It's the Fact Pattern, Stupid!

Let's take a look at this tweet from Adam Goldman of NYTimes fame:

Mr. Trump is not the first president to appoint an ally with thin credentials to run the Justice Department: John F. Kennedy picked his brother, Robert. Nor is it unusual to staff government agencies with officials who bring vested interests to the job https://t.co/aZcziEa4xk

— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanNYT) November 10, 2018

Some of the replies are apt. What the Times might call "critics of Mr. Goldman go into detail about contrasts between Whitaker and Robert Kennedy with persuasive arguments, but the most compelling is "this is classic whataboutism". When the president does this, it's all about distraction, denial, deflection, and accusations. When a reporter does it on behalf of the President because NYT reporting standards so dictate, then he or she is carrying his water.

Goldman's tweet and the referenced article demonstrate the problem that false balance creates as it feeds into the favored narrative of this president. Clearly, the Times method of political reporting  requires looking at something Trump does and then, instead of a laser like focus on the context, dictates that they research comparable actions that a Democrat took as president. Due to the power of framing, magnified by any mention of the Kennedy's, this creates a greater persuader for the argument - See, the Democrats did it, so it is all right. And even if it's not all right, the Democrats do it and there is nothing you can do because that's politics. Or, more dangerously - "see, it happens all the time, so Trump is not as bad as you think, Democrats. And, moderate Republicans, nothing to worry about here - go back to your personal business and good times!"

The proper context requires reporting the nomination of Matthew Whitaker as part of a sequence of actions to quash Mueller's investigation. It's a fact pattern, stupid! Many of those steps were taken under false pretenses, which includes the firings of Comey, McCabe, and Strzok, and significantly, the appointment of Whitaker as AG Sessions' chief of staff a year ago.

A WaPo piece that places the Whitaker appointment in proper context ( and which could go much further, but for the constraints of space) is Aaron Blake's "Almost everything about Matthew Whitaker’s appointment is problematic". I know, it make's you wonder. You say, "Aaron, how is it you do not mention Bobby Kennedy in your article?"

Now, the NYT article by Mark Landler that mentions Kennedy, goes on to say, "...there was no precedent for installing a political crony as attorney general at the very moment he could decide the fate of a federal investigation involving the president." That's point, New York Times! You don't try to cram the facts into a story that forces balance between two equal and opposite sides in a never-ending search to report equivalance at all times in all things regardless of what the evidence tells us. Instead, examine the evidence and tell us what the truthful narrative is...which requires a careful examination of context. And you do not get to context by going back almost 60 years and starting a debate about the facts of that time and the story those facts may or may not tell, which may or may not compare in important ways.

With Fear or Favor

We often think of the strength that comes with great numbers of people acting together as one, but there are forces working against that.

Individual journalists were singled out this week by Trump. (OK, there are journalists and"journalists".)

Trump singled out Hannity and friend Pirro for favor, inviting them to join him up onstage at his rally.

And CNNs Jim Acosta was singled out for fear, his White House press credentials revoked.

source:people.com

source:cnn

The details of the treatment of Acosta do not really matter. The Trump White House has been building up to this making CNN and Acosta in particular his punching bag. CNN is the greater threat to Trump, not MSNBC. Trump supporters ignore MSNBC as biased, but CNN has a history of inviting Trump apologists, not just Republicans and conservatives, as talking heads to position themselves as "fair and balanced". That makes CNN harder to ignore.

This is all about the authoritarian demonstration of his power. See, I can revoke your press pass and your livelihood is gone. There is nothing you can do about it. I can lie about my reason for doing this, everyone knows I am lying, and there is still nothing you can do about it. I revoked Brennan's security clearance - a clear demonstration of power, and there was nothing any of you could do about it. In fact, I can grant my son-in-law, Jared Kushner a security clearance, and there is still nothing you can do about that either.  I can fire Comey and any other witnesses Mueller may find to my antics -  McCabe, Strzok. In McCabe's case, firing him just before eligibility for full pension was the point - the intimidation factor matters. And humiliation.  Picture Rex Tillerson getting the news of his firing on the toilet.

