Six on History: Journalism/Media Literacy
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- Six on History: Journalism/Media Literacy1) Nothing to See Here2) How Chuck Todd and the anti-moral press launder GOP propaganda to create the appearance of conflict - Alternet.org
"It's important to understand that NBC News' Chuck Todd and other members of the Washington press corps1 are not biased in the sense that they prefer one party over the other, one ideology over the other, or one set of interests over another. They are biased, however, in one truly significant way. Reporters prefer covering partisan conflict, especially conflict that has no foreseeable way of being resolved. Conflict begets attention begets profits—or just a feeling of being pivotal to the country's destiny. The press corps will be at the heart of the action even if its members have to invent the action.
For this reason, the Washington press corps tends to behave one way when there's a Democratic administration, another way when there's a Republican one. The press corps' differing behavior is very often mistaken for bias, but that's not what it is. This is important to note, because the solution is not greater neutrality. The real solution is greater morality. Because of the unquestioned value of competition between reporters, however, a moral press is unlikely to happen. Indeed, the press can be anti-moral.Think about it. Liberals, as the current president is, tend to privilege procedure and due process. They tend to see Republicans (or, increasingly these days, Republican voters) as potential bargaining partners. They believe policies should not be enacted for their own sakes but in accordance with higher principles, such as truth and morality. Liberals, moreover, tend to seek compromise if only to dampen passions. They also tend to see partisanship as having boundaries that must be enforced. While the press corps does share some of these values, very little is as important as conflict. The press corps can find itself at odds with liberal officials but not for reasons that are obvious.
The Republicans, meanwhile, are nearly totally fascist. For them, the means are only as important as the ends. While liberals seek bargaining partners, the Republicans "treat liberals as unworthy of recognition." While liberals aim to dampen passions, the Republicans are "bent on inflaming them." While liberals hope to strike fair deals, the Republicans treat anyone who's not a Republican as the enemy. For liberals, politics ends where morality begins. For the Republicans, politics never ends. For liberals, there are rights "that no government can take away." For the Republicans, "in cases of emergency—and they always find cases of emergency—the reach and capacity of the state cannot be challenged."2 The press corps loves conflict. The Republicans love emergency. People don't have to be on the same side to arrive at the same place. ...Which brings me back to Chuck Todd. I don't think the host of "Meet the Press" cares one way or another about what's happening at the southern border. I don't think he cares about a surge in the number of children and adults who are seeking safety and asylum in the United States. What he does care about, however, is covering partisan conflict, especially partisan conflict with no foreseeable way of being resolved. This is why Chuck Todd characterized the surge Sunday as a "political crisis" facing the new president. To be sure, that's propaganda. It's been roiling right-wing media lately. But Todd doesn't have to be biased in favor of the GOP, its interests or ideology to see that laundering their propaganda creates the appearance of conflict. As I said, the press corps will be at the center of the action even if its members have to invent the action."3) Trump’s attacks on the press were bad. What this federal judge did was worse.March 21, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EDTAdd to list"It’s alarming enough when a president calls reporters the “enemy of the people.” It’s even more alarming when words to that effect come from one of the nation’s most prominent federal appeals court judges — and when he goes even further, calling New York Times v. Sullivan, the foundational ruling protecting press freedom, “a threat to American Democracy.”
That happened Friday when federal appeals court judge Laurence H. Silberman dissented in a defamation case decided by the D.C. Circuit. To understand the significance — and danger — of the Silberman dissent requires understanding Silberman’s place near the apex of the conservative legal pantheon.At 85, named to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, he is one of the architects of the conservative legal movement, godfather to many of its current luminaries. So when Silberman speaks, conservative lawyers and judges listen.On Friday, the notoriously volcanic Silberman — he once said he was tempted to punch a colleague in the nose — didn’t just talk, he thundered. The case, Tah v. Global Witness Publishing, involved two former Liberian officials who claimed they were defamed by a human rights group, Global Witness, that suggested they had accepted bribes in exchange for an oil development license. (The Washington Post joined an amicus brief on behalf of Global Witness.)
