Hm, I don't know if I'd draw the cause/effect so directly.
To me, these are two separate problems: 1) NYT doxxes sources, 2) NYT serves advertisers rather than readers. There might be some relation between these two problems but I don't personally have enough information to conclude that.
I didn't make that clear in my previous post, my apologies. No implication was intended.
I have a hard time seeing how the statistic that the Times receives twice as much money from readers as from advertisers is evidence that the NYT "serves advertisers rather than readers". I think that probably puts them in the top 10% of media outlets in terms of how financially independent of advertising they are.
I take the point about subscribers being hard to count to mean that even though most of the money comes from subscribers, each individual subscriber doesn't have much leverage or bandwidth to communicate their desires to NYT. On the flip side, each individual advertiser commands some sizeable chunk of NYT's revenue as leverage.
I think any amount of money from advertisers is toxic.
There's a fundamental disconnect between the mission of a news organization and getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). You cannot accept ad dollars and be an effective purveyor of truth.
not to defend the NYTimes here, they're definitely in the wrong. but doxxing a source for an article and doxxing the subject of an article are very different things. The subject of this article is not a "source".
I think it's equally plausible that the NYT believes that doxxing sources does serve their readers. Perhaps a significant portion of the NYT's paying subscribers are against anonymity in sources? Who knows.
Not saying this is a good thing, but I think assuming that this "policy" is there to get advertising dollars is weird. Why would advertisers care?
> The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?
This shows a lack of how journalism works. Using real names isn't to "drive
clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.
Think about it: Does a furniture business advertising in the local paper care
whether the victim of a shooting is named in a piece? Sure, the owner might know
the victim, but that doesn't mean the business will determine its expenditures
based on names.
> Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.
If the NYT actually thinks they need to use the real name of the author of Slate Star Codex to add credibility to a story about the blog, they're delusional.
I think it's much more likely that they simply don't care about the valid personal concerns of people they write about.
Which is possible through the use of other sources. But it depends on the situation. A pseudonym is appropriate for victims of sex crimes and exploitation.
I think the person you are responding to was trying to figure out what kerkeslager's point was, rather than stating his own conclusion. I am a bit confused myself as to what the connection is between name-publishing policies and sources of funding.
The idea behind a real name policy is that you open yourself up for scrutiny and criticism. Since you can be held accountable for what you say you have an incentive to say the truth or at least avoid making mistakes. The reality is that on the internet thousands of people will criticize you for any arbitrary reason even if that reason is actually a fabricated lie or just a personal bias.
If you value your privacy, don't speak to reporters and take every protection to protect your identity. This thinking goes from the basement dweller to the billionaire.
However, if your information is revealed, don't be shocked when someone approaches you with that information because you didn't cover your tracks.
Correct. Judith Miller is an example. However, her information turned out to be inaccurate. But she wasn't willing to oust her source.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, famously refused to reveal their FBI source, Deep Throat, for decades. Of course, they didn't go to jail.
It’s multi-faceted. In some cases NYT (or any news org of any prevailing political inclination) might want to expose real names to exercise control or rally people to cancel someone. Other times it might be more mundane, just wanting a better angle for the story or more solid corroborative details.
In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written on the blog, but also hate other things like diving into statistics of gender based pay discrimination or statistics of racial motivation in police violence.
These are topics which the modern left (which I’m a million percent a part of) is increasingly pushing out of scope of the Overton window and treating them like they are not allowed to be subject to statistical evidence or neutral discussion.
There is only One Right Thing To Believe about police violence (that is targets blacks and minorities, even if this is simply not supported by data). There is only One Right Thing To Believe about gender-based pay discrimination (the popular notion of “women make 70 cents on the dollar” which is not close to the real effect size, and requires a ton of uncomfortable nuance to discuss properly because of confounding effects of women staying at home more often and choosing to stay home after maternity leave).
I think they want SSC to write about things that comply with their moral narrative, and see doxxing as a way to turn the screws and essentially promote a vague threat that if he writes something controversial about IQ or sexism or income inequality or whatever, and it doesn’t stick to liberal talking points, they can do a damaging hit piece.
Wait, did you just claim that the NYT is part of "the modern left"?
If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left".
And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.
If NYT has any angle to do a story on the blog, it’s very likely to be along the lines of “while this guy got some interesting things correct, look at these other horrible examples of sexism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about gender pay gaps) and racism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about racial motives in police violence).”
