Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

He really is that stupid.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You are here: Home / Politics / Media / Open Thread: All the News That Fits (Our Narrative)

Open Thread: All the News That Fits (Our Narrative)

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The obvious answer is that you can’t build a century’s reputation for probity within a single election cycle. (The corollary being that it’s much easier to destroy such a reputation than to build it in the first place.) And that’s before getting into whether that reputation was ever deserved — the NYTimes was, and to some degree remains, ‘the paper of record’ in America.


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45Comments

  2. 2.

    Cathie from Canada

    Yeah, the New York Times is SUCH a left-wing paper:
    -lets do another Habberman beat-sweetner about Trump!
    -“but her emails”!
    –lets hire Brett Stephens!
    -Obama wore a tan suit!
    -lets do another Miller beat-sweetner about Bush!

  3. 3.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Cathie from Canada: Lets report jack-shit about one of the most egregious criminals operating in our city for 2+ decades, when he then goes to run for President.  Lets report jack-shit on everything we and everybody in our business knows about the fucker.

  4. 4.

    sab

    I haven’t read the WSJ since the Murdochs bought it. It used to have very good reporting and a nutzo editorial page whose editors and contributors apparently never read the news pages. Is this still even true? Is the news side still independent and high quality?

    I used to read the Economist until I realized that in their coverage of stories that I actually knew anything about from my own life they were pretty awful. Also too I don’t trust reporting with no byli es. Who is that person and why should I trust what they say.

    Bloomberg?

  5. 5.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sab: The WSJ’s “news pages” are going downhill.  There was an example we discussed a few days ago — I forget what it was, but it was discussed here, too.  Everything Rupert touches turns to propaganda.

  7. 7.

    sab

    @Chetan Murthy: They did some pretty bogus Covid columns where a study was blatantly misquoted. One of the alleged scientific reporters was an astrophysicist not an epidemiologist and the other was an MD entrepremeur who does Ted talks. Since I don’t know if that pair was reporting on the news side or the editorial side I can’t say if it should reflect badly on the news side

    ETA I think that was in AL’s early morning Covid post sometime this week. Either Laurie Garrett or Helen Branswell tangled with them over it.

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    “Why isn’t there a New York Times of the right,” […] asks @brianstelter on @cnn.

    I would love to know what tone of voice Brian Stelter used to ask that question. Depending on the inflection, it’s either idiotic or aggressive or eminently reasonable.

  11. 11.

    oldster

    But seriously, why isn’t there a New England Journal of Medicine, but for witch doctors?

    Why isn’t there a Nature: Geoscience, but for flat-earthers?

    Because the media has a left-wing bias!

  13. 13.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I think the best way to describe the NYT is “we carefully collected all the data we can find on this topic, had our team of analysts chart it out and since results of this research doesn’t fit our narrative, will just ignore it and go find some dinner to hang out in”

  15. 15.

    mrmoshpotato

    @dmsilev:

    (Looks at NYT Political Desk). Isn’t the “NYT of the right” just the NYT?

    I was about to say! – with much more vulgarity!

    P.S. BUT HER EMAILS!
    Fuck the fucking New York Times!

  19. 19.

    oldster

    @sab:

    Help me out; are you saying that JAMA publishes less reputable stuff than NEJM?

    I feel like I don’t know enough to get your joke.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I think the best way to describe the NYT is “we carefully collected all the data we can find on this topic, had our team of analysts chart it out and since results of this research doesn’t fit our narrative, will just ignore it and go find some dinner to hang out in” 

    “Fucking hell!  Not again!  None of our polling fits our predetermined story!  Who wants to go on a Cletus safari?”

  21. 21.

    sab

    @oldster: I am very out of date here, since the JAMA I read back in the sixties through nineties was my dad’s, and he is now in a dementia ward at age 97. But he used to hoot at JAMA.  Also too, their continuing education was Carribbean cruises when everyone else taught actual medicine in the US.

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    @sab:

    There was always something kind of weird about JAMA when I looked at it.  It had regular journal articles, but it also had a bunch of stuff that you don’t see in most journals.  Some of that is stuff that other journals should pay more attention to, like ethics and the lived experience of being in the profession.  But some of that stuff is just really weird and out of place, like poetry and having a non-scientific painting on the cover.

