From a much-criticized New York Times article:
[A female Yale student] added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most of the work raising kids.
“I accept things how they are,” she said. “I don’t mind the status quo. I don’t see why I have to go against it.”
That same student, in Mediabistro, is clearly unhappy with how the Times quoted her.
The things I told her about fighting against stereotypes that people had of me as an immigrant, and how I overcame obstacles to get where I am today never appeared in the article, and what did in fact appear is a quote about “status quo” that I do not mean in that context.[…]
It saddens me that I am portrayed as an insensitive and unambitious person in the article, and really did not know that Louise was only going to quote those of us who wanted to stay at home if/when we had kids. She in fact did interview my other suitemates who answered the survey as either not wanting to have children at all, or would continue working as a mother. I am somewhat shocked that she did not include ANY of their ideas or views in the article.
The student’s full response can be read at the Mediabistro link. It certainly lends credence to the impression many of us had reading the article – that the reporter, Louise Story, had already drawn her conclusions before doing research.
A reporter from the New York Times had an agenda in writing her story, and filtered her information to present a manufactured spin that advanced her own personal agenda?
My world is crumbling. Crumbling, I tell you!
Well, my world isn’t crumbling. Even when they’re doing decent reporting, I’ve found that the NYT’s articles often throw some unresearched opinion out of left field without any analysis on it.
I am a bit shocked at the blatant disregard for journalistic integrity, though, and it makes me wonder how many other articles they’ve messed up. I know that in the one reporting Hyde’s “genders similarity hypothesis” they misrepresented some of her evidence, which may seem like a minor thing but would have a big impact on anyone using the NYT article as the only reference for her work.
It’s getting to the point where it seems pointless to try to keep up with news; all media seems irrevocably tainted by agendas and the ability to willfully throw out any standards in order to achieve their goals. It’s just so frustrating.
Well, tekanji, seems to me the only viable path is to just recognize that everybody has an agenda, but that varying people have varying degrees of intellectual integrity.
For example, Barry is a big hippie lefty deeeegenerate. Everybody knows this. At the same time, Barry is a passably honest person. He won’t print deliberate lies; if someone finds a clear-cut mistake on something he’s written, he acknowledges and corrects it. So if Barry posts an article saying that Senator X’s plan for ensuring WalMart restroom equity has the following flaws and the following benefits, well, I’m going to believe him. I will let my awareness of his godawful politics into the equation when I analyze his framing and his content, but if he says the bill will fine Wal-Mart $72,000 per broken restroom, then that’s very likely what the bill says.
Other journalists – whether openly advocates or more “newsy” – are not so honest, and their words I discount further, or totally disregard. If Ann Coulter says someone committed treason, well, I kind of doubt it. Al Franken says its a war for ___, yeah, whatever.
Dishonest polemicists – people who will readily distort the truth for partisan reasons – very soon find themselves preaching only to a choir – which makes them politically useful tools, perhaps, but denies them any real agency in affecting change through their work.
So you can read the Times, and perhaps derive a lot of useful information from it – but you have to be a critical thinker about it in order to do anything other than marinate in friendly opinion. (Which is fun and worthwhile, but limited in its productivity.)
And in a story like this, where a reporter is presenting a complex issue and yet only one facet of many is getting any print time…well, you can draw a pretty safe conclusion about the article’s reliability just from that little observation.
Other journalists – whether openly advocates or more “newsy” – are not so honest, and their words I discount further, or totally disregard. If Ann Coulter says someone committed treason, well, I kind of doubt it. Al Franken says its a war for ___, yeah, whatever.
Neither Ann Coulter nor Al Franken are “journalists.” They are “pundits.” There are damn few people out there any more who get airtime or front page stories who qualify as “journalists.”
A reporter from the New York Times had an agenda in writing her story, and filtered her information to present a manufactured spin that advanced her own personal agenda?
I, too, am shattered. Hold me, Robert.
(Althought you can remove “from the New York Times” from that sentence. The NYT hardly has a lock on “deadline, I better make shit up” journalism.)
