It doesn’t necessarily follow. Just because Republicans and what pass for conservatives today are determined to learn nothing from the Trump era that the rest have to blunder on without changing the way we go about our business. And be “we” I’m referring to anyone who is now, has been or in any way engages in some form of journalism.
But mostly I’m concerned with the traditional, primary sources of news reporting.
Despite admirable-to-superb work from a few national outlets — The Washington Post, The New York Times, ProPublica, The Atlantic, even Vice to some extent — regional and local news organizations, like the Star Tribune here in Minnesota — continue to play the traditional game of “neutrality”, where no act, no behavior is so egregious or outrageous that you ever say so in a “news story.” Instead, as journalism schools have taught since the days of Herbert Hoover, reporters and editors compile facts … and let … you guessed it … the reader decide.
Very few large news organizations employ an ombudsman or a “reader’s editor” any longer, (if they ever did). Someone to answer questions about how and why stories are covered. As the few who have had such jobs now tell, on podcasts and such, it was a perilous undertaking. Not so much for the flack and anger of partisan readers, but for the venom of internal politics, where large egos with serious reputations on the line did not much like someone publishing criticism of their work anywhere, much less the very paper they worked for.
Margaret Sullivan, who was such an editor, at the New York Times and now at The Post, has written about the vital need for journalism to grasp the realities of the 21st century and adapt. She echoes the thinking of the more firebrand NYU professor, Jay Rosen, who long before Trump commandeered a major political party, won election and ran amuck, said that America’s traditional press was incapable of evolution.
Rosen more than Sullivan has no problem describing the mainstream press today as a hidebound creature with a near religious devotion to out-moded conventions. Among those conventions being the deep aversion to betraying any sense of judgment when reporting on political behavior.
Rosen likes the phrase, “the view from nowhere”, to describe the perspective of the typical traditional news story. A story that leaves the impression of a reporter/organization with no stake in the consequences of what they’ve seen and heard. And no larger responsibility to insist on truthfulness as a criteria for publication.
This was the comfortable perspective that continues — after four years of Donald Trump — to struggle with the use of the word “lie.”
Sullivan had a column recently recommending three changes in basic journalistic conventions necessary to keep up with the head-spinning bad faith and shamelessness of Trump and Trump-era Republicans. (Being a traditional animal herself, she of course was careful not to go full-inflammatory and actually call out Republicans by name.)
But she did argue for an evolution in convention to include judgmental-sounding language in garden variety news stories. For example, pointing out — right then and there in the printed story — that what Politician “A” was just quoted saying has been debunked — here and here — and why they’re essentially spouting nonsense. Given that many if not most readers consume The Post (and the Star Tribune) on-line, dead-tree space is not an issue with that sort of evolutionary adjustment.
She wrote this in the context of The Big Lie. Namely that this last election was rigged, and that Joe Biden stole it from Trump. In other sectors of American culture, the response to The Big Lie has been fascinating and encouraging. An impressive number of large corporations are withholding campaign donations to — Republicans — who supported The Big Lie, acknowledging the toxic effect that the lie and whole cavalcade of lies that made Trump possible is, well, bad for business.
I suspect these companies will in short order come creeping back to the influence-buying game. But when they do they should be smart enough to expect some reporter somewhere — perhaps The Post’s David Farenthold — will check their paperwork and tell the world that in the view of AT&T, JPMorgan and Coca-Cola or whoever — the likes of Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz have been punished enough and have learned their lesson.
Rosen and others have also suggested a new acid test for Lie enabling. Any reporter interviewing any politician simply asks, “Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election fair and square?” If the answer is anything other than, “Yes,” the interview is over and said politician gets no space to spew in that reporter’s publication.
The rise of Donald Trump required a lot of ennabling in a lot of ways from a lot of different sources. It wasn’t all talk radio blowhards, FoxNews and foaming mouth bloggers. There was the misguided deference to traditional “neutrality” by papers like the Star Tribune. Large rimary news organizations who were reluctant to regularly, routinely, consistently fact check candidate Trump and Trump-like politicians in real time — then and there in their reported stories. (And I give you the long, conventional, “neutral” free-ride Michelle Bachmann got from Minnesota media as Example #1 of such implicit enabling.) That deference to convention played a significant role in sustaining the unwarranted credibility of preposterous, toxic lie-building.