The two judges in the majority, David S. Tatel, a Clinton appointee, and Sri Srinivasan, named by President Barack Obama, dismissed the case, applying the “actual malice” test set out in Times v. Sullivan: Did Global Witness act with knowing or reckless disregard of the truth in reporting on public officials?Silberman used the occasion not merely to disagree with the majority’s application of the Sullivan test, a run-of-the-mill disagreement among judges. Rather, he proceeded to shred the precedent and to call for its overruling. “It must go,” Silberman said of the case.
Then, sounding more like aggrieved columnist than federal judge, he bemoaned, at remarkable length and even more remarkable ferocity, the “dangerous” and “shocking” liberal bias of the modern media.
It’s not uncommon and not out of line for judges to use their opinions to make arguments about the state of the law; dissenting judges, often speaking only for themselves, frequently take even more leeway. But the vitriol of Silberman’s anti-press rhetoric and his use of the forum as an opportunity for an extended rant about media bias unrelated to the case at hand was extraordinary.He denounced the New York Times and The Washington Post as “virtually Democratic party broadsheets,” and “nearly all television” as “a Democratic party trumpet.” He reached back to 2012 to summon outrage at then-CNN reporter Candy Crowley’s debate moderation, and reached out to chide Silicon Valley for joining in the alleged efforts to suppress conservative voices.“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news,” Silberman warned. “It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy.”
It’s tempting to dismiss this as harmless, if off-base and injudicious, ranting — as merely an angry voice from the Barcalounger, except captured in the volumes of the Federal Report. But this was not just unseemly ranting, it was ranting with a mission: an assault on Times v. Sullivan and on sticking with wrongly decided constitutional precedents.
Silberman isn’t alone in calling for Sullivan to be overruled. Donald Trump as candidate argued to “open up those” libel laws. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a 2019 concurring opinion, said Sullivan and subsequent cases should be reconsidered, calling them “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”Yes, policy enshrined in the First Amendment — as the court in Sullivan put it, “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”
Before Sullivan was decided in 1964, there were no constitutional limits on how states applied their libel laws. That allowed Southern politicians to use libel suits as a weapon to deter national news organizations from covering the civil rights movement. L.B. Sullivan, who sued the Times over a civil rights group’s advertisement that didn’t even mention his name, was a Montgomery, Ala., city commissioner; he won $500,000, then the largest libel award in Alabama history.With Sullivan, the court imposed a new test when it came to public officials and, soon after, public figures. Even if a statement or news report was false, it couldn’t be the basis for a libel judgment unless it was made with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth.In Silberman’s telling, the justifications that impelled the court to impose constitutional limits on libel law are turned on their head today: The shield the court afforded the press to help protect democracy instead undermines it by letting biased news organizations operate with impunity. This couldn’t be more wrong. To understand that there is a continuing effort to weaponize libel laws against expressions of disputed opinions, look no further than the Trump campaign’s lawsuits against CNN and the New York Times, both dismissed, and The Washington Post, still pending.As Silberman acknowledges, the likelihood of the court overturning Times v. Sullivan is low; no justice joined in the Thomas concurrence, although Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who clerked for Silberman, has since joined the court.
But Silberman knows to make legal mischief. His dissent argues that the majority opinion’s approach to applying the actual malice standard conflicted with that of another circuit court, one of the tests the justices use in deciding whether to take a case. And as Silberman well understands, there are more ways to neuter a decision than outright overruling.There are many threats to American democracy these days. Times v. Sullivan isn’t one of them — it is an essential bulwark in democracy’s defense."4) Media Find 'Heroes' in Republicans Who Oppose Trump...and Also Democracy
Media Find 'Heroes' in Republicans Who Oppose Trump...and Also DemocracyJULIE HOLLARMajor media outlets have largely come around—a day late and a dollar short—to calling out Trump's extremism and lies, particularly the Big Lie that the election was stolen (FAIR.org, 1/7/21). But this rejection of Trumpism and the Big Lie goes hand in hand with the elevation of a "reasonable" or "admirable" wing of the GOP, whose own extremism and undermining of democracy are thereby whitewashed.
Exhibit A is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who jumped on the Trump bandwagon early and was only kicked off it when he rebuffed Trump's infamous demand to "find" 11,780 votes in order to overturn the state's election result.
