The New York Times faces new controversy over its influential best-selling books list after Elon Musk posts on X about a years-old lawsuit accusing the paper of adjusting rankings according to subjective criteria are doing.
“The New York Times is pure propaganda,” said Musk, the CEO of Company X. I have written It responded Sunday to a post saying the list was “editorial” and not based on sales.
“Like other articles in Mr. Sulzberger’s paper, the NYT bestseller list is fake,” wrote Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer at Coinbase and former general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Srinivasan, who is also the author of The Network State, continued: “They had to admit in court that it’s not a ranked list. It’s actually ‘editorial content’ and they can filter out books they don’t like.” ”
In his post, Srinivasan said: Blog “Killzone” Dedicated to top thriller and mystery writers, it told the story of William Peter Blatty, who wrote “The Exorcist” and its sequel “Legion.”
In 1983, Blatty sued the Times for $6 million In Los Angeles Superior Court, the Gray Lady claimed that Legion’s publisher “ignored actual sales figures” and that the book was delisted due to “negligent or intentional misrepresentation.”
According to the blog, the Times, which claimed the list was derived from sales, argued in court that the list was “not mathematically objective, is editorial content, and is therefore protected as free speech under the Constitution.” “It has been done,” he argued.
A Times representative declined to comment Tuesday, but said: same link The company shared its methodology with Esquire, saying the weekly list is “driven by sales numbers” from various sellers across the country. It does not specify how the Times uses that information to determine where a book should appear on the list.
A California state court rejected Blatty’s case, but the Los Angeles Court of Appeals ruled that the author had a right to go to trial to prove that the paper misrepresented itself as an accurate and unbiased list. The lawsuit was reinstated.
The Times took its case to the state Supreme Court, and the appellate decision puts Pandora over a wide range of legal claims by other authors that they lost any “future benefits” by being delisted. said that the box could be opened.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling that the Times’ bestseller list was “editorial content, not objective factual content,” and allowing the paper to publish as many books as it deemed appropriate. granted a license to exclude.
The ruling still surprises critics who thought the list was a direct reflection of the best-selling books.
content strategist Jason Levine, author of “Meme Make Millions” Reply to Musk’s post: “NYT’s bestseller list = our favorites, because we’re smarter than the average American. Forbes’ 30 Under 30 = Forbes’ 30 Idiots , the time we were scammed out of our money Person of the Year = Hahaha, remember when we had Hitler? Person of the Year, yes me too.”
Free Press Founder and Editor Bari Weiss Added: “@AbigailShrier’s BAD THERAPY is the #1 book on Amazon overall. But it didn’t make the @nytimes bestseller list.”
The bestseller list debuted in October 1931, but confusion about its methodology continues today.
The murky path to making the Times bestseller list has been written extensively over the years, including several lists covering paperbacks, audiobooks, e-books, children’s books, business titles, and more. , including a full-fledged marketing and PR campaign from the book. the publisher.
In Equire’s 2022 piece. “The Ambiguous Path to Becoming a New York Times Bestseller”” scribe Sophie Vershbou recorded this confusing methodology.
“No one outside the New York Times knows exactly how bestsellers are calculated, and the list of theories is longer than the actual list of bestsellers,” Vershbow wrote.
