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How is The New York Times Really Doing? (om.co)

Wired magazine did a profile on The New York Times in its this month's issue. Talking about the paper's transition from print to more digital-focus than ever, author Gabriel Snyder wrote, "It's to transform the Times' digital subscriptions into the main engine of a billion-dollar business, one that could pay to put reporters on the ground in 174 countries even if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever." Veteran journalist Om Malik analyzes the numbers: -> The company reported revenue of nearly $1.6 billion in 2016 -- remarkably consistent with prior years.
-> Print advertising revenue dipped by $70 million year-over-year to $327 million in 2016.
-> Digital advertising revenue, while a meaningful portion of the Times' revenue, did not grow enough to offset vanishing print ad dollars.
-> Total digital ad revenue in 2016 was $206 million, up only 6% from the prior year.
-> The key revenue driver for the New York Times has been its digital subscription business, which added more than half a million paid subscribers in 2016. Thanks in part to interest around the presidential election, the newspaper added 276,000 new digital subscribers in Q4, the single largest quarterly increase since 2011 (the year the pay model was launched).

The Times' digital success is hinged upon two major drivers: affiliate revenues from services like the Wirecutter and digital subscriptions. Advertising might be a good short term bandaid, but the company needs to focus on how to evolve away from it even more aggressively. The Times needs to simplify their sign-up experience and make it easier for people to pay for the subscriptions. As of now, it is like the sound you hear when scratching your nails on a piece of glass.

231 of 408 comments (clear)

  1. Kids these days... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    >if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever

    Yeah, and this is the year of Linux on the desktop.

    1. Re:Kids these days... by tripleevenfall · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Really, the simple fact is that we don't need as many outlets as we used to. One outlet can serve people around the world.

      Naturally, there's going to be some consolidation - particularly if you can't convince enough people that your product is worth paying for above all the others.

    2. Re:Kids these days... by OhPlz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No it can't. There's value in local news teams that you don't get with national or international outfits. That's why the televised networks usually have local news followed by national and world news. Most people are primarily interested in their area, and only the top stories beyond.

    3. Re:Kids these days... by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Gotta agree with sibling, and can drill down even further...

      There's a reason I still support and read our local paper, printed in the town nearest my house; this is a town that has barely 2,000 souls in it, mind. Oh, and the "local" TV news around here covers and centers on Portland, OR - which is 50 miles away.

      The NYT isn't going to tell me the school board minutes, the city council minutes, or the local budget/tax/bond stuff. I don't expect the NYT to print a picture of my kid making the winning score at the last high school basketball game, or remind me when stuff like the Friendship Jamboree is coming up. No coupons for the local grocery store are going to be found in the NYT, either.

      --

      Also, there is a hazard in consolidation, one we can already see. The US (and UK, and etc) have a grand tradition of slanted/yellow journalism that is present even today, denials be damned. Only difference is back then, the papers proudly proclaimed their slants up-front (today? Not so much - you usually get denials from 'em). The best way to counterbalance that bias was to have competing outlets with different slants, then you could compare/contrast to get the actual truth of a given matter if you wanted it.

      Besides, do you really want to go back to the days (1970's-1990s or so) where a select few outlets were the literal 'gatekeepers of truth'? Personally, well, fuck that. Let the marketplace win out - webhosting is cheap, the code for it is free of cost, and it doesn't take much more than a 10th grade education these days to set up a working bit of homegrown journalism. The market can (and in my opinion will) choose the winners and losers from the lot (see also The Drudge Report --love it or hate it-- as an example of a local gossip rag/site that exploded and went international.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    4. Re:Kids these days... by SeriousTube · · Score: 1

      It's nice you have a paper like that. We sure don't in this 20000 person suburb of Philadelphia. I imagine they're pretty rare. Maybe not in small towns.

    5. Re:Kids these days... by SpaceDave · · Score: 1

      It's true that proximity is one of the top drivers for making a story newsworthy, so local news will always have a strong interest value. The problem for local newspapers isn't consumer interest, it's advertiser value. My wife sells advertising for our local paper and she's finding it increasingly difficult to compete with Facebook and other advertising opportunities. The cost of producing local content (even for digital-only distribution) is very high per head of target audience, so advertising is correspondingly expensive.

      Most local papers these days are owned by large media companies as a way to control local content rather than as good business units in themselves.

    6. Re:Kids these days... by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 2

      I live in a town of 5000 people and while the local weekly newspaper has shrunk somewhat over the past 20-odd years that I've been here, it's still loaded with advertising, mostly for local businesses. I'd say there's about a 50/50 mix of editorial content vs advertising in that paper. I have no idea how they manage that; they do have a full-time advertising sales guy who runs around town flogging it.

      --
      If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
    7. Re:Kids these days... by epyT-R · · Score: 2

      Seriously? In the era of overt bias and propaganda, 'fake news', and 'alternative facts'?

    8. Re:Kids these days... by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      Yes, and it's a shame so many local papers sold out. It's a disservice to their readership. There are a lot of problems with local papers. Honesty is a big issue. My local paper had a very lively online community, but they didn't like the fact that the comments pointed out the bias or inaccuracies of many of their reports. Up went a paywall and out went pseudo-anonymous accounts. It absolutely killed them. Worse, the local papers' websites are the hosts for the nastiest, most annoying advertising. Some of them are unmanageable even with adblocking. I would pay a subscription for unbiased content and unfettered commentary and I'm sure a number of people would, forgoing the need for heavy advertising.. but that's a tall ask for the old media and sadly we can't always have what we want. So we go to Facebook or other social media venues to fill the whole that local news used to. They need to adapt with the times or disappear like payphones.

    9. Re:Kids these days... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      It's true that proximity is one of the top drivers for making a story newsworthy, so local news will always have a strong interest value. The problem for local newspapers isn't consumer interest, it's advertiser value. My wife sells advertising for our local paper and she's finding it increasingly difficult to compete with Facebook and other advertising opportunities.

      In the mid-late 1990's I had a side business doing photography and video. Our local paper had advertisement prices that were prohibitive of anything but million dollar per annum plus businesses. I could easily have spent a hundred K per year with small ads. So I advertised only enough so that people remembered the name of the business. A system like that is very vulnerable to economic downturns and especially the internet incursion.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    10. Re:Kids these days... by stoatwblr · · Score: 1

      "Our local paper had advertisement prices that were prohibitive of anything but million dollar per annum plus businesses."

      Same for my business and local paper in the 90s.

      We found that small ads in the classifieds of the nearest large city's papers cost 1/20 as much and got us 5 times as much business.

      The local paper's only response to our pointing this out was to try and sell us even more expensive advertising campaigns than the ones which hadn't worked.

    11. Re:Kids these days... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      The local paper's only response to our pointing this out was to try and sell us even more expensive advertising campaigns than the ones which hadn't worked.

      Crikey's, I could have written that! My local paper kept trying to get me to take out daily's that were going to cost a couple grand a month. And every so often a half page. At one point I asked if the purpose for my being in business was to give them all my money. The lady just grinned. Today they are about 25 percent of the size they used to be. Good.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  2. -> arrows? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    "->" in 2017, while we have these nice unicode arrows...

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  3. news will die forever mark my words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    nobody likes bad news and thats what the papers have pushed hard for the last 20 odd years which coincidently marked a declining press, yes years before the internet even came about. If they were to go back to their roots and report the news in all its forms, stop only reporting politically correct items and focus on all the news like the stuff wikileaks has to leak because the press doenst do its job, then the people may return. They wont so news will die because the younger generation never got into new because its all false crap nothing true.

    1. Re:news will die forever mark my words by RabidReindeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The human brain is wired for pessimism. It's a survival reflex. We want to read about bad news so as to be better prepared in case something like that comes our way.

      Perhaps the original "fake news", in fact, came from our religious leaders. They tell us that sacrificing a hecatomb to Zeus or chanting a magic spell such as "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his Prophet" or "I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour" will ward off evil. Bad news reminds us that reality is different. That prayer and a positive attitude stop short of being able to halt the anvil falling from above, that mountains have more faith that they won't cast themselves into the sea than we do otherwise (and that TNT has more faith than either us or mountains). That it truly does rain upon both the Just and the un-Just, although the un-Just can generally afford umbrellas.

      A steady diet of bad news isn't healthy either, though. Which is why we like our news sources salted with tales of baby ducks being rescued from storm drains.

    2. Re:news will die forever mark my words by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      The part about "accepting Jesus" is said in the book that talks about that sort of thing to be a point of entry into chastisement and possibly even martyrdom. That would be the exact opposite of your quoted "ward off evil." There is a whole sub-book in that book that deals with the fact that bad shit happens to even the very best of people, and for no reason that these people will ever be able to fathom.

      In short, your purported use of religious sentiments to support your supposition has severely undermined your case as the referenced material declares exactly opposite what you say it does. Not surprising though, most people that think they know something about a religion generally don't know the first thing.

      The things I have heard purported new age "Buddhists" say about Buddhism, wow!

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    3. Re:news will die forever mark my words by dcooper_db9 · · Score: 1

      we like our news sources salted with tales of baby ducks being rescued from storm drains.

      Link please?

      Sorry, you were saying..?

      --
      I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
  4. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    New York Times reports FAKE NEWS! Terrible.
    @donaldjtrump

  5. Kowtowing by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Isn't this sort of thing just kowtowing to Trumps use of "failing" every time he mentions the New York Times in tweets or press conferences? We all know why he does that - spread enough misinformation about a companies situation and eventually enough people get spooked to make it true. The numbers don't show a failing company, they merely show a transitional one.

    1. Re:Kowtowing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      No I think Trump is calling this one accurately - although his reasons are more personal.

      The NYT is an outdated format even in it's transitional phase (which has taken nearly 20 years mind you). Few people spend the time to read the entire article when they are looking for headlines and sound bites. Journalism schools have been closing for years now, or wrapped into Speech Comm curriculum which are essentially leftist & politically correct. When you can get news that you like from nearly anywhere and for free, why pay for it and why subject yourself to a New York City viewpoint from barely educated and mind warped fanatics?

    2. Re:Kowtowing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Please give an example of misinformation about Trump. Nobody needs to misinform anyone about Trump, because he himself will tell how crap he is at his job or in being a human.

    3. Re:Kowtowing by jenningsthecat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... When you can get news that you like from nearly anywhere and for free, why pay for it and why subject yourself to a New York City viewpoint from barely educated and mind warped fanatics?

      "News that you like" is the operative phrase there. I'd like to think that it used to be different, bit I'm not sure it ever was. Maybe the majority always gravitated to the news they 'liked' in favour of the news that did its best to be accurate and unbiased, and maybe the generally more accurate and unbiased news of 40 years ago obscured the fact.

      There's so much at stake now for governments and corporations wanting to control the narrative. 'News', (and I use the term very loosely), is often a make-or-break thing when it comes to elections, IPO's, product launches, sales numbers, law suits, new legislation, and even criminal cases, (to name a few); so simply reporting the facts and adding a bit of insightful analysis is kind of obsolete. The distinctions among news, editorials, and advertising have all but disappeared. If people already have a tendency to choose the (um...let's call it 'reportage') that they like, regardless of its accuracy or relevance, then the market is ripe for hucksters and con men of every stripe looking to sway the opinions of a constituency or a nation. It's no accident that Kellyanne Conjob coined the phrase 'alternative facts'. She was pilloried for it, and rightly so, but in one sense she was just pointing out the nature of today's reality, which is that, for a distressingly large number of people, fact is no different from opinion, and is simply a matter of preference. Our culture seems to have made 'critical faculty' a pejorative term; for the history of why that's so, read John Taylor Gatto, among others.

      In an era when people can hear the 'news' that they prefer, for little or no money, does the NYT have any chance of long-term survival?

      --
      'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
    4. Re:Kowtowing by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      People have been claiming newspapers are obsolete in some shape or form for 50 years, ever since television became everyone's primary method for keeping up with the news. In practice, newspapers, while hit, never went away, while TV news has become supplanted by the Internet.

      And who is dominating news on the Internet? Oh, yeah, the newspapers. Most of us have at least one newspaper's website that's on our rotation of sites to check every day, despite the attempts to get us to use news apps or search engine news aggregators - both of which suffer in that they mix the latest from, say, the Daily Mail, with that of The Guardian or Washington Post.

      As for this:

      Few people spend the time to read the entire article when they are looking for headlines and sound bites

      Few do, But few have ever done. You think, if you teleported back to a New York Subway car in the 1940s, every strap hanger was reading the New York Times on the way to work? Go to a London Underground Tube Train in the 1950s, and every passenger was reading The Times, Guardian, or Telegraph?

      There's always been a range of newspapers providing news in different formats for different readers, and the most popular have always been the ones screaming headlines that today we'd call "clickbait", and whose articles are scarcely a few sentences long.

      The New York Times is an exception, because it caters for the market of people who want more. It's always been a small minority that reads it. The difference between the days of paper and today are that all of a sudden the NYT can have an engaged audience that spreads far beyond the range a printed, time critical, newspaper can be delivered within, and that without page limits, its no longer limited to coverage of the region it serves.

      Which is why the New York Times is doing very well right now, when 20 years ago it wasn't.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    5. Re:Kowtowing by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They keep reporting what he actually says, as opposed to what he apparently meant to say... or something. The whole "what happened in Sweden" thing is a perfect example of how Trump makes unhinged and false statements, and then his press team and the legions of true believers will reinterpret those statements so, at least in their minds, he doesn't look, well, unhinged and dishonest. "Ah well, he wasn't talking about a specific event, but you know, general problems in Sweden." How is it that a grown man who is such a tremendous dealmaker needs a full-time public relations team to translate his utterances into something vaguely like the truth? And how is that you can condemn the press for reporting those utterances? Isn't that the press's job? But oh no, because the press doesn't do Conway's job for her, they're "pushing a narrative".