Your comment seems especially silly given that the NYT did, in fact, shut down this blog by threatening doxxing. So, by definition, the idea is not “far out there” or even remotely questionable.
The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around.
There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
SSC is not a "reactionary blog" by any stretch of the imagination. The author is well known for their comprehensive debunking of politically reactionary views.
This is really not accurate. There are many topics where appealing to evidence or statistics is Not Allowed in leftist discourse. There are certain realities that are defined as not possible, politically, and permitted discourse flows from that.
The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism.
But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession.
In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.
Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources --
mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The
latter is constantly debated among journalists. However, the consensus is using
anonymous sources is necessary when all other avenues of getting someone on the
record is exhausted or the story is so explosive that people close to the
information are willing to shed light on an issue so long as their name is not
used in print, mostly from fear of retribution, which is more common than you
think.
Using anonymous sources to relay secret information like government insiders is very different from public pseudonymous writers. 'Scott Alexander' is of interest only as 'Scott Alexander'; he is famous for writing as 'Scott Alexander'; if you want to find criticism of Scott Alexander, you will find it by asking people about 'Scott Alexander'; and he blogs about general topics with reference to publicly verifiable things like scientific research, as opposed to focusing solely on his anecdotal experience; what does knowing his real name add or let a journalist verify? Does it somehow let you verify that he does in fact blog at SSC...? (Yes, he sometimes talks about his psychiatric patients, but like all psychiatrists, he blends and tweaks stories to protect his patients, and knowing his real name is John Smith gives you no more way of verifying said stories than when they were written by 'Scott Alexander'.)
So is it safe to assume that the NYT always refers to Jon Stewart as Jon Leibovitz? Mark Twain as Samuel Clemens?
Maybe one could make an argument for a stage name or pen name being different (and there are many of those), but could Scott Alexander not also be considered a pen name?
NYT frequently uses anonymous sources, even in cases where it doesn't seem to be necessary. Search for "sources familiar with the matter" +site:nytimes.com for dozens of examples per month.
The Globe and Mail, a newspaper that I have a fair amount of respect for, frequently changes names to protect sources, the subjects of articles and interviewees who aren't willing to be named. They say in the article that the name has been changed. It doesn't detract from the article at all.
> In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.
IMO that doesn't apply to a situation like this. By definition, whoever answers email sent to the address on the SSC blog is the author of the blog. It doesn't matter if that person's "name" is Scott Alexander or Santa Claus or SillyBob5319. The piece the NYT is writing is about the blog, not about the specific, identifiable person who writes it. Knowing who that person is does not add credibility to the story; the credibility is already asserted by the fact that the person who controls the email address behind the blog is talking about it.
To your point about "verifiable information": the only verification needed by a hypothetical reader of this perhaps-never-to-be-published NYT article would be 1) visit the blog; 2) find a contact email; 3) send email asking "were those actually your words quote in this NYT article?" The person's name is irrelevant.
> In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information.
Yes, like the fact that a website called "Slate Star Codex" exists and particular posts in it say what the article says they say.
There is no reason why a story about the blog needs to include the real name of the author, when that real name isn't even revealed anywhere on the blog. The story is about the blog.
The policy doesn't even seem to be very consistently applied. There are a couple excerpts from articles floating around that happily use pseudonyms for, eg, one of the Chapo podcast hosts.
Generally it's anonymous sources who tell the wild and not-necessarily-true stories that drive clicks. A policy limiting their use is intended to make the publication more sober. But that's supposed to happen by just not printing the story. Outing people who don't want to be outed is something else.
An anonymous source seems materially different from a pseudonymous source, especially when that source is being quoted about their enormous body of work.
Hm, I don't know if I'd draw the cause/effect so directly.
To me, these are two separate problems: 1) NYT doxxes sources, 2) NYT serves advertisers rather than readers. There might be some relation between these two problems but I don't personally have enough information to conclude that.
I didn't make that clear in my previous post, my apologies. No implication was intended.
I have a hard time seeing how the statistic that the Times receives twice as much money from readers as from advertisers is evidence that the NYT "serves advertisers rather than readers". I think that probably puts them in the top 10% of media outlets in terms of how financially independent of advertising they are.
I take the point about subscribers being hard to count to mean that even though most of the money comes from subscribers, each individual subscriber doesn't have much leverage or bandwidth to communicate their desires to NYT. On the flip side, each individual advertiser commands some sizeable chunk of NYT's revenue as leverage.
