Octopus Overlords

Asking Politico to not boil down important policy issues to bullshit horserace coverage is like asking a songbird not to sing. They'll be writing "Winner: Authoritarians; Loser: Political Dissidents" articles long after Donald Trump Jr. has set up gulags in Alaska.

If you hadn't heard, the WSJ recklessly published a letter from Trump today on the op-ed page. Several outlets have decided to publish condemnation of this madness. Here is a piece in WaPo about this. In essence, Trump asserted the big lie again in full rage form on the op ed page of the Wall Street Journal. It was mostly all the same old bullshit. I'll snip out the point by point take down and just post the last part since it resonates.

The main thing you need to know about the letter, of course, is that Donald Trump is still railing against his election loss 358 days after it occurred. And that prominent institutions are still enabling his dangerous misinformation more than 358 days after they should have known better.

Not fact checking his claims in a follow up response is pretty reckless and borderline treasonous.

The WSJ Op Ed section abandoned reason for madness long ago.

A case study in how the various forms of media continuous provide incomplete and inaccurate views into what is happening in our politics. I'm contrasting two examples here covering Garland's appearance at the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

It perhaps is a little unfair to contrast different media forms - NY Times in print and CNN's Anderson Cooper segment in video. Still my basic question is which one provides the consumer of information with a more accurate flavor of what happened? Neither completely IMO though the CNN piece is much, much closer to reality by far.

The NY Times piece does capture that the session was contentious but doesn't bother to even mention that 2 Senators called on him to resign. Or that multiple Senators pressed him based on a made up conflation between his memo and a 3rd party release. Or that several of the Senator's acted completely unhinged. As an aside, Aaron Rupar expertly showed how these were expressly designed for Fox News to spin into propaganda later in the day. If I was just reading the NY Times or watched nightly news I would have no idea this stuff was happening at all. It is certainly part of why the GOP has been getting away with this madness. They still have the capacity to talk to their crazies without fear of turning off the swing voter.

The CNN piece is focused on the misinformation/unhinged angle without contrasting examples of Republicans behaving. Which some did in some measure. Though even Ben Sasse got blustery and he is supposed to be the 'moderate'. Sasse was more acting as loyal opposition than say Blackburn, Cruz, Cotton, or Hawley who are flat out pretty much auditioning for their shot if Trump doesn't run.

NY Times - article in today's print edition.

CNN - video from last nights Anderson Cooper 360.

This is hip deep bullshit.

Seems like their would be room for both opinions to provide a balanced view? But the decision is all the more baffling when the OpEd they selected obfuscates their support for Trump. The Guardian ended up publishing the Sirota OpEd instead.

FWIW I watched this yesterday and the guys not wrong to highlight some of these issues BIG BUT here. The framing is just unbelievable considering what is happening in this country. The piece is running as "Blue States, You're the Problem". Good fucking lord. The GOP is trying to dismantle our democracy all over the place but sure contrast that to NIMBY and housing issues. Oh wait they didn't even do that. It is entirely focused on Democratic "hypocrisy" because they don't uniformly, everywhere all at once adhere to the Democratic party platform. I just don't get wtf has happened at the NY Times.

It would be too painful to watch that, but I would say today's liberals have some areas that are problematic, namely:

Woke
Defund the Police
Critical Race Theory

But this is like saying Jews in Nazi Germany had controversial religious opinions.

It's worth a watch because he gets the issues largely right but they way they packaged it up...is just aggravating. For instance, harping on zoning issues in Palo Alto is all good and all but he essentially glosses over the fact that California just made a series of zoning law changes that addressed the very issues he raised. In a surprisingly meaningful way. It fundamentally undermined the segment's focus on hypocrisy in zoning issues. The laws were only passed a little over a month ago so my guess is he had already gone very far down that hole. He probably just decided to go with it because it'd require a ton of rework to find another example. Anyway, that is just one example that struck me as a bit dishonest.

Jaymann wrote:It would be too painful to watch that, but I would say today's liberals have some areas that are problematic, namely:

Woke
Defund the Police
Critical Race Theory

And really the areas that are problematic are due to messaging, not policy. The left has a great way of taking great ideas with broad public support and marketing them so poorly that they lose elections over them.

That is effing hilarious.

I rolled my eyes at that this morning. It is why the Pitchbot is so damn effective.