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    6. Re:Kowtowing by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      The Internet has done 2 things. It has pretty much levelled our sources of information. One link is as easy to click on as another, so we tend to follow the links that gratify us,

      The second thing it has done is made it easier to ignore inconvenient truths. A TV news program will typically present a number of articles, and if you don't like/disagree with one of them, you're still obliged to wait until it's over to get to the ones you do want. So at least alternatives have an opportunity to make a case, even if we reject them. Likewise, print publications may have headlines we choose to ignore, but nevertheless we see the headlines and headlines often draw at least cursory scan of what immediately follow. And often print publications are in shared areas where people can see them whether they'd actually buy the publication or not.

      In contrast, we can skip "offensive" links and never know what was behind them and web pages don't lie randomly around houses or offices for the unsuspecting to be corrupted by them.

      What we end up with isn't just echo chambers, but blinkered views of the world. We can manage without much effort to be totally ignorant of important information simply because it wasn't directed straight down our personal pipelines.

    7. Re:Kowtowing by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

      Don't expect a legitimate answer from the troll. He's been going rampant through the comments section with his bullshit.

    8. Re: Kowtowing by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

      Being Trump TrumpoTrump

    9. Re:Kowtowing by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      Isn't this sort of thing just kowtowing to Trumps use of "failing" every time he mentions the New York Times in tweets or press conferences? We all know why he does that - spread enough misinformation about a companies situation and eventually enough people get spooked to make it true. The numbers don't show a failing company, they merely show a transitional one.

      And in related news: Number of bankruptcies:

      • Trump: 6
      • NYT: 0
      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    10. Re:Kowtowing by unixisc · · Score: 1

      More fake news. Every one of Trump's detractors - starting from the GOP primary - pointed out that he had 4 bankruptcies. If he had 6, don't you think they'd have pounded on that very emphatically?

    11. Re:Kowtowing by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      From the Washington Post article I referenced:

      PolitiFact uncovered two more bankruptcies filed after 1992, totaling six. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession.

      Why the discrepancy? Perhaps this will give us an idea: Trump told Washington Post reporters that he counted the first three bankruptcies as just one.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    12. Re:Kowtowing by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      We all know why he does that - spread enough misinformation about a companies situation and eventually enough people get spooked to make it true.

      Indeed, that is Trump's reason at one level level. The overarching reason is that Trump is a self-serving thug who seeks to profit from undermining the democratic institutions of his homeland.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    13. Re:Kowtowing by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      People have been claiming newspapers are obsolete in some shape or form for 50 years, ever since television became everyone's primary method for keeping up with the news.

      It's fair to say that the classic broadsheet is obsolete. Still hanging on at the local community level and motel lobbies, but pretty much fading overall as evidenced by newsprint production statistics.

      And who is dominating news on the Internet? Oh, yeah, the newspapers. Most of us have at least one newspaper's website that's on our rotation of sites to check every day, despite the attempts to get us to use news apps or search engine news aggregators - both of which suffer in that they mix the latest from, say, the Daily Mail, with that of The Guardian or Washington Post.

      Is Huffington Post a newspaper? I think not. It is a new beast: a news site. The New York Times is able to avoid obsolescence exactly to the extent that it is able to transform itself from a newspaper to a news site, which appears to be proceeding well, tweets from liar-in-chief notwithstanding.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    14. Re:Kowtowing by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      What you of course completely ignore is newspapers compete. Compared to print, the internet provides global competition for news. Why do they complain about RT because RT can target a global audience, well beyond the confines of one city or even extended delivery beyond that city.

      The New York Times is dying a slow grim death. It's model of supporting it's advertisers above the value of truth has set it up to fail in the internet age or more specifically global delivery of news direct to the end user pretty much where ever they are in the world.

      You have not even seen the real killer of all dead tree news, accurate auto translation services. Now that will really blow the whole news media front wide open. Even the most backwater third world news service will have access to a global market, not that they will be able to capture it, just that it opens up so much more competition. News organisations that favour advertisers over readers and truth are dying. What was really funny, the whole fake news scam that they conspired to create as a cartel, did them far more harm than it did those who they targeted. Accurate auto translation services are going to blow the internet and last millenniums media market wide open.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  6. You forgot to mention their liberal bias by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The NYT also has their award-winning liberal bias where everything Liberal Democrats do is awesome and anything Conservative Republicans is bad-bad-bad. They're no better than Gawker in many ways with their dead-tree version of click-bait and character smearing.

    But yeah, lets throw some numbers around to make it look they might survive into the digital world.

    1. Re:You forgot to mention their liberal bias by D00MSlayer · · Score: 2

      Well maybe if conservative republicans stopped acting like giant douchebags who seek profit over duty, then they might actually write some favorable articles.

      Any bias that exists is born out of republicans' general hatred for doing their constitutionally-mandated civic duties in a manner that clearly displays their level of shill.

    2. Re:You forgot to mention their liberal bias by colin_faber · · Score: 1

      How is what you've said not completely bigoted? Blanket attacks on a group of people who you don't like for whatever reason. How do you think your sentence would read if you replaced "conservative republicans" with "african americans" or "gays" or "women", etc. Sure makes you seem like a nasty bigot.

    3. Re:You forgot to mention their liberal bias by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

      Well maybe if African Americans stopped acting like giant douchebags who seek profit over duty, then they might actually write some favorable articles.

      Hmmm.... not sure what duty ALL African Americans have floundered to cause NYT to write scathing articles about them.

      Well maybe if gays stopped acting like giant douchebags who seek profit over duty, then they might actually write some favorable articles.

      Again.. not sure what duty that ALL the gays have neglected that would warrant critical news articles to be written about them.

      Well maybe if women stopped acting like giant douchebags who seek profit over duty, then they might actually write some favorable articles.

      What duty are ALL women responsible for that would cause the NYT to condemn them with unfavorable opinions? That I'm not sure of..

      Now, conservative republican congressmen/women, are 99% complicit with the disastrous government policies being pushed forward on a national scale, along with re-enforcing Trumps anti-American anti-constitutional behaviors and orders, while at the same time gobbling up all of those lobbying dollars and donations from republican think-tanks, Super PAC's, and the oil industry who influence them more than the people they are supposed to represent. I'd say a blanket attack on them is warranted until they can prove to the American people that their vested interest isn't in only representing their own financial interests tied to previous said groups, but representing the ENTIRE constituency, even going so far as to listen and accept widely popular concepts, such as universal healthcare, women's rights, sensible gun control, equality for LGBT, clean/renewable energy, non-interventionist foreign policies, etc.

      If money was completely removed from politics, republicans would likely be seen in a much more favorable light(along with some dem's, too), because people like the Koch Brothers wouldn't be able to influence them in relaxing/removing regulations to allow private companies to poison the well. /rant

    4. Re:You forgot to mention their liberal bias by colin_faber · · Score: 1

      You completely missed the point.

    5. Re:You forgot to mention their liberal bias by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

      Well, you completely missed the context.

    6. Re:You forgot to mention their liberal bias by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

      Anybody who disparages liberals is also then acting like bigots if you're going to apply that term to anybody who talks about republicans negatively. That pretty much encompasses the entire right-wing media.

  7. New York what...? by Orangedog_on_crack · · Score: 1, Troll

    Outdated legacy "news" outlet, now more correctly referred to as Carlos Slims Blog. And the new york times is to news as Cheez-Wiz is to cheese. It's not "news" it's processed news product with a side of establishment boot-licking.

    1. Re:New York what...? by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

      Your comment is about as bland as cheez-wiz. Can't you think of something a little more original?

  8. Re:- arrows? by hattig · · Score: 1

    Override the Slashdot CSS to use a font like FiraCode then.

  9. Hmm by Orgasmatron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I saw the headline, my first thought was that slashdot had picked up the story about the major newspapers buying fake clicks from Chinese bots to increase their page rank and advertising revenue.

    See here and here (or here).

    --
    See that "Preview" button?
    1. Re:Hmm by lucaiaco · · Score: 4, Informative

      o The average Chinese person has no interest in Trump or the Brexit. The average Chinese has very little interest in Western politics in general. This is anecdotal evidence, but I have lived in HK and Taiwan (which are way more open than mainlanders) and none of my friends read American news (and they were all mostly very westernized). Open any Chinese newspapers, or social network and see how much they care (they don't, and also, you can't because from your post I cantell you have no clue about their culture).
      o Taiwanese, Japanese, and Indians care way more about Trump (especially Indians), and India is an English speaking country. But there is no spike in viewership from these countries.
      o As it has already been pointed out, these numbers are ridiculous compared to the number of speakers of English.
      o Why only these three journals (one of which is banned)?
      o Do you have any actual argument or evidence to support your claim.
      o Please, realize that you are the idiot, your post and your signature are full of contradictions.


      Now, back to the actually rational, non-brainwashed people left in this site. The data seems pretty legitimate, do we know why it hasn't been picked up by anybody (the news is pretty old). A google search returns very few results, and I couldn't find anything debunking it. Any actual, technical idea of why this info should not be trusted?

    2. Re:Hmm by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Kinda hard to judge the figures where there are no references as to where they came from in the links, but there are over 1.2 billion people in China. Anything you say about the "average Chinese" is bound to be wrong for many tens or hundreds of millions of them. There are only about 65 million people in the whole UK, so mild interest from China would likely constitute a massive boost in readership for a UK newspaper.

      --
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    3. Re:Hmm by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      A google search returns very few results, and I couldn't find anything debunking it.

      Probably for the same reason you will find few results for flat-earth denial, or phlogiston theory.

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    4. Re:Hmm by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      I'd be enormously surprised if Chinese businessmen working in manufacturing industries dependent upon American and European clients aren't interested in news relating to how easy it'll be to export to the US and to European nations in the near future. I would, absolutely, expect them to show more interest than they've done in the past given the ramifications for Trump, who appears to oppose the degree of international trade we have, and Brexit, which will change the relationship of nations and thus have massive ramifications for trade.

      Just because the "average" Chinese person doesn't care, doesn't mean that a significant minority will suddenly have a lot more interest in US and European events than they did previously. With China being a fairly populous country, you'd expect that to amount to a lot of new readers.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    5. Re:Hmm by lucaiaco · · Score: 1

      Can we agree that either position (my whole point) is at least suspicious and that they would deserve more attention than a few blog posts?

      I am not defending either position, in fact, I am trying to understand why it is so hard to find a reliable, official source that discusses this. The data is out there, and it looks extremely suspicious to me.

    6. Re:Hmm by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

      Get outta here with that common sense!

    7. Re: Hmm by Orgasmatron · · Score: 1

      The Gateway Pundit graphs are Alexa Page rank. My understanding is that the rank is derived from a browser plugin. The page that gets the most clicks over whatever time period is ranked 1, then the second most, etc. Higher on the graph means more traffic, which means lower rank.

      http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/...

      I'm not sure why they aren't linear. They don't look like log scale, but it is hard to tell when looking at a small slice like this. Another possibility (and I really shouldn't speculate, since I suspect that Alexa explains this somewhere) is that the amount of traffic needed to achieve each line could be linear.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
  10. Hard to read by blogagog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They've got to get over their hatred of Trump before they can succeed. Even anti-Trump people want to hear about something else once in a while.

    1. Re:Hard to read by EzInKy · · Score: 2, Funny

      More people hate Trump than like him. You are saying they should censor themselves then?

      P.S. I'm really worried about Sweden. The latest terrorist attack against their country never made the mainstream news.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    2. Re:Hard to read by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      I have the same problem in here :D

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    3. Re:Hard to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even as someone who has no particular like for Trump, it's getting old fast. The anti-Trumpers are raving like lunatics and their little fits of rage have worn thin. For people who ride him about tweeting about the irrelevant issues, they sure don't bring a lot to the table themselves. At the rate they're going they may have me voting for him by next election just to put them off.

    4. Re:Hard to read by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can't really avoid reporting what the POTUS and wider government does, and it's not really their fault if honest reporting tends to paint Trump in a bad light. Maybe they can lighten it up with more cartoons or something.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Hard to read by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

      It gets old too quick. Fortunately for me, It gives me a good excuse to go for a morning walk rather than my usual half hour going through news. Bias and the lack of inspiration are a part of it, but too much of "the end is neigh" and there really isn't a point: we are stuck with him for another 47 months, and for at least the next 16 months there really isn't much that can be done to change the picture.

    6. Re:Hard to read by Orgasmatron · · Score: 1

      When I meet these people, I always thank them for volunteering so much time and effort to Trump's reelection campaign. The best part is that they usually react by doubling down - making them even more repugnant to normal people.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    7. Re:Hard to read by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean they should stop reporting on the President of the United States when he does something with serious consequences if whatever he did happens to be a bad thing?

      That's... not the way the press is supposed to act in a free society, FWIW. The Press is supposed to cover what the government does and what the impact of that is. You might not like that, but the rest of us prefer it that way.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    8. Re:Hard to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You mean like Fox and Breitbart got over ranting about Obama and Hillary? That certainly hurt them. Face it, never letting go is now seen as the winning strategy, both in terms of news and politics.

    9. Re:Hard to read by dbIII · · Score: 1

      More people hate Trump than like him. You are saying they should censor themselves then?

