I am thinking about what a journalism professor said some years ago: that a journalists job is not that of merely giving two sides of an argument as to whether it is raining; it is to open the window and find out if it is actually raining.
This interview was great at articulating the press's role in Trump's power grab in a realistic and compassionate way that I hadn't heard before! It has highlighted for me how much vitriolic pointing the finger at the press I have seen recently. It seems there is an eagerness to distribute blame: it's the Republicans' fault, it's Comey's fault, it's the press's fault. As if all of these entities have the sole purpose of standing between the public and the fall of democracy. Not that there aren't arguments to be made there, but it occurs to me that what matters far more than assigning blame right now is taking responsibility. Ok, we're in this mess. We're in it together. What can we do as individuals and as professions? Rosen is contemplating the latter especially, which is great. Me too and I'm starting to actually find some traction on the former as well.
I never considered the press as the defender/savior of the country. But I did and still do expect the press to be pro-democracy. Because that's who we are as Americans. So, I was heartened to read Mr. Rosen's words encouraging the same. Though I recognize press outlets have been under pressure since the 2020 primaries, hated by the Trumpers, alt-right alike, the evidence of Trump's lies, corruption, fraud has been with us from the start. Yet, there was a long stretch of time that most journalists refused to use the word 'liar' despite Trump's daily spew of nonsense and twisted logic. Kellyanne Conway blurted it out with the infamous phrase 'alternative facts,' as if such an animal existed.
My biggest gripe with political articles I've read and continue to read is the penchant for presenting both sides of the political argument. The so-called balanced approach. What pray tell is the 'other side' to a democratic, constitutional Republic? Oligarchy? Fascism? Mafia state? Those systems certainly exist in the world and have gained a foothold in other weak/failed democracies. But do we really want to pretend those systems are desirable, equal, maybe even better forms of governance? In the same vein, do we really want to pretend the current Republican Party is a functional party, the loyal opposition? Because from where I sit they are not only dysfunctional but anti-democratic and unAmerican.
Trump and his enablers are attempting to undo the rule of law, subvert and replace it with subservience to Dear Leader while many journalists worry about 'going too far,' losing access or whatever they're so professionally worried about. They've already been called Enemies of the People. If that doesn't ring alarm bells, I don't know what will.
As citizens who still value truth and facts and our ability to reason, we're all teetering on a political precipice. That includes journalists.
I've also been listening to Bob Dy;an, especially All Along the Watchtower from the "John Wesley Harding" album recording which has timeless relevance on the need to speak the truth and to overcome corrupt government leaders who exploit others selfishly for their own ill-gotten riches and want us to be subservient to them. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT7Hj-ea0VE with these lyrics in description:
Lyrics:
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth
No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late
All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
This is also a fascinating video describing the background and some conclusions about the song, "All Along the Watchtower" & the timeless American songwriter, Bob Dylan (whose body of work won a Nobel Prize for Literature):
Yes, if only people would stop saying we need two strong parties in the United States! We sure don't if one is "anti-democracy" as Jay Rosen well points out and catastrophic as I've been saying as in this comment on a Washington Post article:
"We need to learn to much better cooperate and help each other globally or all lose everything in our highly-interconnected and interdependent world. That also means helping each other to disempower each other's national oppressors instead of normalizing or tolerating them when strategic and intelligent coalition action is needed to force oppressive leaders out of office without war. We barely rescued ourselves in the United States from very destructive, deadly and socially-divisive Trump and the increasingly-extremist and untruthful Republican Party who has become inexcusably anti-democratic, injurious and rapidly authoritarian. Other nations could have done much more to strategically help to save us, too, and still should since Trump and "his" nearly completely subservient far-right party are still a significant threat to all in the U.S. and globally —along with the transnational crime syndicate they are in league with for elite criminal domination over our entire planet. We must urgently act now before the international challenges we face right now become even harder to surmount. We do not "need" two strong parties when one of them is catastrophic!"
Edwin Bayley, the founder and first dean of the journalism school at U.C. Berkeley, wrote Joe McCarthy and the Press, examining in depth how Joe McCarth skillfully manipulated the press, how the press, even when they knew what he was doing, didn't or couldn't respond to protect itself and democracy. Trump is following McCarthy's playbook. Over the last four to five years, Jay Rosen and plenty of others in academia and in the working media have called out Trump and the Republicans for threatening democracy by lying to the public and manipulating the media. Yet, as a profession, journalists and others in the media seem unable to break out of the paradigm of reporting that has proven ineffective in dealing with demagoguery. Listening to Brian Stelter, Margaret Sullivan, and others, the feeling is inescapable that they are continually reinventing the wheel, as though they have never seen one before. Always a prototype, their wheel never finds its way into production. Given what has been known at least since McCarthy, this is inexcusable, but probably happening because the media are first a business and only second a profession. Under these circumstances, isn't the media calling themselves "The Fourth Estate" and assigning themselves an important role in maintenance of democracy misleading the public and deceiving themselves?
