Have you ever seen Wolf Blitzer do this? Brian Williams?
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Jay Rosen
@jayrosen_nyu
I teach journalism at NYU, critique the press, try to suggest reforms. PressThink is the name of my subject and my site. @jayrosen_nyu@mastodon.social
Jay Rosen’s Tweets
"...I've been talking to Fox insiders over the last few days, there's a real concern inside the network that their early downplaying of the coronavirus actually exposes Fox News to potential legal action by viewers who maybe were misled. " —
So far this is my favorite exchange from the Biden crew's briefing room.
ZEKE MILLER: Why is the president going to Delaware this weekend?
PSAKI: He's from there.
Restating: If I ran a newsoom I would not run his briefings live. I would not send reporters so he can waste our time and use them as hate objects. I would tell them to watch it on CSPAN and report any news that emerges. If he makes a factual claim it has to be verified or no go.
I think about her colleagues at Walter Reed, her family, her teachers at Penn State and Houghton College. What must they be thinking as they watch this hostage tape, and hear her describe him as a master of the scientific literature and a wizard with data.
1:05
From
Dan Diamond
Watch this remarkable confrontation between a former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and Paul Kelly, editor-at-large for one of Murdoch's key properties, The Australian. The subject is climate change and the Murdoch empire's disastrous legacy.
2:53
From
Mark Humphries
This clip is justifiably gaining fame as an example of live fact checking and the refusal to grant talking points.
2:01
From
モノリシック
Many, many people told me the briefings could be made to "work" if the reporters would only work together. Yesterday three reporters, , and , worked together (good for them) and the result was he stormed out.
The 's verified account sent this out. That he won in a landslide. Here, I think, the party made official its break with American democracy. Not saying it wasn't apparent before. It was. Just more official now. As ridiculous as Sydney Powell is, this is a sobering moment.
Anyone who says he now soberly accepts the realiity of the pandemic. No. He switched claims. From we're doing a fantastic job, the virus is like 15 people to we're doing a fantastic job, if we did nothing it would be millions dead.
Those calling him sober are the marks.
Watch this outstanding summary of what's going in the U.S. election by BBC journalist Ros Atkins. Sometimes you need to see "us" through another's eyes to understand where we are. It's only 45 seconds.
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"The only person owed an apology here is Ms Wolf, for being scolded by the very people who invited her to speak, and who purport to defend a 'vigorous and free press'" economist.com/blogs/openfutu
The absurd met the pathetic on Meet the Press this week when Peggy Noonan tried to say with a straight face the Republican Party should "use this opportunity" to change and improve its standing with women. The whole panel dissolved in laughter.
I will try to post the clip later.
Jake Tapper does a great job here. It's the right mix of news reporting, astonishment and outrage. And it begins with Biden as the man of the hour, not the deposed would-be autocrat, or any of his dead enders. Watch it.
4:07
From
The Lead CNN
Hey, I'm 62. I never thought I would be in this situation, wondering if American democracy can make it through. But here we are. The day after the 2016 election was bad. This in a way is worse. Dark times.
We don't know why CNN did a town hall with Howard Schultz, who is not a declared candidate and has no visible support. They won't explain it.
We don't know why CNN hired Sarah Isgur Flores, a political operative who joined in culture war attacks on CNN. They won't explain it.
Something has happened to Chuck Todd. I view almost every week. Today his tone — I mean his voice itself — was different, as if the gravity of events had sunk in and his patience with denial had run out. Now go to 0:32 in this clip and watch.
2:33
From
Meet the Press
At least four White House correspondents have contracted the virus. They are risking their health to bring us the news. They work in an unsafe environment created by a shambolic President of the United States.
Read this headline:
A Kenosha Militia Facebook Event Asking Attendees To Bring Weapons Was Reported 455 Times. Moderators Said It Didn’t Violate Any Rules.
It remained up. Two people were shot dead. Then it came down. Now for the story:
"Don’t allow him to become a self-styled president in exile, the golf-cart version of Napoleon on Elba. Do not set up a Mar-a-Lago bureau.Don’t have entire reporting beats dedicated to what he and his family members are up to." —.
Amazing clip. Pompeo: zip.
Brava, and Morning Edition. I don't get to say that very often these days, but it is justified here.
0:53
From
Morning Edition
The haunting words of Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker, May 20, 2016. newyorker.com/news/daily-com
Greg Sargent tells me: "I believe Republicans are banking on a pathology of the press, in which the media will place the entire onus of unity on Biden, and allow the Republican claim that unity hasn't been achieved to count as proof of itself." His post:
I'm with everyone else. The word "existential" has no business there. It's just wrong. The glamour photography is absurdly out of place. And the article itself presents obeying the law as almost a lifestyle choice.
