Project Veritas

American Pravda, NYT Part II: Exploiting Social Media and Manipulating the News

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Video Thumbnail Loop
  • Nick Dudich, Audience Strategy Editor for NYT Video, Admits to Manipulating Social Media to Make Editorial Decisions

  • Uses his Power as a Gatekeeper to Influence the News, “I can choose what goes out and what doesn’t go out.”

  • Dudich Uses his Editorial Power to Protect his Friends in Silicon Valley

  • Dudich Doesn’t Tell NYT About his Connections to Impress his Coworkers, “they don’t know it’s just because my friends curate the front page.”

  • Earnest Pettie of YouTube Helps Make Dudich’s Videos Trend, “algorithms do control everything but sometimes you need humans to provide a check.”

  • Pettie Describes how YouTube can Push “Legitimate News” to the Top

  • Contradicts YouTube’s Mission Statement, “people – not gatekeepers – decide what’s popular.”

  • Continuation of American Pravda New York Times Series

VIEW FIRST AMERICAN PRAVDA NEW YORK TIMES VIDEO HERE

(NEW YORK) – Project Veritas has released its second New York Times video, again featuring Audience Strategy Editor Nicholas Dudich. This time, the video gatekeeper describes how he can influence the news by manipulating social media and employing the help of his friends in Silicon Valley.

“As an editor, I’m a gatekeeper so I can choose what goes out and what doesn’t go out. And let’s say we wrote something about Facebook negatively… We actually just did a video about Facebook negatively, and I chose to put it in a spot that I knew wouldn’t do well.”

Dudich admits he has friends in Silicon Valley who help his videos trend. He buried the Facebook story because of his personal biases, and to protect his friends in Silicon Valley, which is in conflict with the New York Times mission.

When asked if it’s good for business to have Silicon Valley connections, Dudich replied, “Yeah. Very good. Very, very good.”

Dudich goes on to explain why he doesn’t want anyone at The Times to know about his connections:

“Let’s say something ends up on the YouTube front page, New York Times freaks out about it, but they don’t know it’s just because my friends curate the front page. So, it’s like, a little bit of mystery you need in any type of job to make it look like what you do is harder than what it is.”

Earnest Pettie, the Brand and Diversity Curation Lead at YouTube – also Dudich’s friend and former coworker at Fusion ABC – helps push Dudich’s videos to the top.

In a meeting with Pettie, he describes Dudich as “one of the people I think who has more knowledge about YouTube as a platform than probably anyone else that I know.”

Pettie also goes on to explain how a relationship with YouTube benefits the New York Times:

“There are things that exist in the product that, like, are definitely optimized for news.

“Now, like last night if you searched for Hugh Hefner, there’s the search results but then there’s also… A carousel comes up with a page that’s just news videos.

“There’s this need, people are searching for a topic that is, that our systems know is a ‘newsy’ topic, so let’s give them videos that we know to be newsy because we know we have these news partnerships.”

When asked about using algorithms to hide content, Pettie explained how YouTube is able to push what he calls “legitimate news” to the top:

“Realistically, that’s what the… that’s what the news carousel kind of does. So like, it’s above the search results so, at the very least, we can say this shelf of videos from news partners is legitimate news because we know that these are legitimate news organizations. And if at that point, somebody decides they’re going to scroll past that and go find Alex Jones, well, they were looking for him to begin with anyway.”

“Which organizations have YouTube bestowed with the title of ‘legitimate?'” asked James O’Keefe of Project Veritas. “If YouTube is going to get in the news business, they’re going to have to answer for the sins of their news partners.”

This video comes in the heels of American Pravda NYT Part I, which caused a media uproar against The Times, and forced a response from some of their highest-level staffers:

“Based on what we’ve seen in the Project Veritas video, it appears that a recent hire in a junior position violated our ethical standards and misrepresented his role. In his role at The Times, he was responsible for posting already published video on other platforms and was never involved in the creation or editing of Times videos. We are reviewing the situation now.”

James O’Keefe released a statement regarding The Times’ response, saying “We are pleased the New York Times is taking our investigation seriously. We look forward to the public release of their internal review.”

About Project Veritas

Project Veritas is a non-profit investigative news organization conducting undercover reporting. Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society. Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)(3) organization.