7 replies →
I think any amount of money from advertisers is toxic.
There's a fundamental disconnect between the mission of a news organization and getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). You cannot accept ad dollars and be an effective purveyor of truth.
7 replies →
>NYT doxxes sources
not to defend the NYTimes here, they're definitely in the wrong. but doxxing a source for an article and doxxing the subject of an article are very different things. The subject of this article is not a "source".
I understood article subject to be social groups during Covid.
the object of the article is an intentionally anonymous blog tho
I think it's equally plausible that the NYT believes that doxxing sources does serve their readers. Perhaps a significant portion of the NYT's paying subscribers are against anonymity in sources? Who knows.
Not saying this is a good thing, but I think assuming that this "policy" is there to get advertising dollars is weird. Why would advertisers care?
> The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?
This shows a lack of how journalism works. Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.
Think about it: Does a furniture business advertising in the local paper care whether the victim of a shooting is named in a piece? Sure, the owner might know the victim, but that doesn't mean the business will determine its expenditures based on names.
> Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.
If the NYT actually thinks they need to use the real name of the author of Slate Star Codex to add credibility to a story about the blog, they're delusional.
I think it's much more likely that they simply don't care about the valid personal concerns of people they write about.
Regardless, revealing someone's real name is orthogonal to clicks or ad revenue.
4 replies →
Well, in that case, the journalists should adapt and give credibility through pseudonymity.
Which is possible through the use of other sources. But it depends on the situation. A pseudonym is appropriate for victims of sex crimes and exploitation.
6 replies →
I think the person you are responding to was trying to figure out what kerkeslager's point was, rather than stating his own conclusion. I am a bit confused myself as to what the connection is between name-publishing policies and sources of funding.
It is a pretty damn dubious measure of credibility and it has already failed when suggested for civility.
I am honestly starting to think real name policies are just about hating anominity at this point.
The idea behind a real name policy is that you open yourself up for scrutiny and criticism. Since you can be held accountable for what you say you have an incentive to say the truth or at least avoid making mistakes. The reality is that on the internet thousands of people will criticize you for any arbitrary reason even if that reason is actually a fabricated lie or just a personal bias.
If you value your privacy, don't speak to reporters and take every protection to protect your identity. This thinking goes from the basement dweller to the billionaire.
However, if your information is revealed, don't be shocked when someone approaches you with that information because you didn't cover your tracks.
1 reply →
> Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.
What about not revealing sources? Didn't journalists used to go to jail for that one?
Correct. Judith Miller is an example. However, her information turned out to be inaccurate. But she wasn't willing to oust her source.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, famously refused to reveal their FBI source, Deep Throat, for decades. Of course, they didn't go to jail.
It’s multi-faceted. In some cases NYT (or any news org of any prevailing political inclination) might want to expose real names to exercise control or rally people to cancel someone. Other times it might be more mundane, just wanting a better angle for the story or more solid corroborative details.
In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written on the blog, but also hate other things like diving into statistics of gender based pay discrimination or statistics of racial motivation in police violence.
These are topics which the modern left (which I’m a million percent a part of) is increasingly pushing out of scope of the Overton window and treating them like they are not allowed to be subject to statistical evidence or neutral discussion.
There is only One Right Thing To Believe about police violence (that is targets blacks and minorities, even if this is simply not supported by data). There is only One Right Thing To Believe about gender-based pay discrimination (the popular notion of “women make 70 cents on the dollar” which is not close to the real effect size, and requires a ton of uncomfortable nuance to discuss properly because of confounding effects of women staying at home more often and choosing to stay home after maternity leave).
I think they want SSC to write about things that comply with their moral narrative, and see doxxing as a way to turn the screws and essentially promote a vague threat that if he writes something controversial about IQ or sexism or income inequality or whatever, and it doesn’t stick to liberal talking points, they can do a damaging hit piece.
Wait, did you just claim that the NYT is part of "the modern left"?
If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left".
And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.
If NYT has any angle to do a story on the blog, it’s very likely to be along the lines of “while this guy got some interesting things correct, look at these other horrible examples of sexism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about gender pay gaps) and racism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about racial motives in police violence).”
Your comment seems especially silly given that the NYT did, in fact, shut down this blog by threatening doxxing. So, by definition, the idea is not “far out there” or even remotely questionable.
http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G...