      Yes! They should serve King not country! It's the American waaaayta minute, somethings not right here.

    10. Re:Hard to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "the end is neigh"

      I see you're looking your gift horse in the mouth again.

    11. Re:Hard to read by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Informative

      Sorry, but when your president is a habitual liar, at war with the free press and surrounded by even worse people it's not a "fit of rage", it's genuine and justified concern.

      Trying to dismiss it as some kind of childish tantrum is a straight up silencing tactic. It's not going to work. Especially when the POTUS is prone to doing exactly what you complain about, often at 3AM on Twitter, or through his spokesman at a Whitehouse Press Conference.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re:Hard to read by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So now we've moved the goalposts from "fake news" to "blowing the subject out of proportion". I guess that's what happened with Flynn. It went from "claims that he was chatting with the Russians are fake news" to "the media blew it totally out of proportion" to "he didn't do anything wrong but pissed Pence off."

      Nixon's supporters did much the same thing, invoking the same trajectory of "made up" to "not a big deal", and it ended up with him abandoning the Presidency before the inevitable impeachment and removal from office.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    13. Re:Hard to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm really worried about Sweden

      What you are, actually, is ignorant of the facts. Talk to a cop who has to deal with what's going on there. Or better yet, try living with it yourself for a week or two.

      This guy caught heat for being honest about it.

      But you can be honest about it without risking public backlash, so why not try it?

    14. Re:Hard to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Trump's election represented a repudiation of "got'cha" journalism. We have "gotcha" fatigue as a society. With media, it was always, "Forget about policies for a second, people... he SAID THIS DUMB REMARK! Got'cha, Donald! They can't vote for you now! Time to accept an establishment candidate!"

      We're tired of being told who to vote for because somebody's remarks upset elite professors and business owners. They act like outrageous comments should automatically invalidate policy ideas. "Paul Krugman thinks Donald Trump is a real dummy, so you'd better drop Drump like a hot potato!" The middle and working classes view people like Krugman as the drivers of the bus that drove them straight off of a cliff. So we don't care when Krugman plays the "got'cha" game by telling us how Trump's off-the-cuff comment proves he really doesn't understand economics. Krugman's economic ideas sucked for us, anyway.

      What people wanted was an earnest champion of the middle and working classes, not someone that says, "You're job isn't coming back. Undergo some expensive training for a new one that hopefully won't disappear like the last one. Oh, and did I mention that we need more free trade?" You couldn't combat middle and working class anger with simple "got'cha" tactics forever. It was intellectually dishonest and the public now sees through it.

      And that, my friends, is why people are calling the media dishonest. Not because of any outright lies or fabrications. It's because the public gets that "got'cha" journalism is just a way for the media to try and sway public opinion with admitting their real positions on issues. "Forget what Trump says about China... he's a misogynist!" We know the truth: The elite think middle America is stupid and deserves to be ripped apart by free trade. "Got'cha" won't work anymore.

    15. Re:Hard to read by hey! · · Score: 1

      Even anti-Trump people want to hear about something else once in a while.

      Actually not. Our appetite for anti-Trump information is apparently insatiable, and that's a problem for us. In fact I think it's one of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college.

      Like everything else, negative information reaches a point of diminishing returns. There comes a point where more bad news doesn't hurt you any more, but crowds out other news. In a divisive election, you win by getting more supporters to the polls than your opponent, and for that you need media bandwidth. So while Hillary's favorable/unfavorable ratings were consistently far better than Trump's even when they were under water, Trump was hogging all the media attention she needed to make the most of that advantage. Trump was ratings gold, because people who despised him as a buffoon simply adored stories which confirmed that fact.

      And if you're a Trump supporter, take heart: we haven't seemed to learn anything. We still haven't figured out we can't rely on Trump's buffoonery, that we have to craft a positive message and deliver it into places where he has support.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    16. Re:Hard to read by freezin+fat+guy · · Score: 1

      People need to get over their support of Trump so they can succeed.

    17. Re:Hard to read by penandpaper · · Score: 1, Insightful

      TBH, that goes both ways and why I find the Horse-shoe theory applicable. Both sides are doubling down and the real question is which side is pissing off the middle more than the other. Right now, I think more people are getting fed up with the left, hence POTUS Trump. Yea, Trump is disliked but that was true before he was elected. Obviously, that dislike wasn't enough. All he has done is what he promised on the campaign trail, like it or not. Just like the ACA that pissed off R's that Obama said he would do. Polls show his E.O. travel ban was popular . Looks like it is disliked by D's that wasn't going to like anything he did. Go figure.

      Sure, there are some issues with the press and government over truthiness but neither have authority over truth. I like the government and media at odds because they should be critical of each other and not give a pass. No scandals from Obama? Right...

      What is definitive is the violence is more often then not coming from the left. Whether that is paid agitators at campaign rallies or the antifa on inauguration and Berkley. There are allegations of *isms and *ists but a lot of those reports have been either false or carried out by people trying to craft that narrative of *isms and *ists. Like this.

      If I had to gander a guess as to which is more repugnant to normal people; I would venture the guess to the violence, false accusations, and poorly justified allegations..

    18. Re:Hard to read by moeinvt · · Score: 1

      "The Press is supposed to cover what the government does and what the impact of that is. You might not like that, but the rest of us prefer it "

      I love it! Just how long has the New York Times been doing this? Must be right around 3 months now?
      LOL

    19. Re:Hard to read by penandpaper · · Score: 1, Interesting

      What does war with the press mean? Seriously. All I can see is that each (government and press) are vying for authority on truth which neither have. So what?

      What I find funny is that news has become a 3rd person reading of twitter tweets. lol, because twitter has nothing to do with shit-posting. As the internet became more ingrained in society it was inevitable that politicians began shit-posting like the rest of us. It's just hilarious to find "old media" out of touch with shit-posting.

      War on memes because pepe is white supremacist... I mean kek supremacist. top keks for everyone!

      lol, I mean really? How can you take a news outlet that parades a war on memes seriously? On MEMES for gods sake. Don't they know that memes are dreams?

      Faux outrage and slacktivism is not the new civil rights movement and it is not going to free the slaves (modern slaves that actually exist).

    20. Re:Hard to read by gtall · · Score: 1

      They are just echoing the anti-Obama people who went before. We were treated to "stories" about his birth in Kenya even after his Hawaii birth certificate was published. We even had a presidential candidate honk on about it long after it was a dead horse.

      Before that, it was the anti-Bush people who decided their inside joke was to call him a Nazi.

      Before that, we were treated to the Bible thumpers thumping about Bill Clinton and Sex...funny how the Bible thumpers are fixated on Sex.

      Before that, it was the anti-Bush (dad) people, they were a bit subdued but whined drearily about his tax increases.

      Before that, it was the anti-Reagan people who threatened us with nuclear annihilation.

      I'd go on but you get the picture. The U.S. has always had a group of crazies who fixate all their frustrations on the current White House guy. I will admit Trump gives them (and myself) much more fodder to work with...which is surprising really since he has so much less upstairs to work with.

    21. Re:Hard to read by radl33t · · Score: 1

      why do people craft narratives out of nothing?

      90%+++ of people voted the ticket they would voted with ANY D or R candidates. 10% did not. A few hundred thousand made a difference.

      There is zero evidence for your narrative. It should not be used to drive policy in America. Done.

    22. Re:Hard to read by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      What does war with the press mean? Seriously. All I can see is that each (government and press) are vying for authority on truth which neither have. So what?

      The press is essential in a democracy. It's how citizens are informed of the government's actions and able to keep tabs on its behaviour. Trump is trying to subvert that, at best making people believe, as you do, that neither side is at all honest and you can't believe anything (post-truth politics), and at worst that you should only believe what Trump writes on his Twitter feed.

      Trump seems to be hoping that he can live without the media. In the past presidents had to talk to citizens through the media. Trump wants to do it directly, like an always-on fireside chat, or replace reputable organizations with far right radio hosts and blogs that are sympathetic to him. It's really bad for the Republicans, because they still need the media to talk to them and every time it happens they are forced to comment on Trump rather than what they want to talk about.

      That is how non-democratic governments work. Somehow silence or control the press so that they cannot be criticised, and only their message is heard. You should be very alarmed that Trump is trying to do it, and relieved that the press in the US is strong enough to stand up to it.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    23. Re:Hard to read by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I'd have to say that we ended up with a much better guy in McMaster than in Flynn.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    24. Re:Hard to read by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      I am with you right up til "Trump is trying to subvert that". He is pushing a different narrative. Big deal. That is not subversion. The press is not being hamstrung by the government. The press is not losing relevance because of the government. The press is not perceived as dishonest because of the government. The government didn't popularize the term "fake news" or "post-truth politics". The press are not being oppressed or their rights taken away by the government. The 1st amendment is still alive and strong and just like the rest of US history will allow anyone to say anything about the government. You have a very loose and broad term for "subvert" if you think "different narrative" is subversion of journalism and essentially, as you put it, democracy itself. Hyperbole much??

      at worst that you should only believe what Trump writes on his Twitter feed.

      Wow. Someone wants me to believe them over someone else. Why should I believe you?

      Do you honestly believe that one side is honest? If so I have a bridge to sell you. All I need is to know which side you stand and frame the "sale" accordingly. People, governments, and institutions since the dawn of written word have been trying to convince you of something. Why is it now all the sudden an issue?

      Trump wants to do it directly,

      I honestly don't see an issue with this. He doesn't have a monopoly on it and what he says is no longer filtered with the bias of the journalists. The journalists can still do their job and so it is a win for the consumer of information because they can see what Trump is saying without the gatekeepers of information to filter his words in whatever narrative is being pushed. You can still get that narrative and that is what is important but I don't see how people getting what Trump says directly from Trump is bad.

      they are forced to comment on Trump rather than what they want to talk about.

      Yea, that whole "gatekeeper of information" and their filter. No one is forcing anyone to do anything except for the journalists forcing guests to comment on tweets. I see.

      . Somehow silence or control the press so that they cannot be criticized,

      ROFL... No one is being silenced. Everyone can still criticize the government and Trump. The press is losing viewership by their own doing and nothing Trump could do can silence them more then how they silence themselves by becoming irrelevant in the marketplace of ideas.

      I should be alarmed that the press and government are at odds in the US? Relieved that the press is "strong enough"? LOL, I am relieved that the US values free speech to the point that a ministry of truth, from either government or media is laughable.

      You are scared of someone saying something contrary to what CNN/NYTimes says. Grow up. CNN/NYTimes are not authorities on truth anymore than the government. The sooner you realize this the sooner you will realize that the government and media at odds is a good thing in a free and democratic society.

    25. Re:Hard to read by radl33t · · Score: 1

      Speaking of snowflakes, there seem to be a lot of the conservative variety lately. One particularly particularly unique specimen can be found in some tacky beach resort or out on the golf course and I assume, sometimes in the oval office.

      As for the press conference, I couldn't even read through the transcript. There is no way I could watch 80 minutes of incoherent rambling. I'm giving a 90 minute talk tomorrow afternoon. I would be rightly fired if its quality matched POTUS appalling display. Then again, I'm speaking to engineers, not the riled up classroom of 4th graders who support Trump.

    26. Re:Hard to read by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 1

      Why is it patently impossible for anyone saying something positive about Trump (or even trying to turn the negative narrative around) to make a statement without falling on cognitive dissonance, denial, or just plain old-fashioned bullshit? This isn't even a Bush/Gore moment - Trump lost the majority vote and won the EC. The only debate about it is coming from him!

      --
      Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
    27. Re:Hard to read by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It's not a "different narrative", any more than we have "alternate facts".

      The media is there to keep politicians at least a little bit honest. Remove that and you get Donald Trump, free to tell the most ridiculous and often petty lies.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    28. Re:Hard to read by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      You can lie even when you tell nothing but facts. Lies by omission are one example that can frame a narrative despite reality. For example: A historical black church was burned in Mississippi before the election and spray painted with "Vote Trump". 100% true. Reality: A historical black church was burned in Mississippi before the election and spray painted with "Vote Trump" carried out by a black member of said church. Care to take a guess what narrative was spun from the first statement? Hint: racists support Trump.

      The media is there to keep politicians at least a little bit honest.

      And what happens when the media is dishonest? This is what I don't think you understand that is very important. The media does not have an authority on the truth anymore than the government. If you are surrounded by liars how do you know what is in your best interests if they all want to sell you a dollar?

      free to tell the most ridiculous and often petty lies.

      Yes. Everyone is free to tell the most ridiculous and often petty lies. That is the point. No one has a monopoly on the truth. That is why Trump can do nothing to silence journalists. Journalists can be "silenced" by losing all credibility that has nothing to do with Trump.

      media is there to keep politicians at least a little bit honest.

      Honestly, that is the voters job. It should be the medias job to keep the electorate informed but sometimes the media fail at that. Who is the electorate supposed to listen to if the media's integrity has been compromised?

    29. Re:Hard to read by nyri · · Score: 1

      The Press is supposed to cover what the government does and what the impact of that is.

      Come on. You can't seriously claim that they are doing this well at the moment. Assessing the impact requires skills in predicting the future. May I point out that you are defending an organisation that claimed that Clinton would win with 98% probability. If you fair you must admit that the general animus among the chattering class (e.g. NYT) played a role why they got it so wrong. So the animus is there and it obviously affects the quality of the reporting.

      Or, when was the last time when you read an article from NYT which tried to give fair assessment of Trump's views and plans on specific topic? Keep that in mind the next time you read some hysterical BS about "muslim ban" or "russians".