CNN's David Axelrod (1/5/21): "By standing up for the integrity of the election despite Trump's shameless pressure, Raffensperger...has shown courage."
Eager to find Republican heroes to help prove that their own escalating criticism of Trump wasn't partisan, media fawned over Raffensperger. Reuters emphasized his "reputation as a 'straight shooter'" (1/3/21), while New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called him "brave" (2/12/21). CNN.com ran a piece by former Obama adviser David Axelrod (1/4/21) drawing on the idea of JFK's "Profiles in Courage," those "rare acts of political courage, in which politicians placed duty and conscience ahead of public opinion or their own political well-being," to describe Raffensperger's "admirable stand." Meanwhile, Mika Brzezinski (MSNBC, 1/4/21) raved, “He’ll end up being the American hero out of all of this, and that’s amazing, and he’s amazing.”
The biggest paper in his home state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, published an editorial (1/5/21) devoted to praising Raffensperger, vaguely alluding to "past actions" the board had been "critical" of, but arguing that he "has shown that he’s up to the rigor of standing courageously on the side of what is proper and right." "Thank you, Mr. Raffensperger, for remaining steadfast in safeguarding the rights of Georgians and Americans," the board concluded.
It's a measure of how abysmal standards of integrity have become within the GOP when simply refusing to engage in blatantly illegal efforts to overturn election results merits media panegyrics. Surely one can commend Raffensperger's stand against Trump's Big Lie while at the same time holding him accountable for his support of the little lies that made that Big Lie possible.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (12/17/20) documented how Brad Raffensperger fed Donald Trump's false narrative of election fraud.
Indeed, only a few weeks before the AJC's uncritical editorial, the paper's reporting side published a front-page investigative report by Brad Schrade and Mark Niesse (12/17/20), who revealed how Raffensperger, while claiming Georgia's elections were "fair and honest," simultaneously touted "inflated figures about the number of investigations his office was conducting related to the election, giving those seeking to sow doubt in the outcome a new storyline."
Raffensberger repeatedly suggested—including on national television—that he was investigating "over 250" ongoing credible election fraud allegations related to the 2020 presidential election. In fact, according to the AJC report, there were only 132, and the vast majority concerned procedural errors rather than claims of fraud.
As Stacey Abrams, who knows a thing or two about Georgia elections, told Stephen Colbert on the Late Show (1/4/21):
Lionizing Brad Raffensperger is a bit wrong-headed. This man is not defending the right of voters. He’s defending an election that he ran. Because at the exact same moment that he is pushing back on Trump, he's also working hand in hand with Republicans to put together a list of ways to constrain access to the right to vote, starting with the next election.
Raffensperger's voter suppression tactics included launching vote fraud investigations into four progressive voter registration groups, including Abrams' New Georgia Project (AJC, 11/30/20). And independent journalist Greg Palast (Democracy Now!, 1/5/21) found that Raffensperger oversaw the illegal purge of 198,000 voters—mostly people of color—from the Georgia voting rolls before the 2020 election.
Aided by Raffensperger's misleading claims about vote fraud, the Georgia state legislature is currently rushing through a host of restrictions on voting that would disproportionately disenfranchise the Black and brown voters who tipped the state to the Democrats in the 2020 elections. And with the GOP takeover of the Supreme Court and the lower courts, there's vanishingly little those disenfranchised voters are likely to be able to do about it.
Raffensperger is just the tip of the iceberg. In its desperation to find a "reasonable" GOP so that it can continue to play its both-sides game, corporate media let some of the most anti-democratic among them play the hero with little pushback, so long as their brand of authoritarianism is in line with the time-honored US tradition of restricting the vote so the (white) minority can rule, not in support of full-on coups.
Sen. Mitch McConnell was so "pleased about impeachment" (New York Times, 1/12/21) that he voted against it three separate times.
Covering the position of longtime obstructionist-in-chief Mitch McConnell on the subject of Trump's second impeachment, for instance, the New York Times (1/12/21) implied the Senate minority leader actually supported the move, under the headline: "McConnell Is Said to Be Pleased About Impeachment, Believing It Will Be Easier to Purge Trump From the GOP." (Of course, McConnell ultimately—and unsurprisingly—voted "no" each step of the way.)
