Everybody knows the famous slogan of the New York Times™, here reproduced from a column about it’s 60,000th issue:
And my immediate interpretation is that the paper publishes all the news that is worth knowing. Indeed, the NYT is also known as the American “paper of record,” the paper one reads to see good, solid journalism. It’s still my go-to source though it has its biases.
I hadn’t thought too much about that slogan until I read Michael Shermer’s new book on truth. As I’ve said before, Shermer’s book is well worth reading, though I do disagree with his take on free will (he seems to accept its existence, though I think the discussion is misguided). But there are great discussions of religions, miracle, morality, truth denialism, and especially history and how to interpret it. I do recommend the book.
Last night, as I read his chapter six on history (the last chapter I’ve read, as I skipped around), I saw that Michael quoted the NYT motto, saying that it was shown with “no apparent awareness of self-contradiction”,
But is it self-contradictory? I didn’t see how. It’s not a great motto, though it’s stood the test of time, but I couldn’t find an internal contradiction. Rather, I found a tautology. Here are the problems with the motto.
a.) Does it leave out some of the news that’s fit to print? That doesn’t make sense because the motto asserts that the paper prints all the news that is fit to appear. Thus it’s impossible for the motto to be wrong, for if there’s news that doesn’t appear in the paper, it wasn’t worth putting in the paper.
b.) Does it put in some news that is not fit to print? This is a little trickier, for the motto could be construed as saying, “All the news that’s fit to print as well as some news that’s not fit to print.” That is neither contradictory nor tautological.
c.) But the motto could be considered tautological (see “a”). This rests on the fact that someone has to decide what news is “fit to print“. News does not come with an inherent “print-worthiness”. In that light, you could consider the motto to mean “We print all the news that we decide to print.” And they don’t put into print the news that they decide not to print. That is tautological.
In the end, the motto, which has appeared since 1897 (it was written by owner Adolf S. Ochs as an assertion of the paper’s impartiality), could be better written as “All the news you need to know,” which avoids the “fit to print” confusion. But it still implies some God-like figure that decides what we need to know. (This is why I object to journalism’s recent use of subheadings on news articles saying, “What you need to know about X.” They seem patronizing, as if I couldn’t myself decide what I needed to know.)
Back in the Dark Ages, when I was a student studying Mass Communications, we were taught that the slogan was supposed to be “All the News that Fits, We Print.”
That was used by Mad Magazine
I had forgotten that!
I always thought that ‘fit to print’ meant that politeness, decorum, and prudishness were very important at the NYT. For example, news about the evacuation of a hospital in France a few days ago would not have been ‘fit to print.’
I can imagine them reporting that in discreet terms: “…lodged in a sensitive part of his anatomy….”
I don’t know what the contradiction is. But most of the readership will see the NYT output in the form of pixels on a screen and not on paper.
It’s not on the website, at least not where I can find it. So readers online won’t see it at all. (I may have missed it somewhere.)
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the phrase first appeared in the paper in 1897. Some of the “Gray Lady’s”* credibility seems to have been voided beneath that bridge from time to time as well. I have pondered the phrase a few times myself and have come to regard it as a brand, rather than as a credo. (It’s a registered trademark of the paper.) Treating it as a brand, rather than a statement of principle, spares me the challenge of trying to figure out what it means or whether it’s true. Taking it a statement of principle does raise the problems that you describe so well above.
“All you need to know about xx” is annoying and presumptive. I hope it’s just a passing fad.
*also first used in the late 19th century
‘“All you need to know about xx” is annoying and presumptive. I hope it’s just a passing fad.’
I fear that with the current AI climate, it will get worse, as the AI tools mimic the training data.
No, I don’t think AI is evil, nor do I think it is useless. But I have enough understanding to say that its uses are primarily interpolative at this time. This weeks Science has an article about an AI tool making a “discovery’ in particle physics*. Read the article and find that the AI tool did some math, which was then checked. It did not make a discovery.
*”In a first, ChatGPT helps break new ground in theoretical physics”, reflected in a few general press pieces as ChatGPT made a groundbreaking discovery, and, honestly, in Science kinda reads the same way even though the actual reporting does not.
Surprisingly I find nothing I need to know in most “All you need to know” articles.
Equally annoying is the “secret” whatever that some journalist “discovered”.
Many to most organizational mottos, political slogans, and mission statements should be taken with a massive grain of salt. Most don’t align with reality, and many are PR, advertising, or aspirational.
I thought that the motto was distinguishing the NYT from popular but trashy “scandal sheets” such as The Police Gazette, described by Wikipedia as “a tabloid-like publication, with lurid coverage of murders, Wild West outlaws, and sport. It was well known for its engravings and photographs of scantily clad strippers, burlesque dancers, and prostitutes, often skirting on the edge of what was legally considered obscenity.” Other tabloids such as Town Topics dug up dirt on New York’s upper crust. (What REALLY goes on in those Fifth Avenue mansions? Enquiring minds want to know!)
The NYT fake news headline “Israel bombs hospital killing 500”, accompanied by a fake photo of a bombed-out building that had nothing whatsoever to do with the (intact) hospital in question, was the end of the line for me trusting them ever again. (The rocket in question was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket that hit the hospital parking lot, not the hospital, and killed only a handful of people.)