Under the authoritarian mentality, I define reality. So each of these victims to my ritual humiliation is made to look weak and, therefore, something of a loser,and therefore someone who is wrong, morally weak and morally wrong. That becomes the frame in which I define truth. The ritual humiliation is important, the signaling ahead of time - Sessions has been dangled for months - that even when you know the hit is coming, there is nothing anyone can do about it.

The authoritarian relies on fear --- and dispersal of the opposition into individual atoms. No one wants to be singled out for the hit and will think twice before taking action against the authoritarian. That's the point.

Greg Sargent explains how this authoritarianism works.

1) Sarah Sanders is flagrantly lying about what happened with @acosta, to justify punishing a reporter for holding Trump accountable.

People seem baffled.

How could the White House lie about something that's on video, where everyone can see what really happened?

*Thread*

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 8, 2018

Hothead But Not a Liar II - Tactics for Truth

The Washington Post fact checker tells us President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days So what? Is that different from 323 false or misleading claims? How about 2.3 million false or misleading claims. Well, here at WaPo, we believe in fair and balanced he said/she said journalism. We report the facts and let you decide based on the evidence.

But the only reason to report in detail on so many outright lies is to tell citizens that any reasonable person should not believe anything that Trump says. If Alec Baldwin can be called a "hot-head" in a political news story because he is a hot-head, surely Trump can be called a liar in every news story about him that includes a claim by him. "Lying Donald Trump says a 400 pound man may have done it" or "Lying Donald Trumps says 'maybe it's Tchina'". This approach would eliminate the need for reporters to lamely state "Trump claims, without presenting evidence..." Yeah. No kidding. Without evidence because he lies all the time.

George Lakoff comes as close as anyone to pinning down the news media for their kid gloves treatment of Trump based on his research over decades. Lakoff explains why fact checking is a recipe for failure.  See his Medium piece "A Blitzkrieg Strategy of Lies and Distractions."

Lakoff's writing is compelling:

"Trump’s “big lie” strategy is designed to exploit journalistic convention by providing rapid-fire “news” events for reporters to chase. Trump spews falsehoods in a blitzkrieg fashion, but the lies are only part of the game. What reporters continue to miss is the strategy behind the big lies: to divert attention from big truths. The technique is simple: create controversy and confusion around politically-charged topics to stoke his conservative base and distract from stories that harm Trump.

It’s a numbers game. The more he can get his key terms and images repeated in the media — even as “fact checks” — the more he wins. That’s just how our brains work. The more we hear about something, the more it sticks. Even if it’s not true. When I say “don’t think of an elephant,” it forces you to think of an elephant. Repeating lies, even to debunk them, helps spread and strengthen them. The scientific evidence is clear."

As Lakoff tells us, "Trump’s success is rooted in the media’s tendency to amplify, rather than analyze, his tactics." Lakoff recommends a "truth sandwich", that is, placing the lie between two truths at all times in any coverage, which does not seem adequate either.

Trump's strategy has been enormously successful. Fill in the blank: "Lyin' ___" Or how about "Crooked _______". You don't need help. You know the answers. Funny how the most appropriate and accurate response, though, is 'Trump" in both cases. But that's why he instinctively does that. What better way to distract. And that tells us the best approach. For each specific lie, there is a specific purpose- a denial, distraction, deflection, accusation, and so on that can be identified. In some cases this is speculation, but that is OK. Better to be accurate about treating a tactic as a tactic, which it always is, rather than treat Lyin' Trump's statements as possibly true inputs for the fact checking machine.

Which gets us back to "hot-headed actor Alec Baldwin. OK, if that works, then if Trump makes a claim that is false, and a fact checking reporter determines the statement is false, why not lead that news article with "Lyin' Trump says...". That kind of reporting sounds aggressive, but it would put both Trump and his supporters ( who have by the way embraced lying as a successful tactic) on notice that their little tricks have met some opposition, some tactics for truth. If 10 lies a day does not a liar make, what does? And if the article on Trump does not report Trump lying, then don't refer to him as "Lyin' Trump" in that article. Which is actually a gentle approach, though, to avoid snarkiness, I would suggest "Lying Trump" or "The Lying President" over "Lyin'"