Edit: There are some hilarious replies to that tweet.

It was a bright and beautiful morning in Sarajevo when a young man with a head full of wonder decided to show the Archduke his new pistol.

They have cocked that case up so bad that there's no way that kid is getting convicted of murder. Especially with the judge that they have.

It fascinating how badly the big media outlets are dealing with modernity. I'm glad they are having this discussion but the distress is this isn't a new problem. We have been facing an ever radicalizing GOP for over 10 years. Trump poured gasoline on the fire but his departure despite a *COUP ATTEMPT* that they keep downplaying didn't change that the GOP is essentially Trumpist. Yet the media is only now kicking around ideas about how they'll deal with a Trump run? This is constant problem. This is pure madness. Everyone with an ounce of power is failing us right now. It's really dispiriting if you are actually paying attention.

Washington Post

With ominous signs mounting that Donald Trump really may run again for president in 2024, a debate has begun to simmer in newsrooms: How can the press avoid the pitfalls in covering Trump that bedeviled 2016 and 2020?

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More broadly, how do you cover a candidate who is explicitly anti-democracy while simultaneously maintaining both the media’s conventions of nominal objectivity and its small-L liberal commitments?

This debate has now been placed squarely on the public agenda by two mainstream journalists: Jon Karl of ABC News and Brian Stelter of CNN. Stelter recently asked Karl how the press should cover a Trump 2024 run, and Karl said this:

It’s an immense challenge because you’re covering — you’re covering essentially an anti-democratic candidate, you’re covering somebody running in a system that is trying to undermine that very system and somebody who is going to be perpetually lying.
Karl noted that he doesn’t have the answer to this yet. Stelter replied: “This is definitely the conversation that’s starting to happen in newsrooms.”

I think press critic Jay Rosen is right to hope this is a galvanizing moment. As Rosen noted in an important new thread, Karl and Stelter are plugged-in among establishment journalists, which means this debate is a live one among journalists with real influence.

How is this a problem? Cover him as a candidate who is explicitly anti-democracy. That's objective and neutral because it's clearly true. So...just say it.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:29 am How is this a problem? Cover him as a candidate who is explicitly anti-democracy. That's objective and neutral because it's clearly true. So...just say it.

But then they will be tarred as clearly *biased*. This is the problem. It's a constant issue with them. They are always worried about appearance of some adherence to neutrality and not taking a side. It is sort of akin to the Senate rule where a Senator can't directly criticize another Senator. For example, the big name media personalities keep talking about the 'ugly' politics in Congress even though they are almost entirely confined to the GOP caucus. They can't bring themselves to just speak plainly and call a duck a duck. That is what I see as madness. They're clutching some 'paladin's code' of supposed journalistic purity for a world that doesn't exist anymore.

Ironically, the perception that Trump always calls ‘a duck a duck’ is almost precisely what appealed to so many that voted for him and continue to support him.

malchior wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:39 am

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:29 am How is this a problem? Cover him as a candidate who is explicitly anti-democracy. That's objective and neutral because it's clearly true. So...just say it.

But then they will be tarred as clearly *biased*. This is the problem. It's a constant issue with them. They are always worried about appearance of some adherence to neutrality and not taking a side. It is sort of akin to the Senate rule where a Senator can't directly criticize another Senator. For example, the big name media personalities keep talking about the 'ugly' politics in Congress even though they are almost entirely confined to the GOP caucus. They can't bring themselves to just speak plainly and call a duck a duck. That is what I see as madness. They're clutching some 'paladin's code' of supposed journalistic purity for a world that doesn't exist anymore.

You'd think media institutions would have learned by now that they're going to be called biased no matter what.

Now, that doesn't mean that they should go the other way and go full yellow journalism. But trying to avoid saying the truth just to avoid accusations of bias clearly doesn't work.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:57 amYou'd think media institutions would have learned by now that they're going to be called biased no matter what.

Yep. I don't know if they are this clueless (I doubt it), worried about access due to competitive pressures with other outlets, or know this is going south and don't want to be on the wrong side of it. Probably all of the above and more but they're in a failure state if they are really only discussing this *now*.

Now, that doesn't mean that they should go the other way and go full yellow journalism. But trying to avoid saying the truth just to avoid accusations of bias clearly doesn't work.

