A Black Eye for the NYT
In a gutsy report, NewsGuard, the global media rating service, gave The New York Times a failing grade for allowing opinion to seep into its news coverage.
Overall, NewsGuard, which rates media organizations around the world on nine key measures, gave the Times passing grades on eight of the categories it uses to rate the integrity and credibility of news organizations, and it praised the nation's premier news source for the breadth and depth of its coverage of important world events.
photo by Stéphan Valentin
Nonetheless, it flunked the Times in one important category: responsibly handling the difference between news and opinion. Instead of the 100 score NewsGuard previously awarded the Times, the failure to separate news from opinion cut the Times' overall score to 87.5, representing a black eye for a media organization that plays a crucial role in setting the news agenda across the nation and the globe.
"The blending of news and opinion is reflected in a turn to more impressionistic journalism," the NewsGuard rating said, "through beat reporters often taking part in live group blogs and more free-wheeling podcasts, during breaking news events, such as presidential debates, the State of the Union address, and [former President Donald] Trump's arraignments, and offering their personal takes on what is transpiring.
"Because the Times often presents unlabeled opinion as news, NewsGuard has determined that the newspaper does not meet the standard for handling the difference between news and opinion responsibly, NewsGuard said, giving a failing mark in an essential category to a paper that has won 133 Pulitzer Prizes for its journalism.
In response to NewsGuard's questions, the report says, company spokesperson Naseem Amini did not address any specifics, and said in a January 2024 email: “Our news report brings together firsthand accounts, insights and necessary context that, paired with reporters' deep expertise in the field, helps readers understand the bigger picture around complex news topics. Our opinion journalism serves readers in an entirely different way, offering a wide range of explicit perspectives on relevant issues."
The credibility of the journalists who issued the rating at NewsGuard reflects the heft of the failing grade placed next to the rating for the responsible separation of news and opinion at the Times. Steve Brill, a cofounder of American Lawyer magazine and cable Court TV, cofounded NewsGuard five years ago with Gordon Crovitz, a highly regarded journalist and former publisher of the Wall Street Journal. James Warren, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and a veteran press critic, wrote the report, which Brill and Crovitz edited.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I've worked for many years with Warren, both at the Chicago Tribune and later at the Chicago News Co-operative, which partnered with The New York Times. I consider NewsGuard, where Warren is executive editor, a credible service that gives the public a rare and trustworthy yardstick to measure the professionalism of news organizations at a time when misinformation floods the media landscape. NewsGuard has assessed more than 10,000 news organizations around the globe, plus broadcast cable TV news shows and podcasts.
Overall, the Times NewsGuard score means it got passing grades on categories such as gathering and presenting news responsibly, effective policies for correcting errors, and maintaining policies against publishing false or egregiously misleading content. Five of NewsGuard's criteria involve credibility, and four involve transparency in reporting the news. NewsGuard said the Times website "mostly adheres to the basic standards of credibility and transparency." As a matter of policy, NewsGuard does not comment on its ratings, letting its work speak for itself.
In failing the Times on the essential criteria of handling the difference between news and opinion, NewsGuard cited numerous opinion pieces published in its news pages that should have been adequately identified with standard labels such as analysis or commentary.
Most, if not all, of the stories NewsGuard cited for flaws, represent reports that generated controversy when they were published over the last several years. On their own, each story could be considered a flub like many that characterize standard newsroom operations. Taken together, the flawed stories paint a disturbing trend of drifting away from basic journalistic principles highly valued by journalists and editors alike.
NewsGuard said a notable example of opinion seeping into the news was the organization's publication in its August 2019 Sunday magazine of the 1619 Project. A huge endeavor, the project sought to reframe the country's history, pinpointing 1619, the year that African slaves first arrived in America, as the year the nation truly was founded. The project, which continues to generate controversy, placed the "consequences of slavery and the contributions' of Black Americans at the center of the story we tell about who we are,” NewsGuard said. The piece was written by Nicole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer who specialized covering racial injustice, without labeling the project as opinion.
Numerous prominent historians, including Gordon Wood, professor emeritus at Brown University, and James McPherson, a notable civil war historian and professor emeritus at Princeton University, criticized the story's thesis. "The idea that the Revolution occurred as a means of protecting slavery, I just don't think there's much evidence for it, and in fact the contrary is true," Wood said. "The Revolution unleashed antislavery sentiments that led to the first abolition movements in the history of the world."
