How the political press should approach 2020
First, let's get rid of the 'both sides-ism.'
Democracy, the cliche goes, is messy. We are living in a dumpster, and journalism will be stress tested as much as any institution over the coming 6 weeks.
As soon as it was announced that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, the realization that Republicans would flash hypocrisy was all but inevitable.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced at 8:51 p.m. that “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor.” That was almost the exact amount of time it took McConnell to announce after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016 that whomever President Barack Obama nominated would not receive a vote.
This is important; not the fact that McConnell’s continual push for power shows him to be a man of no convictions, but that journalists not play the ‘both sides’ that they’ve relied on for so long. The reframe is slowly happening in opinion pages, but needs to be meted out in the reporting space, too.
Last night, E.J. Dionne laid out the Repubican’’s perversion of democracy in a scathing editorial.
Allowing President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to complete a judicial coup and install a 6-to-3 conservative majority will be, in both form and substance, a triumph for anti-democratic forces and anti-democratic thinking.
This is why we must reject the fake moderation of those who pretend that both sides in this fight are equally partisan, equally stubborn and equally at fault. No. It’s the American Right that has been willing to abuse power again and again to achieve its goal of imposing a radical approach to jurisprudence that would undercut democracy itself.
This, too, is important when thinking about media. No matter how often the talking point is repeated, there is no left equivalent to the right’s media machine. MSNBC does not push conspiracy theories. NPR doesn’t use dog whistles to rile its base.
As the Baltimore Sun’s media critic wrote this morning:
Meanwhile, many of the leading platforms on the right were founded and operate as political tools or weapons: Fox News, Breitbart News Network, The Daily Caller. After Steve Bannon left Mr. Trump’s White House and returned to Breitbart, he said, “I’ve got my hands back on my weapons.” Tucker Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News, is co-founder of The Daily Caller.
If you are founded as a political tool, success is judged by how well you support the ideology and the mission of the politicians trying to get elected and make that ideology into policy. Winning voters and office are what matter, not giving citizens trustworthy information to use in making their own decisions. Propaganda, lies and smears are better if they achieve your ends. How do journalists from mainstream institutions compete with that? We have a different DNA.
Our institutions are undergoing perhaps the most exhaustive stress test they’ve seen in generations. As the WSJ laid out today, every one, from the FBI to the CDC, has been politicized and polarized. One common thread: the lack of trust in media.
The Baltimore Sun poses:
We cannot operate like political tools. To do that would be to lose our souls and our role in this democracy. We have to believe and trust that facts and serving the public rather than trying to manipulate it will ultimately win the day.
However noble this is, it’s not rooted in reality. Journalism has, in America, historically been used as a political tool; it’s only recently that we’ve taken on the role of arbiter of truth, with the notion that to find the closest thing to the truth we have to see “both sides.”
But we’re finding that we cling to this both sides-ism when there’s no both sides.
Eric Boehlert’s Press Run piece this morning highlights how the political press, so caught up in their own role of history, can’t seem to pull itself out of their own verbal quagmire and because of this, winds up as an accessory to a crime.
One of the reasons Republicans don't play by any discernible rules is because they can so often depend on a Beltway press corps to help soften the blow. It’s happening now with the Ginsburg story, as the press embraces Republican talking points, normalizes unprecedented behavior, and erases or downplays the GOP's 2016 obstruction.
Boehlert ends with advice for how to cover:
What Republicans are trying to pull off with the post-Ginsburg power grab has no precedence in American history and represents a corrupt power maneuver by an unpopular president. That’s how the press should cover the unfolding story.
The question is: can the press change decades of reporting imperatives over the next 44 days?
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Jefferson Airplane, “Volunteers”
Some interesting links:
For TV-lovers:
‘Schitt’s Creek’ pulls off the feel-good 2020 Emmy’s sweep we need (LA Times)
Buyers Navigate Makeshift Broadcast Schedules to Set Their Fall TV Buys (Adweek)
For the Holy Shit department:
The FinCen files (BuzzFeed News)
A Notorious COVID Troll Actually Works for Dr. Fauci's Agency (Daily Beast)
Justice Dept. brands NYC an ‘anarchist jurisdiction,’ targets federal funds (NY Post)
For platforms:
Facebook Says it Will Stop Operating in Europe If Regulators Don’t Back Down (Vice)
The Risk Makers: Viral hate, election interference, and hacked accounts: inside the tech industry’s decades-long failure to reckon with risk (One Zero)
For publishers:
Apple’s latest anti-tracking changes present fresh headache for publishers (Digiday)
For buyers:
U.S. Ad Economy Rises 5.9% In August, First Expansion Since March (MediaPost)