The phrase I like today is the “Coalition of Reality.” Are you in, or out?
Given what four years of Trump has wrought, given The Big Lie, given January 6, given the five dead, including a cop, and given the astonishing number of Americans who continue to believe the tortured fantasy of election fraud, traditional conventions have to evolve. Allowing anyone with a campaign bus or an election certificate to say whatever they want unchallenged and uncorrected is not fair, “neutral” reporting. As we have seen, it is sustaining a toxic fiction, a poisonous unreality.
I don’t know that I’d really ever want to “get back to the days” of Herbert Hoover or Dwight Eisenhower. But the reality of 2021 is a lot more aggressively shameless than those lost eras.
The boys and girls or professional news reporting are going to have learn a lesson or two from what has and is going down.
Facts not opinions! I can’t tolerate intolerance of others. If your opinion is hurtful toward others, I will not be tolerant!
I hope I was clear. What Margaret Sullivan, Rosen and I am saying is that the evolution must be to what you might call “facts-plus.” In other words accurately reporting what Politician “A’ says … and then … in the same story inserting verified facts. “Reporting” statements that are inaccurate-to-“false”-to-outright-“lies” should not be considered journalism.
“I can’t tolerate intolerance of others. If your opinon is hurtful toward [sic] others, I will not be tolerant!”
I’m not sure whether this comment was intentionally satirical, or just completely beside the point. I am sure that the Star Tribune and other conscientious corporate news sources (press and broadcast) still do not understand the Trump cult’s truly fascistic character, do not recognize the reality of its indisputable control over the party-formerly-known as-Republican, do not realize the clear and present menace our nation faces, namely, the deliberate destruction of our electoral system by the Trumpery party, in order to impose and perpetuate a dictatorial kleptocracy.
“Facts, not opinions!” Precisely. If the news reporters and their editors are to best serve the public, their most important duty is to report facts. It is a FACT that Trump and 95% of the Republican Party have been lying and lying and lying with their untruthful claims about the election.
How does it serve the public for a newspaper to publish without correction or qualification a rumor or a report which is known to be a FALSEHOOD? No school of journalism, no tradition of “objectivity,” would or could approve of that.
Well then, if it’s journalistic malpractice to publish lies of their own, thereby deceiving the public, how is it justifiable for unscrupulous persons whose intent is to exploit the news media for the purpose of amplifying their deliberate falsehoods, to insist the news media must refrain from debunking them? In a word, they demand that the reporters and editors become their active collaborators in deception.
Hitler and Goebbels understood the psychological effect of the Big Lie. They used it successfully, and Trump and his tools and toadies have done exactly the same.
While as a matter of fact, a lie can’t BECOME a truth no matter how often it is uttered—it’s nevertheless possible to get masses of people to BELIEVE a lie by means of belligerent repetition, especially when backed up by the threat of violence.
If a politician or other public figure is not willing, in the sight of God and the presence of a microphone, to affirmatively declare that Trump lost and Biden won a fair and free election, then that person has clearly demonstrated a degree of either foolishness or mendacity sufficient to disqualify himself or herself from fitness for public office or from the privilege of being treated as capable of saying anything credible on any topic of civic importance or public interest.
Let that be the litmus test for disloyal liars.
After the putsch of January 6th, it’s plain as day that America must confront the menace of domestic fascist terrorism, and that one of our nation’s two major political parties, as Paul Krugman writes, “has parted ways with facts, logic, and democracy, and it’s not coming back.”
The Capitol riot was a FACT. Republican congressional refusal to honor the 2020 electoral results is a FACT. Republican rank-and-file delusion that the election was “stolen” is an OPIINION.
A damned “hurtful” opinion, as it turns out, in the most literal sense!
And one which, in my OPINION, no ethical and conscientious professional newspaperson should ever treat as if it were entitled to the courtesy of uncritical, uncontradicted, content-neutral treatment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Wherever the truth is injured, defend it. You are there on that spot, within hearing of that word, within sight of that action, as a Witness, to the end that you should speak for it.”
