The New York Times is considered one of the most prestigious news organizations and reputable sources for journalism. It’s arguable that The New York Times is matched only by The Wall Street Journal when considering the most prestigious newsrooms in America - although each has their own bias - The NYT leaning left, The WSJ leaning right.
The New York Times publishes a free daily newsletter every morning that gives a short brief on daily news and world events. The Wall Street Journal does not. The problem is that this free NYT newsletter is ridden with bias. WSJ newsletters are behind an expensive paywall that only certain economic demographics can afford. This leaves the only option for reputable news for those of lower economic background to be the NYT free newsletter.
All media contains some bias.
However the media and newsrooms, especially the NYT, have become more sophisticated in using language to hide bias and write in a way where the reader does not need to think about what they read and draw their own conclusions about what it means. The NYT inserts their bias and uses language to come to a predetermined ‘answer’ for how readers should think and feel about a particular piece of news.
The goal of this project is to provide context and point out biases that exist in NYT newsletter reporting.
We are not disputing facts or veracity of claims.
We are not calling anything fake news.
We are not calling anything misinformation.
We simply aim to call out and highlight hidden bias in the language and phrasing that the NYT newsletter uses, so that readers can be informed, digest facts, and come to their own conclusions, instead of just accepting the biased pre-written conclusions the NYT provides in their reporting.
The goal of this project does not have political intentions.
The goal of this project is media literacy.
To help people recognize, and hopefully learn how to recognize for themselves, how the media uses language and selective reporting to manipulate our emotions and reduce our ability to think critically and draw our own conclusions.
