Steve Benen has written a book with the title "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics. The book is excerpted on a talkingpointsmemo at How The GOP Gave Up On Governing In Order To Keep Winning Elections.
The excerpt explains, "The GOP's push to win elections at all costs opened the door to a new leader who would cement its status as a post-policy party."
The following passage is the heart of Benen's argument:
"Many voters have grown accustomed to the idea of a national competition pitting two governing parties against each other. One has a more progressive vision, the other a more conservative one, but for most Americans, Democrats and Republicans are basically mirror images of one other, each with an internal range of opinions. The electorate has long had reason to assume that both major parties were mature and responsible policymaking entities, their philosophical differences notwithstanding.
The actions of the Republican Party over the last decade have made it abundantly clear that it’s time to reevaluate that assumption.
The current iteration of the GOP is indifferent to the substance of governing. It is disdainful of expertise and analysis. It is hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized, or implemented.
The modern Republican Party has become a post-policy party."
When this blog was started on February 14, 2016 with the post "Scalia Successor" , the blog name "When Tactics Become Policy" was chosen as the best description of the phenomenon that Benen describes.What he calls a "post-policy party" is one in which actions to advance a policy are completely replaced by actions with the sole purpose of winning, and such actions are tactical in nature, not designed to advance policy, but to ensure victories, either by election or by judicial nominations.
But this blog has also been dedicated to the proposition that the traditional view of political parties that are mirror images of each other, equal and opposite, is also a protected viewpoint, however flawed. That is because the traditional view of fairness and objectivity taken by the NYT and others commands that any objective view of the political parties must eschew assymetry - assymetry could result in one party being "bad" when the other party is being "good", assumed be a biased conclusion.
This tension between entities like the NY Times clinging to an outmoded definition of good political journalism and the clear logical argument against that NY Times position has persisted in recent years despite its flaws. And so, Benen emerges as only the latest example of someone yet again making an argument to the public as if it is new, trying different angles to convince people who refuse to be convinced by compelling arguments because they made their minds up long ago. Or maybe because they only care about winning and using any tactics that will get them there.
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Monday, June 22, 2020
Friday, June 19, 2020
Two Sides are Better Than One
When you are lost in bothsidesism like the New York Times, you come up with headlines like this:
Bolton Unites Republicans and Democrats in Scorn Over Tell-All Book
Bolton's upcoming book can be reported from different angles.
1. New revelations from a high-ranking insider among those who were fired or resigned. Are the revelations true? Anyone notice a pattern of behavior among these folks whose accusations of Trumpian incompetence are quite consistent?
2. Bolton as the focus in terms of the significant role he played refusing to testify during the House impeachment inquiry without a court approval, but agreeing to testify in the trial if called by the Senate.
But the NYT favors reporting that presumes there are two sides (no more, no less), equal and opposite, always in contention. The way for a reporter to find out about what's new in politics is bounce back and forth between those two sides asking questions prompted by whatever one side or the other said. But as a reporter, you always look for some novelty. Therefore, in this case Republicans and Democrats are "united" in their scorn for Bolton. But for anyone who cares about meaning, that headline is a great normalizer of the current state of the federal government. Suppose the current administration is devastating the Department of Justice under Barr as it has the Department of State under Tillerson, then Pompeo? Are acting heads of the departments a problem? How about the recent criticisms from Mattis? The criticism from General Milley? House cleaning at the Voice of America this week. Is that a concern? The list is endless.
Yet in a series of weak examples in support of a dubious thesis ("dubious" a favorite Times descriptor, often applied to outright lies), the Times makes us question whether the conclusions came first, followed by the examples.
"But on Thursday, they found consensus on one thing.
Everyone, it seemed, was mad at John R. Bolton."
Sorry, but that's not really what constitutes consensus, in particular when we are talking about lawmakers. Democrats in Congress would have preferred that the Bolton evidence be submitted only a few months ago when the impeachment and trial were taking place. A sane NYT article on the subject would have noted that Trump has consistently taken extraordinary measures to keep useful witnesses from appearing before committees, but some have appeared anyway. Instead, the Times regards being able to tell a both sides are the same story as a resounding success. Or is it a safe place for these editors. Hard to tell. But they do go on.
"Republicans were mad that Mr. Bolton, whose book “The Room Where It Happened” described Mr. Trump’s presidency as a series of actions that amounted to “obstruction of justice as a way of life,” was daring to malign the president."
How does "daring to malign the president" explain or justify Trump's alleged 'obstruction of justice as a way of life." The NYT editors know full well if they started to ask Republican members of Congress directly about Bolton's accusations, they would be stonewalled or lashed out against as "fake news". Instead of confronting the Republican officeholders failure to address these issues in good faith with responses, the NYT editors and reporters accept Republicans' reactions as if they are rendered in good faith or just let them sit there without elaboration. But Democrats are not entitled to such generosity. Democrats suffer from "a certain institutional hostility to being told how to do their jobs." if they wanted Bolton to have testified before Congress. Yet Kevin McCarthy can assert without NYT challenge, and without apparent basis in fact "We’ve watched people before make lies about the president.” and suggest that Bolton is only doing this for the money. Is McCarthy claiming that Trump is actually competent?
"Still, at least some lawmakers who agonized over whether to allow Mr. Bolton and others to be subpoenaed as part of the impeachment trial — and ultimately decided to block the move — said they were not sorry.
“I made the decision that I made at the time that I made it,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska. “And, you know, there’s no going back.”"
Where is the proof that Lisa Murkowski agonized? Maybe she just put on a good show. Her alleged mental processes are reported as fact - a typical NYT kidgloves treatment for Republicans in Congress. And there's no going back? Sorry, Trump could be impeached and convicted pretty quickly if Congress got together on it, but someone like Lisa Murkowski would have to take the next step to indicate her openness with "And you know, I would have voted differently - let's go back and fix this problem!"
Susan Collins, another Republican, gets a different free pass, running off and ducking questions with claims of ignorance -another Republican favorite avoidance tactic that NYT fails to point out even as John Cornyn makes the same claim.
Note the shoddy reporting. The assertion of Republican scorn for Bolton is supported by the Kevin McCarthy quote, but the quotes from Murkowski, Collins, and Cornyn do not express or imply scorn whatsoever. Neither does a vague reference to Rubio later in the piece seem to indicate scorn at all.
At the NYT, the federal government of the U.S. is treated as something permanent and unshakable. Nothing could ever destroy it. If democracy in the U.S. were completely destroyed, you can be sure NYT reporting on politics would look pretty much as it does now, centering new articles on "Republicans and Democrats" or, as they sometimes incongruously pose "Democrats and some Republicans".
But the big problem was clear at the very beginning of the article:
"On Capitol Hill, the release of the book appeared only to harden long-calcified views of the president and his conduct."
See what they did there? John Bolton, a very conservative life long Republican no longer in a government position, accuses the president of the U.S. of being completely incompetent, corrupt, and ignorant - only interested in personal advantage with no regard for U.S. policy except as it affects him personally. In other words, Bolton only makes accusations that any long time observer of the national scene already knows through accumulation of all evidence collected over these last three years. Bolton just adds evidence to the case. But the NYT sees all of that evidence and maps it onto the both sides frame - Democrats on Capitol Hill are not looking at the evidence and drawing proper conclusions; they are politicians with "long-calcified views". And Republicans in Congress are given a free pass. They are not politicians who have continued to support Trump and his corruption. They, too, are just politicians with "long-calcified" views. See both sides are the same. Aren't we good fair reporters? Or as the NYT's own Maggie Haberman might say, Whatta Town!
Bolton Unites Republicans and Democrats in Scorn Over Tell-All Book
Bolton's upcoming book can be reported from different angles.
1. New revelations from a high-ranking insider among those who were fired or resigned. Are the revelations true? Anyone notice a pattern of behavior among these folks whose accusations of Trumpian incompetence are quite consistent?
2. Bolton as the focus in terms of the significant role he played refusing to testify during the House impeachment inquiry without a court approval, but agreeing to testify in the trial if called by the Senate.
But the NYT favors reporting that presumes there are two sides (no more, no less), equal and opposite, always in contention. The way for a reporter to find out about what's new in politics is bounce back and forth between those two sides asking questions prompted by whatever one side or the other said. But as a reporter, you always look for some novelty. Therefore, in this case Republicans and Democrats are "united" in their scorn for Bolton. But for anyone who cares about meaning, that headline is a great normalizer of the current state of the federal government. Suppose the current administration is devastating the Department of Justice under Barr as it has the Department of State under Tillerson, then Pompeo? Are acting heads of the departments a problem? How about the recent criticisms from Mattis? The criticism from General Milley? House cleaning at the Voice of America this week. Is that a concern? The list is endless.
Yet in a series of weak examples in support of a dubious thesis ("dubious" a favorite Times descriptor, often applied to outright lies), the Times makes us question whether the conclusions came first, followed by the examples.
"But on Thursday, they found consensus on one thing.
Everyone, it seemed, was mad at John R. Bolton."
Sorry, but that's not really what constitutes consensus, in particular when we are talking about lawmakers. Democrats in Congress would have preferred that the Bolton evidence be submitted only a few months ago when the impeachment and trial were taking place. A sane NYT article on the subject would have noted that Trump has consistently taken extraordinary measures to keep useful witnesses from appearing before committees, but some have appeared anyway. Instead, the Times regards being able to tell a both sides are the same story as a resounding success. Or is it a safe place for these editors. Hard to tell. But they do go on.
"Republicans were mad that Mr. Bolton, whose book “The Room Where It Happened” described Mr. Trump’s presidency as a series of actions that amounted to “obstruction of justice as a way of life,” was daring to malign the president."
How does "daring to malign the president" explain or justify Trump's alleged 'obstruction of justice as a way of life." The NYT editors know full well if they started to ask Republican members of Congress directly about Bolton's accusations, they would be stonewalled or lashed out against as "fake news". Instead of confronting the Republican officeholders failure to address these issues in good faith with responses, the NYT editors and reporters accept Republicans' reactions as if they are rendered in good faith or just let them sit there without elaboration. But Democrats are not entitled to such generosity. Democrats suffer from "a certain institutional hostility to being told how to do their jobs." if they wanted Bolton to have testified before Congress. Yet Kevin McCarthy can assert without NYT challenge, and without apparent basis in fact "We’ve watched people before make lies about the president.” and suggest that Bolton is only doing this for the money. Is McCarthy claiming that Trump is actually competent?
"Still, at least some lawmakers who agonized over whether to allow Mr. Bolton and others to be subpoenaed as part of the impeachment trial — and ultimately decided to block the move — said they were not sorry.
“I made the decision that I made at the time that I made it,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska. “And, you know, there’s no going back.”"
Where is the proof that Lisa Murkowski agonized? Maybe she just put on a good show. Her alleged mental processes are reported as fact - a typical NYT kidgloves treatment for Republicans in Congress. And there's no going back? Sorry, Trump could be impeached and convicted pretty quickly if Congress got together on it, but someone like Lisa Murkowski would have to take the next step to indicate her openness with "And you know, I would have voted differently - let's go back and fix this problem!"
Susan Collins, another Republican, gets a different free pass, running off and ducking questions with claims of ignorance -another Republican favorite avoidance tactic that NYT fails to point out even as John Cornyn makes the same claim.
Note the shoddy reporting. The assertion of Republican scorn for Bolton is supported by the Kevin McCarthy quote, but the quotes from Murkowski, Collins, and Cornyn do not express or imply scorn whatsoever. Neither does a vague reference to Rubio later in the piece seem to indicate scorn at all.
At the NYT, the federal government of the U.S. is treated as something permanent and unshakable. Nothing could ever destroy it. If democracy in the U.S. were completely destroyed, you can be sure NYT reporting on politics would look pretty much as it does now, centering new articles on "Republicans and Democrats" or, as they sometimes incongruously pose "Democrats and some Republicans".
But the big problem was clear at the very beginning of the article:
"On Capitol Hill, the release of the book appeared only to harden long-calcified views of the president and his conduct."
See what they did there? John Bolton, a very conservative life long Republican no longer in a government position, accuses the president of the U.S. of being completely incompetent, corrupt, and ignorant - only interested in personal advantage with no regard for U.S. policy except as it affects him personally. In other words, Bolton only makes accusations that any long time observer of the national scene already knows through accumulation of all evidence collected over these last three years. Bolton just adds evidence to the case. But the NYT sees all of that evidence and maps it onto the both sides frame - Democrats on Capitol Hill are not looking at the evidence and drawing proper conclusions; they are politicians with "long-calcified views". And Republicans in Congress are given a free pass. They are not politicians who have continued to support Trump and his corruption. They, too, are just politicians with "long-calcified" views. See both sides are the same. Aren't we good fair reporters? Or as the NYT's own Maggie Haberman might say, Whatta Town!
President celebrates people being unemployed. Whatta town. https://t.co/aBoHOG9UlK— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 27, 2020
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Will The New York Times Kill What's Left of Americans' Faith in The New York Times?
Will The New York Times Kill What's Left of Americans' Faith in The New York Times?
Yes, they will.
"Will the Coronavirus Kill What's Left of Americans' Faith in Washington?" from Sabrina Tavernise manages to squeeze in a multitude of the grievous errors of political reporting typical of the Times.
As a matter of interest, the URL link tells us the theme "coronavirus-government-trust". That's the warning this will be a carefully crafted both sides story.
To begin, take the false premise - the Times pretends they are in no way part of the story, Even with a focus on the theme of trust, trust is just something that deveops between politicians and constituents without the influence of information sources like the Times. In this fantasy world, the Newspaper of Record has no impact.
Now take the logical fallacy. The Times has been feeding these "man on the street" pieces on politicians and "trust" for years now, bolstered by poll results showing a decline in trust in government. These articles, slotted under the hard news banner rather than opinion pieces, purport to be the result of an exploratory process. Yet a true exploration might yield a surprise here or there. But that never happens. We always know the result of the interviews with "just folks" out there in the country (the real America?) will be a balance and a contrived one at that. We hear from a 62 year old in whose experience "Vietnam happened, then Watergate." Really? Vietnam just happened? Wasn't that the result of conscious decisions by politicians? And Watergate just happened? That was a conscious decision by political operatives to burglarize the HQ of the Democratic Party and by the Republican president to conspire to conceal evidence of crimes. Things don't just happen, unless you are the NYT afraid to seem to point fingers.
If we know what is going to be reported before the interviews happen, what is the value of the interviews other than as false support for a preconceived narrative. And isn't that just a different form of propaganda?
Another fallacy that serves as a fundamental premise of the trust theme is that there is this thing called "Washington". This false premise co-exists with the fallacy that Republicans and Democrats exist in a rivalry between two equal and opposite sides which can only be symmetric, never assymmetric. What if some interesting asymmetry emerged. Sorry, that can not exist because if we observed that and reported its significance, and it made one side look bad, we would appear to be taking sides and could no longer be trusted as reporters. What if one side noticed we, the NYT, always gave our reporting a tilt toward nominal balance and decided to skew their behavior to take advantage of that reporting weakness (such as lying)? Nope. We would still bend over backwards in support of balance and call that "fairness". It's up to the other side to get the truth out there.
The rules of false balance require the reporter to avoid pinning blame on politicians which might make the reporter appear biased or would inevitably tilt a reasonable person to conclude that maybe in this one case one "side" is really bad after all. Can't let that happen.
So in this narrative, you would never know that Trump was impeached by the House a few months ago and acquitted by the Senate. You would not know that a factor in whether or not to trust Trump could be his recommendations to use hydroxychloriquine for coronavirus or that he was excited about getting UV rays inside the body and bleach. You would never know that there just might be more reasons to mistrust Trump than any other government official and certainly any other president. You would not know because of paragraphs like this:
"The disillusionment has become a facet of national political campaigning. Mr. Trump pitched himself as an outsider fighting for those left behind by Washington’s policies. Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, talks that way, too. But for Americans who no longer trust government, the promises, even from their own party, sound hollow."
Paragraphs like that normalize Trump. He has been president for three years, yet the article goes back to favorable claims Trump make about himself while campaigning in 2016. Yet another lame, but standard straight reporting approach is to avoid making statements, far less judgments, about Trump based on ordinary standards of objective facts and instead, to take his claims about himself as a starting point.
