Malice of The New York Times

Every morning I read the New York Times to absorb current worldly events, and every morning it’s only a matter of time before I encounter something that makes my head rock with exasperation. It could be the front page headline dripping with liberal, sanctimonious sentiment. It could be the ‘News Analysis’ with facts and opinions intertwined broadcasted as objective. Or if the leading literature is reasonably tolerable I inevitably wind up at the ‘Opinion’ section where out-of-touch pseudo-intellectualists blather into the void while purposefully drawing on divisively woke narratives.

To me, the malice of The New York Times is rooted in its self-characterization of being a non-partisan voice of reason while deliberately advancing a left-of-centre world-view. The publication is a paradigm of Legacy Media that depends on crafting the narrative their audience is craving. And the key fault of The New York Times is convincing itself and its readers that their principal ideal is impartial, unbiased reporting- this isn’t true. Rather, it’s moralism with a veneer of credibility which attempts to speak on behalf of the masses in advancement of social liberalism and progressive values.  

Yesterday I was reading NYT’s coverage on the Ukraine-Russia conflict and there was a piece on the Chief Justice of the Ukrainian Supreme Court being stripped of his position and detained for accepting a $2.7 million USD bribe. The article contained an especially misleading line: “Corruption, and Ukraine’s long struggle against it…” This deceitful sentence structure shows NYT’s attempt to mask Ukrainian corruption and present Ukraine as a beacon of integrity and democracy (which it isn’t). A more accurate version would’ve read “Ukrainian politics, long plagued by corruption,” but this wouldn’t corroborate with their holier-than-thou portrayal of Ukraine. 

So I hold such irate opinions against The New York Times and yet I still read the publication. In part this is due to The New York Times providing readers (myself included) with the lure of applicable daily knowledge and high-mindedness that is an addictive and comforting security blanket. My resentment of the publication is cognitive dissonance expressing the longing for this security while knowing that any comfort offered is probably an illusion. 

This security blanket of a singular news source is hazardous, especially if the source is held in sanctity. Currently in America this is prevalent and it’s part of the reason hyper-polarisation occurs with markedly different realities. There is a cycle of the media spoon-feeding narratives to their target audience and the same audience depending on their preferred media to be spoon fed. The New York Times isn’t the only guilty party -most media is skewed- but its deceitful journalism has led liberals to become unrelentingly confident in their worldview. With no room to compromise, readers of The New York Times sit secluded on a sinking ship, and believe someone else has caused the leak.