One of journalism’s consistent flaws is ignoring relevant context.
Case in point is this NY Times story about a judge tossing out a new federal regulation limiting extortionate credit card late fees.
Here’s the context the Times didn’t care to include: The financial companies that profit so wildly from these fees went forum shopping, and landed one of their favorite far-right-wing, Trump-appointed judges, who predictably did what they wanted.
Journalistic malpractice, IMO.
If journalists cared about protecting democracy, they would be campaigning — yes, in their news pages — for free and fair elections.
Apparently that’s too “partisan” for people whose fetish for balance has led them to help democracy’s enemies.
So please read and pass around this piece from @marcelias at Democracy Docket. He cares passionately and is doing his best.
If media organizations were trying to discredit themselves, they couldn’t have done better than patronizing a company that fed them “AI”-generated bullshit to put in their publications.
When Joe Kahn succeeded Dean Baquet as the top editor of the New York Times, many of us who’d been critical of the organization’s truly wretched political coverage hoped against hope that Kahn would make vital changes. At the top of my personal list was the desperate need for the Times to recognize, given its vast influence in our culture, that our democracy is in dire jeopardy — and that continuing the Times’ business-as-usual political journalism would play into the hands of those who want dictatorship.
No such luck. As a new interview with Kahn conclusively demonstrates, the Times — still a great news organization in so many other ways — has chosen to stick with political business as usual. For people who care about journalism’s essential role at this pivotal moment in America’s history, this is demoralizing. For America’s democracy, it is a body blow.
Ben Smith at Semafor was the interviewer, and his questions weren’t exactly an example of journalistic hardball. But at least he did ask, directly, whether Kahn believes it’s crucial for a news organization — which depends on democracy’s survival to function — to do what it can to prevent a would-be dictator from taking control.
Not a chance, said Kahn. Here’s an extended quote:
To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda. It is true that Biden’s agenda is more in sync with traditional establishment parties and candidates. And we’re reporting on that and making it very clear.
It’s also true that Trump could win this election in a popular vote. Given that Trump’s not in office, it will probably be fair. And there’s a very good chance, based on our polling and other independent polling, that he will win that election in a popular vote. So there are people out there in the world who may decide, based on their democratic rights, to elect Donald Trump as president. It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It’s the job of Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening.
It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them?
The last part of that is genuinely shocking to me — apart from the implication that polls are decisive in newsroom decision-making.
One of the key reasons democracy is not the top issue in polls is that our news media — starting with the New York Times — have refused to take the threats to democracy seriously. Meanwhile, they’ve done stenography for the Republicans’ apocalyptic framing of immigration and inflation, serious issues indeed and needing serious coverage. Regarding inflation, which has slowed dramatically, there is zero context in most coverage; U.S. inflation is much less severe than in other major economies, but you’ll almost never see that in the Times’ (or any other organizations’) articles on the subject.
Of course the Times (which, to be fair, occasionally does excellent political journalism) should cover the full range of issues. But the prospect of fascism in America dwarfs the others, or should, for any news organization that understands journalism’s most crucial role.
Hell, journalists should see this as a matter of self-preservation if nothing else. End democracy, and you end the system that protects (most of the time) freedom of expression and, by extension, freedom of the press.
So let’s really be “very clear”: Kahn’s ducking of journalistic responsibility boils down to this: News media have no core responsibility to democracy itself, even when one of the two major-party candidates and his cult-like following have said out loud that they support democracy only if it produces the result they want, namely a Donald Trump regime with extreme right-wing policies.
Kahn’s stance — shared, pathetically, by the rest of Big Journalism though rarely so plainly — is journalistic abdication in the face of an emergency. It is shameful.
Given the Times’ recent history, the situation is even worse than that. Even as the Times refuses to take an essential stand in its newsroom, it has persisted (as have basically all major media outlets) in treating Trump and the extreme right that now controls the Republican Party as “one side” of a normal debate.
The Times has consistently and willfully normalized the extremists over the past eight years (and longer). The Times gives endless attention to extremists’ anger, treating even Nazis with the utmost respect on its news pages. The Times, again like other media organizations, has done consistent stenography for blatantly bad-faith right-wing propaganda, letting Trump and his acolytes act almost as an assignment desk. Hey, it’s just another part of being balanced — and the horse race, right?
When Kahn says it’s “not the job” of the news media to help preserve democracy, he is refusing to look even a single day past the fall elections. Whether this is a calculation, or mere cowardice, is irrelevant.
If fascism overtakes America in the next few years, the Times will cover the fascists ever so respectfully. It will be business as usual, until it’s too late.
Time Magazine’s Trump interviews present a dictator-in-waiting. They are important documents for everyone right now.
Read the transcripts. This is as clear a warning as you’ll see of what’s to come.
https://time.com/6972022/donald-trump-transcript-2024-election/
(It’s too bad, however, that the magazine “lightly edited” the transcripts — this means the editors cleaned up his notorious word salad, giving a false impression of sorts.)
Check out this story in the Nevada Current, which comes right out and states the simple reality of the Trump/Republican assault on American democracy. Here’s the lede of the story:
“Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee on Friday announced a “100,000 person strong” program designed to harass election officials and their employees and discredit democracy in Nevada and a dozen other states.”
Some advice for other journalists: Try some unabashed truth-telling of this kind. It’s liberating.
Fortune magazine has this message to readers: You want privacy? Up yours.
Only one choice: Accept.
Well, no, I’ll just keep using an ad/tracker blocker, thanks.
“Explain xkcd is a wiki dedicated to explaining the webcomic xkcd. Go figure.”
The journalistic malpractice shown above is routine for right-wing media, which amplifies tendentious talking points designed to discredit anyone who opposes the Trump cult and its retrograde campaign to take America back decades in social and economic justice.
