It's Past Time For The Media To Step Up

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From Medium (h/t Mock Paper Scissors):

Politicians have always told some lies. This is different. The people running our government, and their key supporters, have launched a war on honest journalism, on facts, and on freedom of expression in general. They are using misinformation as strategy. They want the public to become so confused by what is true and what is false that people will give up even on the idea that journalism can help sort things out. This is not business as usual. You may wish otherwise — and the relentless normalizing journalists still do of this abnormal crew shows how much you wish otherwise — but at some point you have to recognize reality and react to it. 

Your job is not to uncritically “report” — that is, do stenography and call it journalism — when the people you’re covering are deceiving the public. Your job is, in part, to help the public be informed about what powerful people and institutions are doing with our money and in our names.

From Philip Bump (on a headline in The Hill, "Trump: 'There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea'"):

Most Americans don’t follow Trump on Twitter but come across his tweets on a regular basis. Many, if not most, Americans also rely heavily on headlines to convey news to them. Meaning that many Americans learn about what Trump says in his tweets through the summaries that appear in headlines. 

That’s why a headline like the Hill’s is a disservice. It provides no context for Trump’s claim, acting instead like a retweet of Trump’s false assertion across another platform. What Trump tweeted is false, and news outlets should make that as clear as possible when covering his tweets (or his statements more broadly), including in headlines.

From Greg Sargent, on the media's falling for bad faith misdirection by the Trump regime:

One of the most important but overlooked lessons in the bombshell report on the handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation is that bad-faith, right-wing ref-working, via purely instrumental attacks on institutions, works. Buried in the report by the Department of Justice’s inspector general is evidence that former FBI director James B. Comey undertook actions that damaged Clinton’s candidacy, in part, because he had been spooked by such attacks. 

Right on cue, the news media’s coverage of the inspector general’s report is also confirming the same lesson: Bad-faith ref-working is producing its desired results once again. 

The report’s core finding is that the FBI’s decision not to prosecute Clinton was untainted by bias or politics. This lays waste to one of the most important narratives pushed by President Trump and his allies in the quest to undermine special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation by claiming law enforcement is riddled with anti-Trump corruption. 

But in many of this morning’s accounts about the report, you find versions of this additional claim: The IG report nonetheless provides fodder and ammunition to Trump and his allies to discredit Mueller’s probe. 

We will note, in the sh*t show pathological liar Trump provided to the media on the White (Supremacist) House grounds yesterday, several reporters tried repeatedly to call out his lies. That needs to significantly ramp up to the pace and level that the pathological liar is spreading lies (the article in Medium noted above offers some suggestions for that). Even if the effects are marginal (and they won't penetrate the cement between Trump supporters' ears), one of our last free institutions must show that they understand the gravity of the situation and can respond accordingly. Acting as though we're in normal times today must be seen as acting abnormally.

If you see this occurring, please call or write the media outlet to let them know that their job is, as noted above "to help the public be informed about what powerful people and institutions are doing with our money and in our names," not sit by and watch the lights go out all over America.