
NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media - jmsflknr
https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/nyt-google-media.php
======
rayiner
> Several observers noted the story was timed in such a way as to provide
> maximum publicity for a bill that the New Media Alliance has been promoting
> to Congress, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The
> proposed legislation would exempt newspaper companies from competition laws,
> which prevent industry-leading entities from collaborating to set prices.
> The NMA argues this would allow publishers to lobby Google and other
> platforms for better financial compensation together instead of
> individually.

On one hand, you can’t make this stuff up. A “competition” bill that exempts
companies from competition laws. On the other hand, this is the problem with
the “content middleman” business. By leveraging its near monopoly over
eyeballs, Google can negotiate to receive an outsized share of the revenues
from people viewing say NYT content, relative to the value Google adds to the
transition.

That is also why I welcome the rise of competition in movie/TV streaming, even
if it means subscribing to multiple services. The value added by any
particular streaming service is pretty minimal. (Except for Netflix original
content, Netflix is streaming say NBC’s content from Amazon’s servers over
Verizon’s wires to an app using video codecs developed by Sony/etc.) Netflix,
etc., isn’t adding nothing, there is a value to the curation and licensing
deals, but it’s status as a middleman would allow it to wrestle a much larger
share of the profit from the transaction than the share of value it adds.

~~~
sametmax
Except netflix will probably die and you'll get the choice between 2 bullies :
amazon and disney.

Also I have a hard time feeling sorry for the traditional press. They spend
decades killing their own reputation and now paying the price. They could have
had web sites so reputable, so popular, that they would have been the news
hub. Instead they turned internet into the bad guy, kept publishing political
agendas and sensasionalist headlines and hoped we would suck it up as we did
when they were king of the hill.

~~~
mr_t
Naive question: What makes you think that Netflix will probably die?

~~~
sametmax
Amazon and disney just have more firepower. Amazon has the expertise in
hosting, disney in content making. Amazon can drain customers with prime, and
disney with the existing portfolio. Both have infinite cash to aquire and
create new licences.

No matter how good I think netflix is, and despite their now long and good
track record, they are entering a new fight bare handed against machine guns.

~~~
leereeves
Amazon doesn't seem to be seriously trying. Prime Video is a wasteland.

And Disney doesn't own all the content. Netflix need only be the streaming
provider other content makers choose.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> Disney doesn't own all the content

But they own about half (Disney Studios, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, 20th
Century Fox, Searchlight, NatGeo, and I am sure I forgot a dozen others), and
they might never licence it to a "competitor" again unless they are forced to
do under some sort of FRAND unbundling of content and distribution.

------
jrochkind1
> After quoting the head of the News Media Alliance, David Chavern, as saying
> newspapers deserve a cut of that $4.7 billion,

> One of the most glaring omissions from the report, mentioned by a number of
> media-industry observers, is the ad revenue newspapers generate from the
> pageviews they get via Google News and Google search. The search company
> says publishers get more than 10 billion clicks every month (the value of
> which differs depending on the publisher). When asked for comment, the NMA
> tells CJR the purpose of the report was to look at how much Google benefits
> from news, not the opposite.

Uh, so it sounds like Google deserves a cut of the ad revenue directed via
Google News then.

Man, there's no trustworthy journalism left, is there?

~~~
wyxuan
One blemish is not enough to cast away the entire credibility of the source.
NYT has published a lot of original reporting that has proven to be true, but
of course that doesn't matter on this conversation at all, doesn't it.

~~~
d33
It's not just about that, it's more about signal to noise ratio and the impact
of their stories. When one deliberately adds a spin to specific categories of
news, it's easy to prove them manipulative and thus, not trustworthy. The fact
that they currently report correctly on the things outside of their agenda is
not that relevant since it's just a matter of time before it becomes their
agenda as well. Media should strive for objectivity.

------
umvi
"Straightforward" extrapolation is the worst! Reminds me of the RIAA damages
numbers often quoted in courts

"Well, it was a $2 mp3, and ~100M copies were downloaded, that's $2 * 100M =
$200M in lost revenue/damages!!"