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Hope Hicks, one of the best-known but least visible former members of President Trump’s White House staff, is facing an existential question: whether to comply with a congressional subpoena nyti.ms/2I329XZ
He doesn't know anything. He doesn't care to learn. He has no policy views. Nothing he says can be trusted. He's not good at anything a president has to do. His model of leadership is the humiliation of others. These should be the six starting points for covering his presidency.
I agree with Timothy Snyder. This is where it's going, and there is presently nothing on the horizon that would stop it. snyder.substack.com/p/911-and-16
It's a pattern. When women reporters challenge him and make it clear that they will keep insisting, his perimeter defenses light up, his systems shut down, and he can't processs what's happening. So he ends the briefing.
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Trump abruptly ended his Q&A when @PaulaReidCBS asked him this: "Why do you keep saying that you passed Veterans Choice? It was passed in 2014. But it was a false statement, sir."
1:04
Australian journalist visiting the U.S. sees it. "Watching just one press conference from Otay Mesa helped me understand how the process of reporting about this president can mask and normalise his full and alarming incoherence." theguardian.com/commentisfree/ via
It is hard to find a more consensus figure in American journalism than Marvin Kalb, formerly of CBS and NBC News.
He is now telling the American press that its lust to show how it can be critical of Biden is distorting the news and hurting the country.
You know what I can't get over? The single most potent force for misinforming the American public is the president of the United States. Neither the political system nor the media system was built for this.
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I will never get used to the President of the United States repeating rumors about critical health matters at a White House briefing and saying “it may be true, but maybe it’s not. You’ll have to check it out.”
It's not that hard, as the Star-Tribune shows. Just be blunt. Via
Free lede for any newsroom that needs it.
WASHINGTON, August 9. Former president Donald Trump has so far refused to release the warrant served on him Monday, keeping voters in the dark, and creating an information vacuum that supporters have filled with threats and accusations.
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Donald Trump has a copy of the search warrant. He’d show us the warrant if he were so wronged. Show it or shut it.
The New York Times should "finally apologize for the sins of 2016, expose exactly what went wrong, and then reveal the rest, so this kind of disaster never happens again. They owe it to American democracy."
That's on the McGonigal factor.
We need a better question than, "how can Republican Senators vote to acquit after seeing this?"
After seeing this, what kind of Republican Party does a vote to acquit build?
When people who work in the White House appear on the Sunday shows, it's almost all noise— or worse. But when no one will show up... that's signal. It happened this week.
The decision not to conduct any serious review of these events in 2016 — and learn from them — will have lasting effects on Times journalism. It already has.
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For months, @nytimes put stories of Hillary Clinton’s email on its front pages. The final investigative report clearing all of wrongdoing? That is on page 16 today. nytimes.com/2019/10/18/us/
The deep grammar is still symmetrical: Biden is doing this, Trump is doing that. As if there's a chessboard between them. This is a distortion. There is one normal candidacy competing against an attempt to trigger a national emergency and crash the system.
The editor of Forbes has an idea:
"Let it be known to the business world," he wrote. If you hire any of Trump’s fog machines, fabulists or spokes-critters... "Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie."
By now when you bring on air that fog machine named Kellyanne — because that's who they offered — you are committing a hostile act against your viewers' understanding in order to protect your own professional conceit of even-handedness.
"What Happens When Republicans Simply Refuse to Certify Democratic Wins?" washingtonmonthly.com/2021/05/08/wha by
If you think these are distant hypotheticals, you're not paying close enough attention. I know it's hard. But the threat is real.
Over the last few days, it's become clearer and clearer to me that, without intervention, coverage of the 2020 campaign is likely to be a disaster for everyone except Trump and his core voters, who want to watch it all burn anyway. In this thread I describe the danger I see. 1/
Rand Paul just gave a master class in how the Big Lie — election denialism — exploits the "both sides" rule set in journalism. "Was the election stolen?" asked. There was no second question. They fought all the way through. Rand kept saying: hear the other side!
The emerging divide in journalism is not between "let all relevant arguments be heard" and "don't publish opinions we find repulsive." It's between those who ask, "is this something we should be amplifying?" and those who don't see the importance of putting the question that way.
Incredible thread. And it shows why I keep saying: The battle to prevent Americans from understanding what went down January to April will be one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in modern US history.
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Replying to @EricLiptonNYT
As part of our reporting, The NYT obtained hundreds of emails among a group of the top pandemic experts in the US--doctors at HHS, DHS, State, VA, as well as former gov drs--as they watched the pandemic unfold in the United States. Here are some of their observations.