That throw-in line "Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, talks that way, too." reads like a last minute desperate attempt to both sides the comment about Trump with a "Biden just like Trump" line.
The saddest fact about the NYT standard "real people" mistrust Washington articles is that they perpetuate the perception that "Washington" is the problem, thus avoiding accountability of top politicians for their actions and inactions. The NYT could take a stronger stand to force accountability rather than desperately reaching to both sides all of the articles related to politics. When one "side" maintains such control over the federal government, which they continue to expand in the judiciary with lifetime appointments of young judges, the NYT could shift their tone to a speaking truth to power mode. Instead, the NYT has chosen to strain credulity by doubling down on bothsidesism.
Yes, they will.
"Will the Coronavirus Kill What's Left of Americans' Faith in Washington?" from Sabrina Tavernise manages to squeeze in a multitude of the grievous errors of political reporting typical of the Times.
As a matter of interest, the URL link tells us the theme "coronavirus-government-trust". That's the warning this will be a carefully crafted both sides story.
To begin, take the false premise - the Times pretends they are in no way part of the story, Even with a focus on the theme of trust, trust is just something that deveops between politicians and constituents without the influence of information sources like the Times. In this fantasy world, the Newspaper of Record has no impact.
Now take the logical fallacy. The Times has been feeding these "man on the street" pieces on politicians and "trust" for years now, bolstered by poll results showing a decline in trust in government. These articles, slotted under the hard news banner rather than opinion pieces, purport to be the result of an exploratory process. Yet a true exploration might yield a surprise here or there. But that never happens. We always know the result of the interviews with "just folks" out there in the country (the real America?) will be a balance and a contrived one at that. We hear from a 62 year old in whose experience "Vietnam happened, then Watergate." Really? Vietnam just happened? Wasn't that the result of conscious decisions by politicians? And Watergate just happened? That was a conscious decision by political operatives to burglarize the HQ of the Democratic Party and by the Republican president to conspire to conceal evidence of crimes. Things don't just happen, unless you are the NYT afraid to seem to point fingers.
If we know what is going to be reported before the interviews happen, what is the value of the interviews other than as false support for a preconceived narrative. And isn't that just a different form of propaganda?
Another fallacy that serves as a fundamental premise of the trust theme is that there is this thing called "Washington". This false premise co-exists with the fallacy that Republicans and Democrats exist in a rivalry between two equal and opposite sides which can only be symmetric, never assymmetric. What if some interesting asymmetry emerged. Sorry, that can not exist because if we observed that and reported its significance, and it made one side look bad, we would appear to be taking sides and could no longer be trusted as reporters. What if one side noticed we, the NYT, always gave our reporting a tilt toward nominal balance and decided to skew their behavior to take advantage of that reporting weakness (such as lying)? Nope. We would still bend over backwards in support of balance and call that "fairness". It's up to the other side to get the truth out there.
The rules of false balance require the reporter to avoid pinning blame on politicians which might make the reporter appear biased or would inevitably tilt a reasonable person to conclude that maybe in this one case one "side" is really bad after all. Can't let that happen.
So in this narrative, you would never know that Trump was impeached by the House a few months ago and acquitted by the Senate. You would not know that a factor in whether or not to trust Trump could be his recommendations to use hydroxychloriquine for coronavirus or that he was excited about getting UV rays inside the body and bleach. You would never know that there just might be more reasons to mistrust Trump than any other government official and certainly any other president. You would not know because of paragraphs like this:
"The disillusionment has become a facet of national political campaigning. Mr. Trump pitched himself as an outsider fighting for those left behind by Washington’s policies. Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, talks that way, too. But for Americans who no longer trust government, the promises, even from their own party, sound hollow."
Paragraphs like that normalize Trump. He has been president for three years, yet the article goes back to favorable claims Trump make about himself while campaigning in 2016. Yet another lame, but standard straight reporting approach is to avoid making statements, far less judgments, about Trump based on ordinary standards of objective facts and instead, to take his claims about himself as a starting point.
That throw-in line "Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, talks that way, too." reads like a last minute desperate attempt to both sides the comment about Trump with a "Biden just like Trump" line.
The saddest fact about the NYT standard "real people" mistrust Washington articles is that they perpetuate the perception that "Washington" is the problem, thus avoiding accountability of top politicians for their actions and inactions. The NYT could take a stronger stand to force accountability rather than desperately reaching to both sides all of the articles related to politics. When one "side" maintains such control over the federal government, which they continue to expand in the judiciary with lifetime appointments of young judges, the NYT could shift their tone to a speaking truth to power mode. Instead, the NYT has chosen to strain credulity by doubling down on bothsidesism.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
It's Not Bizarre - Here's What's Bizarre
Glenn Kessler is the keeper of the lie count over at WaPo. As if counting lies into the thousands serves some purpose. Oh what a tangled web we weave when at 20,000 lies we continue to deceive. Is that the point?
But imagine the royal keeper of the lie count deliberately shading the truth in order to maintain an antiquated inoperative journalistic standard from days of yore.
The headline, though likely written by a person not named Kessler, starts this off on the wrong foot:
"Fact Checker: Trump's bizarre effort to tag Obama's swine flu response as 'a disaster'".
Using the term "bizarre" in this headline is a lie. The writer presumably means - if we were to ignore Trump's longstanding pattern of behavior of false accusations against Obama and political opponents, repeated for effect, and consider Trump a normal person, not a pathological liar, then this behavior would be bizarre. But Trump is Trump, not a different person. And don't journalists have a responsibility to treat him according to objective standards that consider his pattern of behavior, rather than as if he just now spontaneously sprang to life from the head of Zeus? What sense does it make to call behavior that exactly meets expectations "bizarre"? It makes no sense at all.
Of course the smell test tells us that if the swine flu epidemic was a disaster, we would have strong recollection of many bad things happening, which would be preserved as a collective memory informing our cultural references. But we don't. So without going to the tape, we all know it was not a disaster.
The fact checker walks through the necessary steps of examining the data and debunking the Trump claim. He does a good job of it. But is that the best use of resources. Trump succeeds by distracting attention from his failures and, by making false and misleading accusations, drawing attention to others. The so-called fact-checker's painstaking analysis tells us that a certain amount of luck was involved in the swine flu epidemic. OK, but should our focus be on the Obama administration performance in 2010? And should journalists and fact checkers allow themselves over and over to be led by the nose in whatever direction Trump leads them? I would argue, yes - maybe once, or twice at the most. But thousands of times? No. After the first couple, as the tangled web is being weaved, they need to stop fact checking and report, as I have argued many times, not what Trump claims, but what he appears to be doing by making false and inflammatory claims and accusations. Distracting from his malfeasance and escaping scrutiny of his performance.
Kessler's bottom line:
"The Pinocchio Test
Reviewing this history, we can only assume that Trump has not studied the swine-flu pandemic very closely. He simply heard a death-toll figure — remembering it incorrectly — and presumably concluded that anything associated with Obama was a debacle. But in reality, the government under Obama worked relatively smoothly, even if it was not tested as in the current pandemic."
So "Trump has not studied the swine-flu epidemic". OK, not false, but not exactly true in a helpful sense. Can't we assume that Trump has not studied anything? He does not read any agency reports - remember? And why speculate that he "simply heard a death-toll figure" and " concluded" anything. Trump does not marshall the evidence and draw conclusions about anything whatsoever. He makes accusations and that's what he does. Why speculate about a train of events in a way that is tantamount to lying by ignoring the evidence of a pattern of irresponsible behavior. Just report that behavior factually, recognize the pattern as the most important element - not the detail surrounding the allegation. Because when you, the press, shine a spotlight on the person Trump wildly accuses, you are doing his work for him - and neglecting your own work. And don't even leave the frame there of "anything associated with Obama was a debacle."
So there is nothing unexpected about Trump's behavior. News organizations that aspire to some sort of standard that still can not bring themselves to recognize and directly report a specific pattern of bad behavior as just that need to stop "fact checking" and spend more time "pattern checking".
But imagine the royal keeper of the lie count deliberately shading the truth in order to maintain an antiquated inoperative journalistic standard from days of yore.
The headline, though likely written by a person not named Kessler, starts this off on the wrong foot:
"Fact Checker: Trump's bizarre effort to tag Obama's swine flu response as 'a disaster'".
Using the term "bizarre" in this headline is a lie. The writer presumably means - if we were to ignore Trump's longstanding pattern of behavior of false accusations against Obama and political opponents, repeated for effect, and consider Trump a normal person, not a pathological liar, then this behavior would be bizarre. But Trump is Trump, not a different person. And don't journalists have a responsibility to treat him according to objective standards that consider his pattern of behavior, rather than as if he just now spontaneously sprang to life from the head of Zeus? What sense does it make to call behavior that exactly meets expectations "bizarre"? It makes no sense at all.
Of course the smell test tells us that if the swine flu epidemic was a disaster, we would have strong recollection of many bad things happening, which would be preserved as a collective memory informing our cultural references. But we don't. So without going to the tape, we all know it was not a disaster.
The fact checker walks through the necessary steps of examining the data and debunking the Trump claim. He does a good job of it. But is that the best use of resources. Trump succeeds by distracting attention from his failures and, by making false and misleading accusations, drawing attention to others. The so-called fact-checker's painstaking analysis tells us that a certain amount of luck was involved in the swine flu epidemic. OK, but should our focus be on the Obama administration performance in 2010? And should journalists and fact checkers allow themselves over and over to be led by the nose in whatever direction Trump leads them? I would argue, yes - maybe once, or twice at the most. But thousands of times? No. After the first couple, as the tangled web is being weaved, they need to stop fact checking and report, as I have argued many times, not what Trump claims, but what he appears to be doing by making false and inflammatory claims and accusations. Distracting from his malfeasance and escaping scrutiny of his performance.
Kessler's bottom line:
"The Pinocchio Test
Reviewing this history, we can only assume that Trump has not studied the swine-flu pandemic very closely. He simply heard a death-toll figure — remembering it incorrectly — and presumably concluded that anything associated with Obama was a debacle. But in reality, the government under Obama worked relatively smoothly, even if it was not tested as in the current pandemic."
So "Trump has not studied the swine-flu epidemic". OK, not false, but not exactly true in a helpful sense. Can't we assume that Trump has not studied anything? He does not read any agency reports - remember? And why speculate that he "simply heard a death-toll figure" and " concluded" anything. Trump does not marshall the evidence and draw conclusions about anything whatsoever. He makes accusations and that's what he does. Why speculate about a train of events in a way that is tantamount to lying by ignoring the evidence of a pattern of irresponsible behavior. Just report that behavior factually, recognize the pattern as the most important element - not the detail surrounding the allegation. Because when you, the press, shine a spotlight on the person Trump wildly accuses, you are doing his work for him - and neglecting your own work. And don't even leave the frame there of "anything associated with Obama was a debacle."
So there is nothing unexpected about Trump's behavior. News organizations that aspire to some sort of standard that still can not bring themselves to recognize and directly report a specific pattern of bad behavior as just that need to stop "fact checking" and spend more time "pattern checking".
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
When a Journalist Is Like a Bad Scientist
In his blog post on 'The Generalizability Crisis in the Human Sciences' Andrew Gelman writes:
"The point is that there are costs, serious costs, to being overly polite to scientific claims. Every time you “bend over backward” to give the benefit of the doubt to scientific claim A, you’re rigging things against the claim not-A. And, in doing so, you could be doing your part to lead science astray (if the claims A and not-A are of scientific importance) or to hurt people (if the claims A and not-A have applied impact)."
There exists a parallel to the treatment by journalists of their subjects. As president, Trump has openly subjected journalists to extremes of special treatment - berating them, revoking credentials, etc, especially journalists who most conform to long accepted standards of objectivity. Those journalists who have been subjected to this treatment - or the implied threat of similar treatment for non-obeisance - have sometimes come to heel in subtle, but damaging ways. And if we treat the journalistic product in these instances similar to the way we determine conclusions based on scientific study, we join them in doing damage to the truth. The most important damage may well be in ignoring the possible truth of "not-A".
For example, in ‘What do you have to lose?’: Inside Trump’s embrace of a risky drug against coronavirus', reporters Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, Laurie McGinley and Josh Dawsey begin with:
"As he stares down a pandemic, economic collapse and a political crisis of his own, President Trump thinks he may have found a silver bullet: hydroxychloroquine."
We can see the A vs. not-A problem coming in this article in the very first line that contains an important working assumption posing as a statement of observable fact. Any statement by a reporter of the form "Person X thinks R" can not be a simple statement of observable fact. We never know for sure what someone thinks or believes. In Trump's case, we often find reporters telling us "what Trump believes" - sometimes attributed (lamely) to "three people close to the president", sometimes without attribution. Strikingly, I can not recall reporters making such statements on a regular basis about any other president - all of whom, unlike Trump, felt some affinity, some obligation, to stick to the facts as much as possible. In Trump's case, in the absence of a reliable source in the president, reporters choose to short circuit their customary process of developing facts by appealing to the magical assumption that they can discern Trump's beliefs from the combination of his statements, his behaviors and sometimes, anonymous sources - and this reporting is permissible because they only employ this approach in conjunction with the assumption that the president is innocent of deliberate wrongdoing,
So, in this example, A = president touting hydroxychloroquine is based on a belief he sincerely holds that this drug is effective against the COVID-19 virus. They also ignore for this purpose the unusual negative qualities of this president who has materially lied thousands of times and committed many other acts destructive of a functioning democratic republic.
But in this example, not A, which the reporters ignore, can be many things.
Not-A could be that DJT has stalled having the federal government provide personal protection equipment, ventilators, virus testing kits, and other supplies to NY and other parts of the US in order for family and friends to benefit financially acting as a middleman for desperately needed supplies. In this scenario hydroxychloroquine might be touted as a wonder drug in order for these cronies to corner the market selling this unproven treatment. Giuliani is one of those promoting hydroxychloroquine. Suppose every time Trump puts Jared Kushner in charge of an important government initiative, the primary purpose is to advance personal financial gain for the family with corrupt intent. Suppose Kushner was originally put in charge of Middle East peace as a cover for a trade of foreign policy favors for Bin Salman and Netanyahu for personal financial payoffs or political favors. And now Kushner's assignment to the fight against the virus would be to rake in profits as a coordinator of distribution of medical equipment through private middlemen. And suppose Trump is perfectly fine with Americans dying if they are disproportionately not members of his "base"?
Reporters interested in important factual reporting should not be relying on the illogical standard - "if it means the president is doing something incredibly horrible and we can not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, it can not be true."
Context matters. See:
Trump Removes Watchdog Overseeing Pandemic Fund
Behind the Scenes Kushner Takes Charge of Coronavirus Response
Republican Fundraiser Looks to Cash In on Coronavirus
Again, remember, the point here is not that not A is necessarily factually correct and complete in all respects. The point is that the working assumption underlying the WaPo standard reporting is that not-A is assumed to be false, at least for the sake of discussion. And by assuming that not-A is false in story after story, the reporting substantiates a narrative that Trump is innocent of many, many things of which he is accused and others of which he is only suspected based on his history. The truth is that we do not know exactly why Trump is stuck on hydroxychloroquine. The reporters on this story track down numerous alleged influences on Trump, which may or may not be material to the story, but if they ignore all of the evidence of corruption in this particular case, then they are failing by treating not-A as not important.
"The point is that there are costs, serious costs, to being overly polite to scientific claims. Every time you “bend over backward” to give the benefit of the doubt to scientific claim A, you’re rigging things against the claim not-A. And, in doing so, you could be doing your part to lead science astray (if the claims A and not-A are of scientific importance) or to hurt people (if the claims A and not-A have applied impact)."
There exists a parallel to the treatment by journalists of their subjects. As president, Trump has openly subjected journalists to extremes of special treatment - berating them, revoking credentials, etc, especially journalists who most conform to long accepted standards of objectivity. Those journalists who have been subjected to this treatment - or the implied threat of similar treatment for non-obeisance - have sometimes come to heel in subtle, but damaging ways. And if we treat the journalistic product in these instances similar to the way we determine conclusions based on scientific study, we join them in doing damage to the truth. The most important damage may well be in ignoring the possible truth of "not-A".