As if 1 download = 1 guaranteed lost sale. On the contrary sometimes 1
download = 1 future sale where there was none before!

By that logic the easiest way to make a million is just to download (or copy)
a $1 mp3 1M times - congrats, you now own $1M in assets!

~~~
p1necone
Or police talking about seizing X million dollars worth of drugs where they're
getting their valuation from street value but seizing the drugs in wholesale
quantities from the manufacturer - and ignoring the fact that a large portion
of the labor/risk that contributes to that price hasn't actually happened yet.

~~~
maceurt
Well, they usually say that it is its "street value", and is pretty accurate
of how much money is being taken away from the drug economy.

~~~
luckylion
Will it be taken away though? Wouldn't the prices just adjust to the supply
that is now significantly smaller?

~~~
moorhosj
I’m not sure drugs are that perfect of a market. The buyer doesn’t really have
visibility into price/quality across sellers and drug buyers are not always
rational, two conditions for perfect competition.[1]

Actual economics is far more complex than the simple supply/demand curve
taught in 101 classes.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition)

~~~
luckylion
Sure, it certainly won't immediately adjust perfectly, but when authorities
close some route or bust a large shipment, there will likely be some price
change because of limited supply, increased risk (and cost) for
transportation, right. It's not like drug buyers will just say "oh, you don't
have any this month? okay, see you in six weeks".

------
legitster
So many studies make such bald and ridiculous assumptions but never get called
out for them. Or the results of "studies" where the methods aren't even
public!

Linking to a "study" to validate a point is so easy and trivial. I can find
studies that validate any position I need. But having "a study show" makes my
argument seem truthful and academic. In that regard, "studies" seem to have a
cargo cult where people happy collect and link to them but never bother to
validate them.

Did they not bother to actually run the numbers by anyone at all? Did it being
a "study" magically make it pure and true?

------
espeed
In a nutshell, Elizabeth Hansen's Harvard research group got it right...

"Internet platform economics were going to swamp the majority of publishers no
matter what—there is (almost) no market for their products any more; not
because they couldn’t make one, but because that’s not how internet economics
work."

[https://twitter.com/ehansen02/status/1138077051934707714](https://twitter.com/ehansen02/status/1138077051934707714)

------
ralph84
Any time I see an article in a "mainstream" news outlet on a topic I'm
familiar with, the inaccuracies make me cringe. The more familiar I am with
the topic, the more inaccuracies I spot. The charitable interpretation is that
news outlets have been so decimated by changes in their business model that
they can't afford good editors. There are plenty of less charitable
interpretations.

~~~
gundmc
Sounds like the Gell-Mann amnesia effect[1]. We notice the innacuracies in the
fields we are familiar with and then readily believe stories outside of our
expertise.

Disclaimer - reporting is critically important and by and large journalists
are doing their best to understand and describe incredibly complex and
esoteric subjects. It's always good to remember there is a lot more nuance
behind just about every story than surface level would indicate.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

~~~
kortilla
>reporting is critically important and by and large journalists are doing
their best to understand and describe incredibly complex and esoteric
subjects.

No, by and large they absolutely aren’t doing their best. If they were the
Gell-Mann amnesia effect wouldn’t be so prominent because it’s trivial to run
stories by experts on topics. Most reporters are crunched for time and just
churn out crap as fast as possible.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Which expert on journalism production processes did you query to verify that
statement?

~~~
whenchamenia
You can simply observe the output and see the bias. Its not a theoretical
matter.

------
fyoving
The NYT is yet to publish a correction to an article publicizing a comically
erroneous study suggesting a relationship between Facebook use and attacks on
refugees in Germany:
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/08/fa...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/08/facebook-
causing-anti-refugee-attacks-germany.html)

They have been running smear campaigns against tech companies for years and
then act dumb and ask about the change in sentiment towards them.

~~~
briandear
But yet, we give them credibility on political stories? That’s what makes no
sense to me, we call them out on stories in which we have close experience,
but we accept their stories on politics as if they were “objective,” because
they happen to support our own bias. A story biased against the president:
totally true, it’s “respectable” journalism. A story pushing an anti-Google
agenda, “what were they thinking, this isn’t true!” People want to believe
they are right and they find outlets that agree with them and claim them
“objective.” A conservative thinks Limbaugh is correct, a liberal thinks
Maddow is correct. It’s a circle jerk of self congratulation that leads to
sharply partisan hatred. Unfortunately there isn’t a Walter Cronkite to find
the objective middle.