    30. Re:Hard to read by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      You talk about "the media" like it's some homogeneous group. Yes, Breitbart is dishonest, making up fake news, but that doesn't mean that 99.9% of what the BBC publishes is factually accurate and reliable.

      You have fallen into Trump's post-truth trap, where everything is a lie. Who do you trust? How do you know what is happening in the world if everything is fake news? Are you limited to what you can personally verify with your own eyes?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    31. Re:Hard to read by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      No, I talk about the media as various sources of information available to people. Sure, Breitbart has issues but if you think it is limited to Breitbart (honestly I don't read much of them), I have a bridge to sell you. BBC pushes political narratives. Between the two (and others) I can glean the facts I need and form my own narrative. I don't need the virtue signals of a moral busy body in an organization like the BBC or Breitbart to tell me how to feel and what to believe or what to think. Especially when the BBC takes up racists policies and denies people a job based on skin color yet has the gall to call others racist and push a narrative.

      Trump's post-truth trap? lol, right. When the media have been playing this game for years, now all the sudden it's an issue because the media's narrative and the governments narrative do not align? No. I have always used different sources to find the truth because I know that people lie. This isn't new. I have never used 1 source of information to inform my opinions (unless I don't care or too lazy which I am probably not going to read much about the topic to begin with). Why would that be different now? When the media act like a cabal with the same message; why would I listen to them if they are pushing political narratives that may not be reality (hello burnt church because racist Trump supporters!)?

      I find it interesting that the same complaints and sentiment are all stated by Trump, pewdiepie, jontron, and gamergate. "X is racist, nazi, sexist, homophobic, *ist" coordinated articles using the same bad/non-existent sources using the same bad logic to justify what ever *ist claims.

      So, now tell me. If the news is dishonest and/or their integrity compromised what do you do? If they are acting in a coordinated fashion to push a political narrative at the expense of facts and truth, do you still listen without skepticism?

    32. Re:Hard to read by radl33t · · Score: 1

      If you were impressed by that display, then you need some experience observing smart people talk.

  11. Failing business by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    NYT does not strike me to be a failing business. At least NYT does not have to resort to stiffing contractors like Trump to turn a profit.

    1. Re:Failing business by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      NYT does not strike me to be a failing business. At least NYT does not have to resort to stiffing contractors like Trump to turn a profit.

      LOL...if only stiffing contractors could help him turn a profit. He stiffs them and STILL has to file bankruptcy over and over.

    2. Re:Failing business by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      You don't get it do you? Creating a child company, moving all your liabilities over to it, then have it file bankruptcy is a very successful and LEGAL business tactic that nearly all big US companies use. Companies like Apple and Microsoft are doing this shit every day.

    3. Re:Failing business by gtall · · Score: 1

      Wait until he decides that, being the King of Debt, which he proudly proclaimed, decides the U.S. should have a lot more of it. And his Republican Fausts in Congress are going right along claiming the increase in the economy will wash out the extra money they are willing to spend under Trump which they were unwilling to spend under Obama.

      They love to point at Kennedy and Reagan. However, when tax rates are relatively high, you can get a big bang for your buck lowering them...all other things remaining equal. In today's economy, tax rates are relatively low, lowering them further won't get the same return. Worse, companies are learning to treat every down cycle as an excuse to automate more, and now the economy is gotten very good at providing that extra automation.

      There is story about the oil fields in Texas. The price of oil is back up, they are pumping more. Do the jobs return? Bzzzzzt, wrong. The companies got lean by automation during the low oil price years (those that survived are now the leanest of the lot), now they simply crank their machines and computers harder. No real increase in jobs, Trump and his mercantilist economy cannot exist. In that sense, Trump fails to exist as well.

  12. Re:- arrows? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    It shouldn't be "arrows" anyway, this is a list.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  13. Re:- arrows? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    Or just wait for slashdot to use a modern encoding, like UTF-8, like everybody?

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  14. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    Really, I have to give them credit where credit is due: by repeatedly pointing out errors (however trivial) out of the tens of thousands of news stories that are published every day, they've managed to get their supporters to the point where they'll trust a new story on www.siteiveneverheardofbefore.com/newishstuff/hillaryclintonpedophilering.html more than they will an actual newspaper. It's a real masterstroke in terms of controlling the narrative. "Anything negative you hear about me, it's fake, because there exist cases where newspapers have made errors, and we've selectively presented you only with those cases to create a narrative for you that newspapers are packed full of fakery." Not just newspapers - fact checkers, peer-reviewed articles, even official government statistics - all fake, because they've been presented with every case people can get their hands of of error, without the balancing context of the 10000x more that wasn't in error.

    In the words of XKCD: "Dear God, I would like to file a bug report". ;)

    It's the same thing that contributed to the Challenger explosion. They had a nice clean graph in front of them that plotted O-ring failures vs. temperature. There was no clear trend visible on the graph. The problem was that they omitted the successes, the cases where there were no O-ring failures. Here's what it looked like with that added in. All of the sudden there's a very clear trend of failure increasing at low temperatures - in fact, every low temperature launch had had O-ring failures, while very few high-temperature launches had. By being selective in what data you present (accidentally in that case, on purpose in the present case), you can get people to believe precisely the opposite of what is true.

    --
    I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
  15. How hard is it, really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    My wife and I started subscribing to the (digital) NYT a couple years ago. (I don't want to contribute to the pro- vs anti-NYT aspect of the thread, so I'll just say we legit like reading the NYT and think it is worth the cash.) I don't remember sign up being that difficult; in fact I don't remember it at all. I am willing to believe it could be better (I read about how hard companies work for 'frictionless payments' all the time), I'd just be surprised 'sign up too hard' is a driver. Maybe it's good I don't work in that industry, then, because I apparently don't know anything.

    They do have a neat joint spotify/NYT digital subscription promotion going on right now. It may be enough for me to cancel my subscriptions and restart them in my spouse's name.

    1. Re:How hard is it, really? by gtall · · Score: 2

      I am signed up as well, but still pissed about how they did it. I was enticed by the $15/mo. trial subscription for a one month trial. Then they simply continued charging me. I thought it was deceitful. I only put up with it because I rather like the in-depth journalism.

      I think what bothers the Trump supporters is that the stories are not supporting of Trump. I would argue that the major events covered are simply not supported by Trump's world view....well, he doesn't have a view so much as an ego, and the stories do not support that ego.

    2. Re:How hard is it, really? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      I am signed up as well, but still pissed about how they did it. I was enticed by the $15/mo. trial subscription for a one month trial. Then they simply continued charging me. I thought it was deceitful.

      I'm pretty sure that how most on-line subscriptions, like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, etc... work except that some of these are one month for free. After that, you have to cancel to prevent getting charged.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    3. Re:How hard is it, really? by djinn6 · · Score: 1
      I think what bothers me, despite not being a Trump supporter, is how they spin even the positive things he did in the negative direction. Remember when he strengthened rules against lobbying? Well, NYT put their spin on it:

      Trump Toughens Some Facets of Lobbying Ban and Weakens Others

      While the title is technically true, the parts he strengthened is much more significant than the ones he weakened. Even the critics they interviewed conclude that this is a big step in the right direction. But if you only read the title, you'd think it didn't do much at all. So if NYT was reporting in earnest, the title should've been "Trump Strengthens Lobbying Ban with new Executive Order".

      I looked at one example at random, but I'm sure there are others like his ending the TPP or the jobs that he kept from moving to Mexico by literally calling the CEO of the company. And that's not getting into controversial topics like his deporting of illegal immigrants, which if you think about it, is just enforcing existing immigration laws created by congress, something that any president should've been doing. This is neutral in my book, but I guarantee you, every NYT article on it is going to be negative.

      He does plenty of stupid stuff worthy of being called out on, so there's absolutely no need to try to make him look bad elsewhere. He does it all to himself.

  16. Re:Failing, obviously by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The GOD EMPEROR spoke. HIS word is law. All praise Trump!

    Trumpmen!

    Trump is definitely helping the NYT to succeed, even if that's not his intention. By singling out the NYT he's giving them a legitimacy as a voice for those that dislike Trump (which according to polls is well over half the nation). If he really wanted to hurt the NYT, which his words imply, he should stop talking to them and stop talking about them.

    Everytime he bashes the NYT 100,000 people wonder what it is they said to upset him and go read the paper. Same with Saturday Night Live, the only reason I've watched it a few times is to go see what Trump was complaining about (and if he had a legitimate beef), I know I'm not the only one doing this.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  17. Re:Oh my god! by mcfedr · · Score: 1

    clearly the US president thinks it very important, so someone must care

  18. Clickbaiting by tomhath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slashdot posts a couple of articles a week that invite Trump bashing. This one is a perfect example, you see "New York Times" in the headline and you know there will be a couple of hundred posts, most of which will mention Trump.

    1. Re:Clickbaiting by gtall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I rather put it that Trump posts enough stupid things every week to invite Trump bashing. Live by the media, die by the media.

    2. Re:Clickbaiting by hey! · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Slashdot posts a couple of articles a week that invite Trump bashing.

      AKA "actual news".

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    3. Re:Clickbaiting by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Like the Microsoft bashing and Apple bashing and Firebox bashing and systemd bashing stories, Trump is just an easy target. The easiest, in fact, because you can guarantee that if you posted on story a day he would have said something stupid in the last 24 hours.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Clickbaiting by mvdwege · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Funny, the majority of the posts I see at +1 or better now are repeating some form of Trump's 'failing NYT' bullshit. And it is bullshit, as even TFS shows that the NYT is doing fine.

      I thought it was the Right that was supposed to be the realists and the Left the ones living in a fairy-tale world?

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    5. Re:Clickbaiting by trawg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is it though? I'm not American but share the rest of the world's fascination with the crazy shit Trump says, but I don't follow him on Twitter or read everything he says - but even /I/ know he regularly refers to the NYTimes as "the failing NYTimes".

      As he's the President of the United States, whether or not he's using the 140 character limit of Twitter to say things that are trivially provably false I think is extremely important. If the NYTimes is failing then Trump is saying a true thing.

      If it's not failing, then he's making a statement as if it's a fact that is at best just completely unsubstantiated, and at worst a complete lie to push some other agenda. Given his position in the world, it's important to try to establish a baseline for how useful his word is.

      So far it doesn't seem to be very useful.

    6. Re:Clickbaiting by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      An awful lot of people are simply political automata. Press the right button and they'll literally DuckSpeak a response with no actual thought involved.

      Trump does tend to trigger a lot more buttons, but in large part it's because he's a natural button-pusher.

    7. Re:Clickbaiting by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      The same right who believe in a man (who is actually three men) who lives in the sky?

      I don't think Trump Tower is *that* tall...

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    8. Re:Clickbaiting by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      Wow! Really? Really??

      Look, if you do not possess the ability to read simple English statements and comprehend books don't try to quote them. Misquoting plain and simple statements from a book that is over 1500 years old just makes you look like a complete moron. It is really pathetic.

      I bet you still remember the Four Little Pigs, Goldiehair and the 17 Lizardpeople, and Rumplepimpskin, right? I bet you do. LOL!

      Sad that you can't even get fairy tales right. What a goob!

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    9. Re:Clickbaiting by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Misquoting plain and simple statements from a book that is over 1500 years old

      That's a long time. A quarter of the Earth's age!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    10. Re:Clickbaiting by nyri · · Score: 1

      Is it though? I'm not American but share the rest of the world's fascination with the crazy shit Trump says, but I don't follow him on Twitter or read everything he says - but even /I/ know he regularly refers to the NYTimes as "the failing NYTimes".

      As he's the President of the United States, whether or not he's using the 140 character limit of Twitter to say things that are trivially provably false I think is extremely important. If the NYTimes is failing then Trump is saying a true thing.

      If it's not failing, then he's making a statement as if it's a fact that is at best just completely unsubstantiated, and at worst a complete lie to push some other agenda. Given his position in the world, it's important to try to establish a baseline for how useful his word is.

      So far it doesn't seem to be very useful.

      First you state that you don't listen to him and then you make analysis about "usefulness" of his words. Please. You are mistaken. His words are very useful. He typically communicates ethos and he seems to stay true to it. He also communicates distractions.

      He's also good at branding so that is also what he does. He picks fights where he selects a singular opponent and bashes it, him or her restlessly, making a show of the fight. He's branding New York Times as "failing". And if you don't believe me it works, here we are discussing if it is true or not. This might sound like nothing but look at what is happening to CNN. Trump is fucking burying it. I don't know why he got so mad at CNN but he really made them pay the price.

      This is his way of forcing the media to give him more positive bias (or less negative bias).

      It is also worth pointing out that there is a personal vendetta here. For example, NYT had a front page story making fun of his hair (claiming that he wears toupee; he didn't, at least at the time, but I think he's wearing it again). The NYT piece was mean spirited and mocking in tone. I think we should expect more from NYT, which, after all, is Trump's ethos, when he talks about "failing New Your Times". So in a sense he has a point, don't you think?

    11. Re:Clickbaiting by MattskEE · · Score: 1

      If you even read the summary you see that online ad revenue is a pretty small portion of their revenue, just $0.2B out of $1.6B, so your unsubstantiated assertion that they are falsifying subscribers or gifting subscriptions to up their ad revenue doesn't even make a lot of sense since it's a kind of small part of their revenue.

      You've also credited t_d with finding that 50% of the click rates come from China, which is blocked. I assume you mean ad click rates, the metric that is being replaced more by ad impressions as a metric for ad value. But even if what you say is even true, people in China do know how to get around the firewall, so it's not a bad thing if Chinese people read the NYT.