Sometimes Trump is not lying as much as bluffing. This week he felt the need to say that he would raise the troop levels at the border from 5,200 to 15,000. Then he brought up changing the rules of engagement to have troops shoot at anyone who picks up a rock. Wait a second, this caravan of mostly women and children is hundreds of miles away, trying to escape to live in the U.S., and now they are expected to pick up rocks in a threatening manner against the military? of course that makes no sense, but see what he did there?  By raising the stakes, he kept the threat of violence on the people from Central America and away from the white nationalist terrorists who struck this week - one who sent bombs to prominent Democrats, another who committed mass murder at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and yet another who tried to enter a predominately black church, failed, and then murdered a black man and a black woman nearby. My guess is that many Americans missed that last example and many others already forget about it. Trump wants us to forget. And he really does not want us thinking about the two young Saudi women bound together and thrown in the Hudson River off NYC. Because that reminds us about Khashoggi --- and Yemen.

Trump only needs to make his claims and threats to achieve the intended effect - to focus attention on the border with Mexico and away from these horrors.

At the end of the day, political reporting is just one subject of reporting. If the result is deficient, and the truth does not prevail, then remedial action is required. Political reporters who wring their hands and say "We are just doing what we need to do - reporting the facts" are wrong and need to start doing their job. It may not be easy, but it's not as hard as they make it sound.

Hothead But Not a Liar I

Interesting quick take from CNBC on Alec Baldwin's arrest in NYC for punching a person over a parking space. The article refers to "Hot-headed actor Alec Baldwin." (Italics added)That seems fair enough - meaning accurate enough, given some prior documented incidents of aggressive physical behavior.

But "hot-headed" is surely a negative description, and this story appears under the Politics heading as news, not opinion, along with a photo of Baldwin impersonating Trump on Saturday Night Live. As an important player in Democratic politics immediately prior to the mid-term elections, isn't Baldwin a political figure entitled to "both sides" treatment?

This treatment dictates that the reporter highlight antisocial physically aggressive behavior by a prominent Republican, preferably an actor to keep it as parallel as possible. If you can't find a good example of an actor, maybe go with Corey Lewandowski fighting with John Kelly at the White House in February. See - both sides do it. No matter what "it" is.

And if it's the New York Times, you might even pivot to a bland, but misleading generalization in the headline like "Tempers Flare on Both Sides as Mid-term Election Nears" -  rendering the story meaningless.

But Baldwin is not an officeholder, nor is he running for office. Even though the CNBC story falls under a Politics heading (shown below), he is being given the Entertainment treatment by CNBC.

Besides, it's Republicans whose long history of "whatabout the Democrats" complaints have the news media afraid of their harsh criticisms.

When Political Calculation Becomes Your Only Policy

"When tactics become policy" is an attempt to describe the situation in U.S. politics that has developed over many years. Conservatives have a strategy that counts on short term political victories without regard to the long term impact - destruction of the U.S. political system.

People have been catching on to this.

Facts Don't Matter

Elizabeth Warren can be forgiven for believing facts matter, but they don't. Stories matter, but only stories that "feel" true - true to the listener.

Warren released the results of the DNA test of her Native American heritage. What does this tell us?

Number 1, this tells us that she is owned by the Republicans - Trump, and before him, Scott Brown who also called her "Pocohontas". By responding with her own "fact checking", Warren is showing respect to the campaign distractions of Republican leaders. This situation is nearly identical to the demands for Obama's birth certificate. The accusations about Obama were really just a way to challenge his legitimacy as an appeal to a base that hated having an African American president.

The Republican strategy is always to distract from policy and focus on personal attacks. The more that Republican policy veers away from the preferences of large majorities of Americans, the more that winning requires showering negativity on their political opponents. And, for Republicans, lies are more powerful than facts because telling lies sends your opponents - Democrats and the purported responsible press - into fact checking mode which is a defensive posture of weakness. Members of the press express pride in fact checking, but fact checking in the current environment is a symptom of press failure. Fact checking someone like Trump who lies all the time as a tactic of distraction and confusion only adds to the confusion, especially when the fact checking includes analysis that says "Obama did it too, but when Obama did it, there was this difference...". Sorry, but when you frame the issue as "both sides" do it, the differences you invoke get lost in the shuffle.