~~~
bluecalm
Well, I don't think there are many people left who give them any credibility
on political stories outside of those looking for an echo chamber. They are
Fox News for people who identify as "progressive intellectuals".

~~~
stochastic_monk
That’s MSNBC, not NYT. In fact, their coverage goes out of their way to
support centrist positions. (Unless you’re discussing their opinion columns,
which include everyone from Gorbachev to Sean Spicer to Chelsea Manning.)

~~~
kortilla
>their coverage goes out of their way to support

“Out of their way” as in it’s difficult for them to support anything other
than leftist views? Do you not see the problem there?

~~~
stochastic_monk
To be more verbose, giving plausible deniability to actors who are clearly
malicious.

------
dqpb
NYT has been systematically attacking US tech for years. I'm curious why.

I ignored it for the most part, until I paid more attention to their
hypocritical advertising, user tracking, and the unforgivable dark patterns
they use to throttle unsubscribes - the state of residency feature flag for
online unsubscribe / forcing the subscriber to hold on the phone for an hour
before triaging them to a sales rep. Fuck you NYT.

------
woodgrainz
This article is solid sanity check on the NYT story discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20146090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20146090)

------
in3d
Why don’t these news publishers come together and make a competitor to Google
News? Google News is a poor product. It cannot do basic NLP things right, like
properly grouping related news. The titles that are chosen as the first ones
to display often don’t convey the story. Irrelevant or extremely partisan
stories are prominently listed. “More stories like this” or “fewer stories
like this” does nothing. The publishers could ban Google News from displaying
their headlines and include snippets on their service, so they wouldn’t even
need to compete fairly. To me it seems that they are scared to losing short
term traffic and lack a long-term vision.

~~~
gipp
Absolutely none of the things you listed are anything close to "basic". Those
are things that newsrooms full of talented and well-coordinated professionals
regularly get wrong, let alone software algorithms. You're listing massive,
completely unsolved problems and acting like they're table stakes.

------
blablabla123
> and the figure quoted by the Times—without any critical assessment
> whatsoever—appears to be based almost entirely on questionable mathematical
> extrapolation from a comment made by a former Google executive more than a
> decade ago

They definitely have a point, without putting a tremendous effort into this,
one must have to use very speculative mathematical extrapolation. Although I'm
not sure whether it would ever be worth to put additional mathematical rigour
into this because that would be a lot of work.

Speaking of myself, for many years Google News has been my starting point for
using the internet and self-speaking for getting myself a news update. News
sources have become replaceable and I was always thinking: oh nice, so I'm
always reading articles from various sources/perspectives, so this must
eliminate virtually all bias.

But what has happened in reality is this:

\- many news companies closed down/were merged into other companies

\- often agency news (Reuters, AP, ...) are copy&pasted into articles

\- some online newspapers mostly put bot generated news that seems to be
automatically assembled from agency news and correspondent's; the quality and
readability of this is almost 0

So for me a tipping point has been reached and I switched back to going
directly to news magazine/paper websites. Also I've subscribed to 2 paid
subscriptions. I feel much better informed with more relevant information.

------
thrower123
If you expect better of the New York Times, you haven't been paying attention
for the past few years.

------
eric_b
Huh, it's as if the NYT has a narrative they wish to push, and will use
lazy/questionable journalism to do it...

Makes ya wonder what other topics they're doing this with...

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
WMD comes to mind.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
That has more with W's threats to cut off press room access to anyone who
wouldn't stick to the patriotic script they wanted everyone to follow.

~~~
Macross8299
Is "losing press room access" supposed to be some understandable defense of
knowingly deceiving the public into a war?

Doesn't seem all that different from the days of William Randolph Hearst.

------
donohoe
This Twitter thread on this subject from Dir of Ad Tech at The Washington Post
is worth reading:

[https://twitter.com/chronotope/status/1138074631980683264](https://twitter.com/chronotope/status/1138074631980683264)

~~~
graeme
Seems weak. Media are free to make alternative adtech. Google’s ad system has
made them more money though.