    12. Re:Clickbaiting by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Slashdot posts a couple of articles a week that invite Trump bashing.

      Yes, it's trolling in a good way.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    13. Re:Clickbaiting by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Even if the NYT was failing, which it is not, expressing himself that way reinforces the widely held impression that he does not act like a president and is not fit to be president. A failing, so-called president if you like.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    14. Re:Clickbaiting by MooseMiester · · Score: 1

      Yep, and one only has to look at the poster - msmash - who's every submission is immediately posted. And every submission furthers the leftist agenda.

      As an experiment, right after Trump got elected for a week I submitted stories from newspapers, etc. that leaned to the right, and big surprise they were all rejected. It's very sad because I used to spend a lot of time here talking to smart people about tech.

      --
      Murphy was an optimist
  19. UTF-8 by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    You don't want to be holding your breath on that one.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  20. You're the sucker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Bankruptcy is merely a tool used in the business world. You stigmatize it because you think bad poor white people declare bankruptcy to get out of debt. However, it's one of he very few avenues for ending an S corporation, and the only one for ending a corporation when the shareholders don't have a majority agreement with the bond holders and debt holders on who should get what.

    Worse, though, you're the sucker. You really believe that his business ventures have all failed because the news told you that he declared bankruptcy a few times.

    1. Re:You're the sucker by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      "Merely a tool". No, it's not "merely a tool". Insolvency means your broke and the courts basically take you over and you're either restructured, if that's possible, or you're sold for spare parts.

      But to say Trump's business ventures fail is to misrepresent what Trump's business is. He may look like a real estate developer, but in reality what he's selling is his name. He licenses "Trump", gets paid up front and if the development goes tits up, well that's irrelevant, and at least until recently, even if the development went into bankruptcy, the debt holders still viewed the Trump name as a significant enough asset to keep the signage up. So in a way, those who claim Trump's businesses have gone bankrupt don't actually understand what it is Trump sells.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:You're the sucker by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      So in a way, those who claim Trump's businesses have gone bankrupt don't actually understand what it is Trump sells.

      The many bankruptcies of Trump's concerns don't show that he is a failure. They show that he is a con man.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  21. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by red+crab · · Score: 2

    You forgot to mention Fox News there. I think it outclasses NYT in all the aspects you have mentioned.

  22. No longer all the news that fits by bdh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that the NYT no longer meets their motto of "all the news that fits, we print" (apparently it's not "fit to print", but that's a quibble).

    Rightly or wrongly (and I'd argue wrongly), they've embraced "advocacy journalism". Having a monoculture is never a good thing, because it renders the entire organization vulnerable to a common flaw. The NYT embraces diversity in every way, except in the most important one: thought. Politically, they are a monoculture, and that hurts them.

    The problem isn't that lockstep ideology renders their editorial positions predictable; that's fine. It's the fact that it affects their news coverage, and it affects it negatively. When I'm reading a news story, I shouldn't be able to tell what the writer's opinions on the matter are, and yet in far too many cases, it's obvious. Worse, it's not only affected how stories are covered, but whether they get covered at all.

    The most damning criticism of the NYT I've heard was a friend of mine who cancelled her subscription a few years ago. Her reason was that she was "tired of hearing people discussing controversies I'd never heard of". When newspapers decide not to report on a story because they feel it might empower their ideological opponents, they're not being reporters, they're being advocates. There's nothing wrong with advocacy, but you should at least be honest about it.

    And, as the saying goes, "that's how you get Trump". How could an organization the size of NYT get the election so wrong? Because they were looking at it with blinders on. They may have put on the blinders intentionally, but their readers didn't. And yet their readers still suffered the effects of the blinders, too.

    1. Re:No longer all the news that fits by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Informative

      Elections are never a sure thing. Even fivethirtyeight was weighted towards Clinton, but everything has an error margin, and any prediction of something as large and complex as hundreds of millions of voters in what amounts to fifty separate elections, each with its own dynamics, is inevitably going to have a significant margin of error. For chrissakes, even many Republicans expected, and probably hoped Trump would lose (as is evidenced by the chaos now surrounding repealing and replacing Obamacare, as it turns out no Republican in Congress, save perhaps for Rand Paul, ever actually believed they would ever be in a position to replace Obamacare).

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:No longer all the news that fits by fish_in_the_c · · Score: 1, Insightful

      yeah but that's not really the point. Who one I mean. It is the 'attitude' and the bias that it indicates.
      When I watched news footage of the election I literally saw , horror on the faces of some reporters, other actually cried , it was obvious not only who they thought would win but that they assumed their audience was devastated and disappointed she didn't.

      That is because they all( more then 80%) have the same political leanings, and any that don't are expected so shut up and pretend to agree. The same way of thinking and THAT makes them _unable_ to accurately tell what is and is not newsworthy to more then half the population of the united states.

      The greater problem, is since the news outlets have undermined their social responsibility and credibility, people are looking elsewhere for news, and simply picking the bias that they like best.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
    3. Re:No longer all the news that fits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Predictions on elections and similar things obviously always come with a margin of error, but what happened in this election goes well beyond what can be explained by margins of error.

      No. Just no. The result was well within the margins of error. The popular vote was within a few points of the final polls. The electoral college prediction was about 80% Clinton/20% Trump, so a Trump win *was quite consistent with this*.

    4. Re:No longer all the news that fits by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There has always been a bias in the press. If you think the big press agencies and newspapers now are bad, open up a newspaper from the 18th or 19th centuries.

      The best solution isn't to abandon papers like the NYT, which despite any bias, still remains one of the best news gathering organizations in history. The solution is to find multiple sources.

      And the anti-Trump bias extended a lot further than allegedly left-leaning press. A lot of Republicans were alarmed by Trump's rise, and remain pretty skeptical even now. Even Fox News, while generally the most pro-Trump of the big news sources, has had its problems with Trump. He is an "atypical" candidate to put it bluntly, and how does one cover such a candidate, when his supporters are willing to overlook, or outright support his more outrageous statements, and yet are so thin-skinned that anyone reporting those statements is accused of bias? How do you report "just the facts" about someone who happily dispenses with facts whenever it pleases him?

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:No longer all the news that fits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How could an organization the size of NYT get the election so wrong?

      They didn't get the election wrong. They gave Trump an 18% chance (IIRC) of winning, and he won. This is the same as predicting that a die roll will most likely not be a 6, and having it come up 6. It doesn't make you wrong when you said it would most likely not be a 6, it means you correctly assigned the probability.

      That's what the NYT (and five thirty eight, and most reliable news organizations) predicted, not that Trump would lose, but that the polls indicated the probability that he would lose was high.

    6. Re:No longer all the news that fits by bdh · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Elections are never a sure thing.

      Absolutely true. But the NYT (and others) was not reporting the possibility of a Hillary win, they were debating the size of the landslide that she was going to win. That's why readers were so stunned. The NYT had not only not reported on the possibility of a Trump win, they had openly, and publicly, dismissed it.

      This was a repeat of the infamous Pauline Kael line back in 1980, where Reagan's victory over Carter stunned the NYT, because "no one I know voted for Reagan". If a reporter cannot claim to have met a single person who voted for a president that wins in a landslide, they are living in a bubble and need to get out more. And that's the crux of their problem - they are living in an insular bubble, and they're only marginally aware of it. The lack of awareness alone damages their credibility.

      For a news source that claims to be authoritative, not being aware of its' own shortcomings shows significant ignorance. And who's going to trust an ignorant news source?

    7. Re:No longer all the news that fits by penandpaper · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well said. Dishonesty in the news isn't only about getting the facts wrong. It's is also about what facts you don't include. I.e. Lies of omission are a big problem.

      If all you do is report on one side of an argument is it really surprising that anyone on "that side" think of you dishonest? The best example I can think of is immigration. The argument has been framed as "racists hate immigration" and "immigration helps everyone". It is not the full story even if the "immigration helps everyone" is true. What is missing is "illegal" and what it means to allow immigration from places that have violent ideologues. It is just crazy especially when you consider that we (even with the temporary ban) allow more immigration than any other nation.

      Couple that with extreme political correct speech and it becomes infuriating to be on the counter side of any main stream media position. This isn't' a new phenomenon. It has been around for years and before Trump. Romney is sexist because 'binders full of women". McCain is racist because reasons.

    8. Re:No longer all the news that fits by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      And there was a point during the election when a landslide Clinton victory seemed likely. But what of it? Papers having been making wrong calls for as long as there have been elections and newspapers. Remember "Dewey defeats Truman"?

      The other thing about all of this that bothers me is that people seem to be confused about what constitutes "reporting" and what constitutes "opinion and analysis". Op-ed pieces are renowned for their bias, and in fact that's the whole point. Now it is true that there is a subtler kind of bias elsewhere in a newspaper, but a lot of what people attack and declare "fake news" is often the op-ed and "analysis" pieces, and if I can criticize newspapers for that, it's that I find they often shove some of the op-ed stories on to the main page of their website. I don't think that's an issue of bias so much as it is deliberate click-bait, in that if you punch up your main web page with stories like "Just how big will the Clinton landslide be?" you'll get a lot more hits than more mundane stories reporting the daily grind of a presidential campaign. The latter, even in this last election, can often be pretty fucking boring "Clinton attended a luncheon of the so-and-sos, and had a rally at such and such a place, and the polls shows she's leading by x% in California."

      To my mind that's the real problem here, not a bias specifically, at least not political bias, but a constant need to sex everything up. But come on, that's not even new either. Every edition of a newspaper has to have a headline, whether the underlying story deserves it or not. That's the nature of newspapers for over two hundred years now.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    9. Re:No longer all the news that fits by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Informative

      The problem is that the NYT no longer meets their motto of "all the news that fits, we print" (apparently it's not "fit to print", but that's a quibble).

      Of course you realize (and for those that don't actually know) that the actual quote is, "All the News That's Fit to Print" (printed in a box in the upper left hand corner of the front page on the physical paper since about 1896) and what you quoted is a really old joke.

      From The New York Times:

      The paper's motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print", appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    10. Re:No longer all the news that fits by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      You are aware the Guardian story you reference is a comment piece. Op-ed pieces are fundamentally different than reporting of stories, and in fact, in general, comment pieces are often inflammatory, even absurd, because, guess what, it's often the op-ed section that sells newspapers, and not the news itself.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    11. Re:No longer all the news that fits by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      Yes, but that was a narrative that was circulating in 2008. That was just one of the first google links I chose because I am lazy. One distinct memory I had of "McCain == racism" in 2008 I remember was the day after the election on CNN stating "there are not enough racists to beat Obama" and framed all McCain voters as racist. It was being paraded around for a while that against Obama == racist because he black.

      That article maybe an op-ed but that narrative for sure was in the news being reported as fact during the 2008 general election.

    12. Re:No longer all the news that fits by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      err.. circulating in 2007. You know what I mean.

    13. Re:No longer all the news that fits by Leuf · · Score: 2

      The US is 65th in percentage of foreign born people (2014, NPR) and bounces around between 15th and 30th in immigration per capita. So yes, I guess the papers should do a better job educating you about that.

    14. Re:No longer all the news that fits by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      But again, op-ed pieces are all about narrative. They're often a series of stories written by the same columnist. Anyone who takes op-ed pieces that seriously obviously doesn't understand how newspapers function. That's not to say that there aren't informative op-ed pieces, far from it, but they are *opinion*, and inevitably that is where newspapers' ideological leanings will show up, and indeed where they should. By and large, the Guardian's actual journalism is often rather good, and they have one of the best investigative journalism reputations in the English-speaking world. Just don't go to "Comment is Free" to see it.

      And that's what bothers me about your whole "narrative" line. In one respect, you're absolutely correct that newspapers and other news media spin narratives. That's what the press has been doing for centuries now. Do you think the press as it existed in the lead up to the American War of Independence didn't have plenty of column spent condemning nasty King George and praising the brave colonies for defying his despotic rule?

      As I said, where I will criticize modern media is jumbling up opinion and journalism on the same web page, and CNN is actually worse for that than even Fox News or MSNBC. It almost goes out of its way to confuse readers on what stories are actually news and what pieces are opinion, and I will say that I think there is intent there to trick readers and to push a narrative, but if you open the stories they still make it pretty clear what is opinion and what is actual news reporting. Part of that is simply driven by the need to count clicks, to sell advertising, and the opinion section has been the seller of newspapers for a very long time.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    15. Re:No longer all the news that fits by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      How does that change the fact that the US accepts more immigrants and refugees than any other country?

      When UAE and Qatar are at the top of your list then I am not concerned about being ranked low. Just because they can exploit immigrants doesn't mean it is an immigrant friendly nation. Gratz, slavery is a live and well and in places like Qatar hidden behind a facade of immigration.

    16. Re:No longer all the news that fits by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      It was reported as news outside of op-ed as I said in my previous comment. If it was only op-ed I wouldn't have mentioned it. That link is the first one I grabbed from google was op-ed because I am lazy. Sue me. This was almost 10 years ago.

      jumbling up opinion and journalism

      Yes, and the point is that this has been happening for a long time before Trump. The point you seem to be missing from my first comment is "lies of omission coupled with extreme political correct speech make it infuriating to be on the contrary narrative of mainstream media".

    17. Re:No longer all the news that fits by Leuf · · Score: 1

      Because absolute numbers are pretty meaningless when you are comparing a country that is many times larger than most of the other countries you are comparing it to. A gallon of water will overfill your coffee cup but it doesn't do very much to a swimming pool.

