A lot of tech coverage is just fawning hagiography rather than societally useful critical journalism, and a lot of people involved in tech seem to prefer it that way judging by their public words and actions - "don't question me - I'm changing the world!" The decline in ad revenues for papers and lack of employment opportunities for serious journalists doesn't help.
There was a headline that made it to the top of HN just last week criticizing the fact that the NYT takes an overly critical viewpoint on tech. Most commenters seemed to agree. I’m not overly surprised, your take is the correct one: “how could you be critical, I’m providing so much value!”
The allegations against NYT are quite a bit worse than you're making them sound. Here are the original allegations:
> a few years ago the New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage. Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. Almost never curious about technology or in awe of progress and potential. This was a very deliberate top-down decision. They decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry.
> People might think Matt is overstating this but I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it.
Fawning hagiographies are one extreme of a spectrum. A top-down decision banning _any_ positive coverage is the opposite extreme. What journalists should do is look at the facts and then decide the tone of coverage, which will result in a mix of positive and negative coverage.
> There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it.
Business shouldn't be about stories, it should be about products and services.
Journalists and editorial teams are skeptics by nature, of course they will be suspicious when they see people from SV run their mouth about politics and becoming "thought leaders".
Where are the supposedly negative pieces on Microsoft, Intel, nVidia or IBM? Nowhere to be seen because these companies and those who lead them have perfected the art of not talking about politics or any politics related matter.