For example, in ‘What do you have to lose?’: Inside Trump’s embrace of a risky drug against coronavirus', reporters Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, Laurie McGinley and Josh Dawsey begin with:
"As he stares down a pandemic, economic collapse and a political crisis of his own, President Trump thinks he may have found a silver bullet: hydroxychloroquine."
We can see the A vs. not-A problem coming in this article in the very first line that contains an important working assumption posing as a statement of observable fact. Any statement by a reporter of the form "Person X thinks R" can not be a simple statement of observable fact. We never know for sure what someone thinks or believes. In Trump's case, we often find reporters telling us "what Trump believes" - sometimes attributed (lamely) to "three people close to the president", sometimes without attribution. Strikingly, I can not recall reporters making such statements on a regular basis about any other president - all of whom, unlike Trump, felt some affinity, some obligation, to stick to the facts as much as possible. In Trump's case, in the absence of a reliable source in the president, reporters choose to short circuit their customary process of developing facts by appealing to the magical assumption that they can discern Trump's beliefs from the combination of his statements, his behaviors and sometimes, anonymous sources - and this reporting is permissible because they only employ this approach in conjunction with the assumption that the president is innocent of deliberate wrongdoing,
So, in this example, A = president touting hydroxychloroquine is based on a belief he sincerely holds that this drug is effective against the COVID-19 virus. They also ignore for this purpose the unusual negative qualities of this president who has materially lied thousands of times and committed many other acts destructive of a functioning democratic republic.
But in this example, not A, which the reporters ignore, can be many things.
Not-A could be that DJT has stalled having the federal government provide personal protection equipment, ventilators, virus testing kits, and other supplies to NY and other parts of the US in order for family and friends to benefit financially acting as a middleman for desperately needed supplies. In this scenario hydroxychloroquine might be touted as a wonder drug in order for these cronies to corner the market selling this unproven treatment. Giuliani is one of those promoting hydroxychloroquine. Suppose every time Trump puts Jared Kushner in charge of an important government initiative, the primary purpose is to advance personal financial gain for the family with corrupt intent. Suppose Kushner was originally put in charge of Middle East peace as a cover for a trade of foreign policy favors for Bin Salman and Netanyahu for personal financial payoffs or political favors. And now Kushner's assignment to the fight against the virus would be to rake in profits as a coordinator of distribution of medical equipment through private middlemen. And suppose Trump is perfectly fine with Americans dying if they are disproportionately not members of his "base"?
Reporters interested in important factual reporting should not be relying on the illogical standard - "if it means the president is doing something incredibly horrible and we can not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, it can not be true."
Context matters. See:
Trump Removes Watchdog Overseeing Pandemic Fund
Behind the Scenes Kushner Takes Charge of Coronavirus Response
Republican Fundraiser Looks to Cash In on Coronavirus
Again, remember, the point here is not that not A is necessarily factually correct and complete in all respects. The point is that the working assumption underlying the WaPo standard reporting is that not-A is assumed to be false, at least for the sake of discussion. And by assuming that not-A is false in story after story, the reporting substantiates a narrative that Trump is innocent of many, many things of which he is accused and others of which he is only suspected based on his history. The truth is that we do not know exactly why Trump is stuck on hydroxychloroquine. The reporters on this story track down numerous alleged influences on Trump, which may or may not be material to the story, but if they ignore all of the evidence of corruption in this particular case, then they are failing by treating not-A as not important.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Mr. Baker's Balancing Act
Peter Baker writes opinion pieces for the New York Times under the label of news on politics. NYT does not call these opinion, but these puff pieces are tantamount to opinion. In this worldview Trump is a poor, misunderstood beast who does some things for which he is criticized by some people who are on the other side. (If people who were on the same side switch sides, or if they never thought of themselves as being on the same side as Trump - 'Never Trumpers', we at the NYT just report that as criticism by Democrats and some Republicans. That's the tidy shorthand we use to fix reality into the two sides format that we cherish.
Baker is the master of the softened phrase. If a plain statement of fact would make a certain 'side" look bad, then soften the statement even if that means changing the meaning or making a statement that is unsupportable on its face.
He commits this aggressive crime against the English language and plain factual reporting throughout his writing.
"Trump's War Against 'the Deep State' Enters a New Stage" starts off badly with the title. In this moment for our republic, in a post-impeachment week of mass resignations, firings and withdrawn appointments, is it really necessary to use the Trumpsters' favored term "deep state"? Putting the term in quotes does not change the warped framing being employed and misses the opportunity to tell the reader exactly what is going on. Instead, Baker and the Times adhere to the two sides rendering of reality. One side says this, the other side says that, no one can know for sure what is happening. Everyone is biased except us, your faithful both sides political 'reporters' at the NYT.
Then there's the subhead:
"The suggestion that Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman should now face punishment by the Pentagon was one sign of how determined the president is to even the scales after his impeachment."
We know a slick softening is coming in any sentence that begins with "the suggestion that" along with the passive voice. "Was one sign" is another softy. But the worst phrasing is "how determined the president is to even the scales after his impeachment." Really? Is that all Trump wants? To even the scales? Almost makes it seem like the fair thing to do. The only person trying to even the scales here is Mr. Baker.
But it gets worse with repetition of the coddling and bothsidesist phrasing.
"This is an unsettled time in Mr. Trump's Washington."
What the hell is that supposed to mean? "This is an unsettled time" is classic, bothsidesish phrasing that, regardless what you think of what is going on, tells us absolutely nothing other than the fact that the author is a strict believer in bothsidesism. Unsettled is a vague assertion without attributing good or bad acts, good or bad faith to anyone - just unsettled because some people are upset, maybe a lot of people, probably upset on both sides, but we are clear on one thing - it's Mr. Trump's Washington. Okay...
"In the days since he was acquitted in a Senate trial, an aggrieved and unbound president has sought to even the scales as he sees it.". The word "aggrieved" has many words of similar meaning, but "aggrieved" in particular, unlike "resentful" or "vindictive", connotes a person with a grievance, likely legitimate, due to harm inflicted by another party. And remember, this is the "determined" president that we met earlier in the article. Baker and NYT make a habit of employing this kind of almost invisible description laundering in their clear intent to deprive sentences of objective clear meaning in favor of an appearance of fairness. After all, you wouldn't want an 'aggrieved" Mr. Trump 'determined' to turn his wrath on the NY Times.
An "unbound" president reminds one of Prometheus or Sampson, that is, a god or a hero with the chains removed.. "Unbound" is not inaccurate, but unbound by what? By any principles, law, or maybe norms or a sense of decency? But like the passive voice that omits the subject of an action, applying an adjective to the president without amplification can make him seem dignified and deserving of respect. For more on the story from that perspective, turn to Fox News...
"The war between Mr. Trump and what he calls the 'deep state' has entered a new, more volatile phase as the president seeks to assert greater control over a government that he is convinced is not sufficiently loyal to him."
OK, so Baker knows we are entering a new phase and says he knows what Trump is thinking. Despite a reporting style that makes him avoid plain statements of fact that could make him seem biased, if those statements got into the wrong hands, you know, of someone biased say, on Fox News, Baker knows that Trump is "convinced" the government is not sufficiently loyal to him. That phrasing is almost a full-throated endorsement of the thought - there really is a deep state after all! No wonder Trump is aggrieved!
"...the president has shown a renewed willingness to act even if it prompts fresh complaints about violating traditional norms." In that sentence, Baker, a reporter, retreats from stating that Trump violates traditional norms, something that is plain to see, in favor of bothsidesing the thought. I cant say he does what he does if it sounds bad - I have to render his actions as something that the other side will criticize.
"But the withdrawal of the four career prosecutors working on the case left the unmistakeable impression that they thought something improper had happened.? "unmistakeable impression'? Is that a joke? Is there any more mealy mouth way of saying what happened even possible?
"Mr. Trump has long suspected that people around him - both government officials and even some of his own political appointees - were secretly working against his own political interests. His impeachment...has only reinforced that view..." Wait. How does Peter Baker know what Trump suspects, that is, what he thinks? Based on what Trump, who lies all the time about everything says? This Baker soft treatment is almost an exoneration of Trump. Baker is effectively applying a standard that says - suppose Trump is innocent of all wrongdoing and is, if fact, a victim of a 'deep state' conspiracy by people who just hate him and are trying to get him. How would I write about Trump in this situation. And this is it.
"But Mr. O'Brien is presiding over a broader housecleaning at the National Security Council."
Does a housecleaning ever a bad thing? No, of course not. Let's make the government more efficient. At the NYT, let's put Mr. Trump and everyone allied with him in the best possible light.We wouldn't want to call it a purge. Maybe Mr. Trump cares about efficient government. Makes sense - he cares about corruption in Ukraine, right?
A more useful, meaningful rendering would have placed the latest 'housecleaning' in the context of the many departures from the Trump staff, advisors, and Cabinet positions where only the most ardent loyalists to a Mafia-style boss remain to assist in the expanding abuse of power we are seeing in plain sight.
Baker is the master of the softened phrase. If a plain statement of fact would make a certain 'side" look bad, then soften the statement even if that means changing the meaning or making a statement that is unsupportable on its face.
He commits this aggressive crime against the English language and plain factual reporting throughout his writing.
"Trump's War Against 'the Deep State' Enters a New Stage" starts off badly with the title. In this moment for our republic, in a post-impeachment week of mass resignations, firings and withdrawn appointments, is it really necessary to use the Trumpsters' favored term "deep state"? Putting the term in quotes does not change the warped framing being employed and misses the opportunity to tell the reader exactly what is going on. Instead, Baker and the Times adhere to the two sides rendering of reality. One side says this, the other side says that, no one can know for sure what is happening. Everyone is biased except us, your faithful both sides political 'reporters' at the NYT.
Then there's the subhead:
"The suggestion that Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman should now face punishment by the Pentagon was one sign of how determined the president is to even the scales after his impeachment."
We know a slick softening is coming in any sentence that begins with "the suggestion that" along with the passive voice. "Was one sign" is another softy. But the worst phrasing is "how determined the president is to even the scales after his impeachment." Really? Is that all Trump wants? To even the scales? Almost makes it seem like the fair thing to do. The only person trying to even the scales here is Mr. Baker.
But it gets worse with repetition of the coddling and bothsidesist phrasing.
"This is an unsettled time in Mr. Trump's Washington."
What the hell is that supposed to mean? "This is an unsettled time" is classic, bothsidesish phrasing that, regardless what you think of what is going on, tells us absolutely nothing other than the fact that the author is a strict believer in bothsidesism. Unsettled is a vague assertion without attributing good or bad acts, good or bad faith to anyone - just unsettled because some people are upset, maybe a lot of people, probably upset on both sides, but we are clear on one thing - it's Mr. Trump's Washington. Okay...
"In the days since he was acquitted in a Senate trial, an aggrieved and unbound president has sought to even the scales as he sees it.". The word "aggrieved" has many words of similar meaning, but "aggrieved" in particular, unlike "resentful" or "vindictive", connotes a person with a grievance, likely legitimate, due to harm inflicted by another party. And remember, this is the "determined" president that we met earlier in the article. Baker and NYT make a habit of employing this kind of almost invisible description laundering in their clear intent to deprive sentences of objective clear meaning in favor of an appearance of fairness. After all, you wouldn't want an 'aggrieved" Mr. Trump 'determined' to turn his wrath on the NY Times.
An "unbound" president reminds one of Prometheus or Sampson, that is, a god or a hero with the chains removed.. "Unbound" is not inaccurate, but unbound by what? By any principles, law, or maybe norms or a sense of decency? But like the passive voice that omits the subject of an action, applying an adjective to the president without amplification can make him seem dignified and deserving of respect. For more on the story from that perspective, turn to Fox News...
"The war between Mr. Trump and what he calls the 'deep state' has entered a new, more volatile phase as the president seeks to assert greater control over a government that he is convinced is not sufficiently loyal to him."
OK, so Baker knows we are entering a new phase and says he knows what Trump is thinking. Despite a reporting style that makes him avoid plain statements of fact that could make him seem biased, if those statements got into the wrong hands, you know, of someone biased say, on Fox News, Baker knows that Trump is "convinced" the government is not sufficiently loyal to him. That phrasing is almost a full-throated endorsement of the thought - there really is a deep state after all! No wonder Trump is aggrieved!
"...the president has shown a renewed willingness to act even if it prompts fresh complaints about violating traditional norms." In that sentence, Baker, a reporter, retreats from stating that Trump violates traditional norms, something that is plain to see, in favor of bothsidesing the thought. I cant say he does what he does if it sounds bad - I have to render his actions as something that the other side will criticize.
"But the withdrawal of the four career prosecutors working on the case left the unmistakeable impression that they thought something improper had happened.? "unmistakeable impression'? Is that a joke? Is there any more mealy mouth way of saying what happened even possible?
"Mr. Trump has long suspected that people around him - both government officials and even some of his own political appointees - were secretly working against his own political interests. His impeachment...has only reinforced that view..." Wait. How does Peter Baker know what Trump suspects, that is, what he thinks? Based on what Trump, who lies all the time about everything says? This Baker soft treatment is almost an exoneration of Trump. Baker is effectively applying a standard that says - suppose Trump is innocent of all wrongdoing and is, if fact, a victim of a 'deep state' conspiracy by people who just hate him and are trying to get him. How would I write about Trump in this situation. And this is it.
"But Mr. O'Brien is presiding over a broader housecleaning at the National Security Council."
Does a housecleaning ever a bad thing? No, of course not. Let's make the government more efficient. At the NYT, let's put Mr. Trump and everyone allied with him in the best possible light.We wouldn't want to call it a purge. Maybe Mr. Trump cares about efficient government. Makes sense - he cares about corruption in Ukraine, right?
A more useful, meaningful rendering would have placed the latest 'housecleaning' in the context of the many departures from the Trump staff, advisors, and Cabinet positions where only the most ardent loyalists to a Mafia-style boss remain to assist in the expanding abuse of power we are seeing in plain sight.
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Retribution vs. Revenge
Retribution vs. Revenge. Which side shall win?
So far, retribution is winning, at least in the Washington Post.
Today's headline:
And then there is the first line of the story:
"President Trump on Friday punished two witnesses who testified in the investigation that led to his impeachment, removing them from their posts in an apparent campaign to exact retribution on his perceived enemies in the wake of his acquittal in the Senate this week." [Emphasis addded]
"Retribution" means giving back what is due and has come to mean "punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act." as dictionary.com tells us. "Revenge" means to come back, but as diffen.com tells us in contrast with avenge which means to punish a wrongdoing with the intent of seeing justice done, revenge is more personal, less concerned with justice and more about retaliation by inflicting harm. So you avenge wrongdoing to seek justice, but you seek revenge if a person's actions hurt you, whether or not those actions were morally wrong. But you seek retribution if those actions were morally wrong and those actions hurt you.
When Vindman testified before Congress truthfully to matters consistent with other truth tellers like Marie Yovanovitch who testified, did he do wrong? No, of course not. Therefore, "retribution" as a description of Trump's behavior has no place in objective description of these events. But using the term "retribution" works well if you are WaPo and your goal is not objective reporting, but is "balanced" treatment of the personalities in the news. If WaPo reporters wrote only of vengeance and revenge, readers might think of Trump as a petty person. Better to provide balanced coverage. The subheadline imples this - rather than calling Trump's actions "vindictive", WaPo shifts to the passive voice and calls them "moves that were condemned as vindictive and an attempt to intimidate officials." That pesky passive voice is always a sure sign of an attempt to balance the reporting.
"Retribution" has a softer sound to it and implies normalcy, but most of all, as noted above, the term implies that the action is proper and fitting to the circumstances. That's why the White House prefers that term and used it this week in their official statement on the impeachment outcome:
"Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the President’s phone call. Will there be no retribution? "
That happens to sound like a threat as well...
Nothing to worry about here. No creeping fascism. Just an incremental change. The President can hire and fire officials at any time for any reason. Yes, and he can wait until the day after the Senate vote to acquit him. Nothing wrong with that. Apparently he can do anything he wants. Anything. And the mainstream press will do their best to balance it.
