaper, once the science is known and the proof obtained.

One bias down, aleph0-1 to go

[percy69]

The Times should be lauded for attempting to "remove bias" (on the face of it, an impossible task) for this one topic. If only they could address their own political biases. I suggest not making your next exhalation so contigent.

Re:Everyone is biased - esp the Parent.

[qkslvrwolf]

People who think the NYT is still "left leaning" have clearly never read any real left literature. Try salon, dailykos, thinkprogress, and huffpost. NYT is basically a moderate-right dinosaur that tries to avoid being called "liberal" by the far right and doesn't do enough research and fact-checking to satisfy the left.

Re:False: They are not being paid to have the bias

[dangitman]

No, religion and politics make money. People give the churches and politicians money to be comforted with lies. Science costs significant amounts of money, which is usually only recouped over the long-term, and often not by the people who did the research. Religion and politics are direct profit centers.

Re:False: They are not being paid to have the bias

[Doc Ruby]

Religion and politics, like any serious investment, take money to make money.

You are oversimplifying this relatively simple dynamic into false choices and excluded middles.

The truth is cheaper than lies in anything but the immediate short term, and often not even then. But lies are more profitable, if the returns on the investment can be protected from their true costs.

Re:The point is why did YOU use "zealot"

[Tim C]

If you read my post really, really carefully, you'll see that the only thing that I deny is that zealotry is unique to Linux fans; I say nothing about any bias that I may exhibit (and I surely do; I catch myself doing it sometimes, fate knows how many times I miss it). It's also the first I made in this particular thread; I used the word "zealot" merely to answer the question that was posed, nothing more or less.

Besides, although I personally do it rarely, I call people zealot when it seems to fit; the term has no particular negative connotations. From Cambridge Dictionaries Online, a zealot is

a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too

Nothing inherently negative in that; perhaps you should check your own bias. Given that definition (the only one listed, incidentally), in what way is RMS, Jobs, Gates or any similarly opinionated, outspoken person *not* a zealot?