And the above would be true even if Google News didn’t exist.

The media has incredibly sloppy thinking about their business model.

What monopoly prevents the post from managing their own ads? They choose not
to.

~~~
graeme
I should update this to say that AMP seems much more of a thing to critique as
regards the news and adtech. Thought of this while reading today's thread on
how a bug in AMP prevents links to a publisher's web page.

News sites more or less must use amp to rank, I think, which means they need
google adtech.

Could be wrong, not an expert, but it seems an actual legit critique the media
could make.

------
TehCorwiz
". . .this would allow publishers to lobby Google and other platforms for
better financial compensation together instead of individually."

Something something collective bargaining.

------
shereadsthenews
This is why I unsubd from the NYT and why it makes me sad: 99% solid
journalism but 1% hot garbage is not a good enough ratio. Just in my adult
lifetime this newspaper has materially contributed to both the Iraq War and
the election of Trump, and now they use their paper to try to destroy me
industry because their industry, which for decades was an abusive cartel
exploiting advertisers, is having an angry death fit. I wish there were more
outlets for journalism that don't have old-media baggage.

------
fareesh
The NYT recently hired someone to their editorial board who appears to be a
brazen and open racist.

I don't mean some kind of innuendo racist, but someone with multiple tweets
like this:

"Are <ethnic group> genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus
logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins?"

The NYT excused this this as her way of "imitating the rhetoric" of those who
were harassing her online.

I'm inclined to side with them because I think everyone ought to have the
opportunity to address any of their past statements publicly before being
condemned by "the paper of record".

However:

Anyone that's been paying attention to the news media knows that there is no
way they would offer this opportunity or indulge this kind of a charitable
interpretation. This article is likely proof of that, given that so many have
not been offered the opportunity to comment on the way they/their videos have
been represented.

~~~
isbadawi
[https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1025484876278112261](https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1025484876278112261)

~~~
avinium
I'm glad you posted this.

I was aware of the original tweet a few years ago, but didn't know the context
until now.

I haven't read the referenced article so I can't comment on whether it's a
valid criticism or not. But it's clearly satirical.

~~~
weberc2
To be fair, she has had a steady stream of Tweets going back to 2014 that were
pretty unambiguously racist (or if you're of the "you can't be racist against
white people" persuasion, some other term that means something like "anti-
white"), so you could be forgiven for mistaking the context in this one case.

------
whenchamenia
NYT, the most prolific poster on HN, caught out again, like every month it
seems. Yet they still rule the front page. When will people stand up to bad
journalalism being pushed on them?

------
_cs2017_
Why is not only the conservative, but even the liberal media so strongly anti-
tech? Google, Facebook, and the majority of other tech firms are
extraordinarily liberal, far beyond the normal California bias. And not only
are their executives and employees overwhelmingly liberal, the companies often
act on those beliefs (by supporting various political causes, creating a
certain liberal emphasis in their educational tools, etc).

Or, put another way, how did the tech firms manage to become enemies with the
liberals despite being on their side in the political battle?

~~~
bryan_w
Someone made the believe that big tech was responsible for getting trump
elected

------
alt_f4
NYT does itself no favors with regard to its already questionable credibility
by spreading anti-tech propaganda.

------
scotchio
To be fair...

The front page of Hacker News is pretty much a Google hate hangoutfest -- so
maybe cut some slack on this one...

I'm sure the NYT reporter was not acting malicious.

Maybe they will even issue correction or update in time. No one would argue
that speed of social media and corrections is not ideal, but I would bet they
are trying to be accurate and transparent with their readers.

I just seriously doubt the reporter and editors who published this info did so
solely with the goal to attack Google by "promoting" a questionable study.

Wrong/Lazy/Dumb != Evil

~~~
darawk
No, but they published something that confirmed their priors, and didn't due
their due diligence on it because it confirmed their priors and was the kind
of story they wanted to write. They have to be held to account for that.

~~~
scotchio
Agree. Just don't see it as malicious