    I get the feeling that it started out as a different kind of thing from other scientific journals.  Most journals, even ancient ones like Proceedings of the Royal Society, started out mostly as places for scientists to share their findings with each other, and they’ve kept more or less to that.  But JAMA feels like it started as a place for doctors to discuss what being a doctor was like back at a time when the technical side of the profession wasn’t so dominant.  The technical side has become more and more important, but it still hasn’t squeezed out that older, humanities-based side of the profession.

  24. 24.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: I think it’s that the JAMA is the journal of the American Medical Association, which is just as much a trade group as a professional and scientific organization. Many professional and scientific associations have a trade group aspect, but I think the AMA more so than most.

    So, there is some identity building material: what an AMA doctor is supposed to be and appreciate. And some stuff that is more professional ethics and experience and role modeling, not just scientific publications.

    I don’t think the NEJM, or AJPH etc. have that self-imposed remit.

    The AMA is better than it used to be in terms of conflict of interest between its trade group, professional association and scientific association sides. But I still think the two functions should be separated, as it is in many countries.

    Edit: in sum, that is why JAMA has poetry and, often, high toned art on the cover.

  25. 25.

    LeftCoastYankee

    Because the entire “intellectual” basis of the modern right is to reverse engineer a “potential scenario” which corresponds in a vaguely logical way with the outcomes donors want.

    “Potential scenarios” tend to be shown up as not common or completely unlikely when filtered with a heavy volume of stories from the real world (even with the moneyed thumbs of their publishers on the scales).

    This is why “conservative intellectual” publications are always opinion oriented, well-funded and far more numerous than actual readership could sustain.

  26. 26.

    jl

    The last honest conservative, IMHO, was second president John Adams, a crusty old fashioned pessimistic conservative. He conjectured no democracy could last more than 200 to 300 years. His reasoning was that history showed that is how long it took for human nature to corrupt any earthly system of government, no matter how well designed. The cause was always a corrupt aristocracy of wealth, power, and influence. It always became so corrupt and vicious that it spent all its time infighting for more money and power, and soon the whole systems stopped functioning due to incompetence, inattention and the sheer inanity of its decadent ruling class, a den of vicious loons.

    So, the whole damn thing would go to hell in 250 years or so.

    I forget whether that was in his letters or his journals. Let’s re-animate Adams and give him a newspaper.

  29. 29.

    ian

    Should be noted that most RWM did not make profit for years, and Fox is now as profitable as it is because it is baked into almost all cable deals.  Decoupling Fox from bulk cable purchasing (or taking TV bundles apart and having Fox and all other channels as a stand alone purchase) would return Fox to its pre-profit days.  This is not a business first and foremost, it is a propaganda funnel.  Politics comes before profit for the ownership.

  32. 32.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Paul Farhi:

    “Why isn’t there a New York Times of the right,” with a large staff of reporters to turn up new facts and information, instead of primarily being commentary and opinion organs, asks @brianstelter on @cnn
    Intriguing question.

    “Because The New York Times IS The New York Times of the right, YOU DUMB FUCK!“​

  33. 33.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Also, for the same reason there’s no Fox News of the left:

    Because the left reads, and the right watches TV.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    The more interesting question is why doesn’t the left have a media ecosystem like the right. We have to rely on “mainstream” news media which tries to appeal to a cross section of all Americans.  The only thing we have that comes close is MSNBC’s nightly opinion shows.

  35. 35.

    Geminid

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: Liberals read, and listen to podcasts, while conservatives watch TV and listen to AM radio. I listen along with them, mainly for the news and weather at “the top and bottom of the hour.” Liberal radio shows are few and far between because they get little traction in radio markets.

    There is turnover among the conservatives, though. In my part of Virginia, goofy Glenn Beck was supplanted last year by brash Brian Kilmeade in the morning slot on one station.  And last month the cranky, lugubrious Dennis Praeger was finally axed from a couple other stations’ afternoon slots. I had to laugh,  because Praeger fancies himself an intellectual, and his replacements are a couple wisecracking bros who could just as easily be anchoring a drivetime rock or country show. That probably hit Praeger as hard as the loss of revenue.

  36. 36.

    WayneL140

    I’m late to the party and nobody will read this, but I’ll post it anyway. Obviously nobody on this entire thread saw the Reliable Sources original source material. Brian Steltzer was talking about “reporting versus repeating” where he compared the number of news bureaus of CNN and Fox News. He submitted that conservative media does very little reporting. He was right. To take off on the NYT is to miss his point.