    18. Re:No longer all the news that fits by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      Before, in 1890, when it was ~14.8% there was no welfare state. Now there is. Is partly why it stagnated. And again, the US is still a very generous country to immigrants. More so than most.

      Also, compared to Qatar and UAE? Again, I don't mind being on the low side of any list they are apart of especially their "immigration".

    19. Re:No longer all the news that fits by fish_in_the_c · · Score: 1

      I would acknoledge that of coarse there is and has always been bias, i don't think you can completely clear that as human beings.
      However, the point is , there should be an expectation that newspapers at least try to be objective, in the same way there is an expectation that scientist at least try and be objective. There certainly used to be such and expectation, the reality is that isn't the case anymore.

      My aunt had an interesting observation from when she was station in Germany some 30 year or so ago:
      "The German people believe the German police officers would never lie, which works out pretty well because the German police officers also believe the same thing".

      The problem is that the newspapers no longer 'belive' or even try to objective. If you had a paper with a conservative bias and liberal bias and both were trying to be objective, they would agree on many things , contributing to unity within the socity.

      Nowadays people don't even try which is one of the reasons we are polarizing.

      --
      âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
  23. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Chriscypher · · Score: 2

    Don't forget Tufte's Challenger graph, which provides really the best visualization of the data. He's a master of visual communication.

    If the information was presented in his fashion, a no-launch decision would have clearly been a no-brainer. This is why the soft arts are essential for engineers too.

    https://groups.nceas.ucsb.edu/...

    --
    "You have liberated me from thought."
  24. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by dbIII · · Score: 4, Informative

    They didn't need that graph. Glass transition temperature in polymers is taught to just about every engineering student on the planet in first year materials science subjects.
    As Feynman showed it was a management fuckup of ignoring experts.

  25. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Rei · · Score: 2

    There were a lot of contributing factors, but yes, this sadly was one. The Thiokol engineers were against launch, but they failed to make a sufficient case as to why exactly they felt the O-rings were unsafe (there actually was a Thiokol document showing that not only was O-ring failure high at low temperatures but that the second O-ring ceased to be redundant - but they didn't have the document available to them). The Shuttle program managers were getting mad at them for insisting on delays due to the low temperatures without being able to back it up (one of them said something along the lines of "My god, Thiokol - when do you want me to launch, April?") and eventually the Thiokol management dropped their objections (even though the engineers were still strongly against launch). The engineers all gathered round to watch the launch on TV, thinking it was going to explode on the pad. When it lifted off they all breathed a sigh of relief, only to have it dashed during the explosion.

    --
    I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
  26. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  27. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  28. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    DJT's transgressions are a helluva lot more frequent and more significant than MSM's. Some are just stupid (e.g. "Biggest electoral college win since Reagan," "Just look at what happened last night in Sweden!"), but every day there are new ones.

  29. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    How do we fix this?

    Seems like either we have to fight harder to make people see fake news and these dodgy blog sites/social media posts for what they are, or we have to give in and use all the same tactics to create a counter-narrative.

    The same technique is being used to try to influence the up-coming French election, to get a far right candidate elected. Do we start posting counter-memes and creating blogs full of lies about her and linking to them on Facebook.fr?

    Perhaps there is a third way, but it's risky. Create memes and fake stories supporting the far right candidate, but make them so bad and so obviously fake that they make people more critical and likely to reject them. The danger is that people are so stupid they believe them anyway. That already happened in the UK with stories about the EU.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  30. Re: Echo-chamber fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What if the people think the sources are against them as well, even if you think it's reliable?

    Showing numbers like how many people are affected by terrorism vs how many citizens kill each other... Shows terrorism is a non issue... BUT MUSLIMS

  31. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And this will be a fair comparison the moment when:
    a) Trump prints retractions of his errors when they're pointed out to him
    b) The signal-to-noise ratio of the Times approaches anything near Trump's utterances

  32. Newspapers used to be named Austin American Democr by raymorris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think it was ever more objective, certainly not since William Randolph Hearst in the 1890s. Newspapers used to be more honest about their political leanings. For example, the Austin American Statesman used to be called the Austin American Democrat. Similar names can be found in smaller cities, the newspaper will be named Middletown Liberal Times or whatever.

      The LA Times had a very clear policy of simply not reporting anything that didn't support their political leanings. In 1884 the ignored Grover Cleveland's election to president for several days, pretty much pretending it didn't happen.

  33. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

    Where do you think they got it from?

    Felix Sater.

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  34. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by NatasRevol · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does trump a) apologize for his mistakes or b) blame someone else & double down?

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  35. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by NatasRevol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which is why Donald Trump is more believable than the NY Times

    Only if you are a self-insulated, ignorant non-reader who only wants to hear your point of view from anyone willing to tell it.

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  36. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 2

    I see no votes on parent. As of this posting (Score:0). Click on the word Score and the modal displays "No comment history available." Anonymous Cowards start with a score of 0 here. Always have.

  37. Paid news is hopeless against the internet by zerofoo · · Score: 2

    There are so many free sources of news, it may be impossible to sell it in the near future.

    It may also be impossible for commercial news sources to compete with the millions of "news enthusiasts" that post and analyze news simply for the fun of it.

    Events are posted in near real-time on youtube and thousands of people dissect and analyze Wikileaks releases the instant they hit the internet.

    There is no commercial news room that can scale out to that size.

    Yes, the availability of so much news does force the consumer to filter out bullshit for him/her self - but many times you are getting bullshit from paid mainstream media - so you have to do the due diligence anyway if you want to stay informed.

    Good luck MSM - you are competing with the entire internet - and I don't think you will win.

    1. Re:Paid news is hopeless against the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If the paid news actually offered something not available at every free news source, it might have a chance.

      A few suggestions:
      -Well investigated stories
      -Clean, orderly, ad-less page with no popups, popunders, on-exit scripts, cross-site scripts, or regions that change height while people are trying to read.
      -Articles limited to the evidence rather than trying to link everything to vague doomsday scenarios (no more: "tonight will be partly cloudy because Nemesis is on an approach vector and we can expect a total extinction event within 75 years.")
      -Willingness to admit updating stories and post actual retractions instead of using back-dated stealth edits to hide mistakes.

      I'm sure there are some other good ideas that might be worth a quarter a day.

    2. Re:Paid news is hopeless against the internet by swillden · · Score: 1

      There are so many free sources of news, it may be impossible to sell it in the near future.

      But how do those news sources get filtered and curated? The problem today is that there is so much news that you can find someone writing absolutely any story you want, regardless of the facts, and regardless of the relevance or importance.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  38. Balance, for one. See recent Slashdot story by raymorris · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Slashdot recently had an article regarding a law suit against Apple. The summary went something like this:

    Google's lawyers said blah blah blah on Friday in the appeal they filed ABC's to law suit. Google says they blah blah blah. According to Google's lawyers, they are right because blah blah blah.

    Not a single word about what the other company's position is. Does that sound like a fair and objective story?

    Does such reporting *work*, does it strongly influence opinion? ALL of the comments posted on Slashdot were based purely on the claims in the summary (Google's claims) and therefore supportive of Google. I'm the only one who pointed out that Google made these in an APPEAL - the jury, after listening to evidence from both sides, had already decided that the other company was right. Therefore the other company most likely has a fair point or two - no mention in the Slashdot summary of what the other company said (and the court ruled was correct).

    In almost all disagreements, both sides have a point, or a legitimate concern. One side may have a *stronger* point, but there *are* two sides - otherwise there wouldn't be a dispute. If a source fails to present both sides of an issue they are reporting on, it's probably a source of opinion, not news.

  39. Doh! Law suit against GOOGLE, not Apple by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I correctly said "Google" five times in my comment, but I see I accidentally typed "Apple" in the first sentence.

  40. Jayson Blair vs. Silsby? by Xenographic · · Score: 1, Troll

    It's because the NYT is more likely to lean on "trust us, we're the NYT" and list a bunch of anonymous sources who could tell anyone whatever story they want, whereas the other site in your example would have to link to actual, verifiable docs before anyone with any sense would believe it.

  41. You forgot the biggest one by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    -> The key revenue driver for the New York Times has been its digital subscription business,

    You forgot the ongoing program of the whole paper being a blatantly hardcore left wing proaganda rag. Thats gotta be worth quite a few undercover $$millions from the Democrat party, the Clinton Foundation and god knows which groups of billionaire social manipulators.

    1. Re:You forgot the biggest one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The NYT is not a left wing rag!
      Educate yourself: Politicalcompass.org and then possibly realize the NYT bias is not on the left... and that your simpleton world view can't approximate reality.

      The NYT has plenty of corporate pro-globalism bias as well as falling for the Iraq war fraud when others did not. The establishment is barely touched by the NYT; despite it generally reporting all the major facts of the day (just not highlighting them all.)

      As far as billionaire conspiracies--- there are not enough of them on the "left" "conspiring" to amount to much of a policy shift nationally. But we must hear bitching constantly about Soros. Meanwhile FOX was founded AS A PROPAGANDA rag by a billionaire and Reagan's top propagandist and has refined fake news to a new level... not required in the "alternative fact" newspeak nation. FOX usurps CIA/FBI etc and advises the president. Then you have the koch brothers collation of billionaires which run hundreds of "think tank" of intellectual whores and now OWN a majority of politicians in the country.... plus infiltrated schools with Ian Rand's religion, colleges with fascism (see economics dept + definition of fascism - seriously go do it!) They helped create hate radio hitler could only dream of and now they are working on TV and Film. Plus tenure is less common for professors, they are less protected and busy with more BS because they were a very threatening counter to the wealthy ruling elite and have been undermined since the BS Vietnam war. No corporation wants some low paid professor going on TV leaking out truth they've been suppressing--- and professors who can be bought off are already out of the university working as whores for think tanks... Plus there is always a push to integrate think tanks more with the universities to resist... lowering grants and funding have increased outside influences as well. I know about this side of things having watched it going on.

      Unions while not perfect, do some good-- but they are also being undermined. We've had a quiet cold war being waged which began after FDR didn't jail the elite who tried a failed military coup against him (too big to jail during a depression.) We can't even talk about FDR's greatness and must anoint Lincoln as the greatest or face criticism! Lincoln doesn't come close to FDR, who literally saved the world and did so without doing what we are doing today over a small WEAK group of terrorists.

      Human class wars ALWAYS happened. Do not let the propaganda fool you, it has always been going on in the USA -- even more strongly and strategic while the working classes were sleeping on their great successes during FDR. Trump will finish off most of the gains that were made; and momentum will continue to keep the middle classes going for a while longer (but shrinking in number.)

      As long as human greed exists there will be an upper class pressing the lower classes to get more and there is no level of satisfaction-- and even if there was, too many humans get addicted to money for it to ever be possible to satisfy them all. The love of money is the root of all evil. (money = power; obviously, if money didn't empower it would not be so desirable.)

    2. Re:You forgot the biggest one by radl33t · · Score: 1

      don't forgot the sex trafficking!

  42. Learn from Wikipedia? by Xenographic · · Score: 1

    Report facts and give a list of verifiable sources. Don't expect people to believe that anonymous people told you what you wanted to hear.

    It's terribly simple and they'd know it if they hadn't fallen down into the clickbait hellhole, but random internet comments often have better sourcing than stories from corporate media outlets.

  43. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · · Score: 2, Informative
  44. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by fish_in_the_c · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and that is exactly the problem. The AP and every major United States news outlet is more then just 'selective' about what data they present.
    They may 'pretend' what they are giving you is the news, but what they really give you is 'the news' they think 'should be' .
    Here is a good example that was given to me by a ex-girlfriend who was a catholic and worked in a local news room.
    Standing orders, if there was a story that came across the wire and it involved child molestation and a priest it would be presented if not a lead story that night. Anything else the involved molestation of a child, by a rabbi, a pastor, or a teacher was not newsworthy.

    The girl quit when she was given footage taken at a peaceful prolife march and given the orders 'cut this footage to make these people look nuts'.

    For another example, go back and watch the news footage of Clinton loosing. Note the emotional content of the 'news' being presented. It is obvious that every major news outlet , ( fox is only half a major outlet) is entirely staffed by people who considered it a 'tragedy' that Clinton didn't win.

    Not that there are any 'unbiased' alternative outlets. Heck even Slashdot shows some bias it is hard to get away from, the problem is all of the American news outlets I'm aware of are much more interested in ratings and viewership then truth or objectivity. That is in many ways the fault of the consumers who have stopped demanding it and instead consume whatever is more 'pleasing' to them.

    --
    âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
  45. Code point whitelist by tepples · · Score: 1

    The last time Slashdot tried anything Unicode-related, vandals used control characters in comment subjects to mess with the layout and spoof moderation scores. The administrators had to put in a strict code point whitelist to prevent these code points from appearing in comments posted thenceforth.

    1. Re:Code point whitelist by tepples · · Score: 1

      The administrators had to put in a strict code point whitelist

      The unwanted character black list

      It's a whitelist, not a blacklist.

      Just let all the "good" characters through

      Define "all the 'good' characters".

    2. Re:Code point whitelist by tepples · · Score: 1

      only like 6bn people in the world use languages that require some unicode character or another for something

      Slashdot, on the other hand, is intended for use by those people who read and write English.

  46. NYT & FNC grammar by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Uh, Fox News is a TV channel that one can also listen to on Sirius XM. Question of reading only comes in when one visits their website for the articles, which are typically word to word for what was narrated on the air. So where exactly does the question of readability arise?