~~~
solveit
Malice is completely unnecessary for the world to go to shit. Very few people
are actually malicious in any meaningful sense of the term. Most bad things
happen when generally good people cut corners.

~~~
mehrdadn
I think you can assume "acting maliciously" was intended to be a catch-all for
something more general, like maybe "acting in a grossly disrespectable
manner", regardless of whether the intentions were actually malice or not.

------
noetic_techy
The New York Times is no longer the steady unbias pillar it once was. They
hire fresh out SJW types to do their writing and it shows. Once I finally came
to that realization, I stopped taking them seriously, but I feel others have
not quite reached that epiphany yet. Keep in mind they almost went bankrupt if
it were not for Carlos Slim bailing them out. Then you saw a bunch of praise
pieces about Slim, and you realize much of the old guard is gone. That should
have been the first red flag. The NYT lives off its names legacy reputations
alone, but all the quality journalism is gone, with just refined legacy veneer
wrapped around very questionable bias premises for most stories.

~~~
ergothus
> The New York Times is no longer the steady unbias pillar it once was

Okay, I'm open to hearing this - I've certainly noticed a decrease in quality
(vs quantity - NYT still leads there) vs, say, the Washington Post.

> They hire fresh out SJW types

I'm not even sure what this means. I'm used to seeing "SJW" as an attack label
that is absent actual meaning, similar to "snowflake" or "libtard", stemming
from groups stauchly biased themselves. Are you using it here as an attack
based on political belief, or do you have some more nuanced substantive
meaning? The rest of your comment doesn't expand on this "epiphany" so I'm
left uncertain as to your argument.

~~~
verteu
As the acronym implies, a "social justice warrior" is someone who fights for
social justice.

Hiring journalists with a strong homogenous political agenda is a poor way to
produce neutral, fact-based reporting.

~~~
pm90
> Hiring journalists with a strong homogenous political agenda is a poor way
> to produce neutral, fact-based reporting.

Have you considered the possibility that these SJW's are actually
representative of today's youth? If they are, shouldn't NYT be hiring even
more of them?

I really don't care about what the backgrounds of Journalists are, as long as
they adhere to the principles of journalism (honesty, a desire to question
authority and find the truth at all costs etc.).

~~~
kortilla
Have you considered that if you are fighting for anything other than truth,
you have a serious conflict of interest as a journalist?

~~~
ergothus
The problem being that most everyone thinks they're fighting for the truth.

Person A will complain that "SJW types" are being hired, the complaint being
that they are biased against the truth.

Person B will complain that "SJW types" AREN'T being hired, the complaint
being that people biased against the truth are being hired instead.

I don't know the answers, but I do think the "let's present both sides" of
journalism has left journalism doing a terrible job of effectively presenting
the truth. Finding a path that embraces objective reporting AND denies efforts
to exploit the weaknesses of systems designed to promote objectivity is
something we've not figured out yet.

------
nailer
The NYT also deliberately blurs the lines between any kind of non-leftist
thinking (traditional conservative views, non-left liberal thinking, criticism
of Islam or illegal immigration) and 'alt right' \- a term created by Richard
Spencer, a white nationalist who wants to create a white ethnostate which (at
least according to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-
right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right)) describes far right hate
groups.

I know people who work at the NYT. They're absolutely smart enough to know the
difference.

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. It's boring, nasty,
and just what we don't need here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
nailer
I understand the ideological flame war rule, as I've been here since it's
introduction, but we're discussing the Times being misleading, and I'm not
attacking or promoting any particular ideology in this post.

~~~
dang
That may be true and yet you can still be taking the thread further into
flamewar. At the dog park, when dogs get into a fight, I notice that there are
sometimes other dogs who get in the middle of it, barking and racing around.
They're not fighting at all, but they sure make the thing more intense.

~~~
nailer
Point taken. I'll be more careful in future.

------
buboard
Google spreads way more misniformation than nyt, they aren't worth defending.

~~~
weberc2
It's not a dichotomy, we can and must hold both accountable. This race-to-the-
bottom thinking is ruinous.