Hannah-Jones said the project "decenters whiteness" and chided "old white male historians" who criticized her work. Although the Times initially defended the magazine's reporting, it later clarified a key passage in the project. Slavery was a primary motive for some – but not all – of the colonists, the Times clarification said. The 1619 project is used in the curriculums of schools and was the subject of a HULU documentary.
The 1619 Project wasn't the only example NewsGuard used in grading the Times. The report suggests some disarray in the ranks of the journalists on the Times payroll. The report quoted a 17,000-word critique of Times policies written by James Bennet, a former Times editorial page editor, who stepped down in June 2020 after admitting he published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton, a conservative Republican from Arkansas, without reading it first. Bennet supervised Times opinion pieces, a job that involved publishing views on issues that don't align with the organization's editorial policies.
Cotton had argued that the military should intervene in cities where protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police were marked by looting and violence. Many Times journalists expressed outrage at Bennet, including several hundred who signed a letter of protest to A.G Sulzberger, the Times publisher. Sulzberger initially defended Bennet but later said publishing the piece was a mistake. Bennet subsequently resigned.
In his lengthy piece in The Economist, Bennet attributed the revolt to the newspaper's "illiberal" culture, which was marked by journalists being more concerned with group rights than individual rights, the NewsGuard report said. Bennet argued that "objectivity" for the offended journalists was "code for ignoring the poor and weak and cozying up to power, as most journalists, particularly in Washington, usually do.
In his critique, Bennet touched upon a significant development in contemporary journalism. Organizations with print journalism in their DNA have struggled to differentiate themselves from more nimble competitors ever since television and radio news cornered the market on breaking news decades ago. At first, the public benefitted from the drive to take reports beyond breaking news. Publications distinguished themselves by creating journalists who specialized in subjects, such as environmental writers, science or business writers, and investigative journalists.
The demands imposed on newsrooms by the internet and online journalism created new challenges to remain competitive. Editors and reporters faced intense pressures to do more with less, and strains surfaced on traditional newsroom chains of command. Bennet said the Times added more cultural critics in the news organizations' diverse departments and gave them free rein to opine about politics, a practice frowned upon in prior times at most news organizations. A new class of journalists evolved to challenge outmoded "objective" news standards. The practice flared most publicly with the emergence of President Donald Trump, whose use of the media created thorny ethical dilemmas. NewsGuard frowned upon the Times widespread coverage of Trump by political writers and critics.
An October 2022 culture issue of the Times Magazine," NewsGuard's report noted, "included an unlabeled article by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Wesley Morris on "American Culture Is Trash Culture – It's not just that trash is what Americans want from movies; it's who we are. So where did it go?" Morris wrote, "The gutter is where our popular culture began, and the gaminess lurking there is our truest guise. … Donald Trump is trash's Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, this life-size, seemingly contained thing that a freak accident of slime and ghosts turns into a menacing 10-story engorgement."
NewsGuard also detailed numerous instances of the Times referring to former President Trump as a "liar." "Use of the word 'lie' inspires arguments on whether it is appropriate," the NewsGuard report said, "given a belief that use of the word presumes knowledge of a speaker's intent.” The NewsGuard report cited numerous instances of reporters and opinion columnists' use of the word lie in copy and headlines. "Indeed, derision of Trump courses through basic news stories," NewsGuard said, adding, "The paper's mixing of news and opinion without signaling it is doing so goes far beyond its Trump coverage," NewsGuard said, citing coverage of issues ranging from Supreme Court Justices to the climate crises and "political memos."
Given the subject, I must label the following paragraph as my opinion: I fear that the NewsGuard report could be applied to many contemporary news organizations that are ditching quality standards to become more competitive. As a craft, the media is drifting towards bottom feeder journalism when competitive instincts merge with the lax standards that characterize online news practices. That an organization such as NewsGuard, built by principled journalists, should call out the Times in such a public way should be a warning to all news professionals that perhaps the media should take a hard look inward as well as outward.
—James O’Shea
James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Five W’s Substack here.