Are you arguing that the New York Times *intentionally* published the article to help Mamdani? If so, I think that's a little too conspiratorial for me to accept without further evidence.
Also, on Twitter I have indeed seen people earnestly criticize Mamdani for this; although granted, those people were almost certainly already against him in the first place.
- NYT saw an opportunity to hurt a candidate they don't like (others have pointed out that NYT has previous anti Mamdani articles, and they are generally NOT pushing people who are anti-zionist)
- NYT is neutral here and just ran a story that they knew would generate lots of attention, it's good for business. Their audience having a lot of Mamdani supporters meant the article had to go soft on this. The headline being "Mamdani did a bad thing" and the actual body being "actually it's not that bad" makes it kind of perfect for generating discourse, and being able to say "we didn't really say he's bad! we put in all the facts!"
I think the most useful lens to look at this is still the "what does this news story do". It doesn't really matter what NYT intended, or what Crem intended. If you're trying to hurt someone but end up helping him, then you're losing the narrative battle (similar to how NYT kept trying to fight Trump the first time, but he was able to use that attention for his benefit)
I see, so you're arguing for a sort of POSIWID lens. I do think intentions matter more than this phrase implies, but I agree that in cases like e.g. the media feeding Trump attention in 2015, the consequences override the intent in terms of importance.
yes, I think this is how we "short circuit" the narrative warfare. If you accept the possibility that propaganda exists at all (that *some* stories are coordinated to manufacture public opinion) then it casts doubt on *everything* (it becomes a kind of epistemic poisoning of the commons)
Instead of living in a world where you (1) trust all authority or (2) distrust all authority, we adopt the POSIWID lens. If someone claims to be on my side, but keeps "failing" to help me, then I consider them not on my side. Incompetence & malice are treated the same if I can't trust their intention.
If they are truly incompetent, then I'd expect that upon giving them feedback that they will improve.
the other context I wanted to mention here is that the NYT a few months go ran a story where they were explaining how narrative manufacturing works, in hollywood, and they ended it with a suggestive, "if this kind of thing is possible in the entertainment industry, for money, imagine what might be happening in the arena of politics"
yes!! the theory applies to all. Which is good news because it means you can prototype incentive alignment at the small scale, and if it works, you can try scaling it up
Crazy good analysis; I believe this kind of meta-level content HAS to eventually get its hooks into more people once they realize how effective it is.
Are you arguing that the New York Times *intentionally* published the article to help Mamdani? If so, I think that's a little too conspiratorial for me to accept without further evidence.
Also, on Twitter I have indeed seen people earnestly criticize Mamdani for this; although granted, those people were almost certainly already against him in the first place.
other ways of looking at it:
- NYT saw an opportunity to hurt a candidate they don't like (others have pointed out that NYT has previous anti Mamdani articles, and they are generally NOT pushing people who are anti-zionist)
- NYT is neutral here and just ran a story that they knew would generate lots of attention, it's good for business. Their audience having a lot of Mamdani supporters meant the article had to go soft on this. The headline being "Mamdani did a bad thing" and the actual body being "actually it's not that bad" makes it kind of perfect for generating discourse, and being able to say "we didn't really say he's bad! we put in all the facts!"
I think the most useful lens to look at this is still the "what does this news story do". It doesn't really matter what NYT intended, or what Crem intended. If you're trying to hurt someone but end up helping him, then you're losing the narrative battle (similar to how NYT kept trying to fight Trump the first time, but he was able to use that attention for his benefit)
I see, so you're arguing for a sort of POSIWID lens. I do think intentions matter more than this phrase implies, but I agree that in cases like e.g. the media feeding Trump attention in 2015, the consequences override the intent in terms of importance.
yes, I think this is how we "short circuit" the narrative warfare. If you accept the possibility that propaganda exists at all (that *some* stories are coordinated to manufacture public opinion) then it casts doubt on *everything* (it becomes a kind of epistemic poisoning of the commons)
Instead of living in a world where you (1) trust all authority or (2) distrust all authority, we adopt the POSIWID lens. If someone claims to be on my side, but keeps "failing" to help me, then I consider them not on my side. Incompetence & malice are treated the same if I can't trust their intention.
If they are truly incompetent, then I'd expect that upon giving them feedback that they will improve.
the other context I wanted to mention here is that the NYT a few months go ran a story where they were explaining how narrative manufacturing works, in hollywood, and they ended it with a suggestive, "if this kind of thing is possible in the entertainment industry, for money, imagine what might be happening in the arena of politics"
https://defenderofthebasic.substack.com/p/new-york-times-is-trying-to-explain?utm_source=publication-search
Great article! I found footnote 5 particularly ironic - it's not just large media organizations that get trapped by their personal incentives
yes!! the theory applies to all. Which is good news because it means you can prototype incentive alignment at the small scale, and if it works, you can try scaling it up
good analysis. useful. helps see other cases more easily. thanks
thank you!! 🙏