Democrats, with their ceaseless faith in the power of truth and logic, continue to work on messages consistent with their belief that reality matters to everyone, that eventually, people will come around to the belief that reality matters. And it does, to anyone paying attention to politics. But the Trump base does not care.

More to come on this and the difference between placing focus on persons vs. policy.

The Art of the Frame

George Lakoff tells us that Republican strategists are the masters of messaging. They understand the importance of being the first to frame an idea. Repeating the idea over and over - "Lyin' Ted" - crowds out competing thoughts, or any rational thinking for listeners who are so inclined.

But there is another side to the art of the frame.

source:theonion

In "Khashoggi’s Disappearance Puts Kushner’s Bet on Saudi Crown Prince at Risk", NYT reporters show that they do not understand the vulnerability of their outdated journalistic standards to inadvertent framing that they employ. If you try too hard to be "objective" to avoid framing as illegitimate, you create a frame of legitimacy.

Anyone who has paid attention to the emerging story of the Trump administration and the relationship with repressive regimes comes to the story with the following perspective:

Authoritarians have felt emboldened to ratchet up their authoritarian behavior with Trump in the White House, especially those who feel close to him.  Putin seems to be murdering political opponents with greater frequency and brazenness. That includes his stated enemies in the press.

The Trumps have not hesitated to use their position for personal financial gain. In fact, personal financial gain appears to be the primary goal. So it would not be surprising if the Trump administration would use Kushner's title of negotiator of peace in the Middle East as a cover for business initiatives aimed at financial gains for the Trumps.

In the NYT story about the relationship between Kushner and the Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the writers apply a journalistic standard peculiar to the Times that says - anything germane to the story that has not been proved with verified evidence beyond a reasonable doubt should be completely omitted from the story lest the reader be left with a false impression.

By not providing this context - suspicions that a reasonable person may have - in this case, the fact that a strong personal and business relationship between the Trumps and the Saudi Royal Family, has emboldened Bin Salman to murder Khashoggi, (after all, the non-propaganda press in general and the Washington Post in particular have been designated enemies of Trump) the NYT frames the story more as a Saudi scandal that may damage Kushner's foreign policy"bet". So we are not talking about a family that has run a widespread corrupt business enterprise for years, evading taxes, most likely money laundering, and so on. No, we are talking about Jared Kushner, a young man like Bin Salman, who is interested in peace in he Middle East. Never mind stories like this:

Saudi Arabia's crown prince reportedly bragged about having Jared Kushner 'in his pocket' after being told classified information meant for Trump
OR this:
Top Trump fundraisers who sought to negotiate $1 billion in business deals with Middle East princes called Jared Kushner a 'Clown Prince'

which includes the line: "And US officials told The Washington Post in February that UAE officials had discussed ways to manipulate Kushner using his "complex business arrangements, financial difficulties, and lack of foreign-policy experience" as leverage."

Even today's WaPo, in a story - Crown prince sought to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and detain him, U.S. intercepts show  - focused not on the relationship between Kushner and Khashoggi, but on the man's disappearance, includes the following line:
"Kushner’s relationship with Mohammed, known within national security agencies by the initials MBS, has long been the subject of suspicion by some American intelligence officials."

The frame of the Times story is clear. This is a legitimate presidential administration and Jared Kushner is a legitimate Middle East negotiator, not someone who is badly compromised. Nothing in the story talks about Kushner's inability to obtain a security clearance (other than by father-in-law fiat.)

Based on the actions and inaction of this administration over the past two years, a reasonable person would now conclude that members of Congress will raise a stink over this murder of a dual American/Saudi citizen who worked for the Washington Post, but the Trumps will do nothing while calculating just how much they need to keep up appearances that they care or are willing to do something.

How soon will Trump use his infantile Russian technique - " I am tough on the Saudis. Hillary was always easy on the Saudis".

And why not? It works every time, because every statement Trump makes, instead of being immediately identified as a weapon of deception, is instead treated as a possible statement of fact that needs to be accepted as possibly true (thus sustaining the frame of possible truthfulness), and made subject to fact checking (as a first step into the wilderness of confusion) along with comparisons to Obama or Clinton (thus locking the door on any meaningful understanding with the death knell of false balance).