Under US politics it is clear on the left side. It is not far left, but its not center either.
1 reply →
[dead]
The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around.
There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
SSC is not a "reactionary blog" by any stretch of the imagination. The author is well known for their comprehensive debunking of politically reactionary views.
8 replies →
This is really not accurate. There are many topics where appealing to evidence or statistics is Not Allowed in leftist discourse. There are certain realities that are defined as not possible, politically, and permitted discourse flows from that.
The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism.
But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
1 reply →
I think it's best to hear from NYT about why they strictly only use real names.
Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession.
In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.
Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter is constantly debated among journalists. However, the consensus is using anonymous sources is necessary when all other avenues of getting someone on the record is exhausted or the story is so explosive that people close to the information are willing to shed light on an issue so long as their name is not used in print, mostly from fear of retribution, which is more common than you think.
Using anonymous sources to relay secret information like government insiders is very different from public pseudonymous writers. 'Scott Alexander' is of interest only as 'Scott Alexander'; he is famous for writing as 'Scott Alexander'; if you want to find criticism of Scott Alexander, you will find it by asking people about 'Scott Alexander'; and he blogs about general topics with reference to publicly verifiable things like scientific research, as opposed to focusing solely on his anecdotal experience; what does knowing his real name add or let a journalist verify? Does it somehow let you verify that he does in fact blog at SSC...? (Yes, he sometimes talks about his psychiatric patients, but like all psychiatrists, he blends and tweaks stories to protect his patients, and knowing his real name is John Smith gives you no more way of verifying said stories than when they were written by 'Scott Alexander'.)
21 replies →
So is it safe to assume that the NYT always refers to Jon Stewart as Jon Leibovitz? Mark Twain as Samuel Clemens?
Maybe one could make an argument for a stage name or pen name being different (and there are many of those), but could Scott Alexander not also be considered a pen name?
1 reply →
NYT frequently uses anonymous sources, even in cases where it doesn't seem to be necessary. Search for "sources familiar with the matter" +site:nytimes.com for dozens of examples per month.
2 replies →
The Globe and Mail, a newspaper that I have a fair amount of respect for, frequently changes names to protect sources, the subjects of articles and interviewees who aren't willing to be named. They say in the article that the name has been changed. It doesn't detract from the article at all.
> In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.
IMO that doesn't apply to a situation like this. By definition, whoever answers email sent to the address on the SSC blog is the author of the blog. It doesn't matter if that person's "name" is Scott Alexander or Santa Claus or SillyBob5319. The piece the NYT is writing is about the blog, not about the specific, identifiable person who writes it. Knowing who that person is does not add credibility to the story; the credibility is already asserted by the fact that the person who controls the email address behind the blog is talking about it.
To your point about "verifiable information": the only verification needed by a hypothetical reader of this perhaps-never-to-be-published NYT article would be 1) visit the blog; 2) find a contact email; 3) send email asking "were those actually your words quote in this NYT article?" The person's name is irrelevant.
2 replies →
> In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information.
Yes, like the fact that a website called "Slate Star Codex" exists and particular posts in it say what the article says they say.
There is no reason why a story about the blog needs to include the real name of the author, when that real name isn't even revealed anywhere on the blog. The story is about the blog.
1 reply →
Does this mean they don’t care if there is a reasonable risk of retribution as long as they get the person on record?
8 replies →
The policy doesn't even seem to be very consistently applied. There are a couple excerpts from articles floating around that happily use pseudonyms for, eg, one of the Chapo podcast hosts.
Someone started a Twitter thread to compile examples where the NYT reported about someone using their pseudonym:
https://twitter.com/hradzka/status/1275460707069210624
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The NYTimes is filled with anonymous sources as well as pseudonymous sources -- look at many articles about Banksy.
This is just a hit on someone the reporter viewed as not sufficiently an ally in the culture war.
Generally it's anonymous sources who tell the wild and not-necessarily-true stories that drive clicks. A policy limiting their use is intended to make the publication more sober. But that's supposed to happen by just not printing the story. Outing people who don't want to be outed is something else.
Advertisers do not directly care about real names.
What matters is journalistic integrity. We are in a time when reporters are consistently hammered for quoting anonymous sources.
An anonymous source seems materially different from a pseudonymous source, especially when that source is being quoted about their enormous body of work.