So far, retribution is winning, at least in the Washington Post.
Today's headline:
 |
| WaPo 02082020 |
"President Trump on Friday punished two witnesses who testified in the investigation that led to his impeachment, removing them from their posts in an apparent campaign to exact retribution on his perceived enemies in the wake of his acquittal in the Senate this week." [Emphasis addded]
"Retribution" means giving back what is due and has come to mean "punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act." as dictionary.com tells us. "Revenge" means to come back, but as diffen.com tells us in contrast with avenge which means to punish a wrongdoing with the intent of seeing justice done, revenge is more personal, less concerned with justice and more about retaliation by inflicting harm. So you avenge wrongdoing to seek justice, but you seek revenge if a person's actions hurt you, whether or not those actions were morally wrong. But you seek retribution if those actions were morally wrong and those actions hurt you.
When Vindman testified before Congress truthfully to matters consistent with other truth tellers like Marie Yovanovitch who testified, did he do wrong? No, of course not. Therefore, "retribution" as a description of Trump's behavior has no place in objective description of these events. But using the term "retribution" works well if you are WaPo and your goal is not objective reporting, but is "balanced" treatment of the personalities in the news. If WaPo reporters wrote only of vengeance and revenge, readers might think of Trump as a petty person. Better to provide balanced coverage. The subheadline imples this - rather than calling Trump's actions "vindictive", WaPo shifts to the passive voice and calls them "moves that were condemned as vindictive and an attempt to intimidate officials." That pesky passive voice is always a sure sign of an attempt to balance the reporting.
"Retribution" has a softer sound to it and implies normalcy, but most of all, as noted above, the term implies that the action is proper and fitting to the circumstances. That's why the White House prefers that term and used it this week in their official statement on the impeachment outcome:
"Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the President’s phone call. Will there be no retribution? "
That happens to sound like a threat as well...
Nothing to worry about here. No creeping fascism. Just an incremental change. The President can hire and fire officials at any time for any reason. Yes, and he can wait until the day after the Senate vote to acquit him. Nothing wrong with that. Apparently he can do anything he wants. Anything. And the mainstream press will do their best to balance it.
Monday, November 18, 2019
Accessory to the Crime
In "No One Believes Anything’: Voters Worn Out by a Fog of Political News
Paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and other developments means having to figure out what is true, false or spin. Many Americans are throwing up their hands and tuning it all out." the New York Times tells us "Swaths of the American public are numb and disoriented by information saturation — struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact."
But does the New York Times acknowledge they have some role in whether and how swaths of the American public react to this "fog of political news?" Does the NYT cut through the fog? Let's see.
Their report:
A few examples of regular people busy with their daily lives.
The Democrats took their case against Trump to the public last week.
Many Americans were not paying attention and some do not trust "the media".
A flood of "partisan" news leads to exhaustion.
The president lies all the time which makes people numb and unsure who to believe.
But many Americans turn to sources they trust - some on left, and others on the right.
Examples of people tuning out.
Fake information makes the picture confusing.
Sheer volume makes it confusing - Els Ruijter is a left-leaning independent who complains that certain programs have such disdain for Trump it becomes a Trump bashing show.
Then there are "the politicians", "first among them Trump" who lie so much that people don't know what to believe.
Comparisons to Putin's Russia.
Some Republicans do not like Trump's brand of politics either.
But Mr. Memory, a Republican, complains about lack of coverage of Trump being cheered at a football game in Alabama in comparison to the coverage of Trump being booed in Nats Park, which he sees as liberal bias.
Gallup Poll about lack of confidence in the media.
Conservatives who feel the cultural tide has turned against them, that liberals have contempt for them.
News avoidance cuts across political lines and the concept of left and right no longer fits - like Russia.
When it comes to Americans evaluating news sources, we are now like Russia.
In this news article the facts presented clearly attribute material blame to one side - Trump and the Republicans for creating a fog of confusion and exhausting voters, but the conclusions drawn from those facts embrace the both sides view of politics. That is, both sides are presumed equally to blame at all times in all ways. For example, Trump is the one who lies all the time, but instead of creating mistrust of anything Trump says, that somehow causes "confusion". And the "sheer volume" of his lies magnifies that "confusion" by inducing "exhaustion". Now, in a sane world, that set of facts would make any fair minded person mistrust everything Trump and his supporters say and turn elsewhere for reliable information. Unfortunately, the NYT, so dedicated to the proposition that they must remain "above the fray", ignores the obvious conclusion. It would be simpler to ignore Trump entirely if you want to know the truth.
For balance, NYT talks to a self-reported "left-leaning independent", whatever that is supposed to mean, who complains about the "sheer disdain" of some shows for Trump. But if Trump lies all the time about everything - and that is treated as fact - how would that be reported without seeming or being disdainful? What would you think of a commentator who said - "Trump lies all the time and that shows he is not afraid of the truth."?
For more balance, NYT talks to a self-reported Republican who complains about lack of coverage of the cheering crowd for Trump at a football stadium in Alabama. The article fails to note that the appearance at Nats Stadium was of interest because Trump has limited almost all appearances to friendly venues, mostly at this campaign style rallies. Therefore, the appearance at an Alabama football game falls into the same category as a rally. The NYT article fails to note the distinction. Of course, this example is besides the point - cheers or booes in either venue have to do with popularity or unpopularity and nothing to do with policy - domestic or foreign or Trump's actions and their impact on policy.
The article concludes by comparing the situation in the U.S. with Russia, ignoring Trump and the Republicans singular role in this as dramatic as Putin's role in making Russia what it is today.
Unfortunately this article is typical of the NYT. The facts presented in the piece would logically lead to the conclusion that Trump and the Republicans are causing significant damage to the information environment, but the writer (and likely the editor) feel compelled to dig for examples to validate the "both sides" premise, which only muddies the issue in the same way that Trump and the Republicans muddy the issues. Thus does NYT act as an accessory to the crime of turning the U.S. to the Russian model of deliberate misinformation on politics.
Paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and other developments means having to figure out what is true, false or spin. Many Americans are throwing up their hands and tuning it all out." the New York Times tells us "Swaths of the American public are numb and disoriented by information saturation — struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact."
But does the New York Times acknowledge they have some role in whether and how swaths of the American public react to this "fog of political news?" Does the NYT cut through the fog? Let's see.
Their report:
A few examples of regular people busy with their daily lives.
The Democrats took their case against Trump to the public last week.
Many Americans were not paying attention and some do not trust "the media".
A flood of "partisan" news leads to exhaustion.
The president lies all the time which makes people numb and unsure who to believe.
But many Americans turn to sources they trust - some on left, and others on the right.
Examples of people tuning out.
Fake information makes the picture confusing.
Sheer volume makes it confusing - Els Ruijter is a left-leaning independent who complains that certain programs have such disdain for Trump it becomes a Trump bashing show.
Then there are "the politicians", "first among them Trump" who lie so much that people don't know what to believe.
Comparisons to Putin's Russia.
Some Republicans do not like Trump's brand of politics either.
But Mr. Memory, a Republican, complains about lack of coverage of Trump being cheered at a football game in Alabama in comparison to the coverage of Trump being booed in Nats Park, which he sees as liberal bias.
Gallup Poll about lack of confidence in the media.
Conservatives who feel the cultural tide has turned against them, that liberals have contempt for them.
News avoidance cuts across political lines and the concept of left and right no longer fits - like Russia.
When it comes to Americans evaluating news sources, we are now like Russia.
In this news article the facts presented clearly attribute material blame to one side - Trump and the Republicans for creating a fog of confusion and exhausting voters, but the conclusions drawn from those facts embrace the both sides view of politics. That is, both sides are presumed equally to blame at all times in all ways. For example, Trump is the one who lies all the time, but instead of creating mistrust of anything Trump says, that somehow causes "confusion". And the "sheer volume" of his lies magnifies that "confusion" by inducing "exhaustion". Now, in a sane world, that set of facts would make any fair minded person mistrust everything Trump and his supporters say and turn elsewhere for reliable information. Unfortunately, the NYT, so dedicated to the proposition that they must remain "above the fray", ignores the obvious conclusion. It would be simpler to ignore Trump entirely if you want to know the truth.
For balance, NYT talks to a self-reported "left-leaning independent", whatever that is supposed to mean, who complains about the "sheer disdain" of some shows for Trump. But if Trump lies all the time about everything - and that is treated as fact - how would that be reported without seeming or being disdainful? What would you think of a commentator who said - "Trump lies all the time and that shows he is not afraid of the truth."?
For more balance, NYT talks to a self-reported Republican who complains about lack of coverage of the cheering crowd for Trump at a football stadium in Alabama. The article fails to note that the appearance at Nats Stadium was of interest because Trump has limited almost all appearances to friendly venues, mostly at this campaign style rallies. Therefore, the appearance at an Alabama football game falls into the same category as a rally. The NYT article fails to note the distinction. Of course, this example is besides the point - cheers or booes in either venue have to do with popularity or unpopularity and nothing to do with policy - domestic or foreign or Trump's actions and their impact on policy.
The article concludes by comparing the situation in the U.S. with Russia, ignoring Trump and the Republicans singular role in this as dramatic as Putin's role in making Russia what it is today.
Unfortunately this article is typical of the NYT. The facts presented in the piece would logically lead to the conclusion that Trump and the Republicans are causing significant damage to the information environment, but the writer (and likely the editor) feel compelled to dig for examples to validate the "both sides" premise, which only muddies the issue in the same way that Trump and the Republicans muddy the issues. Thus does NYT act as an accessory to the crime of turning the U.S. to the Russian model of deliberate misinformation on politics.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
More Distractions and Confusion and It's Working
As POTUS, Donald Trump likes to distract and confuse. It's working. At least it works on the New York Times.To be fair, much of the objectivity-based press fell for the ruse, too.
In the Times editorial "Trump, Greenland, Denmark. Is This Real Life?
Or a Peter Sellers movie?" the editorial board treats the Trump trial balloon to buy Greenland mostly as farce. And the trip cancellation solely as a reaction to Denmark's response because that reaction is in character for Trump.
Granted, the editors noted a few serious issues involved:
1. Greenland's deposits of rare earth metals, crucial to the defense industry, which are now mostly sourced from China.
2. The U.S. military's "northernmost missile-warning, space surveillance and deepwater seaport" in Greenland.
3. China's recent efforts to establish a "foothold", or at least a toe-hold in Greenland.
But the NYT editorial board concludes that Trump's cancellation of his upcoming trip to Denmark after being rebuffed on the Greenland sale proposal can be taken entirely thus:
"That the president of the United States would demonstrate such willful ignorance of how the world works, that he would treat a territory and its independent people like goods and chattel, that he would so readily damage relations with an old and important ally out of petty pique, is frightening."
But maybe the NYT editorial board does not know 'how the world works' - if this president abruptly cancels a trip to meet with an "ally" (ally in quotes because an ally of the U.S. is so often not an ally of Trump and vice versa) for what appears to be a ridiculous excuse, let's ask ourselves about the agenda for that trip. Maybe he needs to cancel to save face, to avoid awkward confrontations, and not make a fool of himself.
A hot topic in Denmark this year and especially this summer is the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built by Russia to transport natural gas to Western Europe. The proposed route passes through Denmark's territorial waters. Russia has been avidly pursuing Denmark's approval in order to complete the project this calendar year and enter into new long term contracts for delivery. Otherwise the pipeline will be delayed if constructed along an alternate route. The pipeline poses a threat to Ukraine's current route for much of Russia's gas transport to Western Europe.
The U.S. has so far opposed the pipeline:
Senate panel backs Nord Stream 2 pipeline sanctions bill
And Trump has spoken out against the pipeline.
But Trump opposing Putin on a major issue has been rare and awkward when it happens. The issue is complicated by the tensions between Western Europe's goal of obtaining adequate energy at low price, Eastern and Central Europe suspicion of Russia, and U.S. substantial reserves of natural gas which could compete with the Russian supply, but at higher prices due to transportation costs for the LNG.
One can hardly imagine Trump having a constructive meeting with an ally, especially if he needs to negotiate with a woman who he knows will be better versed on the issues. When confronted with his incompetence and ignorance, Trump needs to find a way out. When Putin's wishes are a factor, things become too tricky for him to handle. So he needed to bluff his way out of the meeting.
The problem with NYT (like too many other news orgs) is that even after so many lies by Trump, they are willing to take his statements at face value as a first pass if those statements can not immediately be "fact-checked" and found false instead of asking "what is really going on here?" and pursuing more likely explanations.
In the Times editorial "Trump, Greenland, Denmark. Is This Real Life?
Or a Peter Sellers movie?" the editorial board treats the Trump trial balloon to buy Greenland mostly as farce. And the trip cancellation solely as a reaction to Denmark's response because that reaction is in character for Trump.
Granted, the editors noted a few serious issues involved:
1. Greenland's deposits of rare earth metals, crucial to the defense industry, which are now mostly sourced from China.
2. The U.S. military's "northernmost missile-warning, space surveillance and deepwater seaport" in Greenland.
3. China's recent efforts to establish a "foothold", or at least a toe-hold in Greenland.
But the NYT editorial board concludes that Trump's cancellation of his upcoming trip to Denmark after being rebuffed on the Greenland sale proposal can be taken entirely thus:
"That the president of the United States would demonstrate such willful ignorance of how the world works, that he would treat a territory and its independent people like goods and chattel, that he would so readily damage relations with an old and important ally out of petty pique, is frightening."
But maybe the NYT editorial board does not know 'how the world works' - if this president abruptly cancels a trip to meet with an "ally" (ally in quotes because an ally of the U.S. is so often not an ally of Trump and vice versa) for what appears to be a ridiculous excuse, let's ask ourselves about the agenda for that trip. Maybe he needs to cancel to save face, to avoid awkward confrontations, and not make a fool of himself.
A hot topic in Denmark this year and especially this summer is the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built by Russia to transport natural gas to Western Europe. The proposed route passes through Denmark's territorial waters. Russia has been avidly pursuing Denmark's approval in order to complete the project this calendar year and enter into new long term contracts for delivery. Otherwise the pipeline will be delayed if constructed along an alternate route. The pipeline poses a threat to Ukraine's current route for much of Russia's gas transport to Western Europe.
 |
| source:dutchnews.nl |
The U.S. has so far opposed the pipeline:
Senate panel backs Nord Stream 2 pipeline sanctions bill
And Trump has spoken out against the pipeline.
But Trump opposing Putin on a major issue has been rare and awkward when it happens. The issue is complicated by the tensions between Western Europe's goal of obtaining adequate energy at low price, Eastern and Central Europe suspicion of Russia, and U.S. substantial reserves of natural gas which could compete with the Russian supply, but at higher prices due to transportation costs for the LNG.
One can hardly imagine Trump having a constructive meeting with an ally, especially if he needs to negotiate with a woman who he knows will be better versed on the issues. When confronted with his incompetence and ignorance, Trump needs to find a way out. When Putin's wishes are a factor, things become too tricky for him to handle. So he needed to bluff his way out of the meeting.
The problem with NYT (like too many other news orgs) is that even after so many lies by Trump, they are willing to take his statements at face value as a first pass if those statements can not immediately be "fact-checked" and found false instead of asking "what is really going on here?" and pursuing more likely explanations.
Friday, July 19, 2019
Surprise: These Party Activists are Party Activists
CNN's "These GOP women see nothing wrong with Trump's comments" has been exposed as fundamentally misleading. Subtitled "CNN's Randi Kaye speaks to a group of Republican women who say they don't have a problem with President Trump's racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color.", the setup implies that these eight women are a focus group of somewhat randomly selected Republican women from Dallas.
Erik Wemple, among others, points out that the CNN piece (still up on CNN website at this writing, without correction or clarification) , and teed up in reporting by Anderson Cooper and Kate Boduan without further amplification, features a group of activist Republican women. And that CNN had previously used these same women in 2016 in a similar role.
After CNN's misleading identification of these women was exposed, as Wemple reports,
"CNN host Ana Cabrera on Wednesday afternoon characterized 'several' of the women as being 'affiliated with groups that support President Trump.' The purpose, said Cabrera was "to see if any of them have changed their minds.'"