Malcolm Gladwell has a long and interesting disclosure statement on his site that has helped me make sense of opinion vs. bias. But in the end, his cred still depends on me trusting that he’s not skewing things, and if I don’t know enough about the domain he’s discussing, then all I have is critical opinion to help check whether he’s fallen into bias. (Advantage: blogosphere?)
Be brave, little one. It will be all right. Daddy’s here.
There are good reporters, bad reporters even within publications. And some publications are better than others.
I’m in the profession. And I’ve been correctly and incorrectly, quoted. Sometimes really misquoted or had my words skewed in a way that fits the reporter’s agenda. OTOH, some reporters do make an effort to portray what you said, fairly. I always make my best efforts. But each complaint is a way to learn.
News Print reporters are much better than television. Radio, it really depends on who you are dealing with and whether it’s live or not. Small indy radio stations are really cool, FTMP.
My worst example of skewed reporting was 20/20. The topic was women and breasts. If you liked your breasts, they weren’t interested or didn’t include you. If you were so miserable about them, you wanted to hack them up or stuff them yourself, then you were front and center. Message: Women are miserable about their breasts, bring on the plastic surgeons!
I was contacted by Self magazine and later 20/20 after responding to a survey on body image, but there was no followup. I was a bit perturbed b/c I really think it’s important to send a message to young girls and women that their bodies are fine the way they are. But I became relieved and infuriated at what happened in the end result. Even if women like myself had been included, we would have been portrayed as imbalanced or abnormal.
Not surprised. You know what they say, not all the fiction in the New York Times is in the bestseller list.
I would be extremely pissed if it were me. I *detest* having words put in my mouth. Quotes out of context, ditto.
Man, Robert, you almost had me for a minute there. I have a friend who’s into the Daddy thing if you want me to pass your number on to him, though.
One of the blackly funny things that came out of the whole Jayson Blair scandal was when the NYT contacted many of the people about whom he’d Made Shit Up–the NYT wanted to know why they’d never called in outrage. The people in question knew very well that Blair had fabricated his stories; they shrugged and said that a) they *expected* newspaper people to be liars and b) it’s not like the NYT would have done anything about it.
These are the kinds of articles I try to avoid reading anymore because they only get written at all to validate an agenda — “lifestyle” awareness articles or whatever you want to call them. They visited one school, talked to a few women, selectively quoted even fewer, did an unscientific poll, and filtered their conclusions through a lens with maximum attention to relaying what would be “newsworthy,” aka, “contrary.”
This particular article offended me first because it carries forward the same old, same old assumption that the women who matter most are those whose husbands will be wealthy and indulgent enough to let them carry out whatever career choice they want to pursue. And these women aren’t even married (let alone divorced) yet! But the assumption is there, explicitly, in the article.
There is a real dichotomy in the Times — on the one hand, it gives explicit attention to issues of race and class in a variety of articles, but when it comes to the “mainstream” articles that don’t explicitly address race and class, it’s as if everyone below affluent, bred to be a Yalie, is invisible.
I don’t even bother to read this crap any longer, because they never deal with women like me. Basically, I’m the woman that these spoiled upper-class women hire to do their dirty work, or else I wait on them in restaurants or watch their kids or do theirlaundry or something. I don’t exist. There are more of me than t here are of them but who gives a shit?
Judith Miller. Jayson Blair. ….. Should I be surprised that NYT articles are written with “facts” taken out of the “journalist”‘s ass? That’s why it is useful to read a variety of news sources and insofar as possible, check publicly available sources.
Extracting “facts” from asses is a full-time profession for a lot of people in power, our pResident included.
Wow Ginmar, your comment was the absolute best. Why are these really rich women a sign of anythign in particular except their own really weird and skewed world?
The fact that even their world is not skewed enough for the NYT who has to further skew it, though, is a bit disturbing. I don’t know why anyone reads the NYT for news anymore.
Jack Shafer has a follow up to his earlier Slate story. Among the things he covers is that the Times did a story just like this in 1980 and Shafer found the woman who was quoted in that story who said she was going to be a stay-at-home mom. Turns out that Times misrepresented her quote and that she “never stopped working after finishing school, has three children, and put in 20 years at Morgan Stanley before joining Blackstone a year ago.”
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