ClaimsNate Silver

“The NYT has a pretty striking negativity bias in its COVID coverage, even relative to other outlets.”

Nate Silver, writing on X 10 June 2021 Post by @NateSilver538 on X, 2021-06-10 (X)

Factual Philosophy, ethics and society

The New York Times has a pretty striking negativity bias in its COVID coverage, even relative to other outlets.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

The second judge said mostly false; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

Judged as of 2021-06-10 against systematic content or sentiment analyses of COVID-19 coverage that include the New York Times and other outlets. True: such analyses show NYT COVID coverage was markedly more negative in tone than most comparable outlets (US and/or international), not just negative in absolute terms. Mostly true: the NYT is clearly among the most negative outlets but roughly level with some peers, or the evidence covers a narrower period or outlet set than the claim implies. Mixed: studies disagree, or the NYT is more negative than some comparison groups (e.g. international or scientific outlets) but not others (e.g. other major US outlets). Mostly false: the evidence shows US media broadly were strongly negative but does not single out the NYT as more negative than other outlets, so the claim takes a general finding and pins it on the NYT. False: comparative analyses show NYT COVID coverage was no more negative than, or less negative than, comparable outlets.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (4)

  1. E1 Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News? National Bureau of Economic Research (working paper 28110, authors Bruce Sacerdote, Ranjan Sehgal, Molly Cook) · 23 November 2020

    “Ninety one percent of stories by U.S. major media outlets are negative in tone versus fifty four percent for non-U.S. major sources and sixty five percent for scientific journals.”

  2. E2 Why Is U.S. Media So Negative? - Freakonomics Freakonomics (Freakonomics Radio podcast, transcript) · 26 November 2024

    “The data suggests that The New York Times is more negative than the average regional or local paper or TV.”

  3. E3 Bad news bias: The U.S. media offers a more negative picture of Covid-19 than science journals or international media, study finds Nieman Lab (Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard) · 24 March 2021

    “Notably, the coverage was negative in both U.S. media outlets with liberal audiences (like MSNBC) and those with conservative audiences (like Fox News).”

  4. E4 Why Is U.S. Media So Negative? - Freakonomics Freakonomics (Freakonomics Radio podcast, transcript) · 26 November 2024

    “But the Times was just one of the 14 major U.S. media outlets in this analysis.”

Reasoning

The evidence shows U.S. major media as a group were more negative than international and scientific sources [E1], and that the NYT was more negative than the average local or regional outlet [E2]. No item compares the NYT's COVID coverage with other major national outlets [E4], so the evidence does not settle whether it stood out against its peers.

Cite this claim

Nate Silver, “The New York Times has a pretty striking negativity bias in its COVID coverage, even relative to other outlets.” (said 10 June 2021). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_00585af00994, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_00585af00994

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Nate Silver, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More factual claims by Nate Silver

  1. Mostly true Factual 9 October 2024
    “If anything, there was too little panic from Team Blue about 2016, which was dismissive of polls showing a tightening race down the stretch run and a tenuous Hillary Clinton lead in the Electoral…”

    Silver said that, if anything, there was too little panic among Democrats about 2016, and that they were dismissive of polls showing a tightening race late in the campaign and a tenuous Hillary Clinton lead in the Electoral College.

  2. Mostly true Factual 9 October 2024
    “Ever since I’ve been covering elections in 2008, Democrats have been prone to bouts of panic about the state of the horse race.”

    Since Nate Silver began covering elections in 2008, Democrats have been prone to bouts of panic about the state of the horse race.

  3. Mostly true Factual 13 August 2024
    “People have been trained for thousands of years, more than thousands—hundreds of thousands of years—in an environment where there was no abundance.”

    Humans evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment without abundance.

  4. Mostly true Factual 28 October 2026
    “He's actually not a DSA guy, but sort of a more left populist.”

    Abdul El-Sayed is not a DSA guy but is sort of a more left populist.

  5. Mostly true Factual 23 October 2026
    “Jocelyn Benson’s lead in the Michigan gubernatorial polls is about 4.2 points larger than Abdul El-Sayed’s in the state’s Senate contest”

    Jocelyn Benson's lead in Michigan gubernatorial polls is about 4.2 points larger than Abdul El-Sayed's lead in the Michigan Senate polls.

All of them

Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.