Burying a very important story
News organizations suffer from news whiplash and it's not great.
Editors—line, desk and masthead—make hundreds of tiny decisions every day affecting any number of stories.
Story assignments; guiding reporters through tricky reporting to actual copy editing; advocating for a reporter’s story, often jostling with other editors on when to publish and, arguably most important, where.
Where on the homepage? Or even on the homepage?
Where in the actual paper/magazine?
Emails are swapped; meetings (which often could just be emails) are attended; arguments are made; hearts are sometimes broken where others are filled with pride (getting your first Page One or magazine cover, for example).
With this background, let’s jump to an interesting thing that happened yesterday.
Every president has transferred power to the next guy since George Washington stepped aside after 8 years as president, relinquishing power to John Adams, who had narrowly beat Thomas Jefferson in the fledgling nation’s first election (Washington was more appointed than elected; and an election in 1797 was a very different beast than 2020).
And now we come to the 44th person (but number 45 in your scoresheet) to hold the office.
When asked by a reporter, “Win, lose or draw in this election, will you commit here today for a peaceful transferal of power after the election?" Donald Trump responded, “We’re going to have to see what happens.”
The fact that a reporter has to ask that question at all should be a signifying moment, but it gets swept away because of the answer: the president isn’t sure that he will relinquish power should he lose.
This is...alarming.
But then he starts to lay down the claim that the “ballots are a disaster”, that “we want to get rid of the ballots, and then we’ll have a peaceful -- there won’t be a transfer, frankly; there’ll be a continuation.”
In other words: the president, who won’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power (arguably the foundation of what makes America great), continues to lay the groundwork contesting the election while at the same time is signalling some kind of voter fraud through eliminating mail-in ballots so that he can win (the theory that if people are allowed to vote through mail-in Trump will lose).
This is ... really alarming. Like, a huge story even at a time when we are pummeled with huge stories every day. This is an A1, top of the fold, top of the broadcast kinda story.
Well....
How about on the good old homepage?
The New York Times wasn’t alone. Though by late Thursday morning, the paper of record has the story in its top slot, and at 10:39 a.m. sent out a push alert:
The Wall Street Journal doesn’t have this story on its homepage (as of this writing, the top story is jobless numbers).
Vox doesn’t have this story on its homepage (Breonna Taylor is the lead story);
The Washington Post doesn’t have it on its homepage, even though at the bottom, where its “most read stories” resides, it’s the 4th most read story on the site.
HuffPost has a little headline buried (main story is GOP power grab for SCOTUS pick).
CNN, on the other hand, has this story as the main story:
And BuzzFeed has it as a top story.
The point of all these examples: the decision to not only publish, but where it resides, is usually made through discussion by a variety of editors, many of whom seem to be failing to see the magnitude of this story.
A counter argument of story placement: people don’t visit a homepage anymore, as they get their info from Facebook and Twitter. Fine. But seeing how the social platform algorithms are as much of a culprit of our disinformation age as any decision-making inside of newsrooms, it’s hard to believe that this particular story caught a Facebook wave.
MediaMatters has a good piece on the Trumpian media strategy and how it affects newsrooms:
Steve Bannon is a shameless grifter and fringe crank who, like many other former top aides to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, was recently hit with federal criminal charges. But the many-shirted would-be Machiavelli offered up what stands as the single best explanation for the Trump team’s communications strategy. “The Democrats don't matter,” he explained to Bloomberg’s Michael Lewis a year into Trump’s presidency. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."
Bannon’s quote explains how Trumpist propaganda creates a fog of disinformation that overwhelms the press and disorients the public. But it also points to a simpler media vulnerability: The newshole is finite. There are only so many column inches in a newspaper, so many news segments in a broadcast, and so many journalists available to report out stories.
But couple this fatigue with the well-worn communication theory, Agenda Setting, which we talked about in April:
In the early 1970s, a couple of communications researchers looked into the effects of how news organizations frame political stories. They found that the media may not tell you how to think, but instead, what to think about, calling it "Agenda Setting Theory." In their abstract, they wrote:
"In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues—that is, the media may set the “agenda”of the campaign."
And as we discussed, Trump has flipped the Agenda Setting script so that it’s not the media setting the agenda but the news-maker himself.
So newsrooms have systemic challenges in a few varieties to overcome: of internal politics that spill out onto a publication’s pages through not only what story to run but where to run it, and of newsrooms that have, five years later, yet to figure out how to cover a president who “flood(s) the zone with shit.”
Editors are people, too. Exhausted from 6 months of navigating a pandemic, not to mention 5 years of Trumpian whiplash. But continually missing the importance of a story while elevating non-important stories (you know, “emails” and what not) erodes the trust of media, which we know is pretty abysmal.
And at a time when the president is on the fence on whether he’d leave if he loses an election, we need all the institutions to work. Especially since many institutions (the DOJ, the CDC, the USPS, etc) have been compromised.
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Wes Montgomery, “A Day in the Life”
Some interesting links:
For more election shenanigans:
‘The Devil Will Be in the Details.’ How Social Media Platforms Are Bracing For Election Chaos (Time)
Bernie Sanders Sounds Alarm on a Trump ‘Nightmare Scenario’ (NYT)
For artificial intelligence bias:
The Gradient photo filter app made digital blackface a thing again (Input)
For annual CPG giant industry clarion calls:
P&G's Pritchard Calls For Fundamental Changes To The Media Trading Ecosystem (MediaPost)
For publishers:
‘Walk before you run’: Sports publishers look to blow out their betting content (Digiday)
For platforms and brand safety:
Reddit Rolls Out 3 Flavors Of Brand Safety Inventory Controls (AdExchanger)
"Flooding the zone with shit" is the strategy. Trump is a windbag, and ignored for that reason. Although they wouldn't hold power otherwise, Trump's silent henchmen are the real danger to our democracy. Their doings demand reporting.
Thank you for your effort here! Well done!