A group of professors, myself included, have written an open letter to the heads of ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC and CNN petitioning for an end to live coverage of the president's briefings. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI If you're an academic and want to sign, scroll down....
Everyone paying attention already gets this. I'm just writing it down for my own sanity after the events of January 6.
As more comes out it feels like we know less because each new fact hints at a story much bigger than the one we have heard so far.
Reminder: Flooding the zone with shit, also known as the "firehose of falsehood," is a propaganda method for which there is no known solution. When the people running the government are determined to lower trust in everything — including themselves — there is no way to stop them.
My personal view is that the Mark Meadows surrender statement,"We are not going to control the pandemic" was a much bigger story than the Washington press played it, even though the press played it medium big.
Phrases like "rewriting history" and "muddying the waters" do not convey what is underway. It's an attempt to prevent Americans from understanding what happened to them through the strategic use of confusion.
This is a remarkable interview with Chuck Todd. rollingstone.com/politics/polit He admits several times he has been naive about the Republicans' commitment to disinformation.
I don't know what led to do this, but I am sure glad they did. A stark look at the Big Lie and the dangers ahead. npr.org/2021/12/23/106
No dilution via "both sides."
No "critics say."
No turning facts into opinions.
Just a straight up warning.
Listen to it.
"Wednesday’s briefing was arguably the most abnormal moment yet in a profoundly abnormal presidency. But top news organizations, rather than accurately representing Trump’s alarming behavior, made it sound like nothing untoward happened at all."
The "make Elizabeth warren say she would raise taxes on the middle class" question should be a credibility killer. For the journalists who keep asking it.
Social science teaches us that a factor in people's willingness to express the views they actually hold is their sense of how many others hold that view. Which is one reason street demonstrations — and coverage of them — matter. They can shift that sense.
0:24
From
Alejandro Alvarez 
"It’s the opposite of news because the information Trump dispenses is filled with misinformation. Airing it live, knowing Trump’s record for dishonesty, is professionally irresponsible." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch, editorial board.
Many, many people have told me they wanted this question asked.
I don't know how to unite the country, but I do know how to start. With a question: "who won the election?" Anyone who does not say Joe Biden is un-unitable— either perpetrator or victim in what students of propaganda call the big lie. Against that is the only unity within reach.
My suggestions.
* No build up, no count down, no empty podium awaiting his arrival
* Don't carry it live; disinformation risk too high
* After it's over, sift for any genuine news and report it
* Do not amplify familiar lies and distortions; they've all been fact checked already
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@jayrosen_nyu Any advice on how the press should handle DJT’s presser on Jan. 6th?
The battle to keep Americans from understanding what went on January to March is going to be one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in modern US history. theguardian.com/us-news/2020/m Precisely because so much of it is public, confusion has to be made massive.
Let's see more of this from newspapers.
"We apologize to our readers for endorsing Michael Waltz in the 2020 general election for Congress. We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time, that Waltz was not committed to democracy." orlandosentinel.com/opinion/editor via
The Christmas Eve Confessions of Chuck Todd. pressthink.org/2019/12/the-ch My new post. I hope you will read it.
Replying to
Finally, I have to observe... People who think that confronting Donald Trump more forcefully with facts he cannot deny will produce some kind of accountability must never have lived with a malignant narcissist.
It does not work. 15/ END
With this decision, NBC has rewarded Trump for torpedoing the second debate, created dueling spectacles for voters, and simply looked past the fact that its reporters never got an answer to: when was the president's last negative test before he got COVID?
I don't know how our journalists came to see "storytelling" as the heart of what they do, and "storyteller" as a self-description. I can think of 4-5 elements of journalism more central than "story." Truthtelling, grounding public conversation in fact, verification... listening.
"We took far too long to call his falsehoods what they often were: lies. And far too long to call his world view what it clearly was: racist. Instead, we danced around — for years — with euphemisms..." looks back at four years of Trump coverage.
"If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell." nybooks.com/articles/2018/
The battle to prevent Americans from understanding what he did to minimize the danger in January to March is going to be one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in modern US history. politico.com/news/2020/03/0 The term cover up won't begin to describe it.
It is believed by many people who follow me that tougher, more confrontational questions — and more determined follow-ups — are the answer to press briefings on the virus that allow Trump to elude accountability.
I disagree. It's is one of my least popular conclusions. THREAD 1/
Over the years we've seen many signs that Fox is a propaganda house. The clearest one yet came last night. They cut away from the impeachment hearings while the House managers were making their case. Think about that.