So we are back on the diner circuit rationale employed by NYT, CNN and other mainstream political outlets. After the surprise victory by Trump in 2016, the presumption was that all those white Trump voters would come around soon. So each Trump outrage for months was followed like dusk follows day by a team of reporters visiting diners to see if they changed their minds about Trump. Which they never did - because the premise that any rational person would now be outraged by Trump was no better than the idea that any rational person on November 8, 2016 would be outraged by Trump.
This episode reminds me of an incident one year ago. S.E. Cupp, the conservative pundit, in a guest piece in the NYT with the straw man (straw woman?) title "No, Not All Women Are Democrats", wrote the following:
"Salena Zito, co-author of the new book “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics,” recently surveyed 2,000 Trump voters in the rust belt. They are the kind of voters, she says, that experts overlooked in 2016 and still don’t get today.
One of them is Amy Maurer, a 43-year-old well-educated suburban mom in Kenosha, Wis, who is on the executive board of the Republican Party of Kenosha County. The Clinton campaign aimed ads at Republicans— even women like Ms. Maurer — keying in on Mr. Trump’s misogynistic remarks.
“It’s not my favorite thing,” she said when I asked her about the way Mr. Trump has talked about women. “It’s kind of like what I told my mother-in-law when she complained that her heart surgeon wasn’t very friendly: If he’s good at what he does, who cares? He’s not there to be your best friend.”'
Except she did not write exactly those words. The article awkwardly suggests that Zito surveyed a large group of Trump voters, but then quotes a Republican woman activist in order to provide some insight on the thinking of representative Republican women voters. So what gives. Well, the original piece omitted significant information about Amy Maurer:
"An earlier version of this article omitted a relevant detail about Amy Maurer, a Wisconsinite who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Ms. Maurer is a Republican Party official in Kenosha County; that information should have been included with her comments."
Actually, no. That makes no sense. Ms. Maurer should not have been quoted. A Republican woman who is not a party activist should have been quoted, if we are trying to sample the crowd of 2,000 fairly.
So why is it so difficult to find Republican Party women who are not activists? It's not.
My best guess is that the two mainstream new organizations who invariably bend over backwards the most to assure conservatives that they are truly objective - CNN and NYT - prefer to give as much control to Republicans when they "balance" their presumably "biased" political articles with pieces about Republican voters. And when they enlist Republicans in that cause, people like SE Cupp, and whoever puts together these "focus groups" for CNN, they are yielding editorial ground to a class of people - Republican political operatives - who seize every opportunity to distort the facts and avoid disclosure, in order to craft their favored narrative.
For the "facts don't matter" crowd, disclosures don't matter either, especially in these two cases where disclosure would render the pieces useless as a gauge of representative Republican women.
Erik Wemple, among others, points out that the CNN piece (still up on CNN website at this writing, without correction or clarification) , and teed up in reporting by Anderson Cooper and Kate Boduan without further amplification, features a group of activist Republican women. And that CNN had previously used these same women in 2016 in a similar role.
After CNN's misleading identification of these women was exposed, as Wemple reports,
"CNN host Ana Cabrera on Wednesday afternoon characterized 'several' of the women as being 'affiliated with groups that support President Trump.' The purpose, said Cabrera was "to see if any of them have changed their minds.'"
So we are back on the diner circuit rationale employed by NYT, CNN and other mainstream political outlets. After the surprise victory by Trump in 2016, the presumption was that all those white Trump voters would come around soon. So each Trump outrage for months was followed like dusk follows day by a team of reporters visiting diners to see if they changed their minds about Trump. Which they never did - because the premise that any rational person would now be outraged by Trump was no better than the idea that any rational person on November 8, 2016 would be outraged by Trump.
This episode reminds me of an incident one year ago. S.E. Cupp, the conservative pundit, in a guest piece in the NYT with the straw man (straw woman?) title "No, Not All Women Are Democrats", wrote the following:
"Salena Zito, co-author of the new book “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics,” recently surveyed 2,000 Trump voters in the rust belt. They are the kind of voters, she says, that experts overlooked in 2016 and still don’t get today.
One of them is Amy Maurer, a 43-year-old well-educated suburban mom in Kenosha, Wis, who is on the executive board of the Republican Party of Kenosha County. The Clinton campaign aimed ads at Republicans— even women like Ms. Maurer — keying in on Mr. Trump’s misogynistic remarks.
“It’s not my favorite thing,” she said when I asked her about the way Mr. Trump has talked about women. “It’s kind of like what I told my mother-in-law when she complained that her heart surgeon wasn’t very friendly: If he’s good at what he does, who cares? He’s not there to be your best friend.”'
Except she did not write exactly those words. The article awkwardly suggests that Zito surveyed a large group of Trump voters, but then quotes a Republican woman activist in order to provide some insight on the thinking of representative Republican women voters. So what gives. Well, the original piece omitted significant information about Amy Maurer:
"An earlier version of this article omitted a relevant detail about Amy Maurer, a Wisconsinite who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Ms. Maurer is a Republican Party official in Kenosha County; that information should have been included with her comments."
Actually, no. That makes no sense. Ms. Maurer should not have been quoted. A Republican woman who is not a party activist should have been quoted, if we are trying to sample the crowd of 2,000 fairly.
So why is it so difficult to find Republican Party women who are not activists? It's not.
My best guess is that the two mainstream new organizations who invariably bend over backwards the most to assure conservatives that they are truly objective - CNN and NYT - prefer to give as much control to Republicans when they "balance" their presumably "biased" political articles with pieces about Republican voters. And when they enlist Republicans in that cause, people like SE Cupp, and whoever puts together these "focus groups" for CNN, they are yielding editorial ground to a class of people - Republican political operatives - who seize every opportunity to distort the facts and avoid disclosure, in order to craft their favored narrative.
For the "facts don't matter" crowd, disclosures don't matter either, especially in these two cases where disclosure would render the pieces useless as a gauge of representative Republican women.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
What's Wrong with these Headlines?
New York Times today:
As America Turns More Divided The Mood Turns More Tense
It's the first time in more than a century that all but one state legislature is dominated by a single party.
As each state's majority party pushes its agenda, the weaker one has grown more combative
Absolutely nothing there to suggest that the current American president pushes his agenda of division daily, as he did throughout the 2016 campaign. Nothing to suggest that Republicans have been playing extreme hardball in state legislature for decades and Democrats have been slow to catch on to these tactics. And Republican tactics have become more extreme - not only to suppress the votes of citizens, but to thwart the outcome of elections if a Democrat defeats a Republican governor, but the state legislature remains controlled by Republicans, by stripping the incoming governor of powers normally retained by the executive, which were enjoyed by his or her predecessor. See Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio. (Incumbent Ohio governor refused to play, to his credit.)
The NYT has a strong bias toward skewing the facts toward a balanced conclusion when reporting on politics. Thus the NYT fails to distinguish between fair, accurate reporting and balance. Balance in reporting is regarding by traditional reporters as an attribute when a fair and accurate conclusion can not be known. But Republicans in office together with Fox News reporting have teamed together to furnish America with a 24/7 propaganda channel dedicated to keeping Republicans in office and their policies in place. This conspiracy of the right has built on a mountain of lies that has worsened with Trump as president. True balance would mean that a responsible news organization (i.e. NYT or WaPo) would confront the mountain of lies with the hard truth - not after-the-fact fact checking,which always comes too late because liars have already moved on to the next lie, thus controlling the overall narrative - but aggressive reporting on the fact of Fox News as lying propagandists.And not trying so hard with every news story to report "both sides" as equal and opposite as possibly true, when they are not. The net result of the narrative that America hears is Fox News propaganda on one side and NYT maybe-yes-maybe-no "balance", which ironically yields an imbalance in sum while failing to be accurate by implying that some lies may be true.
The NYT article provides factual information about the contentiousness of activity in the divided state legislatures, but fails to note that extreme gerrymandering has been practiced more by Republicans - to greater effect on election outcomes - than Democrats. This is not to suggest that Democrats have been perfect in all cases, but observing how Republicans behave in office and looking for the same thing in Democrats will always yield some examples, but accurate reporting requires continuing the analysis at that point to report full context, rather than declaring vicotry - done, we found an example of Democrats behaving badly so "both sides do it".
We see this again in the recent NYT:
People are trying to figure out Bill Barr. Meanwhile He's Stockpiling Power. Is he the operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report? Or the straight shooter who later disclosed portions that were damaging to President Trump?
NYT syntax shows how they gravitate to the middle of all stories relating to politics. Their headlines often take the almost comical form "On the One Hand, Yes - But on the Other Hand ,No". Bill Barr wrote an unsolicited paper in support of unbridled presidential power - a job application for AG - prior to his nomination.
The problem with these headlines is that when the NYT is satisfied with any conclusion that validates the middle as true and treats with great skepticism any conclusion that treats one "side" as different qualitatively as different from the other "side" they themselves help to create the reality of a "divided" country because that behavior encourages more extreme tactics. Republicans know that the more extreme their tactics, the more the NYT will be willing to work toward the "safe" conclusion that Democrats do it too.
And why, NYT, is the opposite of "straight shooter" an "operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report"? Isn't the opposite of straight shooter a liar?
As America Turns More Divided The Mood Turns More Tense
It's the first time in more than a century that all but one state legislature is dominated by a single party.
As each state's majority party pushes its agenda, the weaker one has grown more combative
Absolutely nothing there to suggest that the current American president pushes his agenda of division daily, as he did throughout the 2016 campaign. Nothing to suggest that Republicans have been playing extreme hardball in state legislature for decades and Democrats have been slow to catch on to these tactics. And Republican tactics have become more extreme - not only to suppress the votes of citizens, but to thwart the outcome of elections if a Democrat defeats a Republican governor, but the state legislature remains controlled by Republicans, by stripping the incoming governor of powers normally retained by the executive, which were enjoyed by his or her predecessor. See Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio. (Incumbent Ohio governor refused to play, to his credit.)
The NYT has a strong bias toward skewing the facts toward a balanced conclusion when reporting on politics. Thus the NYT fails to distinguish between fair, accurate reporting and balance. Balance in reporting is regarding by traditional reporters as an attribute when a fair and accurate conclusion can not be known. But Republicans in office together with Fox News reporting have teamed together to furnish America with a 24/7 propaganda channel dedicated to keeping Republicans in office and their policies in place. This conspiracy of the right has built on a mountain of lies that has worsened with Trump as president. True balance would mean that a responsible news organization (i.e. NYT or WaPo) would confront the mountain of lies with the hard truth - not after-the-fact fact checking,which always comes too late because liars have already moved on to the next lie, thus controlling the overall narrative - but aggressive reporting on the fact of Fox News as lying propagandists.And not trying so hard with every news story to report "both sides" as equal and opposite as possibly true, when they are not. The net result of the narrative that America hears is Fox News propaganda on one side and NYT maybe-yes-maybe-no "balance", which ironically yields an imbalance in sum while failing to be accurate by implying that some lies may be true.
The NYT article provides factual information about the contentiousness of activity in the divided state legislatures, but fails to note that extreme gerrymandering has been practiced more by Republicans - to greater effect on election outcomes - than Democrats. This is not to suggest that Democrats have been perfect in all cases, but observing how Republicans behave in office and looking for the same thing in Democrats will always yield some examples, but accurate reporting requires continuing the analysis at that point to report full context, rather than declaring vicotry - done, we found an example of Democrats behaving badly so "both sides do it".
We see this again in the recent NYT:
People are trying to figure out Bill Barr. Meanwhile He's Stockpiling Power. Is he the operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report? Or the straight shooter who later disclosed portions that were damaging to President Trump?
NYT syntax shows how they gravitate to the middle of all stories relating to politics. Their headlines often take the almost comical form "On the One Hand, Yes - But on the Other Hand ,No". Bill Barr wrote an unsolicited paper in support of unbridled presidential power - a job application for AG - prior to his nomination.
The problem with these headlines is that when the NYT is satisfied with any conclusion that validates the middle as true and treats with great skepticism any conclusion that treats one "side" as different qualitatively as different from the other "side" they themselves help to create the reality of a "divided" country because that behavior encourages more extreme tactics. Republicans know that the more extreme their tactics, the more the NYT will be willing to work toward the "safe" conclusion that Democrats do it too.
And why, NYT, is the opposite of "straight shooter" an "operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report"? Isn't the opposite of straight shooter a liar?
Monday, February 25, 2019
The Enemy Within
Who is the enemy within? To figure that out, you need to decide who you are, who is acting against you, and whether or not they were here all along acting against you or recently entered from the outside - physically or virtually.
The Mueller investigation starts with actions taken against the U.S. and makes an effort to determine their source. The Special Counsel team is investigating crimes against the U.S.by foreign actors as well as U.S. citizens.
But team Mueller is constrained by their mandate and how legal investigations work. They do not look for analogies. What if Russian has been working all along to ally themselves with conservative movements in Europe and the U.S. in order to weaken the Western alliance - NATO and the EU to strengthen the Russian hand internally as well as throughout the formal members of the Soviet Union and the unaligned nations?
Russian actions against the progressive democracies of the West have manifested themselves in similar ways in different countries. Yet this similarity is too abstract, too speculative for mainstream political journalists in the U.S.to seize upon as evidence of anything.
The U.S. and the UK stand out as examples, but Italy looms large.
"Billionaires" who are not billionaires.
In the UK, Arron Banks was the largest contributor by far to the Leave campaign at 8.1 million pounds. If the source of his funds was foreign, such as Russia, those contributions would be illegal in the UK. For much of the past three years, the press reflexively called him "Billionaire Arron Banks". As recently as last November, Time ran a piece: "The Billionaire Who Bankrolled Brexit Is Now Under Criminal Investigation. Officials Suspect Foreign Money" even as questions mounted about the source of his wealth and whether he is a billionaire. Bloomberg now has "The Mysterious Finances of the Brexit Campaign’s Biggest Backer" which sets his known assets at 34 million pounds.
Denying Meetings with the Russian Ambassador...and many other Russians...or their agents
In Britain, as in the U.S. meetings between those who promote so-called "populist" campaigns, inexplicable meetings with the Russian ambassador are first denied, then admitted, but minimized - it was "only once", then when there are more, but it was only social. As The Guardian reported: "Revealed: Leave.EU campaign met Russian officials as many as 11 times"
For analogy in the U.S., one need only think back to Jeff Sessions in his Senate testimony at confirmation hearings claiming that no one in the Trump campaign had any meetings with Russians. Then for him personally, it became only twice with Kislyak, allegedly and improbably in Sessions' role as a Senator.
Those Russian Wives and Girlfriends
Of course Arron Banks has a Russian wife whose first marriage at age 25 to a much older Englishman was an apparent sham to obtain UK citizenship and perhaps act as an agent of influence in the UK?: "The story of Mrs Arron Banks’ extraordinary first marriage"
Which brings to mind special agent of influence Maria Butina and her much loved boyfriend Paul Erickson of GOP/NRA fame.
Another Russian wife is Olga Roh, married to Stephan Roh. Zurich lawyer Stephan Roh has had close ties to the missing "professor" Joseph Mifsud, speaking alongside him at conferences and claiming to represent him though Mifsud has been missing for over a year. Roh has co-written a self-published book “The Faking of Russia-gate: The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis,” Early Trump campaign advisor George Papadapoulos worked with Mifsud, as did his girlfriend, now wife Simona Maniante, who claims to be Italian, not Russian, and admits her real age did not match her Italian passport age.
And Now Italy
Similarities to the U.S. are fascinating. The Daily Beast reported in March, 2017 :"Putin’s Party Signs Cooperation Deal with Italy’s Far-Right Lega Nord".
The Money: As the Daily Beast reports: "An Italian Expose Documents Moscow Money Allegedly Funding Italy's Far-Right Salvini" :
"Italy’s interior minister and vice premier, Matteo Salvini, went off the grid for 12 hours during an official state visit to Moscow last October. Tales of Russian prostitutes seemed to explain the time lapse for the single statesman. But a new exposé by the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso suggests that his time may have been spent doing something far more sinister: he may have been making backroom deals with Russian operatives ahead of European Parliamentary elections.The investigation, which the magazine says was conducted over several months, comes to the conclusion that Russian president Vladimir Putin is selling 3 million tons of diesel fuel via a Russian company to an Italian state company, Eni, that Salvini as interior minister can help manage."