Right or the many other things that aren't working. I hope they adjust but I have little confidence they will.

I will say that I thought that the coverage of Trump in 2020 was better than the coverage of Trump in 2016, I think mainly because in 2016 there was just more of an assumption that Trump couldn't win, so more of the mainstream media thought that their job was more to hold Hillary (as the future POTUS) accountable. Also I think it hadn't really hit most journalists then how crazy Trump and the GOP were.

But you know, still not good enough.

Dana Milbank commissioned a sentiment analysis of media coverage. My take is it found that the media is biased ... for fake controversy aka clicks. Not a big surprise but they are key part of the death of our democracy. FWIW we also got a glimpse of this in 2016 when people did sentiment analysis comparing Trump to Clinton.

The "problem" for a democratic president is that there's no real parallel for the conservative media ecosystem that exists on the right. No matter what Trump did he could count on supportive coverage from Fox News and the Murdochverse. Whereas Democrats and their voters pay attention to media that, while not free from bias, at least strives for objectivity, so consequently generates negative media coverage when something bad happens. So in terms of tone, democratic presidents have a lower floor and a lower ceiling in terms of negative / positive media coverage.

C'mon, Axios.

But how else would the American public understand what Trump was saying there?

I don't understand what Axios did wrong.

I’m not sure I get the highlighted problem either.

Alefroth wrote: ↑Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:15 pm I don't understand what Axios did wrong.

Axios is translating Trump's crude rage-narcissism into something that sounds more like diplomatic language.

They're pretending he's a normal statesman rather than a preening man-baby who takes everything personally.

That's not how I read it. It's just the beginning of a deep dive analysis. Maybe Axios shouldn't be doing that?

https://www.axios.com/trump-netanyahu-d ... 03e67.html

I have a lot of issues with the way Axios has their journalists write articles to begin with, but quoting Trump as saying "Fuck him" and then launching into a "What he's saying" is pretty ridiculous when it's clear what Trump is saying is "Fuck him".

Went over my head for some reason.
That is annoying.
I bet most of his base prefers the FU, over the long boring drown out explanation/dress-up.

The article was about Trump's entire criticism of Netanyahu and how it affects his campaign. 'Fuck him' was just the headline. I guess that wouldn't be clear if all you saw was the tweet.

My main problem with than that piece - even more than the accidental normalization - is how they chunked up the article. The mixed sections with bullet points are borderline unreadable to me. It is like an attempt to turn a PowerPoint into a Word document by cutting and pasting the slide text.

Pretty much any Axios article I read skim is structured that way.

Chris Wallace's contract is up and he's out. The list of legitimate newspeople at Fox Is pretty thin now.

Hmm. Grains of hope in the evolution of local news in Chicago...

While the city’s media have seen brutal job cuts in recent years, including a dramatic downsizing at the Chicago Tribune, a sense of rebirth and optimism prevails. Longtime observers talk about “an explosion of media” that makes it “more exciting than it’s ever been.”

The changes are attracting national attention, according to Sue Cross, CEO and Executive Director of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN). “It’s important nationally and perhaps even globally because Chicago is a petri dish for the re-invention of news media,” Cross said.

A variety of journalism trends intersect in Chicago.

Nonprofit news is assuming a prominence once reserved for the city’s commercial outlets as the 175-year-old Tribune recedes and a public radio station, WBEZ, emerges as a rival for dominance in local reporting.

WBEZ has not only grown on its own but is finalizing a merger with the Chicago Sun-Times that represents a creative attempt to save a legacy newspaper.

The Better Government Association (BGA), a nearly century-old organization that conducts journalistic investigations, is taking on a much bigger mission by teaming with the Robert R. McCormick Foundation on a new $10 million journalism effort called the Illinois Solutions Partnership. A key aim is to replace the government oversight lost in the downsizing of legacy news outlets.

And startups are becoming upstarts.

The digital nonprofit Block Club Chicago is attracting national attention for its fresh approach to neighborhood news. Block Club and scores of other small news outlets have banded together in a new Chicago Independent Media Alliance that is led by the Chicago Reader, a groundbreaking alt-weekly that once was a cash cow, then fell on hard times and now is being reinvented as a nonprofit.

DirectTV dropping OAN in April.

One less mass outlet for their insanity is a good thing, although I’m sure their viewers will just turn to other rabbit holes to go down.