The piece, by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, uncritically quoted McConnell: "Our nation was founded precisely so that the free choice of the American people is what shapes our self-government and determines the destiny of our nation.” Admirable sentiments; if only there was the slightest truth behind his commitment to allowing "the free choice of the American people" to shape the government.
Or take the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump; at least three different editorials boards held them up as "profiles in courage" (Washington Post, 2/13/21; Houston Chronicle, 2/15/21; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2/15/21). Or Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, whose support for impeachment made her a "hero" (Houston Chronicle, 2/15/21) and "the conscience of Republicans" (CNN.com, 1/12/21).
Cheney, whose role as one of Washington's greatest torture apologists alone ought to disqualify her eternally from deserving the label "hero," voted in line with Trump's positions nearly 93% of the time in the House. The Republican senators who voted to convict Trump also voted, in almost every instance, to seat Trump-appointed justices eager to gut voting rights protections.
Sure, media will fret about voter suppression as Republican-held states around the country push through draconian restrictions in an attempt to thwart the "free choice of the American people." But their own credulous coverage of the little lies of vote fraud, which went on for decades (Extra!, 11–12/08, 10/12), and their willingness to lionize purveyors of those lies to this day, have played no small role in allowing it to happen."5) Chris Hayes Is Finding Reasons to Be Optimistic Againhis Mom was an art teacher and then art supervisor in BX. I had the pleasure to work with her. Good genes!"Chris Hayes and I spoke last March, in the early days of COVID-19 in the United States, when people were still calling it "the coronavirus," and we were running on adrenaline. One hundred and fifteen people had died in the United States from the virus, and businesses were just starting to shut down. On his nightly MSNBC show All In, Hayes’ tone was growing increasingly panicked and frustrated. Hayes had switched to nearly full-time COVID-19 coverage, and his urgency was obvious. “That tone you’re talking about," he told Esquire, "is me being like, we are headed for disaster here! Like, wake the fuck up!"People, eventually, woke up. New York, where Hayes films his show, was ravaged by the pandemic. He began filming at home as hospitals risked reaching capacity, sirens becoming the soundtrack to a shutdown city. Now, one year later, we’ve passed half a million American deaths, and it was even worse than Hayes predicted.
We spoke again last week. “I will say as someone who is very freaked out and pessimistic, it still exceeded what I thought," he said.
Now that we’re coming up on a full year of the pandemic, thousands of people are still dying every week and Hayes is still covering COVID nearly every night on his show—even if it’s not the top story each evening, as it was when we spoke in 2020. A lot has happened since, and with a live special, All In America: The Year We Meet Again, airing on March 11, Hayes is reflective. Ahead of the episode, which will film at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., we talked about a full year of pandemic coverage, what he would have done differently, and what comes next. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
When we spoke a year ago, you were very frustrated that people seemed to not be taking COVID-19 seriously. Could you have imagined that a year later we’d still be dealing with COVID-19?
I thought we would get our hands on it. I think that the vaccine has been the only amazing, positive surprise in this story, but everything else has been pretty awful.
I know you were filming from home for a while. Are things pretty much back to normal at the studio for you?
It's a weird current normal. It's a ghost town of an office. I'm only there for a few hours. We wear masks. I can't wear a mask on the actual show, but there's only like one other person in that room with me. I get tested two times a week. I go in for a few hours, and that's it."
6) If you're worried that journalists have learned nothing from the Trump years. - PressThinkThis post is for you. But instead of confirming your impressions, I bring news of a contrary kind."Even after all that has happened from the escalator to the insurrection, you’re worried that the American press has learned nothing from the Trump years. You’re seeing it fall into old patterns. Your frustration is rising, your patience thinning.
This post is for you. But instead of confirming these impressions — for which, I admit, there is ample evidence — I bring news of a contrary kind: Four or five developments that are… encouraging, in that they suggest that some journalists understand what has to be different: after the Trump presidency, after the Stop the Steal movement, after the riot at the U.S. Capitol, after the Republican Party committed to making it harder to vote.
We can lose this thing
Thirteen days after the 2020 election I published, “Two paths forward for the American press.” One path, I said, was “a restoration of order as a more normal president takes office.” This was (and it remains) the most likely course. The other possible path was to extend what I called “a democratic breakthrough in journalism.”
