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NY Times CEO Advises How to Avoid ‘Fake News:’ Subscribe to Our Paper, Truth Revolt, Trey Sanchez, December 16, 2016

The New York Times Company president and CEO of one of the leading purveyors of leftwing-biased news has some peculiar advice on how to avoid “fake news:” “Subscribe to The New York Times.”

That’s what Mark Thompson told the Detroit Economic Club in his recent speech about getting consumers back to “real journalism.”

“If you want real journalism, you as a consumer will have to pay for it,” Thompson said. “So subscribe. Subscribe to your local paper, or The New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or The Washington Post, or, if you’re feeling particularly flush, to all of the above.”

“At The Times,” he added, “we’re making real progress, with audiences and subscriber numbers larger than at any time in our history, as well as big gains year over year in digital revenue. We still post healthy profits.”

That’s an interesting take seeing how readership is lower than ever with a reported $14 million net loss for the first quarter of 2016. Not to mention the paper getting “five times the normal level” of complaints of bias; a bias the NYT has apologized for with promises to act like journalists from now on.

In his speech, Thompson meandered through several fixes to “fake news” such as through “human or algorithmic means,” especially on social media platforms. But even with “a mighty algorithm” or “legions of human scrutineers” it would raise suspicions of “repressive regimes” and would be too “worrisome… in our free societies.” He cites the protections of the First Amendment:

“And who said that the public should only be allowed to read the facts anyway? The First Amendment essentially says they should be allowed to write, distribute and read anything they damn well please. If some of them turn out to prefer churning out and eagerly consuming lies and fantasies, so be it.”

But Thompson’s eagerness to fix the news is hindering his ability to see he is leading the charge in distributing highly partisan content. The NYT just hired on Glenn Thrush. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, his actions sure will. Thrush is the Politico writer exposed by WikiLeaks for sending his articles to Hillary Clinton’s camp for preapproval before publishing. Thrush is also a self-proclaimed “hack.”

Yet, Thompson remains confident that his paper is the portal to truth:

“Real journalism is vital to our democracy, and it has to be paid for. If not, it will largely disappear … If you as a citizen are worried about fake news, put your money where your mouth is and pay for the real thing.”

What Adam Carolla said about the NYT bears repeating here: “New York Times, you don’t get to dictate outcomes… We got the Internet. New York Times, no one gives a sh*t about you. You ain’t Hearst, William Randolph Hearst. You can’t affect things anymore.”

This entry was posted on December 17, 2016 at 8:15 PM and is filed under "Fake news", New York Times. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: New York Times