Media
The military paid for a study on sea level rise. The results were scary.
www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/04/25/climate-change-could-make-thousands-of-tropical-islands-uninhabitable-in-coming-decades-new-study-says/
Daniel Dale
@ddale8
The president rejecting the fact that the world is warming - let alone that the warming is caused by humans - is one of those scandals that gets little coverage because it's viewed as a policy matter on which the media can't take a side.
And
An NYT writer, Amy Chozick, has written a book about the Clintons that Chelsea Clinton states has several inaccuracies that could have been fact checked. Then NBC's Katy Tur waded in and said she believed Chozick because they used the same fact checker (Katy Tur's book isn't out yet).
Katy Tur
@KatyTurNBC
The man fact checking @amychozick's book is the same one who fact checked mine. The same one who is so nit picky that he called Delta to confirm flight times. I would bet on Chozick here, not @ChelseaClinton.
Dan Halpern
*@HalpernDan*
Replying to @KatyTurNBC @amychozick @ChelseaClinton
Amazing how little people understand how this stuff works but how much they have to say about it. If the checker is good, any journalist can guess exactly what happened here. Bet on Chozick.
Chelsea Clinton
@ChelseaClinton
More Chelsea Clinton Retweeted Dan Halpern
Hi Dan! Neither Amy nor her fact checker ever reached out to me or my office. She’s not disputing that. There’s no guess to be made. I care about facts. Hope you have a great night!
[in response to a now-deleted tweet:
Chelsea Clinton
@ChelseaClinton
Replying to @moorehn @anamariecox
Her characterization of my election night was completely false. She had to amend the excerpt. I wish she would have asked me directly and wish now she would explain why she or her fact checker didn’t fact check. ]
(another example twitter.com/hunterw/status/989135894312640517 )
Linda Schoenberg
@LindaSchoenberg
The egregious false equivalence (HRC emails vs all the Trump horrors) propagated by the NYT during the 2016 election was unforgivable and shows that the sloppy reporting of Amy Chozick isn’t just a one off.
The Hoarse Whisperer
@HoarseWisperer
There is something particularly vulgar about journalists like @amychozick profiteering off of tell-all’s about the disservice they did to the country in covering the election.
And
southpaw
@nycsouthpaw
CNN panel rn: Bloomberg reporter, AP reporter, NYT reporter, opinion writer from The Federalist
Greg Greene
@ggreeneva
More Greg Greene Retweeted southpaw
Jesus Christ, @CNN, look at yourselves.
This rankles today because I keep thinking about @jayrosen_nyu's thread on how the press has become an embattled noncombatant in conservatives' information war. Thread:
Jay Rosen
@jayrosen_nyu
1/ I wrote in my latest essay: "Journalists are correct that if they become the political opposition to Trump, they will lose. And yet, they have to go to war against a political style in which power gets to write its own story." www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/25/why-trump-is-winning-and-the-press-is-losing/ … Many people have asked me—
... about that distinction. They want to know: What should journalists do in this situation if they cannot become the political opposition, and yet they have to push back against Trump turning journalists into hate objects and "flooding the zone with shit," as Bannon put it. 2/
First: Suspension of normal relations, as one does in diplomacy. Many things belong under this heading, starting with withdrawal from rituals like the @whca dinner that presume normalcy. It would be up to different news organizations to decide what to suspend, but begin there. 3/
Second. Those who have exited from the press system? (The one third I mentioned in my @nybooks essay.) Keep reporting on them, and trying to understand where they are coming from, so as to deepen our grasp of what led to this disaster. Click for more: pressthink.org/2016/12/prospects-american-press-trump-part-two/#p30 … 4/
Third: Optimize "normal" journalism for trust in the way I describe here: pressthink.org/2017/12/show-work-new-terms-trust-journalism/ … and again here: medium.com/de-correspondent/optimizing-journalism-for-trust-1c67e81c123 … 5/
Fourth: Collaborate internationally with journalists in countries that are seeing the same events play out, so as to improve our understanding of how "the politics of press hating" operates in different settings with different political systems. 6/
Fifth: When the national press and the local press team up to deliver public service journalism and accountability reporting, that's fighting against the "fake news" canard without mentioning the term or its circulator-in-chief. More like this, please. www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/insider/louisiana-times-picayune.html … 7/
Sixth: News organizations could band together more often — with each other and civil society groups — to put heavy pressure on the platforms to do more to combat propaganda and disinformation here and around the world. 8/
Are these "solutions?" Nope. Each has its own defects; there are costs that might not be affordable. And there are stories to chase! I guess it depends on how serious you think the situation is. My view: bad enough to suspend normal relations, and take unprecedented actions. END
Greg Greene
@ggreeneva
No, CNN shouldn't become a partisan opponent of the Trump administration. That job is for politicians.
But journalists need to recognize that the whole point of the right-wing project is to demolish any sources of authority that compete with its own.
This has been the objective of the right wing for a while, actually.
That explains why among the first moves Newt Gingrich made as Speaker, out of the gate, were the termination of funding for caucuses and the shutdown of the OFfice of Technology Assessment.
It's also why conservatives like Scott Walker have attacked tenure in higher-ed.
And also why conservatives in places like Texas have enacted campus carry — which intimidates speech on campus.
And also why conservatives like Sam Brownback, Scott Walker, and — just this year — Pennsylvania lawmakers have threatened to defund or pack their judiciaries.
And also why conservatives such as Scott Pruitt and — at the state level — Scott Walker, former N.C. governor Pat McCrory and Sam Brownback move to quash, defund, or eliminate the jobs of people who conduct scientific research.
And also why conservatives have built a whole ersatz media apparatus to belch misinformation and worse across the landscape — while attempting to discredit or intimidate providers of mroe objective reporting.
www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approached-the-post-with-dramatic--and-false--tale-about-roy-moore-sje-appears-to-be-part-of-undercover-sting-operation/2017/11/27/0c2e335a-cfb6-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html
I could go on, but you get it.
The institutions I've mentioned above — scientists, academia, and, yes, the press — are in the business of helping people understand the world as it is.
To judge from its behavior for a quarter-century now …
… the American right has come to see knowledge of the world as it is as intolerable — as a threat to the movement's power to do as it wishes.
I don't expect CNN to come right out and say that. But it should recognize that as an institution dedicated to explaining the world as it is, war is being made on it — and made on it precisely for that reason.
And the least it can do in response — not as a political act, but in its own defense — is give up the pretense of balance (i.e., a little from the left, a little from the right, dust hands, job done!) to focus instead …
… on objectivity: on explaining the world as it is.
Panels that pit three traditional reporters against a conservative sloganeer fail miserably at doing that. In fact they're acts of self harm …
… because they create precisely the impression of traditional outlets as political opponents of the right that the press ostensibly wants to avoid.
Putting reporters in front of political operatives to be lectured for their 'tone,' as CNN's @Acosta was scolded yesterday, also permits the right to position the media as a political opponent — while delivering nothing of actual substance.
I don't have well-developed answers here — I'll leave that to press thinkers. But I'll cap my amateur diagnosis with a bare-minimum suggestion to CNN: stop doing this stuff, for pete's sake.
Stop hurting yourselves. Figure this stuff out.
And
James Comey
@Comey
The last two weeks were a reminder of the vital role of the press and of open-minded, respectful conversation in our lives. I’m grateful for good and tough questions from reporters across the spectrum and around the world. Look forward to more.