The breakthrough happened during the tense days after November 3, when an autocratic leader, Donald Trump, tried to reverse the results of a free and fair election. His attempt was defeated, in part by journalists who made it clear that he had no case. His claims of election fraud were themselves fraudulent.
In my view this was a shattering experience for the American press— shattering in a good way. No refuge in false equivalence, no retreat into “both sides” reasoning, no fantasies of remaining neutral in the fight could withstand the experience of reporting on Trump’s furious battle to retain power after losing the 2020 election. Journalists came face to face with an attempt to subvert democracy, led by the president of the United States. Instantly every bromide they had ever uttered about the role of a free press in a healthy democracy turned frighteningly real.
What lasting effects there will be on journalism’s political imaginary we do not yet know. But I know what they should be: We can lose this thing if we don’t learn how to defend it. That’s the attitude the press ought to have toward American democracy. Since the election, I have tried to keep watch for any sign that journalists understand this. Here and there I find them. And that’s what this post is about. Signs of a shift in thinking that could spread to more people in journalism. Ready to hear about them?
WITF says it will not forget those votes to overturn a free and fair election.
WITF.org is the public broadcaster in the Harrisburg region of central Pennsylvania. On January 28 the company explained its policy toward those in public office who spread the election fraud lie and encouraged the January 6 insurrection. WITF’s policy is not to forget these facts:Eight Pennsylvania congressmen supported Trump’s lies about election fraud and irregularities as he attempted to illegally retain power. Those lies led many to believe the election was stolen from Trump. After the insurrection at the Capitol to try to overthrow the U.S. electoral system, those eight lawmakers voted to nullify Pennsylvania’s election results.The journalists at WITF further declared that they intended to contextualize future actions by these officals with reminders about their fateful moves in the period between the 2020 election and the inauguration of Joe Biden. They gave this example of what they had in mind:
“Sen. (name), who signed a letter asking members of Congress to delay certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral votes despite no evidence that would call those results into question, today introduced a bill…”
They didn’t use the phrase, “never forget!” but that is what their decision amounts to. In explaining it, they made these points:
- They expressed their shock that “elected leaders, who took an oath to uphold the laws of the United States, would actively work to overturn an election that county, state and federal judges and public officials of both political parties, and election experts, concluded was free and fair.”
- “The constant drumbeat of falsehoods that the election was stolen came to a head on Jan. 6 with a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol… The attack’s purpose was to ignore the will of the people, throw out their votes and allow former President Trump to remain in power. If it had succeeded, democracy would have failed.”
- “All the false claims about Pennsylvania’s results were attacks on the truth. On democracy. On the work of dozens of journalists at WITF and across the state, who were doing on-the-ground reporting and talking with the county-level leaders who ran elections.”
- “We understand this may be an unusual decision for a news organization to make. But, these are not normal times. As disinformation and misinformation take more and more of a foothold in our social media feeds and dinner-table discussions, it is important for our journalists to adapt, as transparently as possible, to bring you the facts and not memory-hole the damage done to our democracy in the last three months.”
Events like Stop the Steal and the January 6 insurrection were different, they said. Not normal politics, but an “unprecedented assault.”
Our approach is based in fact and provides the proper context to the decisions made by Republican elected officials in the commonwealth.
This wasn’t a policy disagreement over taxes, abortion, or government spending.
This wasn’t lawmakers spinning an issue in their favor.
This was either knowingly spreading disinformation or outright lying by elected officials to overturn an election in an attempt to keep former President Trump in office.
This was an unprecedented assault on the fabric of American democracy.
Confronted with a novel situation — a attempt to “overthrow the U.S. electoral system” — they decided to do what they could within the existing code of conduct for public service journalism, which includes holding elected officials accountable, contextualizing current events, insisting on the primacy of verifiable facts, and serving as one of the guardrails of democracy.
“Within the existing code” is important, because it means that any other newsroom sharing these values could make a similar call without rewriting the playbook. Their message: rather than new commitments, we need to intensify the ones we already have. (For more detail on WITF’s efforts at countering the Big Lie, see this second post I published today.)