Media
It’s hard to overstate our respect and gratitude for the Fourth Estate (i.e., the press and news media). To us, a free press is everything. We deeply believe media can significantly contribute to the health of our democracy and, without high-level journalism, democracy’s very survival would be at risk.
Take investigative journalism, for instance, which has been on fire over the past few years. Holding individuals and corporations accountable for their actions is invaluable to our society, and many journalists have been knocking it out of the park.
There was Vice News’ reporting on white supremacist groups during and after the Charlottesville domestic terrorist attack and Buzz Feed’s heartbreaking coverage of China’s internment of the Uyghurs. The Washington Post did a deep dive into the Pandora Papers, which uncovered a massive offshore financial system used to hide money and shield corrupt and criminal behavior, and incredible reporting by The New York Times that revealed how the United States tried to hide an airstrike in Syria that killed dozens of civilians.
ProPublica – an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest – reported on child separation at the border, which included audio tapes of hysterical children detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with their explosive “Secret IRS Files” investigation. ProPublica also published an exposé on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ close – and, in our opinion, highly inappropriate – relationship with a GOP megadonor. Incidentally, the Clarence Thomas article really ticked some conservatives off, to the point where Fox News often now refers to ProPublica as a “left-wing nonprofit,” which they are not. They are just really, really good.
All that said, there is something that has been bothering us over the past few years. We hate to join the negative chorus against the media in any way, but it’s true there are elements of the media that have gotten sideways.
One of our favorite things to do is switch back and forth between MSNBC and Fox News when big news stories break. Based on this unscientific experiment, we can personally attest to the fact that, depending on the cable news channel they watch, Americans are living on two completely different planets. On cable news especially, it’s clearer than ever before what channels are “Team Red” and which are “Team Blue” – loyalties that are reenforced by what they choose to cover and how they cover it, the words of their hosts and anchors, and the guests they book.
But now, this phenomenon has spread beyond cable, and other media sources seem to feel empowered to follow suit. On January 23, 2021, Roy Peter Clark – a senior scholar and vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit journalism school that owns the Tampa Bay Times and operates PolitiFact – wrote an article in response to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Actually, he wrote an article about another article written in The Washington Post about the attack on the Capitol.
Naturally, we quickly went to the article he referenced, which was published on January 6th, and found the writing to be – as most Washington Post writing is – masterful. We also found most of the writing in the front-page piece perfectly appropriate: “With poles bearing blue Trump flags, the mob bashed through Capitol doors and windows, forcing their way past police officers unprepared for the onslaught. Lawmakers were evacuated shortly before an armed standoff at the House doors. The woman who was shot by a police officer was rushed to an ambulance, police said, and later died. Canisters of tear gas were fired across the rotunda’s white marble floor, and on the steps outside the building, rioters flew Confederate flags.”
No problem here, the journalists were simply reporting exactly what we all saw with our own eyes – nothing more, nothing less (with the possible exception of saying police officers were “unprepared for the onslaught,” which seems a bit more like commentary).
However, in other parts of the article, words used to describe the Capitol attack included “attempted coup,” “saboteurs,” and the phrase “much of it incited by the president’s incendiary language.” Of The Washington Post article, Mr. Clark said, “I am astonished by the way the lead was written, and by an epiphany: Language that pushes the boundaries of traditional neutrality can be used in a responsible news report.”
We could not disagree more with this statement. In all honesty, his words really scare us. It is imperative that news coverage be 100% neutral, with the goal of nothing beyond presenting raw, vetted facts. The reader must then be trusted to make an independent, informed decision based on facts and facts alone. Please believe us when we say this is not a thread we should pull on.
The words/phrases “attempted coup,” “saboteurs,” and “much of it incited by the president’s incendiary language” do not belong in a Washington Post front-page news story, at least not on the very day of the event when emotions are high, information is still being gathered, and investigations hadn’t even started. At that early juncture, they belong in its opinions and editorials section – if even there. Unfortunately, this very thing has happened A LOT since Donald Trump came down that escalator in Trump Tower. From the beginning, many journalists have fallen right into his trap, chasing every distraction he throws down and giving him the oxygen he so desperately craves.
Increasingly, the media’s calculation seems to be that, since Donald Trump is such a “danger” to this country, they have the responsibility to fight back with anything and everything they have at their disposal – even if it means sacrificing a few basic journalism rules here and there. Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
Wrong. That’s nothing more than misguided justification. Two wrongs do not make a right.