Do you have any insight into why the media seem unable to break out of their reporting paradigm that treats the Republicans as a traditional political party rather than an organization committed to power to the exclusion of all other aims? Constantly describing the parties as "polarized" suggests a single line continuum, with one party on either end. But Democrats have policy goals (in addition to maintaining their majorities), whereas Republicans are an organization steeped in lies and focused on the single goal of power. Why do the media persist in the polarization model, which fails to report the reality of what is going on?
Thanks Ruth, both the Baker and Rosen interviews made for frustrating reading and illuminatinig at the same time. What follows isn't a criticism in their regard: I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for them to work in that environment. and keep sane.
I keep thinking of what is happening to journalists inside Russia, Poland, Hungary, China, Myanmar and any other regime where the freedom of the press is non-existent or in danger of extinction and I need to wonder if the American or Western press in general understand that this could actually happen to them.
I'd love to know if they felt they were in danger of losing their freedom as journalists, and as citizens.
I think they felt in danger of a more immediate kind, but losing freedom takes time, unless you have a coup, the countries you cite have leaders there for many years now (other than the Myanmar coup)
The big issue I’ve found seems to be fear of loss of access(NYT can now call Trump a liar) as when he was in office they were afraid to. Further, we need more Bernstein-Woodward type investigations, but fear of lost access blunts this too. Very unfortunate. I’m heartened by the PA station’s work.
Its somewhat encouraging to see the press and media outlets like the NY Times are finally using the word 'lie' to describe Trump's claim that the election was stolen.
Jay Rosen great comment in the early tfg era was for the news orgs to "Send in the interns".
I want to hear more about the pressures journalists feel.
I am thinking about what a journalism professor said some years ago: that a journalists job is not that of merely giving two sides of an argument as to whether it is raining; it is to open the window and find out if it is actually raining.
(I think) Jay Rosen called this as kind of reporting as the "View From Nowhere"
This interview was great at articulating the press's role in Trump's power grab in a realistic and compassionate way that I hadn't heard before! It has highlighted for me how much vitriolic pointing the finger at the press I have seen recently. It seems there is an eagerness to distribute blame: it's the Republicans' fault, it's Comey's fault, it's the press's fault. As if all of these entities have the sole purpose of standing between the public and the fall of democracy. Not that there aren't arguments to be made there, but it occurs to me that what matters far more than assigning blame right now is taking responsibility. Ok, we're in this mess. We're in it together. What can we do as individuals and as professions? Rosen is contemplating the latter especially, which is great. Me too and I'm starting to actually find some traction on the former as well.
I will follow Jay Rosen!
I never considered the press as the defender/savior of the country. But I did and still do expect the press to be pro-democracy. Because that's who we are as Americans. So, I was heartened to read Mr. Rosen's words encouraging the same. Though I recognize press outlets have been under pressure since the 2020 primaries, hated by the Trumpers, alt-right alike, the evidence of Trump's lies, corruption, fraud has been with us from the start. Yet, there was a long stretch of time that most journalists refused to use the word 'liar' despite Trump's daily spew of nonsense and twisted logic. Kellyanne Conway blurted it out with the infamous phrase 'alternative facts,' as if such an animal existed.
My biggest gripe with political articles I've read and continue to read is the penchant for presenting both sides of the political argument. The so-called balanced approach. What pray tell is the 'other side' to a democratic, constitutional Republic? Oligarchy? Fascism? Mafia state? Those systems certainly exist in the world and have gained a foothold in other weak/failed democracies. But do we really want to pretend those systems are desirable, equal, maybe even better forms of governance? In the same vein, do we really want to pretend the current Republican Party is a functional party, the loyal opposition? Because from where I sit they are not only dysfunctional but anti-democratic and unAmerican.
Trump and his enablers are attempting to undo the rule of law, subvert and replace it with subservience to Dear Leader while many journalists worry about 'going too far,' losing access or whatever they're so professionally worried about. They've already been called Enemies of the People. If that doesn't ring alarm bells, I don't know what will.
As citizens who still value truth and facts and our ability to reason, we're all teetering on a political precipice. That includes journalists.