The malpractice is also routine at the New York Times, at least on its political desk and in stories that are political at their core.
The story I’m pointing to above, about Katherine Maher, NPR’s new CEO (and a friend), is an example of how the Times normalizes extremists’ BS while harshly challenging liberalism. In this case, the news organization eagerly jumped on a what should be a non-controversy because, well, that’s what it does.
The piece mashes together two essentially unrelated things, into a murky mess.
One central element is a rehash of the argument surrounding the anti-NPR screed a now-former employee published on a right-wing newsletter. That piece is full of complaints — and a number of falsehoods — about coverage and events that preceded Maher’s move to NPR.
The other, “new” element, is the “discovery” of Maher’s years-old tweets in which she had the temerity to speak the truth about Trump and his extremist cult. The sub-head shown above, quoting her plain-truth assertion that Trump is a racist, is turned into controversy for what reason, exactly? Trump is a racist, a blatant one. But telling the truth about him is problematic — that is, when right-wing trolls say it is.
Reading (not far) between the lines, it seems that the source of this non-scandal is Christopher Rufo. Relevant section:
Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, called attention to many of Ms. Maher’s posts on X and shared a response from Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, who had responded to one of Ms. Maher’s posts that Mr. Rufo highlighted, saying, “This person is a crazy racist!”
“If NPR wants to truly be National Public Radio, it can’t pander to the furthest-left elements in the United States,” Mr. Rufo said in an interview. “To do so, NPR should part ways with Katherine Maher.”
There is absolutely zero context here. Rufo is an right-wing activist who has turned his bad-faith trolling into a career. At the very least, the Times readers should have been told about this sleazy character’s track record.
There’s more about this article I could pound on, but you get the point. The reporter failed here, but so did his editors.
If this was a rare occurrence in the Times’ coverage of political issues — and the attacks on Maher (actually attacks on NPR) are purely political — I would chalk it up to what happens in a deadline-driven business. But the Times’ political coverage does this kind of thing all the time.
I love the Times for a lot of the other things it does so well; it truly is a great news organization in other ways. But I loathe it for the way it consistently — and, let’s face it, deliberately — helps the people who are trying to wreck our democracy.
In a month from now, I’ll be leaving Arizona State University to embark on a new (for me, anyway) phase of life — first, retirement from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where I’ve been a member of the faculty for the past 16 years; and second, a renewed focus on civic duty.
I’ll still be plenty busy. More on that below, and in upcoming posts.
ASU has been incredibly good to me. The Cronkite School’s founding dean, Chris Callahan, hired me in 2008. He persuaded me that he and ASU’s president, Michael Crow, intended to turn the school into the finest institution of its kind. I believe it did become that. I was fortunate to be there as it happened, and am grateful to have worked with such outstanding people: practitioners, scholars, and staff — and, not least, the inspiring students.
For the past decade or so my Cronkite focus has been on media literacy. In 2017, colleague Eric Newton and I co-founded something called the News Co/Lab. We then had the immense good fortune to put the project in the hands of Kristy Roschke, who has a PhD in media literacy and is one of the most effective people I’ve ever seen in getting stuff done. Kristy spearheaded the creation of bachelors degree in Digital Media Literacy, and her many other contributions to the Cronkite School — and the vital cause of media literacy — are extraordinary.
When Chris Callahan — now the president of the University of the Pacific — first approached me about coming to ASU, I asked some friends who were familiar with higher education what they knew about the place. One of them said that the university had a president whose goal was to blow up higher education and remake it for the 21st Century. That sounded useful!
ASU used to be considered a “party school” — but today it’s a powerhouse. Crow and his colleagues deserve enormous credit for fostering that emergence. But I think their greatest achievement lives in the way they defined university’s core principles. Here’s ASU’s mission statement:
ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves.
Please read that carefully, if you haven’t seen it before. I believe the words “…not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes…” go to the heart of what state universities, in particular, should be but far too often are not. ASU walks the talk, and the state of Arizona will be far, far better for it as time goes on — if state and national politics permit.
There’s a very real possibility that right-wing extremists and grifters will be in charge of the federal government after this year’s elections. One of their goals is to destroy public education as we know it. Trump and his acolytes — now in control of one of America’s two major political parties and many state governments — threaten far more than public education, of course. They’re aiming to bring down democracy itself.
Which brings me to what’s next on my personal agenda. Here’s my new mission statement, if you will:
I want to help people who are working to save democracy, and by extension freedom of expression, in part by helping journalism perform its most essential role.
I am absolutely convinced that journalism’s most essential role at this critical moment goes far, far beyond what it’s doing. The status quo in political (and related) coverage consists of sporadically noting that gosh-maybe-there’s-a-problem, while sticking mostly to journalistic business as usual. The status quo is journalistic malpractice.
It would be unfair not to note that at least a few journalists are meeting the challenge (and I highlight them whenever possible). But we have to see things clearly: Most media outlets are not coming close.
And even the best work, with exceedingly few exceptions, mostly falls short of a journalistic role — albeit a discomfiting one — that feels increasingly necessary: as outright activists in defense of democracy. (I believe journalism schools should also adopt this role as part of their own missions.)
Democracy needs more than journalists to survive, and it might fall even if they do become activists in its defense. But they should understand what their role will be if it does fall: They’ll either be collaborators with dictators, or members of the resistance.
What does my new mission statement mean in practice? I have a lot of ideas, and several specific plans. I’ll be describing them in more detail in upcoming posts here and elsewhere. Meanwhile, I’m having lots of conversations with people who understand the dangerous situation we face.
I never envisioned my “retirement” going this way. Nor, however, did I imagine that I would stop working at things I care about; binge-watching and binge-reading in a recliner was never the plan, either. In the end, we do what we can, when we must, and hope it makes a difference.
