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JV Journalism
Over at The Federalist, @molliehemingway makes an excellent (and rather subtle) argument regarding the press and President Donald Trump. Partial summary:
- Several big, recent news stories — some subsequently unproven or discredited — rely on anonymous sources.
- Trump and Spicer publicly gripe about it.
- Several journalists throw it back at them, pointing out incidents where Trump relied on anonymous sources (specifically, the birther stuff).
- Journalists miss that the logical (and highly ironic) conclusion to be drawn from their barbs at Trump is that anonymous sources cannot be trusted.
The smarter response to the administration’s carping would have been to point out incidents where carefully vetted, anonymous sources were both accurate and central to the story’s reporting. This, however, would have taken a little thought and wouldn’t have been as emotionally satisfying as making fun of Trump and Spicer.
You don’t have to argue that the administration is playing 4th-dimensional chess here, or even that they’re being particularly clever; it’s just that the press is so eager to land punches against them, that they’re not listening to themselves.
Press, you can do better than this. You need to do better than this.
Published in Journalism
Sure, Tom, that makes sense. But then nothing seems to make sense when it comes to the press. It continues to shoot itself in the foot, trying to be the first with a story, finding any and every opportunity to attack Trump, and discounting the need to give factual information to the public. Doesn’t sound like journalism to me.
Exactly.
Maybe they should be asking John Barron and John Miller what’s going on? Those guys seemed to have a good read on the situation
I’ve found the NYT and WaPo nearly unreadable that way since January, but the WSJ seems to have stayed this side of sanity.
There are lots of good reporters doing good work out there and there are many more who could be doing good work (or better work) if they learned to disengage from the administration’s total war against them.
I’m not sure the admin is indiscriminately firing off V2 rockets over the channel. Once a group gets in this admin’s crosshairs it’s been pretty comical. Embarrassing at times but entertaining as heck. Needed also.
If the press cannot change from within, and it seems they will not, then the outside pressure may well do it somehow.
I’m not renewing my 21 year old subscription to the WSJ. It has not become a hotbed of idiocy like the NYT and WaPo have, but the regular news stories increasingly insert sly opinions into their straight news stories, often stealing a base or two in the story setup. The editorial page has been viewed separately from the news section for a long time, but even it is showing the effects of the owners’ bias towards Wall Street. I know, duh. The best part of the paper, apart from the hysterically knowledgeable and funny Dan Neil, is the letters to the editor section. The Deplorables do write in.
It can be comical (and deserved), but it’s just as often not from what I’ve seen. The likelihood that something gets dismissed as “fake news” has far more to do with whether the administration likes it than it’s actual truth value. It’s not the only thing that toxic in all this, but it definitely is toxic.
On the flipside, telling the truth isn’t exactly the administration’s job, though it is the press’s. What I hope eventually comes out of this is that the administration stops spinning things as hard as it is and that the press figures out that what counts as a win for them need not count as a loss for the administration (and vise versa).
My comment on the WSJ, is “just barely”; I’ve noticed lately that they are sounding more liberal. Weren’t they the ones who published that the intelligence community was hiding information from Trump? Still, it’s way better than the Orlando Sentinel! Talk about an arm of the Democrats!
I agree. Sigh.
The last 3 press secretaries were liars and the press usually refused to call them on it. The current press calls everything Spicer says a lie regardless of whether it is. The press will not change and they deserve to be discredited as a group because of the irrelevance of truth in comparison to ideology.
Agreed. The degree to which the press was abused by the Obama Administration and was willing to basically put up with it is thoroughly damning.
See, this is the dynamic I want to break. If the administration sank half of the effort it puts into humiliating the NYT and CNN into, say, writing the next executive order we’d all be better off. Likewise, if the NYT and CNN spent some of the time they do making lame smears, they could focus on actual substantive issues (regardless of whether or not it benefits the administration).
I agree that either of these is an increasingly remote possibility, but we need to root for it happening.
I doubt the president is going to stop being a reactive thin skinned narcissist and I doubt the press will stop being socialist ideologues or the pawns of progressives. Here’s to hope though.
Stop supporting Hillary! ;)
Just HAFTA point out that the thing about Omega being born in Kenya does NOT come from an “anonymous source”. It’s in the blurb for B. Hasbeen Omega’s own book. You can check Left-leaning Snopes for this. Also, Clinton used it in ‘o8.
I call you out on your last sentence: “Press:… you NEED to do better than this!” if you mean the press “needs” to discredit our legitimately elected president, who is doing or trying to do exactly what he promised people who voted for him.
No, the press “needs” to give Trump the fighting chance every other guy elected has received.
This is one back-handed swipe at our president.
Interestingly, a search warrant generally cannot issue solely on the information provided by a confidential informant. There must be additional evidence to back him up. The press might think about that before they rely on a confidential source. You know, due process, or more colloquially, simple honesty.
Tom, there is no way I can agree with this. If Reince and company let any of the MSM’s lies fester for more than a day, it becomes truth. They must come out the next day and refute it with everything they have. Otherwise, “The White House refused to deny today that Ivanka has been sleeping with Putin for more than her entire life.”
Likewise, the MSM has to keep making up stories, because they have nothing of substance on this President, and they know it. The DNC has charged them to trash Trump every day, and the only way they can do so is to flat-out lie.
Given the multitude of lies told daily, it would be hard to acknowledge a valid criticism. It’s like a ballgame where the ref makes bad call after bad call against your team. The reflex action is to complain every time you see the flag come out.
That is because veracity is not integral to entertainment. Trump and the News media are in the entertainment business. Each is writing or speaking to their fan base. Trump himself takes no care with his words at any point, and neither does the media by and large. While some reporters at various outlets attempt to conform to certain standards and expectations much like some in the administration also seek to do the same. There is no real incentive for either organization media and the administration to be anything other than loud and provocative (because that grabs headlines). Once the chief executives decide to run with the BS version of reality as an employee what are you really going to do? No one is going to quit their job just because Trump or some editor at CNN ran some nonsense up a pole to see who would salute. In fact if you can explain or divert the audience from the ridiculousness of it all you increase your stock with those who sign your pay check. The incentives are all wrong, so nothing will change.
Which sort of misses the point. Trump’s not a journalist. And Barry’s book had the claim splashed all over the jacket when it helped him sell books and bolster a career based on essentially nothing.
But no one dare ask the question, which would, given the number of interviews Barry has given, something that should have come up. Not that he wasn’t born where he said he was, but why he lied on a book cover about it.
“I approve this message, and personally recommend reading Mollie’s article.” ~ anonymous
And yet, they won’t do better than this. They’ve been exposed as the SJWs (with thin veneer of journalists) that they are. They have no other choice now than total war.
Tom,
What they have been peddling isn’t selling anymore. In the exchange of punches with Trump they are losing ground not gaining. Either they take your advice or they are going to assist Perez & Ellison in dragging the democrats down further. It will really be exciting to have 60 plus Republicans in the Senate after 2018.
Thanks MSM.
Regards,
Jim