Great points, we will raise them in the live chat!
I've also been listening to Bob Dy;an, especially All Along the Watchtower from the "John Wesley Harding" album recording which has timeless relevance on the need to speak the truth and to overcome corrupt government leaders who exploit others selfishly for their own ill-gotten riches and want us to be subservient to them. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT7Hj-ea0VE with these lyrics in description:
Lyrics:
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth
No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late
All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
This is also a fascinating video describing the background and some conclusions about the song, "All Along the Watchtower" & the timeless American songwriter, Bob Dylan (whose body of work won a Nobel Prize for Literature):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In6gCrGeZfA .
Yes, if only people would stop saying we need two strong parties in the United States! We sure don't if one is "anti-democracy" as Jay Rosen well points out and catastrophic as I've been saying as in this comment on a Washington Post article:
"We need to learn to much better cooperate and help each other globally or all lose everything in our highly-interconnected and interdependent world. That also means helping each other to disempower each other's national oppressors instead of normalizing or tolerating them when strategic and intelligent coalition action is needed to force oppressive leaders out of office without war. We barely rescued ourselves in the United States from very destructive, deadly and socially-divisive Trump and the increasingly-extremist and untruthful Republican Party who has become inexcusably anti-democratic, injurious and rapidly authoritarian. Other nations could have done much more to strategically help to save us, too, and still should since Trump and "his" nearly completely subservient far-right party are still a significant threat to all in the U.S. and globally —along with the transnational crime syndicate they are in league with for elite criminal domination over our entire planet. We must urgently act now before the international challenges we face right now become even harder to surmount. We do not "need" two strong parties when one of them is catastrophic!"
Edwin Bayley, the founder and first dean of the journalism school at U.C. Berkeley, wrote Joe McCarthy and the Press, examining in depth how Joe McCarth skillfully manipulated the press, how the press, even when they knew what he was doing, didn't or couldn't respond to protect itself and democracy. Trump is following McCarthy's playbook. Over the last four to five years, Jay Rosen and plenty of others in academia and in the working media have called out Trump and the Republicans for threatening democracy by lying to the public and manipulating the media. Yet, as a profession, journalists and others in the media seem unable to break out of the paradigm of reporting that has proven ineffective in dealing with demagoguery. Listening to Brian Stelter, Margaret Sullivan, and others, the feeling is inescapable that they are continually reinventing the wheel, as though they have never seen one before. Always a prototype, their wheel never finds its way into production. Given what has been known at least since McCarthy, this is inexcusable, but probably happening because the media are first a business and only second a profession. Under these circumstances, isn't the media calling themselves "The Fourth Estate" and assigning themselves an important role in maintenance of democracy misleading the public and deceiving themselves?
Yes, Barbie Zelizer also talks about McCarthyism as a precedent in the 2017 book she edited on the media and Trump.
Do you have any insight into why the media seem unable to break out of their reporting paradigm that treats the Republicans as a traditional political party rather than an organization committed to power to the exclusion of all other aims? Constantly describing the parties as "polarized" suggests a single line continuum, with one party on either end. But Democrats have policy goals (in addition to maintaining their majorities), whereas Republicans are an organization steeped in lies and focused on the single goal of power. Why do the media persist in the polarization model, which fails to report the reality of what is going on?
Thanks Ruth, both the Baker and Rosen interviews made for frustrating reading and illuminatinig at the same time. What follows isn't a criticism in their regard: I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for them to work in that environment. and keep sane.
I keep thinking of what is happening to journalists inside Russia, Poland, Hungary, China, Myanmar and any other regime where the freedom of the press is non-existent or in danger of extinction and I need to wonder if the American or Western press in general understand that this could actually happen to them.
I'd love to know if they felt they were in danger of losing their freedom as journalists, and as citizens.
I think they felt in danger of a more immediate kind, but losing freedom takes time, unless you have a coup, the countries you cite have leaders there for many years now (other than the Myanmar coup)
The big issue I’ve found seems to be fear of loss of access(NYT can now call Trump a liar) as when he was in office they were afraid to. Further, we need more Bernstein-Woodward type investigations, but fear of lost access blunts this too. Very unfortunate. I’m heartened by the PA station’s work.
Its somewhat encouraging to see the press and media outlets like the NY Times are finally using the word 'lie' to describe Trump's claim that the election was stolen.
Yes, it took CNN some time too, as I can attest, but they got there earlier than many others
Stay lucid and serene with John Lennon and the Beatles. A JL favorite of mine "Gimme Some Truth".