This seems to be contradictory. It's ok to be politically biased, but still factually accurate for things that fit their political bias? The NYT and others like it go out of their way to pretend they have no political bias, using the passive voice to give authority to slanted reporting which favours one "team" over another.
Being a partisan mouthpiece isn't itself a problem, the issue is when it pretends (and many of its supporters repeatedly and falsely claim) that items described in the paper are more objective and carries greater weight than those in your average political party's weekly newsletter.
> It's ok to be politically biased, but still factually accurate for things that fit their political bias?
Everybody is biased. You, me, and every journalist on earth. Of course, that's okay. The NYT also does not go out of their way to "...pretend they have no political bias."
What is important is to be able to understand the difference between news and editorials (including editorial decisions), but sadly more and more people seem to lose grasp of this basic distinction. This may be a sign of the negative consequences of the politization of many points.
Not all partisan mouthpieces are equivalent. You can be factually accurate while leading people to the wrong conclusion. However, it’s much less work to find someone willing to lie, and much harder to detect lies than misleading statements.
Journalistic integrity is therefore critical when selecting which biased sources to pay attention to.
Leading people to believe things that are wildly untrue using statements that are technically not lies does as much damage to society as doing it any other way, in my opinion. Sure, in theory smart people might be able to spot that what the article is trying to convince them of isn't backed up by the facts it uses - but in practice they almost never seem to, not even other journalists. (Here in the UK, the BBC seems to be a bit of a repeat offender - some other partisan rag publishes something designed to lead people to an untrue conclusion without technically lying, and then the BBC just outright repeats the untrue claim.)
I've noticed this thought pattern with many people who argue against freedom of speech and for tighter control of media or "canceling" them recently:
1. The arguer claims that negative consequences follow from the exercising of free speech, in this case NYT right to freely chose the topics they write about.
2. The alleged consequence is that people are made to believe wrong or false things (where "wrong" and "false" are defined by the arguer).
3. The arguer portrays himself at the same the victim of those media and the person who knows better than those media and therefore can decide between wrong and right, true and false better than the accused media.
4. The arguer presents no evidence of knowing better and when you ask them about their sources, they tend to be highly problematic, based on blogging and websites who often do not even employ journalists.
Paraphrase: "I know better than large group of people X but everybody else is mislead by X" - I don't think so.
Here's an alternative form of the "NYT/CNN should be canceled" argument: they should be held to the same standard as a private citizen when they behave poorly.
If you write a blog post that doxxes a prominent figure and link to it from Facebook and Twitter, you are going to get banned from those platforms. The NYT can apparently do this with impunity, and calls for canceling other people and organizations who do this.
In US law, there is a different standard for libel against "public figures" than against other people. The NYT gets to take advantage of this much looser libel law whenever they write a hit piece because they can argue that anyone who does something "newsworthy" is de-facto a public figure.
As far as I have seen, the "cancel NYT" crowd is arguing that the NYT should be held to the standards that it pushes into others and obviously doesn't follow.
In almost all cases I can think of I'm also against canceling individuals, so I agree with you. If NYT openly spread hate speech or called for murder and violence, then they should be "canceled" (boycotted).
You used the term "biased," not them -- just to be clear. Which way a publication leans can be determined by things that have nothing directly to do with integrity or truth telling -- which stories they cover, for instance. In practice, lean often comes along with audience. Like any publication, news outlets have audiences, and the interests of that audience group will determine what stories it covers and how it covers them. This can be done with full journalistic integrity; in fact, it's harder (and perhaps impossible) for a publication to have zero political lean.
Political lean != acting as a mouthpiece.
Do also please note that your personal political leanings will determine whether you view the reporting of any publication as unethically biased or not. No matter which sides we're talking about, what one party reports as truth, another will hear as politically motivated.
Being a partisan mouthpiece isn't itself a problem, the issue is when it pretends (and many of its supporters repeatedly and falsely claim) that items described in the paper are more objective and carries greater weight than those in your average political party's weekly newsletter.