In his article, Mr. Clark also referenced another author, Samuel Hayakawa, who wrote Language in Thought and Action. In this seminal book, Hayakawa argues that reporters should avoid “loaded” language and always understand that it is not their job to declare something good or bad. Hayakawa warns that straightforward reporting is the only remedy for malicious propaganda which, around the time of his writing, had been widely disseminated by the Nazis.
He is so right. The only thing more dangerous than brazen lies told by a destructive leader is overcompensation – somehow convincing oneself that the actions of this person are so terrible that it gives everyone else permission to abandon their own moral principles.
Listen, we get it. American journalists are asked to achieve one of the trickiest balancing acts in the world, especially during a time when the U.S. president calls them “fake news” and “the enemy of the state;” says he is going to throw them in jail; and actively tells his followers on television, social media, and in person at political rallies to attack them mentally and physically.
Journalists are only human, after all. They are also Americans, and every one of them has a deep love for our country, just as we all do. It would be exceedingly naïve to believe that humans can switch off their opinions and world views every time their hands hit a keyboard or camera lights come on. This is the reason we could never be journalists, as much as we would love to be. We would find it incredibly frustrating to not freely give our opinions whenever I wanted. But that’s why we're not journalists.
It’s important to also remember that Donald Trump’s first presidency came at a time when media were already going through an extremely difficult transition. Because the Internet has given anyone and everyone access to a public platform, it has cut deeply into traditional newsrooms.
Plus, let’s face it, most straightforward new stories don’t sell nearly as well as salacious ones. That’s just a fact. Buy any reporter a shot or two of tequila and I bet anything most would admit that, while incredibly frustrating and utterly exhausting, the first presidency of Donald J. Trump – and both before and after – was on balance a huge windfall for them.
Our fear is that these new realities created additional motivations for journalists. A decade ago, we would never even know what our favorite newspaper reporter looked like. Even today, The Economist doesn’t include the name of the person who writes each article. But now, we see print journalists everywhere, especially on cable news (and are we crazy or does it seem like many of them also have brand new gym memberships and stylists?!?). We buy and read their books, which usually reveal early on if they are Team Red or Team Blue …then their bylines show up in supposedly straightforward, unbiased articles in The New York Times or The Washington Post.
Take Willie Geist, whom we adore. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Willie is free with his personal opinions, and it is pretty obvious which side he generally comes down on… and it goes without saying he is no fan of Donald Trump. But then, soon after, you’ll see him anchoring The Today Show on NBC. It gets a little muddled, to say the least. Americans who watch Fox News know Willie does this too, and it feeds right into their already strong belief that the “mainstream media” is just a propaganda machine for the Democrats.
This is a problem. It’s actually a MAJOR problem because Fox News itself is a MAJOR problem. In fact, I blame Fox News more than anything else for the escalation of our national political division over the past decade for this reason:
Fox News blatantly misleads and manipulates its audience. Straight up. And has for years.
The hundreds of thousands of pages of internal emails, texts, and other communications that Fox News was forced to provide during the defamation lawsuit brought against them by Dominion Voting Systems proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
In the years before the 2020 election, then chairman and CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes and its owner Rupert Murdoch had an uncanny read on what Fox’s audience wanted to hear and worked tirelessly to give them what they wanted, irrespective of journalistic integrity. But after the election, it became clear there was a high cost to doing business this way. In the process of providing its viewers exactly what they wanted to hear for all those years, Fox inadvertently handed all editorial decisions to them, essentially letting the tail wag the dog.
This business model worked fine when the stakes were relatively low, but in the weeks after the 2020 election – when the stakes couldn’t have been higher – Fox’s chickens came home to roost. Rupert Murdoch and Fox News had a choice to make: Should they stick to reporting the truth and risk losing some of their audience to new players like Newsmax, or follow some of their audience down a rabbit hole of election lies and conspiracy theories?
They made the wrong choice. As Fox host s#+# stirrers and executives from the top down privately scoffed at – and denounced – the election fraud claims being made by Donald Trump and his clown show surrogates, their airwaves shamelessly perpetuated falsehoods and conspiracy theories for nothing more than ratings.
We hope these people have done some serious soul searching since then. What good are high ratings when you sell your country out? What exactly is the price for your soul?
Thankfully for us but unfortunately for them, Fox News’ insidious and duplicitous behavior was all revealed in black and white thanks to the Dominion lawsuit. God bless you, Dominion! You did your country a tremendous service.