  47. Re:Trump on Sweden by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thank you for providing an example of how Trump's supporters happily reinterpret his statements so as to at least try to make them jive with reality.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  48. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · · Score: 1

    I'd started a long rebuttal, but you're not worth the effort if you're not willing to attach your name. I'll just settle for this: Show any evidence whatsoever that:
    a) There really was an IRS witchhunt for the tea party (hint: there wasn't, they also targeted keywords like "progressive" and "occupy")
    b) Obama ordered it

  49. Re: Echo-chamber fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    See, now that post of yours is misleading.

    Terrorism is not a non-issue. It is statistically unlikely but that does not make it a non-issue. It is even more an issue if you consider the societal implications.

  50. Re:Trump on Sweden by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    I'm not the one rushing around trying to find some set of circumstances to match to Trump's statements so he doesn't look like a fantasist.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  51. Re:You assume 538 didn't have bias by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Understanding probability and statistics is not "wearing blinders". It's taking the blinders off.

    They assigned a lower probability to Trump winning based on the polls, and Trump won. That does not mean they were wrong in any way, any more than stating that the probability of a dice roll coming up anything but six is higher than the probability of rolling six. If you roll the die just once, and it comes up six, it doesn't make the probability statement wrong, biased, or based on incorrect assumptions. It just means events with non-zero probabilities of happening still happen.

  52. Re: Echo-chamber fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here you go: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf
    start on page 11 where they admit the targeting of conservatives was improper

    The question is why nobody got fired/jailed for improper persecution of conservatives at the IRS. Why did e.g. Lois Lerner get to resign and keep the pension, instead of ending up in jail. Did Obama intervene, or was it somebody else? Who covered it up?

    Pres. Trump, it's not too late to appoint a special prosecutor! Subverting the Constitution using administrative powers is no small feat. Heads of these eggs should roll. Obama may be immune, but the underlings can still be indicted to stop these kinds of crime in the future.

  53. Re:Failing, obviously by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    Except that the polls didn't show either of those things. They showed them as being less likely than a Clinton win.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  54. The NYT is not a reliable source of news by mikein08 · · Score: 1

    Neither is the WaPo. The sooner they both fail, the better.

    1. Re:The NYT is not a reliable source of news by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      * citation required.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    2. Re:The NYT is not a reliable source of news by eaglesrule · · Score: 1

      Coverage of the Zimmerman case is an example of why I learned to distrust the NYT. A reporter's job is to provide all the relevant facts so that a reader can have a better sense of what actually happened, and be fair and impartial, but this article doesn't do that. It makes heavy use of sources antagonistic to the subject and leaves out pertinent information, making the bias quite plain to me. It reminds me of the oft used Mark Twain quote about lies, damn lies and statistics; while factual, the presentation can be biased such that the impression a reader has is not an accurate or complete one.

  55. Re:Trump on Sweden by BundesSheep · · Score: 1
    Trump is a terrible public speaker. He's loose with his facts, he exaggerates, he makes claims that he believes to be true without actually looking into them, and he appeals more to people's emotions than he does to their intellect. Figuring out what he meant to say takes a little work. After looking into this a bit, I ended up agreeing with the parent poster. That does appear to be what he meant, as far as I can tell. If all you want to do is call Trump a liar and ignore the rest, he sets himself up for that as no President has before him. If you are interested in what he really means, you have to do a little guess work since he's so bad at explaining it.

    I thought the same thing when Obama made his "traveled to 57 states" remark. It's obvious he meant 47, that he started at 50 and subtracted the three he hadn't been to, and that he flubbed it when he said it. Same kind of thing, just on a smaller scale and it happened far less often.

    I'm not a Trump supporter, I didn't vote for him, but he's the guy we've got. I don't find it particularly helpful to jump on every mistake he makes when speaking, and I have reduced my news intake accordingly since that's as far into it as the media seems to want to go.

  56. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...
    This one was on Page 11 and drafted 2 years earlier. Make you feel any better, you shill?

    Go jack off to Alex Jones and enjoy your bubble of ignorance.

  57. Re: Echo-chamber fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm a Trump supporter, and you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

    I know Trump is a narcissistic asshole who doesn't give a shit about the truth. He's playing the game your ilk invented, and doing it better than you ever imagined possible. You're just angry that your side lost, but you know they're all playing the same game.

    You're either a moron or intellectually dishonest if you actually believe that Hillary or the Democrats have some kind of moral superiority. They lie, cheat, and steal just as much, if not more.

  58. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Shane_Optima · · Score: 2
    Yup. And that's just the tip of the clusterfuck iceberg. Anyone who is interested should read Feynman's appendix in its entirity, which he insisted should be added to the Roger's Commission report on threat of having his name removed from the whole thing.

    He believed that NASA's delusional bureaucracy was ultimately to blame and it needed to be torn down entirely and rebuilt. The other members of the commission disagreed, which is pretty much why two decades later the crew of the Columbia died. Sadly, a narrative of organizational incompetence is extremely hard to keep alive in the mainstream media, so in the minds of most people they're still just random tragedies... an unavoidable price of space flight.

    Two other things worth noting about Feynman's assessment: he was strongly impressed by the software systems of the Shuttle, considering it to be much more robust than the hardware (not the sort of thing one often hears these days), and the coda to his appendix is, of course, a timeless one worth quoting:

    For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

  59. Re: Echo-chamber fake news by OhPlz · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The government finds the government not guilty, hardly surprising.

    This is just like Hillary and her emails. She broke the law and everyone knows it but the FBI wouldn't act "because Hillary".

    Or like the AHA with Obama warning the Supreme Court that overturning his precious law would be "unprecedented".

    Or like Benghazi where we still don't know what the hell happened or who ordered our assets in the area to stand down.

    Or like the BP spill where the Mines and Minerals Service wasn't held to account for not enforcing existing regulations.

    Etc..

    Plenty of rage we're coming off of that is valid rage.

    Not to mention.. if you like your plan you can keep it and the average working family will save $2000 on their premiums.

  60. Re:the NYT is doing great by D00MSlayer · · Score: 1

    Wow.. this is a popular enough story that ALL the shills are out to play.

    Any other enlightening "alternative facts" you would like to share with the class, today?

  61. Race to the bottom by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1

    This is a race to the bottom the left cannot win. The right is used to and will tolerate an astonishing quantity of lies and bullshit. The left, as we've already seen, will become demoralized when faced with a candidate who is only a blandly, typically-horrible politician.

    The Times has already reached "bad enough" in my estimation, along with every other news publication I've ever looked at in any detail. And unlike the millions of evangelicals who watch Fox News and reluctantly voted for Trump, I don't grade on a curve.

    The mainstream media needs to aggressively, forcefully hold Trump to account. Given the amount of material they have to work with, this should be an easy task. Unfortunately, they have conclusively demonstrated that they cannot separate out lies from truth, much less the absurdly sensationalist and irrelevant from the reasonable and important. They've fallen prey to the greatest troll[1] the world has ever seen and it will destroy them in the end, once the lurid headlines lose their charm.

    And history will record the moment of their downfall, of course, as the moment they tried kill two birds with one stone with their "fake news" non-story[2], too busy drinking their own kool-aid to realize that mainstream news has always been a pretty damn sketchy enterprise, even during its supposed golden eras.


    1. Albeit probably one who is operating mostly on a subconscious level.

    2. Fabricated news websites and chain emails and conspiracy theories obviously exist, but they've been around for a long time and are more of a symptom than a disease in their own right.

    1. Re: Race to the bottom by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1

      You have it wrong, as nobody wins in a race to the bottom, that's the point of the expression.

      The expression is a complicated one with a long and varied history. Describing it as "everyone loses" really missed the point. The expression is more about the process involved more than the end result.

      It can be like a game of chicken. Somebody does indeed win if the other one swerves before hitting bottom, or otherwise can't continue the race, or if one party is more bottom-tolerant than the other. In this context, the American right is more tolerant of and proficient with lies and nonsense than the American left. The latter will fall to shambles long before the former does, but that doesn't mean they aren't in a race right now.

      A lot of industries had a race to the bottom with Chinese competitors. Guess what? China won, because their "bottom" is lower than that found in first world nations. And it's a real victory we're talking about here; they're raking in the billions.

      You lose on such a victory, as it is destructive.

      No, you're thinking of pyrrhic victory.

    2. Re:Race to the bottom by Shane_Optima · · Score: 2

      I can't help it if the journalists in this country are dead set on proving Trump right. He should be the one person it should be possible to oppose by sticking to talking about normal, sensible truth but when faced with such a jackass the media can't help but lie and blither a stream of irrelevances. It's been very illuminating.

      That doesn't mean they lie more than he does (of course not), but they are a much deeper and more durable fixture of American (and world) culture than the shit talking 70 year old buffoon in the White House.

  62. Re: Trump on Sweden by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    I agree that that is difficult, and in fact Sweden is experiencing integration problems (though it still remains one of the safest countries in the world). And if Trump had actually been discussing that problem, then he would have had a strong point. But since he appears to do no research other than to watch news broadcasts and respond viscerally to what he doesn't like, he comes out with idiotic and factually-impaired statements that the White House spin doctors have to try to find some event close enough in time and space to make what he said sound even vaguely plausible.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  63. Re:Trump on Sweden by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    Obama flubbing a line and Trump basing public policy based on irrational and emotionally visceral feelings are not the same thing.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  64. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by mccrew · · Score: 1

    Sigh, the orange one is the poster child for the Dunning Kruger effect.

    --
    Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
  65. Re: Echo-chamber fake news by aquacrayfish · · Score: 1

    If I felt inclined to prove interkin3tic's point by conjuring some overused talking points, I'm unsure I could have come up with anything better than what I just read. Well done, AC, well done.

  66. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Dread_ed · · Score: 1, Interesting

    How hilarious that you post something completely accurate and are modded a troll.

    Just goes to show that people who are brainwashed with narratives are not only completely hoodwinked but also addicted to those narratives. They have exchanged their self worth and individuality for a story thought up in a think tank. As drones they cannot conceive of anything other than how they are programmed. They are fearful of anything that approaches the truth. Contradicting their world view is considered an assault.

    Poor simple bastards.

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  67. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    Or if you understand that there are 2 sides to every story, especially in politics, and that you can still lie by stating all the facts i.e. lies of omission.

    The media and government do not have an authority on truth.

  68. Re:Trump on Sweden by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    Honestly, that is how I talk sometimes. See some report and in conversation make a generic statement about it that isn't 100% correct or contextual for the sake of brevity.

    I don't get it. You say "reinterpret" but all I see is context. The context being "a segment on FNC b/w Tucker Carlson and Ami Horowitz" and "immigrants and rape/murder" rates and the under-reporting of those events that we have seen. For example, during the new years rape fiasco in Germany.

    There is truth in what he said and he isn't a smooth talker that likes to go on rants... It isn't hard to understand. What he said was cavalier and did not allude to the context of where he heard it or what specific instance and he made it seem that everyone should know about it because mainstream news. That is how a lot of discussions with my family and politics are like.

    It isn't hard to understand what he says if you are used to language beyond the professional polished vernacular of Obama/Clinton and journalists.

    Was there truth to his statements about Sweden? Yes, but it did not give the context from which he heard it and it probably isn't as bad as he makes it. Go figure he talks like an uncle instead of polished politician.

    Maybe you can help me understand. What should I be outraged about again?

  69. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by radl33t · · Score: 1

    The media is not a monolithic entity, but composed of tens of thousands of people each with their own agenda and subject to those rules and agendas of their thousands of editors and hundreds parent organizations from dozens of countries... Just like it has always been, which is why accusations raised about "the media" have always been silly distractions by scheming assholes attempting to support their own agenda.

  70. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by lgw · · Score: 1

    Point to ANY non-minor, non-retracted error in WaPo or NYT. Show me ONE.

    Forty lies from the mainstream media last week. WaPo tells some whoppers.

    45% of people believe Trump is credible
    42% of people believe the mainstream media is credible
    The MSM did that to themselves.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  71. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by lgw · · Score: 1

    Here's a fact: more people find Trump credible (45%) than the mainstream media (42%). BTW, Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. They aren't parsing his words for nuance and subtlety.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  72. Re:Trump on Sweden by BundesSheep · · Score: 1

    Obama flubbing a line and Trump basing public policy based on irrational and emotionally visceral feelings are not the same thing.

    The flub that Trump appeared to make was describing an incident that happened "last night", when what he appeared to want to describe was an incident that was covered in a show he watched last night. That's similar to Obama's flub, as far as I can see.

    The topic of what he is basing public policy on is another discussion.

  73. I often wondered how democracy would die. by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

    We're in this situation because millions of people lack basic skills in critical thinking. People who are unable to name a single logical fallacy are being encouraged to go out and vote.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  74. Re:Trump on Sweden by hey! · · Score: 1

    Actually the policy conclusion is not correct, however without a sophisticated understanding of statistics it's easy to be misled.

    It is true that a higher proportion of immigrants commit crimes in Sweden than natives. However, if you break down immigrants by socioeconomic status and educational attainment you don't see any difference between immigrants and natives. This is because of something called Simpson's Paradox.

    What's happening here is that Sweden is a wealthy advanced country with a low birth rate, and it's been importing low-education poor workers to augment it's own dwindling underclass in filling low-paying jobs. Now poor, uneducated people commit many kinds of crimes at a higher rate that affluent, educated people. Whether they are native or immigrant makes no difference. So what the Swedish statistics actually tell us is that uneducated low-wage workers make up a higher proportion of immigrants than they do of natives, which should be no surprise because that's why the largest proportion of immigrants have been admitted.

