It has less to do with “being (…) high on themselves” and more to do with the reality.
We have a former president who led a violent insurrection against the government in an attempt to lynch the vice president and anyone in congress who he didn’t like. The military actively ignored it and significant parts of the government are protecting him for it.
pretty much the next time republicans have power (trump or no trump), heads will roll: Literally. And if nobody is going to protect organization X on the way to that, why should organization X “fight the good fight” and paint a bullseye on their foreheads?
We see the same with a lot of branches of the government. When the best you can hope for is to have your career torpedoed (and the more likely outcome being you and your family literally getting torpedoed), why are you going to fight a losing battle?
Journalism is more important than any journalistic organization. The NYT has clearly forgotten that reality. The best journalists often put themselves in harm’s way to shine light on ugly realities, and their country doesn’t usually need to be falling to fascism to do so.
The NYT is good at protecting themselves at the cost of good journalism. Better to survive as a shiny brand than burn out as as journalists at a journalistic organization, I suppose.
Yes, the ideal is that Truth matters. And plenty of journalists still firmly believe that and are targeted by corporations and hate groups for it.
And you know what they get for it? Their employers have to lay them off because nobody is willing to pay for news and the response is usually “Fuck that, I refuse to look at anything with a paywall”. Or people start chomping at the bit to attack them for “being high on themselves”. And so forth. Anti-intellectualism is rampant throughout the world and journalism has been a target of that since long before fascists realized they could weaponize it.
In a perfect world? Yeah. Fight the good fight. And plenty of outlets still do that (often at great personal cost). But I have a real hard time getting pissy that people are deciding that they want to have a job, or a life, after November.
NYT has been going to shit long before anything scary was happening politically. Deference to the political status quo has been their guiding light since at least the Iraq War.
I have a LOT of issues with the NYT. Not least of which is their ability to turn ANYTHING into “and this is why it is bad for Democrats”
But I think you, like many others, are very much forgetting just how strong bipartisan support was for the 2000s Iraq War at the start. And how it was actually moderately strong even for Desert Storm.
Politicians and pundits (and influencers) like to talk about how they were always above it all because nothing is worse than a flip flopper (rape? Boys will be boys. CHANGING YOUR MIND UPON RECEIVING MORE INFORMATION??? FUCK YOU AND DIE!!!). But in the late 80s/early 90s? There were a LOT of reasons to support military intervention in Iraq or, more specifically, Kuwait. Basically the exact same reasons to support military intervention in Ukraine.
And while we (rightfully) focus on the complete fabrication of WMDs*, there were still a LOT of humanitarian reasons to have intervened when we went back in the 2000s. Of course, we refused to do anything meaningful and mostly just created a power vacuum and plunged the region into chaos all while tricking people into cooperating with us and then leaving them to be murdered when we left but… we are talking about the start of the war. And that also ignores the nationalistic fervor after 9-11.
*: That actually gets a lot more complicated if you go by the actual definition of WMDs. But we were sold on nukes rather than “just” chemical weapons and the mechanisms to create nukes. Which were very much not believed to be there.
Being a good reporter does not mean deferring to whatever is popular at the time.
All those risks and flaws were evident in the build up for war (Bush Jr.'s). Maybe many people believed the bullshit, but that’s not an excuse for the people who are supposed to be calling bullshit bullshit rather than cheerleading the march to war. I am very much not forgetting the bipartisan support for war. I was there marching against it and calling it bullshit at the time, along with many more diligent reporters than the NYT. People rightfully didn’t trust the Bush Jr. administration.
When institutions fail in big world altering ways that kill a lot of innocent people, hold them to it, don’t pretend they did the best they could and no one could possibly expect better.
It has less to do with “being (…) high on themselves” and more to do with the reality.
We have a former president who led a violent insurrection against the government in an attempt to lynch the vice president and anyone in congress who he didn’t like. The military actively ignored it and significant parts of the government are protecting him for it.
pretty much the next time republicans have power (trump or no trump), heads will roll: Literally. And if nobody is going to protect organization X on the way to that, why should organization X “fight the good fight” and paint a bullseye on their foreheads?
We see the same with a lot of branches of the government. When the best you can hope for is to have your career torpedoed (and the more likely outcome being you and your family literally getting torpedoed), why are you going to fight a losing battle?
Journalism is more important than any journalistic organization. The NYT has clearly forgotten that reality. The best journalists often put themselves in harm’s way to shine light on ugly realities, and their country doesn’t usually need to be falling to fascism to do so.
The NYT is good at protecting themselves at the cost of good journalism. Better to survive as a shiny brand than burn out as as journalists at a journalistic organization, I suppose.
So its their job to suffer and die for you?
Yes, the ideal is that Truth matters. And plenty of journalists still firmly believe that and are targeted by corporations and hate groups for it.
And you know what they get for it? Their employers have to lay them off because nobody is willing to pay for news and the response is usually “Fuck that, I refuse to look at anything with a paywall”. Or people start chomping at the bit to attack them for “being high on themselves”. And so forth. Anti-intellectualism is rampant throughout the world and journalism has been a target of that since long before fascists realized they could weaponize it.
In a perfect world? Yeah. Fight the good fight. And plenty of outlets still do that (often at great personal cost). But I have a real hard time getting pissy that people are deciding that they want to have a job, or a life, after November.
NYT has been going to shit long before anything scary was happening politically. Deference to the political status quo has been their guiding light since at least the Iraq War.
I have a LOT of issues with the NYT. Not least of which is their ability to turn ANYTHING into “and this is why it is bad for Democrats”
But I think you, like many others, are very much forgetting just how strong bipartisan support was for the 2000s Iraq War at the start. And how it was actually moderately strong even for Desert Storm.
Politicians and pundits (and influencers) like to talk about how they were always above it all because nothing is worse than a flip flopper (rape? Boys will be boys. CHANGING YOUR MIND UPON RECEIVING MORE INFORMATION??? FUCK YOU AND DIE!!!). But in the late 80s/early 90s? There were a LOT of reasons to support military intervention in Iraq or, more specifically, Kuwait. Basically the exact same reasons to support military intervention in Ukraine.
And while we (rightfully) focus on the complete fabrication of WMDs*, there were still a LOT of humanitarian reasons to have intervened when we went back in the 2000s. Of course, we refused to do anything meaningful and mostly just created a power vacuum and plunged the region into chaos all while tricking people into cooperating with us and then leaving them to be murdered when we left but… we are talking about the start of the war. And that also ignores the nationalistic fervor after 9-11.
*: That actually gets a lot more complicated if you go by the actual definition of WMDs. But we were sold on nukes rather than “just” chemical weapons and the mechanisms to create nukes. Which were very much not believed to be there.
Being a good reporter does not mean deferring to whatever is popular at the time.
All those risks and flaws were evident in the build up for war (Bush Jr.'s). Maybe many people believed the bullshit, but that’s not an excuse for the people who are supposed to be calling bullshit bullshit rather than cheerleading the march to war. I am very much not forgetting the bipartisan support for war. I was there marching against it and calling it bullshit at the time, along with many more diligent reporters than the NYT. People rightfully didn’t trust the Bush Jr. administration.
When institutions fail in big world altering ways that kill a lot of innocent people, hold them to it, don’t pretend they did the best they could and no one could possibly expect better.