The Russian Wife:
As the Daily Beast reports:
Salvini's key tie to Russia is his former spokesman, Gianluca Savoini, who is not present in the current Italian government, but who remains a trusted ally of the leader. Savoini, who is married to a Russian woman named Irina, is listed as president of the Russia-Lombardy Association based in the north of Italy"
Austria, too. It's all happening in Austria, as the Daily Beast reported:
"Anger as Austria's foreign minister invites Putin to her wedding""
"Kneissl, an independent, owes her appointment as foreign minister to the populist, anti-immigrant Freedom party (FPÖ), the junior party in Austria’s ruling coalition.
The Eurosceptic and openly pro-Russia party has signed a “cooperation agreement” with Putin’s United Russia party, and Kneissl’s close ties to the Russian leader are raising questions in the EU over where Austria’s loyalties lie. The FPÖ has supported Russia’s claim to Crimea and called for the easing of sanctions on Moscow."
But not the U.S., right? Where's the signed cooperation agreement with the Republican Party?
Even if Mueller can prove everything, these are just process crimes, right? Nothing to see here. Or, as the Republican House Intelligence Committee insisted, speciously and falsely - Putin was anti-Hillary Clinton, not Pro-Trump, which Republican leaders repeated even after Helsinki: "House GOP stands by controversial finding in Russia report despite Putin's preference for Trump"
OK, so Putin was
(1) Pro-Brexit in the UK,
(2) Pro-Northern League in Italy (and Five-Star Movement for Italy to leave the EU),
(3) Pro-FPO in Austria, but
allegedly not (4) Pro-Trump in the U.S, despite Trump's strong pro-Putin stance.
If we only we could find the person or party Putin secretly supported in the U.S. in our national elections, that would surely be the enemy within.
The Mueller investigation starts with actions taken against the U.S. and makes an effort to determine their source. The Special Counsel team is investigating crimes against the U.S.by foreign actors as well as U.S. citizens.
But team Mueller is constrained by their mandate and how legal investigations work. They do not look for analogies. What if Russian has been working all along to ally themselves with conservative movements in Europe and the U.S. in order to weaken the Western alliance - NATO and the EU to strengthen the Russian hand internally as well as throughout the formal members of the Soviet Union and the unaligned nations?
Russian actions against the progressive democracies of the West have manifested themselves in similar ways in different countries. Yet this similarity is too abstract, too speculative for mainstream political journalists in the U.S.to seize upon as evidence of anything.
The U.S. and the UK stand out as examples, but Italy looms large.
"Billionaires" who are not billionaires.
In the UK, Arron Banks was the largest contributor by far to the Leave campaign at 8.1 million pounds. If the source of his funds was foreign, such as Russia, those contributions would be illegal in the UK. For much of the past three years, the press reflexively called him "Billionaire Arron Banks". As recently as last November, Time ran a piece: "The Billionaire Who Bankrolled Brexit Is Now Under Criminal Investigation. Officials Suspect Foreign Money" even as questions mounted about the source of his wealth and whether he is a billionaire. Bloomberg now has "The Mysterious Finances of the Brexit Campaign’s Biggest Backer" which sets his known assets at 34 million pounds.
Denying Meetings with the Russian Ambassador...and many other Russians...or their agents
In Britain, as in the U.S. meetings between those who promote so-called "populist" campaigns, inexplicable meetings with the Russian ambassador are first denied, then admitted, but minimized - it was "only once", then when there are more, but it was only social. As The Guardian reported: "Revealed: Leave.EU campaign met Russian officials as many as 11 times"
For analogy in the U.S., one need only think back to Jeff Sessions in his Senate testimony at confirmation hearings claiming that no one in the Trump campaign had any meetings with Russians. Then for him personally, it became only twice with Kislyak, allegedly and improbably in Sessions' role as a Senator.
Those Russian Wives and Girlfriends
Of course Arron Banks has a Russian wife whose first marriage at age 25 to a much older Englishman was an apparent sham to obtain UK citizenship and perhaps act as an agent of influence in the UK?: "The story of Mrs Arron Banks’ extraordinary first marriage"
Which brings to mind special agent of influence Maria Butina and her much loved boyfriend Paul Erickson of GOP/NRA fame.
Another Russian wife is Olga Roh, married to Stephan Roh. Zurich lawyer Stephan Roh has had close ties to the missing "professor" Joseph Mifsud, speaking alongside him at conferences and claiming to represent him though Mifsud has been missing for over a year. Roh has co-written a self-published book “The Faking of Russia-gate: The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis,” Early Trump campaign advisor George Papadapoulos worked with Mifsud, as did his girlfriend, now wife Simona Maniante, who claims to be Italian, not Russian, and admits her real age did not match her Italian passport age.
And Now Italy
Similarities to the U.S. are fascinating. The Daily Beast reported in March, 2017 :"Putin’s Party Signs Cooperation Deal with Italy’s Far-Right Lega Nord".
The Money: As the Daily Beast reports: "An Italian Expose Documents Moscow Money Allegedly Funding Italy's Far-Right Salvini" :
"Italy’s interior minister and vice premier, Matteo Salvini, went off the grid for 12 hours during an official state visit to Moscow last October. Tales of Russian prostitutes seemed to explain the time lapse for the single statesman. But a new exposé by the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso suggests that his time may have been spent doing something far more sinister: he may have been making backroom deals with Russian operatives ahead of European Parliamentary elections.The investigation, which the magazine says was conducted over several months, comes to the conclusion that Russian president Vladimir Putin is selling 3 million tons of diesel fuel via a Russian company to an Italian state company, Eni, that Salvini as interior minister can help manage."
The Russian Wife:
As the Daily Beast reports:
Salvini's key tie to Russia is his former spokesman, Gianluca Savoini, who is not present in the current Italian government, but who remains a trusted ally of the leader. Savoini, who is married to a Russian woman named Irina, is listed as president of the Russia-Lombardy Association based in the north of Italy"
Austria, too. It's all happening in Austria, as the Daily Beast reported:
"Anger as Austria's foreign minister invites Putin to her wedding""
"Kneissl, an independent, owes her appointment as foreign minister to the populist, anti-immigrant Freedom party (FPÖ), the junior party in Austria’s ruling coalition.
The Eurosceptic and openly pro-Russia party has signed a “cooperation agreement” with Putin’s United Russia party, and Kneissl’s close ties to the Russian leader are raising questions in the EU over where Austria’s loyalties lie. The FPÖ has supported Russia’s claim to Crimea and called for the easing of sanctions on Moscow."
But not the U.S., right? Where's the signed cooperation agreement with the Republican Party?
Even if Mueller can prove everything, these are just process crimes, right? Nothing to see here. Or, as the Republican House Intelligence Committee insisted, speciously and falsely - Putin was anti-Hillary Clinton, not Pro-Trump, which Republican leaders repeated even after Helsinki: "House GOP stands by controversial finding in Russia report despite Putin's preference for Trump"
OK, so Putin was
(1) Pro-Brexit in the UK,
(2) Pro-Northern League in Italy (and Five-Star Movement for Italy to leave the EU),
(3) Pro-FPO in Austria, but
allegedly not (4) Pro-Trump in the U.S, despite Trump's strong pro-Putin stance.
If we only we could find the person or party Putin secretly supported in the U.S. in our national elections, that would surely be the enemy within.
Saturday, February 16, 2019
Pivot to the General Case
One communications tactic that is easy to spot is the pivot from discussing that which is specific and germane to that which is general and irrelevant, and, often misleading.
Let's take an example that has nothing to do with politics per se and show how this works.
A certain NYTimes article begins thus:
"Danielle Teuscher decided to give DNA tests as presents last Christmas to her father, close friends and 5-year-old daughter, joining the growing number of people taking advantage of low-cost, accessible genetic testing.
But the 23andMe test produced an unexpected result. Ms. Teuscher, 30, a nanny in Portland, Ore., said she unintentionally discovered the identity of the sperm donor she had used to conceive her young child.
The mother of the donor was identified on her daughter’s test results as her grandmother. Excited and curious, Ms. Teuscher decided to reach out."
So, in the space of a few short sentences we are told that the mother of a young girl who was just trying out new ideas for Christmas gifts stumbled on the heritage of her biological daughter. Something does not seem right there.
The deflection begins with the first sentence. Let's talk about Christmas, not -"who is the biological father of my child?". And the general case - everybody is interested in DNA testing kits these days, not just mothers who resorted to anonymous sperm donors. Besides, this testing is so darn low cost and accessible. Who could resist? And then you find out a genetic link to the father of your daughter - who knew that was even possible?
But there is a dramatic logical flaw in that first sentence. Supposedly Ms. Teuscher bought a DNA test kit as a gift for her 5-year-old daughter. That makes no sense. Ms. Teuscher is obviously buying this test kit for herself to uncover the sperm donor. And the nonsense about buying kits for other family members is just noise - introduced to create confusion and to falsely make the case that this is all about Christmas, not about the mystery of paternity.
Even the title: "A Mother Learns the Identity of Her Child’s Grandmother. A Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue." gives away the game. "A Mother Learns..." is passive voice, also a clue to deception. Why not be direct? The mother did not just learn something. She took deliberate action. "A Mother Subjected Her 5-year-old to DNA testing and located the biological father. A Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue" would have been more to the point. The author is clearly taking the side of the mother in this one, but is being incredibly disingenuous. But this type of subterfuge is common in politics. Start with a specific case, possibly a specific question from a reporter, and deflect attention away from meaningful information to other irrelevancies, thus turning a discussion into nonsense. News reporters in politics have a tough time identifying this behavior as bad faith action, which, unfortunately, leads to continued bad faith.
In the Rose Garden yesterday Trump was challenged about his evidence requiring declaration of a national emergency at the southern border when statistics tell us "illegal immigration is down and crime is down, so on what do you base your facts?". After yelling "Sit down. Sit down" as he waved the reporter away -"You get one. You get one." Trump claimed, "I get my numbers from a lot of sources, Department of Homeland Security..." and then bobbed and weaved all over the place, saying "I have many statistics." In Trump's case, not only is the pivot away from the specific and germane to the general and irrelevant, and also to the vague and misleading, but, as we all know, almost always - to a statement that is false.
Let's take an example that has nothing to do with politics per se and show how this works.
A certain NYTimes article begins thus:
"Danielle Teuscher decided to give DNA tests as presents last Christmas to her father, close friends and 5-year-old daughter, joining the growing number of people taking advantage of low-cost, accessible genetic testing.
But the 23andMe test produced an unexpected result. Ms. Teuscher, 30, a nanny in Portland, Ore., said she unintentionally discovered the identity of the sperm donor she had used to conceive her young child.
The mother of the donor was identified on her daughter’s test results as her grandmother. Excited and curious, Ms. Teuscher decided to reach out."
So, in the space of a few short sentences we are told that the mother of a young girl who was just trying out new ideas for Christmas gifts stumbled on the heritage of her biological daughter. Something does not seem right there.
The deflection begins with the first sentence. Let's talk about Christmas, not -"who is the biological father of my child?". And the general case - everybody is interested in DNA testing kits these days, not just mothers who resorted to anonymous sperm donors. Besides, this testing is so darn low cost and accessible. Who could resist? And then you find out a genetic link to the father of your daughter - who knew that was even possible?
But there is a dramatic logical flaw in that first sentence. Supposedly Ms. Teuscher bought a DNA test kit as a gift for her 5-year-old daughter. That makes no sense. Ms. Teuscher is obviously buying this test kit for herself to uncover the sperm donor. And the nonsense about buying kits for other family members is just noise - introduced to create confusion and to falsely make the case that this is all about Christmas, not about the mystery of paternity.
Even the title: "A Mother Learns the Identity of Her Child’s Grandmother. A Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue." gives away the game. "A Mother Learns..." is passive voice, also a clue to deception. Why not be direct? The mother did not just learn something. She took deliberate action. "A Mother Subjected Her 5-year-old to DNA testing and located the biological father. A Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue" would have been more to the point. The author is clearly taking the side of the mother in this one, but is being incredibly disingenuous. But this type of subterfuge is common in politics. Start with a specific case, possibly a specific question from a reporter, and deflect attention away from meaningful information to other irrelevancies, thus turning a discussion into nonsense. News reporters in politics have a tough time identifying this behavior as bad faith action, which, unfortunately, leads to continued bad faith.
In the Rose Garden yesterday Trump was challenged about his evidence requiring declaration of a national emergency at the southern border when statistics tell us "illegal immigration is down and crime is down, so on what do you base your facts?". After yelling "Sit down. Sit down" as he waved the reporter away -"You get one. You get one." Trump claimed, "I get my numbers from a lot of sources, Department of Homeland Security..." and then bobbed and weaved all over the place, saying "I have many statistics." In Trump's case, not only is the pivot away from the specific and germane to the general and irrelevant, and also to the vague and misleading, but, as we all know, almost always - to a statement that is false.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Real News Now
Margaret Sullivan and Jill Abramson present starkly different portraits in journalism today in the Washington Post.
In "Trump doesn't believe his own damaging rants about 'fake news", Sullivan correctly reports, with compelling evidence - it's in the title, and worth repeating:
:Trump doesn't believe his own damaging rants about 'fake news".
Surprise, surprise.
That fact is obvious, but editorial standards at WaPo, like NYT, require that reasonable conclusions derived from facts appear as Opinion, in this case, the "Style: Perspective" column. How does Trump get away with it? People like Jill Abramson help him. As Sullivan points out:
"Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson drew right-wing plaudits recently when she referred to her former paper’s coverage of the president — as well as The Washington Post’s — as “unmistakably anti-Trump.” (The author of a new book on the press, “Merchants of Truth,” Abramson also praised much of the reporting at both papers.)"
When journalists who tout themselves as objective bend over backwards to treat "both sides" equally, at all times and in all circumstances, one side may realize the vulnerability created - that they can lie, cheat, and steal in plain sight. All they need to do is cry out "fake news", which he said/she said journalistic practice - the companion to 'both sides" - turns into a meaningless echo chamber of charges and counter charges that easily drowns out meaning.
Abramson's inability to take a stand - on reality, not political preference - is evident in her own WaPo piece today:
"Will the media ever figure out how to report on Trump?"
If editors are all like Abramson, the answer is "No". Fortunately, they are not.
Abramson leads off:
"The news media’s collective shock that Donald Trump won in 2016 was evidence of how out of touch most reporters were with the less affluent, less educated, rural parts of the country, where white voter rage galvanized into votes that made him the 45th president. In the days after the election, there was anguished self-examination in many newsrooms and vows to cover the parts of the United States that had been mistakenly overlooked."
These statements are simply false. If polls had predicted a 50%/50% probability of Trump/Clinton victory, there would not have been the same shock. And Abramson conveniently ignores a series of events - the Clinton email releases, the Comey memo, and other factors. For example, many suburban Republican-leaning voters were convinced - mostly by the even-handed coverage of Trump by responsible news orgs like the New York Times in particular, that both candidates were equally terrible and that, as the Times so clearly put it - "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia."
These factors had an impact in the final weeks of the campaigns.
But Abramson is conflating the issue of how and why Trump won with the issue of how news organizations need to report on politics so that readers understand best what exactly is going on. To Margaret Sullivan, who previously worked as the Public Editor at the Times when they still had that role, news orgs need to recognize Trump's games for what they are and report accordingly. As Sullivan says, "The fact that the Trump coverage comes off as negative doesn’t make it “hostile” and doesn’t make it “anti-Trump.'"
But to Jill Abramson,
"One way out of the reactive cycle is to report the story from the places where the pro-Trump and Trump-curious live, to cover the facts and truths of their lives. The Caro approach offers a way forward for news organizations to find contributors from, or place correspondents in, the communities that support the president, to soak up the sense and sensibility of under-covered America. That way, we mix with the other tribe. The 2020 campaign, already upon us, offers a great opportunity to fulfill the pledge we made after the last election."
