
Sorry New York Times, I decline to be interviewed - tosh
https://twitter.com/arram/status/1288140786396143617
======
yongjik
Regarding the second tweet,

If you plot the word frequency of "coronavirus" it will show a quantum jump on
2020. So what? Journalists report on what's happening around them, so if
people keep talking about "male privilege" then of course NYT will pick it up,
whether you (or NYT) are for or against the concept.

If you want to argue that NYT or the larger journalism _caused_ the rise of
terms like "male privilege", you need a better argument than cute pictures.
Using a 10x10 grid of cute pictures cherry-picked to maximize outrage is
precisely what people are complaining about modern journalism, or so I have
thought?

~~~
fluidcruft
Coronavirus would also spike on google trends which is the control mentioned
in the tweet.

~~~
yongjik
That doesn't follow, because people normally don't search for "male privilege"
or "inequality" or "victimization" \- even those people for whom these words
are parts of their daily discourse. When was the last time you searched for
"pointer"?

So, of course the graphs aren't going to match. Not to mention the graphs
themselves are all over the place. (What insights are we supposed to get from
the decreasing trend of "general motors"?)

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admiralspoo
That second tweet with word usage trends of the NYT is shocking. It's like a
phase transition.

~~~
icedistilled
Wait but the words highlighted in the word usage trends don't support the
claim that NYT "abandoned it's commitment to nonpartisan reporting"

Explain how a big uptick in the use of words like "feminism", "islamaphobia"
and "anti-semitism" mean the NYT became partisan?

I have a lot of beef with the NYT but the graphs don't show what he claims.
And if he actually believes they do, then I have seriously questions about his
viewpoints.

Especially considering events that happened around the phase change, like the
muslim ban and Me Too movement, that could easily explain the step changes in
word frequency around 2014-2016. And is there any comparison with other news
outlets word frequencies?

If anything, the step changes show that before 2014ish, NYT was failing at
recognizing important issues that they have now started reporting on.

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sprusemoose
fl3x

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rbecker
> The data makes it plain that the NYT has abandoned its commitment to
> nonpartisan reporting. When the internet threatened their business they made
> a devil’s bargain to amplify outrage and us-vs-them psychology.

They abandoned any such commitment in 1946, when they introduced the still-
active editorial rule [1] that:

 _race should be cited only when it is pertinent and its pertinence is clear
to the reader. The race of a victim of a hate crime or the subject of a police
search is clearly germane, an essential part of the person’s description. But
the race of a person convicted of a crime is not pertinent unless the case has
racial overtones;_

It is left as an exercise for the reader to find out in which cases race was
_pertinent_. Reuters and AP have similar rules.

[1] New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 2015 Edition, pg. 2183
[http://1.droppdf.com/files/bp7ed/the-new-york-times-
manual-o...](http://1.droppdf.com/files/bp7ed/the-new-york-times-manual-of-
style-and-usa-allan-m-siegal.pdf)

~~~
shureluck
I fail to see how this decision in 1946 is relevant. Its clear you are just
pushing a narrative and reaching way, way, way into the past to try and sell
it.

~~~
rbecker
Way into the past? The rule is still in place _today_.

~~~
ratsmack
I'm totally lost, because I can't see why this rule is a problem. It seems
logical to only include a subjects race, only when race is relevant to the
article.

~~~
rbecker
And if the NYT only deemed race relevant when the perpetrator was Black and
victim was White, filling the pages with "Black kills White", and never the
reverse, would you see the problem then?