Don't tell me it's news, but with a different POV. It's not.
January 6 was one of the worst attacks on civil order in American history.
Have any of these given a briefing and answered questions yet?
Capitol Police
DC Police
FBI
Secret Service
Homeland Security
National Guard
Secretary of Defense
DOJ
Vice President
President
White House
"I was wrong. Now we see: Tuesday night was not the moment he became presidential. I got swept up in the moment." <— Anyone heard that yet?
I agree with those calling this a seminal interview moment. All credit to for pushing past the moment when things became uncomfortable for McConnell. It happens so rarely in American journalism.
On simple grounds of keeping people informed of what is happening in government, this was one of the worst weeks the political press has had in a long time.
Mindless incrementalism, an undeclared ideology favoring "moderates," the politics-as-a-game lens— all outdid themselves.
Before he will work with any Republicans, Rep. Brad Schneider (D, IL) requires "an affirmative statement that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States and the 2020 election was an honest and fair election." view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/16163
Good standard for TV news too.
White House sec said no network except Fox Business was willing to have a White House rep on their Sunday show this week.
CBS and CNN said that wasn't true. And Fox Business has no Sunday show.
You do realize that the White House is trying to catch leakers that it also says do not exist because 'the fake news' makes them up, right?
A low point for the Washington Post.
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I spent four years covering the Trump WH and two years covering the Biden WH. What’s fascinating is that they both lie, albeit in v different ways. Trump team was shameless, whereas Biden team is too cute by half. twitter.com/katierogers/st…
If I'm a White House reporter, my hypothesis is: They think they can still pull a win out of this. The win is, "See? COVID is no big deal. The president had the sniffles and beat it in a few days." Working backwards from a fantasy outcome, they are struggling to find the script.
NBC's major achievement tonight: passing along to the American people the claim that 85 percent of the people who wear masks have contracted COVID-19. Good job.
This is in Seattle speaking. "We will not be airing the briefings live due to a pattern of false or misleading information provided that cannot be fact checked in real time."
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KUOW is monitoring White House briefings for the latest news on the coronavirus — and we will continue to share all news relevant to Washington State with our listeners. (1)
This is a remarkable piece of work by CNN producers. Sit through the ad and watch it all the way through. Seriously.
One of the highlights of the campaign coverage so far. uses Trump surrogate Jack Kingston as a mop. twitter.com/TexDem16/statu
Compare:
: “This was remarkable from the president... He is being the kind of leader that people need, at least in tone."
AP's : “This is not something that should be applauded, necessarily... This is where he should have been all along.”
Both today.
With three days of Putin summit coverage coming, I want you to watch for something. How reporters, pundits and anchors avoid mentioning or steer around the most basic fact there can be about this event, which is that we don't know WHY it is happening.
This tweet by demonstrates the "truth sandwich" method of reporting false or dubious claims. First state what is true. Then introduce the truthless or misleading statement. Then repeat what is true, so that the falseood is neither the first impression nor the takeaway.
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It's been a few days since VP nominee Kamala Harris joined Joe Biden's ticket & the birtherism attacks have begun. @JennaEllisEsq, a Trump campaign advisor, is openly questioning whether Harris is eligible to be on the ticket. Harris was born in the U.S. & is clearly eligible. twitter.com/benstracy/stat…
Let’s be clear about what happened here. Executives at the New York Times literally defended the indefensible. The publisher and the opinion editor - numbers one and three in the hierarchy - defended an op-ed that the company later said did not meet Times standards. That’s huge.
A document of our times. The editorial board says it cannot endorse any candidates in the GOP primary because (this is my paraphrase) they do not live in a shared reality where there can be differences of opinion on a common set of facts.
This interview was so good. When the whole clip becomes available I will post it. Timothy Snyder is among the best we have.
0:42
From
Maddow Blog
A clip you have to watch. I was waiting for it to come online.
Watch stop the interview and explain to : when everything a source says is a lie, you do not engage with that source because that only spreads their propaganda. cnn.com/videos/busines
The signal was sent.
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Breaking: Trump has just deleted his tweet sharing video of a supporter chanting "white power"
This photo by Jabin Botsford of the The Washington Post captures the 45th president and his government better than any I have seen.
This piece is a good example of why I and most of the people I know in journalism believe — by a very wide margin — that the Washington Post has surpassed the New York Times in reporting on the president of the United States.
Big newsrooms may need to take political reporters – and editors on the political desk – "entirely out of the loop" on the Coronavirus story, says . "It’s too damned important to be covered as a two-sided battle over who’s winning the narrative."