What Abramson is saying - unbeknownst to her apparently - is that support for Trump is so incomprehensible - that we need to go to places that have large majority Trump voters to understand how this is possible. These people must be so so angry - "white voter rage". This is a case of deciding what the story must be and seeking it out until you find some facts to support it. The NYT and other news orgs took it upon themselves to nail down the story they had already told themselves by going on this mission many times after the 2016 election. These white people must be so angry. It must be the economy. All of this is the noble savage take. It can't be white racism or white resentment or white supremacsim. In many cases, what these journalists found was Republican Party operatives willing to masquerade as angry independent voters.
And note that last line. "That way we mix with the other tribe." There it is. The former executive editor of the NYT saying that she was not able to report true stories because she and her tribe did not mix with the "other tribe." Wow. The other "side". There is not truth based on facts, only stories two "sides" believe to be true based on their own "facts". Maybe Kellyanne Conway could be executive editor of the New York Times. Instead of traveling all that way to the country, why not bring the other "tribe" in-house right at the top?
In "Trump doesn't believe his own damaging rants about 'fake news", Sullivan correctly reports, with compelling evidence - it's in the title, and worth repeating:
:Trump doesn't believe his own damaging rants about 'fake news".
Surprise, surprise.
That fact is obvious, but editorial standards at WaPo, like NYT, require that reasonable conclusions derived from facts appear as Opinion, in this case, the "Style: Perspective" column. How does Trump get away with it? People like Jill Abramson help him. As Sullivan points out:
"Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson drew right-wing plaudits recently when she referred to her former paper’s coverage of the president — as well as The Washington Post’s — as “unmistakably anti-Trump.” (The author of a new book on the press, “Merchants of Truth,” Abramson also praised much of the reporting at both papers.)"
When journalists who tout themselves as objective bend over backwards to treat "both sides" equally, at all times and in all circumstances, one side may realize the vulnerability created - that they can lie, cheat, and steal in plain sight. All they need to do is cry out "fake news", which he said/she said journalistic practice - the companion to 'both sides" - turns into a meaningless echo chamber of charges and counter charges that easily drowns out meaning.
Abramson's inability to take a stand - on reality, not political preference - is evident in her own WaPo piece today:
"Will the media ever figure out how to report on Trump?"
If editors are all like Abramson, the answer is "No". Fortunately, they are not.
Abramson leads off:
"The news media’s collective shock that Donald Trump won in 2016 was evidence of how out of touch most reporters were with the less affluent, less educated, rural parts of the country, where white voter rage galvanized into votes that made him the 45th president. In the days after the election, there was anguished self-examination in many newsrooms and vows to cover the parts of the United States that had been mistakenly overlooked."
These statements are simply false. If polls had predicted a 50%/50% probability of Trump/Clinton victory, there would not have been the same shock. And Abramson conveniently ignores a series of events - the Clinton email releases, the Comey memo, and other factors. For example, many suburban Republican-leaning voters were convinced - mostly by the even-handed coverage of Trump by responsible news orgs like the New York Times in particular, that both candidates were equally terrible and that, as the Times so clearly put it - "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia."
These factors had an impact in the final weeks of the campaigns.
But Abramson is conflating the issue of how and why Trump won with the issue of how news organizations need to report on politics so that readers understand best what exactly is going on. To Margaret Sullivan, who previously worked as the Public Editor at the Times when they still had that role, news orgs need to recognize Trump's games for what they are and report accordingly. As Sullivan says, "The fact that the Trump coverage comes off as negative doesn’t make it “hostile” and doesn’t make it “anti-Trump.'"
But to Jill Abramson,
"One way out of the reactive cycle is to report the story from the places where the pro-Trump and Trump-curious live, to cover the facts and truths of their lives. The Caro approach offers a way forward for news organizations to find contributors from, or place correspondents in, the communities that support the president, to soak up the sense and sensibility of under-covered America. That way, we mix with the other tribe. The 2020 campaign, already upon us, offers a great opportunity to fulfill the pledge we made after the last election."
What Abramson is saying - unbeknownst to her apparently - is that support for Trump is so incomprehensible - that we need to go to places that have large majority Trump voters to understand how this is possible. These people must be so so angry - "white voter rage". This is a case of deciding what the story must be and seeking it out until you find some facts to support it. The NYT and other news orgs took it upon themselves to nail down the story they had already told themselves by going on this mission many times after the 2016 election. These white people must be so angry. It must be the economy. All of this is the noble savage take. It can't be white racism or white resentment or white supremacsim. In many cases, what these journalists found was Republican Party operatives willing to masquerade as angry independent voters.
And note that last line. "That way we mix with the other tribe." There it is. The former executive editor of the NYT saying that she was not able to report true stories because she and her tribe did not mix with the "other tribe." Wow. The other "side". There is not truth based on facts, only stories two "sides" believe to be true based on their own "facts". Maybe Kellyanne Conway could be executive editor of the New York Times. Instead of traveling all that way to the country, why not bring the other "tribe" in-house right at the top?
Thursday, January 31, 2019
The Six Forms of Media Bias?
David Leonardt of NYT has an interesting piece - The Six Forms of Media Bias - in response to Margaret Sullivan's WaPo perspective article: "The media feel safest in the middle lane. Just ask Jeff Flake, John Kasich and Howard Schultz."
These articles properly address major problems of objective media political reporting, but miss the big picture. Leonardt organizes his piece around six elements, but in two of those - Centrist Bias and Liberal Bias, he notes the problem of bothsidesism, which is the correct point of focus.
Bothsidesism derives from an inability of political journalists to understand the difference between:
1. Fair and accurate reporting
2. Fair and balanced reporting
Balanced reporting can be inaccurate, and often is, especially if one "side" recognizes this media vulnerability and instinctively or, with calculation, act to exploit that weakness.
So, political reporters, so afraid of being wrong, now and then, practice bothsidesism, and wind up wrong more often than not.
The commitment to forced balance leads to these errors:
-If a full and objective analysis of facts would logically lead to dire conclusions regarding one "side" in our politics, especially if it is the other "side", these so-called "liberal" journalists soften their conclusions in order to maintain the appearance they are unbiased, but the result is bias against factual reporting in full context. Fox News does not have "Conservative bias" as Leonhardt writes. Fox News is a propaganda machine with enormous influence on viewers who like what they see and hear on the station. But Leonhardt can not say that. He says they "skew hard right" says nothing about their disregard of reality. They lie. Trump lies.
Fair and balance leads to
Forced balance, leads to
False balance,
False equivalencies
We need a new journalistic set of standards for political reporting with a commitment to objectivity and accuracy, not so-called "fair and balanced" reporting. Fair and balanced implies the reporter is just a conveyor of facts without context. This has resulted in reporters who try to step back at all times to the "View from Nowhere" as Jay Rosen calls it, practice he said/she said journalism by default. They can not do otherwise under this regime. He said/she said political journalism favors the more aggressive politician, especially those who lie over those who tell the truth. Lying sends the political reporters into fact checking, which means they waste their time. Or they go running to the political opponent to ask - "he says this bad thing about you. What do you say about that?
"Bias for the new" is a big problem that is related to an inability to properly handle incremental changes to the status quo on important items. For example, the unbelievably significant interactions between Trump, his campaign, and Russia in 2015 and 2016 became public slowly over an extended period of time and the means of revelations was often manipulated by team Trump to soften the immediate blow to their credibility. So, for example, Jeff Sessions sworn testimony to the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he was not aware of any contact with Russia was an absurd statement.
The solution to outdated standards of reporting for journalists is to step away from he said/she said reporting. Political journalists need to be like scientists - not referees, not judges. Instead of fair and balanced, be complete and accurate in context. Instead of horse race emphasis, turn to likely outcomes. We live in a world that is completely opposite to the world America would have inhabited if Clinton had won and Brexit had lost. But we did see much, if anything on that story in the he said/she said, false balance reporting of 2016.
Donald Trump is not an aberration. He represents the apotheosis of Republican political strategy of the last half century. Republicans are good at winning. Democrats are good at analyzing complex problems and designing complex solutions. Republicans succeed by dumbing down the debate to the lowest common denominator. Journalists have a duty to report this as fact, as the context for political debate, not as opinion.
These articles properly address major problems of objective media political reporting, but miss the big picture. Leonardt organizes his piece around six elements, but in two of those - Centrist Bias and Liberal Bias, he notes the problem of bothsidesism, which is the correct point of focus.
Bothsidesism derives from an inability of political journalists to understand the difference between:
1. Fair and accurate reporting
2. Fair and balanced reporting
Balanced reporting can be inaccurate, and often is, especially if one "side" recognizes this media vulnerability and instinctively or, with calculation, act to exploit that weakness.
So, political reporters, so afraid of being wrong, now and then, practice bothsidesism, and wind up wrong more often than not.
The commitment to forced balance leads to these errors:
-If a full and objective analysis of facts would logically lead to dire conclusions regarding one "side" in our politics, especially if it is the other "side", these so-called "liberal" journalists soften their conclusions in order to maintain the appearance they are unbiased, but the result is bias against factual reporting in full context. Fox News does not have "Conservative bias" as Leonhardt writes. Fox News is a propaganda machine with enormous influence on viewers who like what they see and hear on the station. But Leonhardt can not say that. He says they "skew hard right" says nothing about their disregard of reality. They lie. Trump lies.
Fair and balance leads to
Forced balance, leads to
False balance,
False equivalencies
We need a new journalistic set of standards for political reporting with a commitment to objectivity and accuracy, not so-called "fair and balanced" reporting. Fair and balanced implies the reporter is just a conveyor of facts without context. This has resulted in reporters who try to step back at all times to the "View from Nowhere" as Jay Rosen calls it, practice he said/she said journalism by default. They can not do otherwise under this regime. He said/she said political journalism favors the more aggressive politician, especially those who lie over those who tell the truth. Lying sends the political reporters into fact checking, which means they waste their time. Or they go running to the political opponent to ask - "he says this bad thing about you. What do you say about that?
"Bias for the new" is a big problem that is related to an inability to properly handle incremental changes to the status quo on important items. For example, the unbelievably significant interactions between Trump, his campaign, and Russia in 2015 and 2016 became public slowly over an extended period of time and the means of revelations was often manipulated by team Trump to soften the immediate blow to their credibility. So, for example, Jeff Sessions sworn testimony to the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he was not aware of any contact with Russia was an absurd statement.
The solution to outdated standards of reporting for journalists is to step away from he said/she said reporting. Political journalists need to be like scientists - not referees, not judges. Instead of fair and balanced, be complete and accurate in context. Instead of horse race emphasis, turn to likely outcomes. We live in a world that is completely opposite to the world America would have inhabited if Clinton had won and Brexit had lost. But we did see much, if anything on that story in the he said/she said, false balance reporting of 2016.
Donald Trump is not an aberration. He represents the apotheosis of Republican political strategy of the last half century. Republicans are good at winning. Democrats are good at analyzing complex problems and designing complex solutions. Republicans succeed by dumbing down the debate to the lowest common denominator. Journalists have a duty to report this as fact, as the context for political debate, not as opinion.
Friday, January 25, 2019
He said/She said Journalism Rules
At the Schumer/Pelosi news conference announcing the agreement with Trump to end the federal government shutdown, Pelosi was asked:
"The president has wanted this wall funding for a long time, but it wasn't until Democrats won the House that he really went to the mat for it. How much of all of this do you think is about the new power dynamic that is his desire to show you who really is in charge?"
Pelosi did not take the bait.
The question can be reparsed as "Why is he doing this to you?" Isn't that better asked of the person doing the doing rather than the done to party? Better to ask someone who is not going to yell at you and shout you down as "fake news".
This particular reporter is demonstrating a problem with journalistic standards in the U.S. Mainstream political journalism is comprised of reporting actions and events and asking each side what they think about the other side. Direct observation with reasonable interpretation is forbidden under standard political reporting and relegated to the opinion section. Just as journalists willingly follow every tweet by the president, in part, because it fits their model the "he said" parry, someone like Nancy Pelosi, who is performing her job, needs to be drawn into the he said/she said model of both sides journalism in order for the model to appear to function, to advance to the next parry. The reporter in this scenario had made the same observation that many others have made (see "Not a Wall, Not a Wall"). But if you think this, there is no reason to ask Pelosi if she agrees with you. It's just not her job.
The only real reason for this shutdown was for Trump to asset his dominance and deny that the Democratic majority in the House has any power.
The reporter reached this reasonable conclusion, but is not empowered to make a declarative statement - hence the disguise in the form of a question to try to get a response from Pelosi that nudges team Trump to respond in an endless he said/she said "debate" of both sides journalism.
Hey - this isn't Jeopardy people.
"The president has wanted this wall funding for a long time, but it wasn't until Democrats won the House that he really went to the mat for it. How much of all of this do you think is about the new power dynamic that is his desire to show you who really is in charge?"
Pelosi did not take the bait.
The question can be reparsed as "Why is he doing this to you?" Isn't that better asked of the person doing the doing rather than the done to party? Better to ask someone who is not going to yell at you and shout you down as "fake news".
This particular reporter is demonstrating a problem with journalistic standards in the U.S. Mainstream political journalism is comprised of reporting actions and events and asking each side what they think about the other side. Direct observation with reasonable interpretation is forbidden under standard political reporting and relegated to the opinion section. Just as journalists willingly follow every tweet by the president, in part, because it fits their model the "he said" parry, someone like Nancy Pelosi, who is performing her job, needs to be drawn into the he said/she said model of both sides journalism in order for the model to appear to function, to advance to the next parry. The reporter in this scenario had made the same observation that many others have made (see "Not a Wall, Not a Wall"). But if you think this, there is no reason to ask Pelosi if she agrees with you. It's just not her job.
The only real reason for this shutdown was for Trump to asset his dominance and deny that the Democratic majority in the House has any power.
The reporter reached this reasonable conclusion, but is not empowered to make a declarative statement - hence the disguise in the form of a question to try to get a response from Pelosi that nudges team Trump to respond in an endless he said/she said "debate" of both sides journalism.
Hey - this isn't Jeopardy people.
 |
| source:npr.org |
Monday, January 7, 2019
The Safe Place
In America, political journalists in the business of objective news reporting pull themselves to the safe place of "both sides" reporting as a purported best practice in their field. When you play the "both sides" game you innoculate yourself from criticism of bias.
Reporting "both sides" is not always wrong or inaccurate, but forcing all political reporting into a "both sides" box is one of the great journalistic failures of 2016. And it continues.
On MSNBC this morning, Craig Melvin announced in his lead-in:
"A disrupter in Congress...
How Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez draws the right's outrage and forces members on the left to look over their shoulders all at the same time.
Take a look at the subject and the predicate. Ocasio-Cortes just is a maverick - is that now that John McCain is no longer with us? Is that why - just to fulfill the press's need for a maverick?
And what action did she take to draw the right's outrage? Is it really outrage at some action? More likely she represents a threat or an opportunity. A threat if she is well liked, or an opportunity if she lets certain conservatives check all the boxes of their antagonism - a) female, b) outspoken, c) latina, and d) young. After her election, a Washington Examiner reporter tweeted a picture of her taken from behind, challenging her personal story by claiming her being too well dressed to be poor. That also gave him the excuse he needed to take a photo of her butt. More recently, an old video of her joyfully dancing with friends at Boston University was tweeted in an apparent effort to discredit her for being what? Young, attractive, energetic, and happy? That most recent episode demonstrates that something peculiar is going on here with the urgent attempts to take her down. Ordinarily a freshman member of Congress has very little power - one vote among 435. So the rapid fire attacks on AOC demonstrate that Republicans feel a need to make the story about her. It's a tell - something about the Republicans. Not AOC. That is the real news. The Republicans want AOC to be their spokesperson for the Democrats. And for that story, let's keep "the left" out of it. Don't bring in "the left" to force the appearance of balance. Just tell the real story.
"How conservative operatives jumped on the election of AOC to attract attention and foment anger and resentment of this new member of Congress as a way to distract from serious policy discussion"
Not perfect. But would be much better. Much closer to the truth.
Melvin made it worse after he came back from the "break."
