“Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The New York Times used to be my favorite source to get reliable local, national and world news. That changed a few days ago after I finished reading an article about one of the two men running for president.
The article started out okay, but as I reached the mid section, I began questioning the accuracy of the information, as some of it was the opposite of what I had always heard and believed through personal experience. I began to question what I had always thought, maybe I was wrong all along. That’s how much faith I had put into the NY Times. That’s how much integrity I put into their reporting, feeling that this was one news organization that wouldn’t try to deceive the public.
Upon finishing the article, I had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right with the article. This particular article had comments, something very rare for the NY Times. I began reading the comments, and found that almost everyone commenting had the same message: the article was completely inaccurate.
This wasn’t just a minor mistake here and there. The entire article, from the title itself to the information cited, were all false and misleading.
Looking to add my two cents, I found the editors had very quickly stopped accepting any more comments.
There is nothing wrong with supporting one candidate over the other, even for a news organization. There is enough material from both sides to present a good argument for your choice. Twisting the truth doesn’t just affect the author of the article, but affects the integrity of the entire news paper.
Now I understand why the NY Times doesn’t accept comments on many of their articles: the truth begins to come out.
It’s unfortunate because now, I have nowhere else to go to get unbiased, accurate news reporting. The news on television lost its integrity a long time ago. Some print and television outlets never had any to begin with.
Are we now forced to get impartial news from the social media, from places like twitter, where it’s reported realtime, as it happens, by people seeing it unfold? Are we reduced to watching a video of the event on Youtube, that is until one of the media outlets gets it removed?
The problem with losing your integrity is that it is very difficult to get it back. For the NY Times, they lost more than one long time reader. They’ve lost their reputation.
For those of you interested, here’s the article:
Omar M. Kiam 