Important. The NYT letting a partisan writer publish this partisan, anti-democracy column—w/out disclosing his background!—is a travesty.
The MAGA Republican Party wishes to reduce turnout in Nov.
Walther previously said the Trump impeachment was a bad idea and “no one cares about COVID.” 1/2
Times Opinion would argue different viewpoints should be represented. I’m fine with that (though the choice of opinions to publish defines what the paper is.)
But NYT *MUST* disclose agenda and context if it wants its readers to fully evaluate a writer’s points. 2/3
bsky.app/profile/greg...
The NYT also allowed him to exclude his partisan inclinations. From the 2018 piece: "In a bland way I hope to see Republicans control various state and national offices. This arises from a single issue: the legality of abortion."
@gregpak.bsky.social and myself looked at Walther’s history — me looking in the Atlantic and the Week, read his past pieces, and that shapes the way we interpret what Walther writes.
Most readers don’t have the time for that.
How humans absorb information is influenced by reputation and agenda.
We have evolved to do this. We put new information in context based on where it is coming from.
Most readers will not know who Walther is, or his history — vital info to evaluating his claims. In fact, the majority of NYT readers will read just the headline.
Humans do not use info without context. NYT does a disservice to its readers when it publishes highly partisan columns w/out context.
One aspect of fixing this is pushing the NYT to do better, to describe the history and background of each columnist, especially for these infrequent contributors.
The other piece is that all of should speak about the reputation of the NYT itself. A paper doing this isn’t a liberal paper.
I’d say they’re small-c conservative, or conservative in the Buckley “standing athwart history yelling stop” sense.
Both NYT and university leadership fundamentally don’t want things to change. They’re the Buckley conservatives in an era where the right has become quite activist.