"Love her or hate her Congress youngest member AOC has become a lightning rod for Republicans
She has also become a darling of the left."
There he goes again. Both sides. You can't say anything about one side without invoking an equal and opposite statement about the other "side" That may seem harmless enough, but that approach has made it almost impossible to state the obvious as plain fact or even as the most likely set of facts in any situation where "both sides" leads to fallacy.
The presumption that both sides are always the same is a fallacy that flies in the face of the reality we have faced over the past two years. A man is president of the U.S. who did certain things and did not do certain things.
He never ran for or served in any government office or as a general in the military.
He never functioned in business in any way similar to ANY business leaders in the U.S. He just is not Rex Tillerson, let alone Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, or anyone else.
He ran beauty pageants.
He ran casinos.
He traded in real estate, such as condos and office buildings. Much of his real estate was sold to Russian oligarchs and criminals.
And so on. Ignoring that stark asymmetry with a both sides approach guarantees that reporting will distort the truth about Trump. Which is why we are where we are today. And failure of major news organizations to recognize that problem with their reporting guarantees that 2020 will be a replay of 2018.
Reporting "both sides" is not always wrong or inaccurate, but forcing all political reporting into a "both sides" box is one of the great journalistic failures of 2016. And it continues.
On MSNBC this morning, Craig Melvin announced in his lead-in:
 |
| source:msnbc |
How Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez draws the right's outrage and forces members on the left to look over their shoulders all at the same time.
Take a look at the subject and the predicate. Ocasio-Cortes just is a maverick - is that now that John McCain is no longer with us? Is that why - just to fulfill the press's need for a maverick?
And what action did she take to draw the right's outrage? Is it really outrage at some action? More likely she represents a threat or an opportunity. A threat if she is well liked, or an opportunity if she lets certain conservatives check all the boxes of their antagonism - a) female, b) outspoken, c) latina, and d) young. After her election, a Washington Examiner reporter tweeted a picture of her taken from behind, challenging her personal story by claiming her being too well dressed to be poor. That also gave him the excuse he needed to take a photo of her butt. More recently, an old video of her joyfully dancing with friends at Boston University was tweeted in an apparent effort to discredit her for being what? Young, attractive, energetic, and happy? That most recent episode demonstrates that something peculiar is going on here with the urgent attempts to take her down. Ordinarily a freshman member of Congress has very little power - one vote among 435. So the rapid fire attacks on AOC demonstrate that Republicans feel a need to make the story about her. It's a tell - something about the Republicans. Not AOC. That is the real news. The Republicans want AOC to be their spokesperson for the Democrats. And for that story, let's keep "the left" out of it. Don't bring in "the left" to force the appearance of balance. Just tell the real story.
"How conservative operatives jumped on the election of AOC to attract attention and foment anger and resentment of this new member of Congress as a way to distract from serious policy discussion"
Not perfect. But would be much better. Much closer to the truth.
Melvin made it worse after he came back from the "break."
"Love her or hate her Congress youngest member AOC has become a lightning rod for Republicans
She has also become a darling of the left."
There he goes again. Both sides. You can't say anything about one side without invoking an equal and opposite statement about the other "side" That may seem harmless enough, but that approach has made it almost impossible to state the obvious as plain fact or even as the most likely set of facts in any situation where "both sides" leads to fallacy.
The presumption that both sides are always the same is a fallacy that flies in the face of the reality we have faced over the past two years. A man is president of the U.S. who did certain things and did not do certain things.
He never ran for or served in any government office or as a general in the military.
He never functioned in business in any way similar to ANY business leaders in the U.S. He just is not Rex Tillerson, let alone Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, or anyone else.
He ran beauty pageants.
He ran casinos.
He traded in real estate, such as condos and office buildings. Much of his real estate was sold to Russian oligarchs and criminals.
And so on. Ignoring that stark asymmetry with a both sides approach guarantees that reporting will distort the truth about Trump. Which is why we are where we are today. And failure of major news organizations to recognize that problem with their reporting guarantees that 2020 will be a replay of 2018.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Pivot to the General
In "Agents of doubt :How a powerful Russian propaganda machine chips away at Western notions of truth" Joby Warrick and Anton Troianovski construct a powerful evidence-based narrative.
They begin the story with a compelling timeline graphic that separately documents the actions of Russian officials and Russian media alongside the contemporaneous events in Britain. As they point out "Russian media have disseminated as many as 46 false stories" about the Skripal nerve gas attack in Britain. And, using the projection method popular with certain elements in the West, "Moscow has repeatedly rejected [the] accusations, while suggesting that Britain is responsible for any confusion over what happened in the Skripal case."
The WaPo writers explain that the problem goes well beyond the attempted murders of the Skripals.
"Yet the same tactics that were observed in the wake of the Skripal poisoning have been employed multiple times since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, in each case following roughly the same script. When pro-Russian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew members, Russian officials and media outlets sought to pin the blame on the Ukrainian government, suggesting at one point that corpses had been trucked to the crash site to make the death toll appear higher."
So far so good. Great reporting.
But the car goes off the road. Here we go:
"While many of the individual stories are easily debunked, the campaigns have had a discernible impact, as measured by opinion polls and, occasionally, public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments. In October 2015, months after U.S. and European investigators concluded that Flight 17 had been brought down by a Russian missile fired by separatists, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told CNN that the culprit was “probably Russia” but suggested that the truth was unknowable."
Wait. Why are the authors suggesting that the doubt expressed by Donald Trump about Russian responsibility for the downing of Flight 17 is somehow a representative example of successful sowing of doubt by the Kremlin in presumed rational Western leadership? Surely the authors have noticed that Donald Trump leans heavily toward Russian in his public pronouncements and actions. And that a full scale Justice Department investigation of Team Trump ties to Russia is proceeding apace.
Notice that the authors avoided quoting Trump's nonstop "doubts" about the findings of U.S. intelligence regarding Russia's avid support of candidate Trump in the 2016 election with the distribution of the hacked DNC emails. "It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."
Unfortunately, the WaPo, similar to the NYT, employs the dubious standard - we only know what we know for sure and anything we suspect about a politician needs to be treated as false. As a result, the opposite of what we suspect needs to be treated as true. Therefore, if we suspect that Trump and his team collaborated actively with Russia (We actually know this, by the way, but, whatever), and we are trying to discuss the reaction of Western leaders to Russian propaganda, we do not know Trump's complicity for sure, so when Trump expresses doubt about the facts that contradict Russian propaganda, we can use Trump's expressions of doubt as a solid example of confusion in the West rather than as a clear example of collaboration with Russia to advance his own personal interests.
In other words, if journalists want to assume Trump may be innocent of any particular wrongdoing, even in the face of all available evidence, that does not justify a presumption that Trump is definitiely innocent. Assuming someone may be innocent does not mean the person is innocent and does not justify coming to conclusions that are only true if the person is innocent.
Adding insult to injury, from a journalistic perspective, this device of presumed innocence creates a false frame that Trump is definitely innocent of any collaboration with Russia, criminal or otherwise.
One indicator of the logical flaw shows up in the statement "public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments." followed immediately by a single flawed example - Donald Trump. The logical fallacy here is the pivot to the general - drawing a general conclusion from a specific case where more careful objective analysis of the specific case would yield a different conclusion. This pivot from the specific to the general is often used by conservatives as a debating tactic to avoid reasonable evidence-based inferences. (more to come on that in future posts.)
As a journalistic failure, this logically flawed practice is related to the problem of minimalism given context in The Problem With Appearances. Reporters assume the best is true if they do not know for certain that the worst is true.
This is not the first time WaPo has employed this dubious journalistic standard that results in implied false conclusions. While WaPo has been head and shoulders above the NYT the past two years, this example is particularly egregious because Trump, together with Fox News, and in support of the Kremlin has been the key operative in the West to create as much confusion as possible about the facts. As a consequence, this journalistic breach, repeated yet again, is deserving of a "Bottomless Pinnocchio".
They begin the story with a compelling timeline graphic that separately documents the actions of Russian officials and Russian media alongside the contemporaneous events in Britain. As they point out "Russian media have disseminated as many as 46 false stories" about the Skripal nerve gas attack in Britain. And, using the projection method popular with certain elements in the West, "Moscow has repeatedly rejected [the] accusations, while suggesting that Britain is responsible for any confusion over what happened in the Skripal case."
The WaPo writers explain that the problem goes well beyond the attempted murders of the Skripals.
"Yet the same tactics that were observed in the wake of the Skripal poisoning have been employed multiple times since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, in each case following roughly the same script. When pro-Russian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew members, Russian officials and media outlets sought to pin the blame on the Ukrainian government, suggesting at one point that corpses had been trucked to the crash site to make the death toll appear higher."
So far so good. Great reporting.
But the car goes off the road. Here we go:
"While many of the individual stories are easily debunked, the campaigns have had a discernible impact, as measured by opinion polls and, occasionally, public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments. In October 2015, months after U.S. and European investigators concluded that Flight 17 had been brought down by a Russian missile fired by separatists, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told CNN that the culprit was “probably Russia” but suggested that the truth was unknowable."
Wait. Why are the authors suggesting that the doubt expressed by Donald Trump about Russian responsibility for the downing of Flight 17 is somehow a representative example of successful sowing of doubt by the Kremlin in presumed rational Western leadership? Surely the authors have noticed that Donald Trump leans heavily toward Russian in his public pronouncements and actions. And that a full scale Justice Department investigation of Team Trump ties to Russia is proceeding apace.
Notice that the authors avoided quoting Trump's nonstop "doubts" about the findings of U.S. intelligence regarding Russia's avid support of candidate Trump in the 2016 election with the distribution of the hacked DNC emails. "It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."
Unfortunately, the WaPo, similar to the NYT, employs the dubious standard - we only know what we know for sure and anything we suspect about a politician needs to be treated as false. As a result, the opposite of what we suspect needs to be treated as true. Therefore, if we suspect that Trump and his team collaborated actively with Russia (We actually know this, by the way, but, whatever), and we are trying to discuss the reaction of Western leaders to Russian propaganda, we do not know Trump's complicity for sure, so when Trump expresses doubt about the facts that contradict Russian propaganda, we can use Trump's expressions of doubt as a solid example of confusion in the West rather than as a clear example of collaboration with Russia to advance his own personal interests.
In other words, if journalists want to assume Trump may be innocent of any particular wrongdoing, even in the face of all available evidence, that does not justify a presumption that Trump is definitiely innocent. Assuming someone may be innocent does not mean the person is innocent and does not justify coming to conclusions that are only true if the person is innocent.
Adding insult to injury, from a journalistic perspective, this device of presumed innocence creates a false frame that Trump is definitely innocent of any collaboration with Russia, criminal or otherwise.
One indicator of the logical flaw shows up in the statement "public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments." followed immediately by a single flawed example - Donald Trump. The logical fallacy here is the pivot to the general - drawing a general conclusion from a specific case where more careful objective analysis of the specific case would yield a different conclusion. This pivot from the specific to the general is often used by conservatives as a debating tactic to avoid reasonable evidence-based inferences. (more to come on that in future posts.)
As a journalistic failure, this logically flawed practice is related to the problem of minimalism given context in The Problem With Appearances. Reporters assume the best is true if they do not know for certain that the worst is true.
This is not the first time WaPo has employed this dubious journalistic standard that results in implied false conclusions. While WaPo has been head and shoulders above the NYT the past two years, this example is particularly egregious because Trump, together with Fox News, and in support of the Kremlin has been the key operative in the West to create as much confusion as possible about the facts. As a consequence, this journalistic breach, repeated yet again, is deserving of a "Bottomless Pinnocchio".
Monday, December 10, 2018
Doubling Down on Doubling Down
Jay Rosen succinctly prescribes one solution to the bafflement of the mainstream press in dealing with Trump:
"Don't let him be your assignment editor." (At 2:30.)
If only the fact checker at the Washington Post was paying attention.
Trump doubles down on lies all the time. The constant lying is a way to deny reality, distract from the malfeasance of his team, deflect attention from important issues to unimportant or irrelevant matters, and to accuse a political opponent or the press, usually falsely or in a grossly misleading way of doing some wrong thing. Unfortunately, if there is the slightest veracity or mere appearance of relevance to Trump's false claim, our mainstream press feels compelled to analyze the Trumpian statement in excruciating detail. By that point, Trump has succeeded in derailing the press from their mission by controlling the narrative, the constant drumbeat that he uses to keep his supporters agitated, aggravated, on edge, and fearful or hateful as the case may be.
Thus, fact checking of Trump by the press makes no sense as a reporting method because it gives Trump exactly what he wants, helping him to achieve the goals of his communications effort - satisfying supporters and confusing some opponents.
Early on, the press was mystified by Trump's doubling down on his lies. Surely fact checking would expose Trump as a fraud (but we can't call him a fraud, despite the preponderance of the evidence - we are a free press, after all, who must recoil from anything that smacks as an opinion, even when the verifiable conclusions are clear.)
So what does the WaPo do after all these years of fact checking have proved insufficient to derail Trump's false narratives? When Trump doubles down, they double down too -- on fact checking!
Wapo calls their latest invention the "Bottomless Pinnochio". When four Pinnochios are not enough.
From the WaPo fact checker ---"Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again"
How exactly does "bottomless Pinnocchio do anything that 5 or even 10 Pinnochios would not accomplish?
Any reader who is not convinced by four Pinnochios will not be convinced by a bottomless Pinocchio. And, by covering the lies in this manner, as statements that are considered with regard to their veracity instead of statements that Trump makes to deny, distract, deflect, and/or accuse, that is, statements that are made tactically, WaPo continues to fail to cover Trump responsibly ( or any politician who operates in bad faith) in the manner in which they deserve --- which is the coverage that the readership deserves.
See also: "Hothead But Not a Liar II - Tactics for Truth" for coverage of similar WaPo fact checking flaws and apt comments of the linguist George Lakoff.
And for more about deny, distract, accuse and masterful narrative control, see:
Birtherism as a Service (BaaS)
"Don't let him be your assignment editor." (At 2:30.)
If only the fact checker at the Washington Post was paying attention.
Trump doubles down on lies all the time. The constant lying is a way to deny reality, distract from the malfeasance of his team, deflect attention from important issues to unimportant or irrelevant matters, and to accuse a political opponent or the press, usually falsely or in a grossly misleading way of doing some wrong thing. Unfortunately, if there is the slightest veracity or mere appearance of relevance to Trump's false claim, our mainstream press feels compelled to analyze the Trumpian statement in excruciating detail. By that point, Trump has succeeded in derailing the press from their mission by controlling the narrative, the constant drumbeat that he uses to keep his supporters agitated, aggravated, on edge, and fearful or hateful as the case may be.
Thus, fact checking of Trump by the press makes no sense as a reporting method because it gives Trump exactly what he wants, helping him to achieve the goals of his communications effort - satisfying supporters and confusing some opponents.
Early on, the press was mystified by Trump's doubling down on his lies. Surely fact checking would expose Trump as a fraud (but we can't call him a fraud, despite the preponderance of the evidence - we are a free press, after all, who must recoil from anything that smacks as an opinion, even when the verifiable conclusions are clear.)
So what does the WaPo do after all these years of fact checking have proved insufficient to derail Trump's false narratives? When Trump doubles down, they double down too -- on fact checking!
Wapo calls their latest invention the "Bottomless Pinnochio". When four Pinnochios are not enough.
From the WaPo fact checker ---"Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again"
How exactly does "bottomless Pinnocchio do anything that 5 or even 10 Pinnochios would not accomplish?
Any reader who is not convinced by four Pinnochios will not be convinced by a bottomless Pinocchio. And, by covering the lies in this manner, as statements that are considered with regard to their veracity instead of statements that Trump makes to deny, distract, deflect, and/or accuse, that is, statements that are made tactically, WaPo continues to fail to cover Trump responsibly ( or any politician who operates in bad faith) in the manner in which they deserve --- which is the coverage that the readership deserves.
See also: "Hothead But Not a Liar II - Tactics for Truth" for coverage of similar WaPo fact checking flaws and apt comments of the linguist George Lakoff.
And for more about deny, distract, accuse and masterful narrative control, see:
Birtherism as a Service (BaaS)
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