[Air-L] Has NYTimes jumped the e-shark

Barry Wellman wellman at chass.utoronto.ca
Fri Dec 16 15:08:10 PST 2011


Monica Murero just pointed out to us the evidence-free NYT article on 
doctors supposedly "distracted" by e-devices.

That's the second evidence free article from the NYT I've seen in 2 days. 
They did a piece on Thursday about people allegedly leaving Facebook. Once 
again, just with a few random anecdotes that were not quite on point.

I'm not talking about spinning evidence, but total lack of. So I wonder if 
the NYT, which for all its faults used to fact check (I remember the Qs 
well when they interviewed me) has gone over to the dark side.

Cdns may be amused/outraged that CTV Toronto news read the Times article 
and only then contacted me about the subject. The reporter was sure it was 
right because her editor (not she) had read it in the NYT.

Is this lack of evidence related to recent editorial changes at the NYT?
  Barry Wellman
  _______________________________________________________________________

   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC               NetLab Director
   Department of Sociology                  725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
   University of Toronto   Toronto Canada M5S 2J4   twitter:barrywellman
   http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman             fax:+1-416-978-3963
   Updating history:      http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
  _______________________________________________________________________




More information about the Air-L mailing list