If we want to defend our democratic republic from its most dangerous and sinister domestic enemies, then each and every clear-minded citizen must become such a fearless witness. If the pen is to prove mightier than the sword, the corporate media must shake off the shackles of its self-imposed soft-peddling approach to the Republican party’s treason, cowardice, and lunacy.
Thank you for that, Oliver.
Excellent piece of commentary.
Thank you. But I’m not anticipating significant evolution from local reporters. The financial blowback for “liberal bias” is much too worrisome.
I’m in. “Coalition of Realty,” and yes, dare I say it, we need a “litmus test” to decide whether someone deserves the right to speak. If you can’t answer “yes” to “Did Joe Biden win the election,” you fail.
NO ONE – NOBODY – used the word “LIE” on TV until K Conway started claiming “Alternative Facts.” That was only 3 years ago.
The demographic most responsible for Trump being elected in first place are the journalists who don’t the difference between objectivity and “letting both sides have their voice.” Journalists have to wake up and stop believing that it’s “neutral” to give extremist liars equal time.
Thanks, Larry. I’ll get you a membership card. One of the wisest things I ever heard — and I can’t remember who said it — was that there’s a rich irony in traditional news outlets embracing “neutrality” in their reporting, as though it is purer than anything else. It’s an editorial standard above political partisanship. The irony being that choosing “neutrality” or “the view fron nowhere” is itself a fundamentally political calculation. It provides you with a position less likely to endure criticism … and keep readers and sell advertising. There’s not a lot of “couurage” to it. Especially when reporters and editors have at their fingertips verified facts clearly contradicting what someone has said. Truth is accessible. Not including truth in basic reporting is malpractice.
I’m in. False equivalency is insidious but not insurmountable.
Agreed. False equivalency is insidious but not insurmountable.
I do not like the term Coalition of Reality at all. A coalition is the last thing we need in national reporting; rather, we need competitive, fact-based reporting. We also cannot find a source that is qualified to fully define reality for a population as diverse as ours. To claim “reality” is to infer that you have full context, and almost no one can, not even the best-staffed newsroom. I want objective, fact-based reporting, not opinion (except in the OpEd section) and not slant. I want thorough reporting, honed with editors that hold the line on what is required before publishing. Yes – Call a conspiracy and a lie what it is, but take the time and the work to back it up with facts and sources.
Brian: all good points that I agree with.
But I am afraid that they are not enough to prevent another Trump. There are all sorts of people who do not want “facts”–they want to be told that what they already believe is true. They are convinced that they know the truth, and they are only interested in being told that they are correct, in hearing explanations of why what they suspect/feel/believe (any manner of wacky ideas) is actually the truth.
Sadly, I don’t think that anything journalism does can solve this.
Sadly, I agree with you. But the 74 million are counter-balanced by the 81 million who are appalled by the rapidity with the way garden variety political spinning has devolved into flagrant, utterly shameless lying. Dissecting old school spin is tricky. He/she could be saying this .. or that. But flagrant lying is easy to strangle in the crib. All you have to do is … print the facts in the next paragraph. The truly Lost Cause MAGA crowd is just that. They’re lost in a morbid, self-pitying fantasy. Professional journalism has no obligation to thin-down and contour its reporting to avoid displeasing them. Much the opposite. BTW. I’m getting very thirsty. Raise your hand when you’ve had your shots and let’s gather.
I agree with the premise that journalists must accurately cover the news. That extends both ways. You can’t complain about the 4 years of Trump without giving credit to those who made him…those same journalists. During the 2016 primaries, they couldn’t stop themselves from covering Trump. By the time the election came around it was too late to turn the 180 and stop him from being elected. They spent the next 4 years trying to make up for that.
The Liberal bias exists, not so much from the coverage of stories they “choose” to cover, but the stories they choose to cover. The old adage of the end justifies the means.
For the average American, the truth lies somewhere in the middle ground. Not red, not blue, but some cross section of the above. Until journalists and editors take that into account, they are going to continue to loose credibility and readers. Take a gander at Tom Hauser over at KSTP. He does a good job looking at both sides and I respect his reporting for it.