    PS–Love the take on John Adams. I think he’s right. The pendulum which used to swing left and right has come to a stop at the bottom of the arc. There is no more momentum for movement.

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    why would a movement dedicated to the proposition that journalism should fundamentally not exist want to also produce journalism

    That’s almost as silly as asking why one of the two main political parties wants to get elected to government so that it can destroy government.

  40. 40.

    schrodingers_cat

    @WayneL140: You mean reporting like the Mouth of Sauron does? NYT have been the biggest enablers of Orange ?? and are now salivating for his return.

  41. 41.

    J R in WV

    Others have made the point already, but the WSJ has taken to fictionalizing their news coverage by just making shit up when the facts don’t fit their preferred narrative. So no longer a “news media” outlet at all.

    The FTFNYT has been a supporter of fascists for very nearly the past century, since 1922 at least, when they covered that very polite nice Mr Hitler person over in central Europe. They continued to give Mr. Hitler fawning coverage until at least 1938.

    More importantly, the NYT loved them some German-American Bund coverage locally, when that “slightly conservative” group had parades in Manhattan and conventions at Madison Square Garden with huge scarlet banners just like those used in Germany. You know what I mean, I won’t go into the symbology, we all have seen it many times in film and history.

    Will also support the idea that liberals read and RWNJs watch TV…

    My grandfather grew up speaking SwitzerDeutsch until he entered grade school up in Ohio Dairy country in the V early 1900s. As a successful publisher he took his family (2 parents 4 kids) to visit the old country around Bern, Switzerland, then Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia (which names to use, Empire-times, interwar period, modern?) France, Britain, etc. This was the summer of 1938!

    They traveled by ship and took a big gray Oldsmobile with trunks strapped to hold their stuff. They were over in Europe for weeks, as one did back in the day. My father and his two brothers collected the flags of all the countries they visited. While in Vienna, just before Mr. Hitler entered Austria after a mostly bloodless take over of that nation, the whole city was draped with banners and flags, every streetlamp post had 4 flags. Scarlet flag, white circle with black swastika centered.

    Uncle (or maybe my dad, different memories of the tale) shinnied up a lamppost and pulled out a flag, which he rolled up and put down his pants, quickly. A good thing because 4 goosestepping storm troopers marched around the corner just after, which would have seriously affected the odds of me ever existing had they seen that vandalism take place.

    Then 50 or 60 years later, going through other (recently deceased) Uncles things with a cousin, she pulled that scarlet flag, still mostly pristine, out of her dad’s file cabinet in the basement. We were nearly overcome by the discovery, and heard my father tell that story.

    Their return was fouled up by the beginning of the war. They were in England and heard Chamberlain address his nation about the Munich accord while in a movie theatre — the film was interrupted for the announcement, and they sailed for home out of a British port rather than Bremerhaven, Germany to get home just before the European war broke out.

    Thanks NYT for all your support of German/American Fascism over the past 100 years ~!!~

  42. 42.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @mrmoshpotato:“Fucking hell!  Not again!  None of our polling fits our predetermined story!  Who wants to go on a Cletus safari?”

    “Free lunch, count me in!”

    Thinking about it, my guess is, the Cletus Safaris and Narratives are  because their subscribers are smug, upper middle class small c conservatives who just want to have their views confirmed and not challenged. You know, Middle Management types.

  43. 43.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @J R in WV:The FTFNYT has been a supporter of fascists for very nearly the past century, since 1922 at least, when they covered that very polite nice Mr Hitler person over in central Europe. They continued to give Mr. Hitler fawning coverage until at least 1938.

    The NYT also had a reporter on it’s staff who was basically a paid agent of the NKVD and would write fawning interviews with Stalin as the same time as the NYT’s Hitler crush.  I wouldn’t be surprise to learn that the NYT was also enamoured with Mussolini and Franco. NYT seems  to be dictator curious.

    “Stalin wants to kill the rich as class enemies, Hitler wants to kill the rich because they are Jews, can both sides compromise on their extermination policies? The answer is complex”.

  44. 44.

    Ruckus

    @ian:

    I believe that Fox also charges more per subscriber than most any other channel. They sell that because it is more “popular” but that’s because they hard sell. So even if you never, ever watch Fox, if you pay for your service, which is very, very common now, you pay for Fox. I wonder how long it would take for them to fold if only the hard core Foxites paid to watch and knew how much they paid?

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