The New York Times and Slate Star Codex: A Case Study in Journalistic Ethics

By: Joe from The Gaslight Hour

On June 22nd, 2020, pseudonymous author Scott Alexander posted that he would be taking down his semi-popular blog Slate Star Codex. He did this because a New York Times reporter stated that he would be publishing an article about Slate Star Codex and that the article would include Mr. Alexander’s full real name. The New York Times published the article(archive) 9 months later on Feb. 13, 2021, and faced a torrent of criticism. I hope here to provide a more systematic examination of the ethical lapses made by the New York Times. The main 3 lapses I will focus on are:

1. The author of the piece, Cade Metz, failing to make a compelling argument that his article is in the public interest.
2. The outing of Mr. Alexander’s real name with little public interest justification and with a significant chance of causing harm.
3. The shoddy sourcing of the article relying on out-of-context quotes and innuendos.

My Relationship to Scott Alexander

(This section was written in the interest of full disclosure, you can skip it if you wish and lose little.)
I have admired some of Scott Alexander’s work. An article of his I found especially compelling was I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup(archive); the article provides an effective framework for thinking about tribalism, both in general and in the American context. I believe it is one of the best essays of the blog era. That said, I am not now nor have I ever been a Rationalist, and Alexander has never been a hero figure to me. By the time I discovered his work, my ideas were mostly firmly entrenched, and I had encountered most of his best ideas in other places. I also would not trade my life for his for a second, even if he’s arguably more successful than me. Despite running some similar circles, as far as I know, I have never spoken to him online or offline.

Was the New York Times Article in the Public Interest?

The New York Times is a powerful institution. It has existed since 1851, has a circulation of about 5 and a half million¹, and it is often referred to as the “paper of record.” Just about any institution will accept a citation to the New York Times. Given these facts, I think it’s fair to apply a high level of scrutiny to what the Times chooses to publish and why it chooses to publish it.

The main argument made by Metz for the significance of the subject matter seems to be that Slate Star Codex is “a window into the Silicon Valley psyche.” The basis for this argument is a quote from an interview with Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI. Altman stated that Slate Star Codex was essential reading among “the people inventing the future” in the tech industry. He also managed to find evidence that Paul Graham has said nice things about the blog, Patrick Collison has read it, and that Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz follow Scott Alexander’s account on Twitter. It is worth noting that Marc Andreesen follows over 20,000 people on Twitter including me.

Metz proceeds to attempt to connect Scott Alexander to controversial Neoreactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin. Through this paper-thin connection, he proceeds (unconvincingly) to connect Alexander to Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan. Metz also insinuates with little evidence that the laissez-faire (in his view) moderation policies of Twitter and Facebook were influenced by Scott and the rationalists, along with the irresponsible release of facial recognition systems, digital assistants, and chatbots that have the potential to harm minority groups. Metz fails to provide convincing evidence that the writing of the rationalists, and Scott Alexander in particular, are responsible for the above-mentioned indiscretions, or that Scott’s writing is even all that influential in Silicon Valley. It seems likely that a lot more tech executives read the New York Times than read Slate Star Codex unless overwhelming evidence is provided otherwise.

If Metz was attempting to argue that Slate Star Codex is widely influential in Silicon Valley, he failed miserably. The main purpose of the article, to an outsider, appears to be to smear Mr. Alexander and the previously mentioned Silicon Valley luminaries by association. It is a hit piece. It is fine to write critical articles on powerful figures, but Scott Alexander is a private citizen who does not seem to hold much power. I see no reason to think the information about him in this article rises to the level of public interest worthy of being printed in the Times. This type of shoddy reporting would perhaps be acceptable in a low-level blog but should be beneath the standards of a powerful institution like the New York Times.

Was Publishing Scott’s Real Name Justified?

I believe that one can make a compelling public interest argument to out someone who is using a pseudonym. For example, if they are being deceptive about their identity to take advantage of others, if they are trying to hide previous extremely immoral and/or indecent actions, or if knowledge of the real identity of the figure is essential to the story.

As an example of a situation where publishing a pseudonymous author’s real name could be justified, I will tell a story based on personal experience. A pseudonymous author on Twitter accuses multiple antiwar activists of sexual indiscretions with no evidence. Someone discovers that the author is actually a high-level Pentagon official. Outing him is warranted because the fact that he is a Pentagon official engaging in such actions is much more interesting than if he was some random crank.

The Scott Alexander situation is nothing like this. There is no evidence that he was using his pseudonym to take advantage of others, or that his private life is interesting, or that his real name was important to the article. If Metz chose not to include Mr. Alexander’s real name in the article, he would have had to make no major changes. The decision to include Mr. Alexander’s real name appears to be pure spite.

Alexander said that a New York Times reporter told him that it was New York Times policy to include real names². This is horseshit. New Yorker writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus found instances where the New York Times allowed Chapo Trap House co-host Virgil Texas, Banksy, and a member of ISIS to use pseudonyms³.

The use of Mr. Alexander’s real name appears to have been purely malicious. Being an active psychiatrist, he had a compelling reason to not want his real name associated with his writing, and Metz failed to provide a compelling reason to out him.

Should The New York Times rely on out-of-context quotes and innuendos?

The article uses out of context quotes to portray the left-of-center Scott Alexander as more sympathetic to controversial right-wing beliefs than he lets on. In the article, Metz says that Mr. Alexander aligned himself with Charles Murray, controversial writer of The Bell Curve. This is true in the sense that Mr. Alexander agreed with Charles Murray that telling 55-year-old laid-off truckers to “learn to code” is unrealistic and insensitive, and that they both support a basic income. However, Metz implies they agree on more, including Murray’s controversial racial views.

At another point in the article, Metz reported that Mr. Alexander called some feminists akin to Voldemort. This is true, but Mr. Alexander was referring to a very specific subculture of feminists on the social media website Tumblr that he believed were actively attempting to drive their targets to suicide⁴.

The article also makes much effort to connect Mr. Alexander to Curtis Yarvin. There’s indeed a connection between them, but it’s that they’re long-term rivals. Scott Alexander wrote a many thousand word essay(archive) mostly in opposition to Yarvin’s writing, and Yarvin took shots back(archive). They’re connected in the same sense Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were connected. The only evidence that Metz provides for a closer connection between the two is that Scott Alexander did not censor all Neoreactionaries from his comment section and that Scott Alexander put Nick Land in his Blog Roll. This claimed connection between the two is the source of the majority of the New York Times’ article’s more spicy claims, and it’s laughable.

Conclusion

As an institution that holds a large amount of power, the New York Times should be held to a very high standard. When the New York Times publishes something, a lot of people believe it, including people in positions of power. That makes the ethical lapses in this article all the more egregious. The article reads like a warning to heterodox thinkers to stay in their place, and not even engage with dissident voices, or they’ll have a hit piece written about them in the New York Times. It’s the powerful punching down, and it’s disgusting.

Plugs

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Citations:

1. The New York Times Company Reports 2020 Third-Quarter Results. (2020, September 27). https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2020/11/Press-Release-9.27.2020-Final-for-posting.pdf

2. Alexander, S., & er. (2020, June 23). NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog. Slate Star Codex. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/ archive

3.Lewis-Kraus, G. (n.d.). Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media. The New Yorker. Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-vallelargeys-war-against-the-media archive

4. Alexander, S. (2021, February 13). Statement on New York Times Article — [Substack]. Astral Codex Ten. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-times-article archive