    This also raises another possibility: you can actually reduce crime rates with immigration, if you let in the right people. In fact there is evidence this is happening in Canada, which places a premium on education and language skills when deciding who to admit.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  75. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

    Citation needed. I really don't believe that NYT or any other media outlet has been excessively harsh on the man. I listened to the entire Israel/US joint press conference the other day. I feel like it was portrayed in the media fairly, and in some cases too nice. Trump came off sounding like a buffoon and a charlatan, and his counterpart was a typical slippery politician. But even NPR and NYT went to spin it as if Trump and Netanyahu came up with some master plan that will finally bring peace to the middle east. Nevermind the fact that Trump refused to call on a single reporter from a traditional media outlet. That being said, I'm actually OK with the media portraying Trump as more competent than he really is. No matter who actually resides at 1600 Penn, I want the office of the President to be seen across the globe as a station of power, respect, and wisdom.

  76. Re:Trump on Sweden by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

    If the media or you wanna demonstrate that Trump's statements on this are false, ...

    That's not how burden of proof works. Trump is the one claiming something happened, or is happening. It is up to him to provide evidence. Otherwise, the null hypothesis is that something did not happen, or is not happening. It is impossible to disprove something that doesn't exist. I can't prove there are no rainbow-colored elephants. But if you claimed there were, the burden of proof would be on you.

  77. Re:Trump on Sweden by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

    But you have to admit it's a little ironic for him to claim dishonesty on the part of the media, when he can't even be bothered to Google a simple fact like how many electoral college votes George HW Bush got.

  78. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    The engineers all gathered round to watch the launch on TV, thinking it was going to explode on the pad. When it lifted off they all breathed a sigh of relief, only to have it dashed during the explosion.

    Wow.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  79. Re:Oh my god! by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    Let's have an article about the horse and buggy industry next.

    So is quality journalism the horse and buggy industry now? I cannot think of a more depressing news story.

  80. Re:Failing, obviously by orgelspieler · · Score: 2

    According to polls, he had about a 25% chance of winning the electoral college, if you can actually do math and understand how statistics work (HuffPo obviously didn't understand that). Fivethirtyeight pretty much nailed it; they predicted 4 possible scenarios that had equivalent odds of happening, and the one that occurred was one of them almost exactly.

  81. Re:Trump on Sweden by unixisc · · Score: 1

    In a broad sense, you are right. However, the underlying subject here was Syrian immigration specifically, or immigration from Muslim countries in general. The main issue being the refugees from Syria, who after being admitted to Germany, got to scatter all over Europe, including Sweden. Some of the cities being described, like Malmo, have the no-go zones, which was part of what was being discussed.

    Yeah, if you introduce millions of, say, Buddhists from places like Tibet, Bhutan and Myanmar, you may well get a society w/ reduced crime rates. Particularly when you filter them by educational and language skills. Statistically, that's not the bulk of what Sweden has been facing, which is what is being discussed here.

  82. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by NatasRevol · · Score: 2

    Just because people believe something doesn't make it true.

    BTW, Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. They aren't parsing his words for nuance and subtlety.

    And yet he constantly shows everyone that he should be taken exactly literally.

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  83. You almost got it by zerofoo · · Score: 1

    "They assigned a lower probability to Trump winning based on the polls"

    You were so close to defining the problem with that statement.

    fivethirtyeight doesn't simply perform statistical probability analysis. If that was the case, you could simply run the data through SPSS and be done with it.

    Nate Silver and his group of hacks is supposed to look at the ENTIRE process. If you do your analysis on bad data - you will have a bad result. Nate Silver's blinders came from believing that the polls weren't biased - and they absolutely were.

    NYT, Washington Post, fivethirtyeight and others simply did not question polls that jived with their pre-defined political beliefs....and as a result practically no one trusts their analysis.

    1. Re:You almost got it by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Nate Silver and his "group of hacks" made it clear that there were no guarantees. Perhaps if you had read his analyses, you would understand that. He made it clear right up until the election that Trump's chances were far from non-zero, and even went into detail in some of his blog posts to explain some of the problems with polling in some of the states. If you had actually read anything he wrote, rather than just inventing a "Nate Silver is a hack" narrative to beat him with, then you would understand a great deal of how he weighted the polls, and how uncertain he viewed the projections.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  84. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by jomama717 · · Score: 1

    Ah, the "seriously, not literally" defense. In despair I tried to rationalize Trump using this argument as presented pretty well by Peter Thiel shortly before the election. I thought wow, maybe they're right, and maybe Trump really can buck the establishment and do some great things!

    What a fucking farce. He's worse than I had originally feared. He is a brainless troll that has packed his cabinet with billionaires and is executing (ineptly, at least) the establishment GOP plan to a tee. Oh, and on top of it attempting to literally implement his bizarre campaign promises, e.g. the idiotic wall.

    Completely disregarding the Russian conspiracy circlejerk - I absolutely believe the man is not of sound mind and therefore unfit for any public office, let alone the presidency. There is no other adequate explanation.

    --
    while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
  85. One predictive failure - no by zerofoo · · Score: 1

    many predictive failures - yes.

    The last few years have shown the weakness in the predictive power of polls. (Brexit and the like: http://www.newsbusters.org/blo...)

    Polling has turned in to a partisan activity in an apparent attempt to sway the outcome of the very thing being polled.

    It is completely unlike predicting the weather.

    1. Re:One predictive failure - no by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      The last Brexit polls were incredibly close. Again, it seems you misunderstand what statistics represent.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  86. Re:Trump on Sweden by Gussington · · Score: 1

    The flub that Trump appeared to make was describing an incident that happened "last night", when what he appeared to want to describe was an incident that was covered in a show he watched last night. That's similar to Obama's flub, as far as I can see.

    I could give you that if it was a one off, or rare flub, like most people make. We're all human after all. But Trump has only been in office one month and already made more errors than Obama did in 8 years. Even GWB, the most flubbingest POTUS ever probably never made as many in his 8 years.
    A key skill of a leader is to communicate and bring as many people on the journey as possible. Trump is an absolute failure at this on all levels. His only experience at this level has been as a owner of a private business, which is closer to a dictatorship. As an owner you can be a jerk and and lie through your teeth and employees just have to suck it up. Democracies don't work the same way.

  87. My suggestions to NYT by lfp98 · · Score: 1

    1. Allow comments only from subscribers. People love to opine, and will pay for the privilege. 2. At the same time, allow comments on a larger range of articles. Particularly aggravating is that they don't normally allow comments to guest editorials. Why? If they can't take criticism, they shouldn't be writing editorials. 3. Allow subscribers only to turn off animated ads. NYT blocks at least some ad blockers, but without an ad blocker it is all but unreadable due to distraction from animated ads all over the page.

  88. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by nyri · · Score: 1

    Comparison between Trump and New York Times is not fair.

    Trump is now in the profession of lying. He's a politician if you haven't noticed. The tendency of politicians to lie is well known. Such is life. Luckily, we have a counter balance: news media. Which brings me to point out the obvious:

    New York Times is in the profession of telling the truth. That is the sole purpose of its existence. The fact that New York TImes lies (or even have a clear bias) is worse that Trump lying. He's a politician and NYT is trusted news media. You can assume Trump lies but you should also be able to assume that NYT tells the truth.

    The fact that you are even comparing NYT and Trump in this regard, means that we all have already lost. NYT is not credible anymore.

  89. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Archfeld · · Score: 1

    The NY times is in the profession of making money. If it requires they tell a modicum of truth and fact check then they will. If they can get by making stories up and going on 4 martini lunches then that will work as well.

    --
    errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
  90. I want by Archfeld · · Score: 1

    I want my comics with a digital subscription, otherwise I'll stick with the local rag in print, with syndicated comics, and get my digital news from the reposting sites, e.g. here.

    --
    errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
  91. Re:Failing, obviously by nyri · · Score: 1

    Trump is definitely helping the NYT to succeed, even if that's not his intention. By singling out the NYT he's giving them a legitimacy as a voice for those that dislike Trump (which according to polls is well over half the nation).

    I think he's fully aware of this effect. For example, I think some of the back-and-forth between Trump and Morning Joe was purposefully only to this effect. What I also believe is that there is a long game. Even as this gives NYT short term financial benefits, it will affect its brand in detrimental ways in long term. NYT does not want to be in the same ecological anti-Trump niche with Huffington Post and the like. It wants to be something more. It wants to be taken seriously and Trump is attacking this.

  92. Re:Trump on Sweden by hey! · · Score: 1

    Except I have seen no data from the Swedish government, which publishes extremely comprehensive crime data (something we would do well to copy), to support the Syrian crime wave story. I've gone through Brottsförebyggande rådet data and it's just not there.

    What I have seen is a lot of sloppy correlation and overprojection of statistical noise. For example Sweden amended its legal definition of "sexual assault" to be much, much broader, generating a spate of spurious stories about a Swedish rape epidemic.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  93. Re:Trump on Sweden by BundesSheep · · Score: 1

    A key skill of a leader is to communicate and bring as many people on the journey as possible. Trump is an absolute failure at this on all levels.

    I totally agree with this. The choices, though, seems to be either to jump on each and every mistake he makes in a speech in detail and hang onto it for days at a time, or to try to figure out what he's really saying and discuss that. The former is just antagonizing anyone who might agree (even a little) with whatever his actual point is. Probably smarter to engage on the actual issue, where real discussion might be had.

  94. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by lemur337 · · Score: 1

    Other NYT stories tell a different side but you have your ideological blinders on I see.

  95. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

    Sigh, the orange one is the poster child for the Dunning Kruger effect.

    Not really. Dunning-Kruger requires you to actually be an expert at something. Being born rich is not an expertise. We need another name for the syndrome where having lots of money makes people think they're experts at everything.

  96. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by mccrew · · Score: 1

    I was referring to the tendency of the cluelessly wrong to double down when confronted with contradictory, factual evidence instead of changing their position.

    --
    Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
  97. Re:Trump on Sweden by unixisc · · Score: 1

    This was addressed in that discussion w/ Ami Horowitz. Previously, the Swedish government did maintain statistics on immigrant crimes, but since they did not like what the data showed, they stopped collecting it. The last time that they did collect it, it did show a co-relation b/w increased (Muslim) immigration and crime. Ironically, today, there was a riot in Stockholm w/ Muslim immigrants even while the Swedish Prime Minister was at pains to deny it: they couldn't even hold it in to even try to prove Trump a liar

  98. Re: Trump on Sweden by unixisc · · Score: 1

    I'm saying that the original was probably true, when the cops didn't anticipate the coverage that their interview would receive. But once it got shown on a channel and got echoed by the US president, thereby causing Sweden's Prime Minister to take notice, they went into a CYA mode. Ironically, today, there was a riot in Stockholm by immigrants, thereby making the cases of Ami Horowitz and ultimately Trump

  99. Re: Echo-chamber fake news by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

    Fucks sake, why is it you precious snowflakes need constant acknolwedgement that politicians on both sides are have sins?

    Democrats at the moment DO have a moral superiority. Self-dealing with buisiness interests, fake charities, discriminating against people based on religion, endangering the freedom of the press... Hillary didn't do anything like that, nor has any democratic president.

  100. Re:Failing, obviously by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

    If well over half your nation hates Trump then why did he win the election? Oh right, you need a proportional electoral voting system for that.

    Well over half the country hates Hillary too! The other people running either didn't get much coverage, or people simply believed they were incapable of winning or worth casting a vote for.

    It was a case of the most disliked candidates to choose between for a long time.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  101. Dont piss off half the population by YouGotTobeKidding · · Score: 1

    If the Grand Old Girl wants to survive it has to become more moderate. They were cheerleaders for Hillary and made Drumph out to be the devil. Every. Chance. They. Got. Add in 'you are all *ists for daring to speak out against XYZ... and poeple move on. People are stupid.. but they dont want to be called stupid IF you expect them to buy your product.

    IMHO You can be biased in your opinions but reporters are SUPPOSED to reign themselves in and not put their world view first. Report the facts as colored as little as possible and both sides will read it. Don't and you loose half the readers. With so many options the only LONG TERM solution is to be moderate. Report both sides and NYT could be the leaders again in 'print' news.

  102. Re:Echo-chamber fake news by chihowa · · Score: 1

    That's a terrible fit of the data and the trend that Rei refers to isn't even that convincing. All that you can get from these data are that conditions at and above 66F were well-sampled and predominantly (though not entirely) associated with non-failure. There are nearly as many non-zero points above 66F as below. Drawing conclusions from sparse data, especially in retrospect, is silly and unscientific.

    The plot you link to gives a ridiculously high weight to the sparsest data and deviates greatly from the best-sampled data. The page it's from seems to be down, but is his fit to any particular model or is it just a scary looking curve?

    --
    If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
  103. Re:Trump on Sweden by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

    My favorite is how Ami Horowitz calls Politifact out for "obviously" lying about who said only 500 immigrants in Sweden are working. Yeah. That's the lying media for you. Taking the falsehoods that one bigot said and another bigot agreed with, and accidentally attributing it to the second bigot. That's the real problem: misattribution. Never mind the fact that the entire premise of the "documentary" was complete BS, and the actual rape statistics from Sweden show rates going down during the height of the refugee crisis. Must be the Swedish deep state lying about everything!! But go ahead and keep watching Fox News, and believing everything they say, so long as it agrees with your worldview. That's what the president does, and it's working pretty great for him.