All That Is Old Is New Again

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Joe Weber

Couples who have been married a long time repeat the same arguments again and again. Denied resolution, they bicker over a husband’s habit of putting keys and wallets on shelves meant for artwork. They fight over whether he listens enough to her. They scrap over whether she is too critical. The arguments grow so familiar that they should, perhaps, be numbered so a wife can say “No. 13,” instead of berating the husband over the wallet, or “No. 17” over the listening issue, perhaps “No. 3” over whether she criticizes too much.

Some publications have sought to be helpful in seeking a way out of the never-ending battles. See the Guardian on this.

Lately, we’ve seen a similar dynamic at work in the argument over journalistic objectivity. Journalists and some non-journalists have beaten this horse for decades and lately the argument is getting a fresh airing by a generation that, apparently, is discovering the debate anew.

The latest missile to fly comes from A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, whose long discussion appears in the Columbia Journalism Review. To boil it down, he argues that objectivity should remain as a journalistic ideal. He argues: “I continue to believe that objectivity—or if the word is simply too much of a distraction, open-minded inquiry—remains a value worth striving for.”

But he avoids the term, mostly characterizing it as a hoary notion espoused by philosopher and journalist Walter Lippmann, who detailed the objectivity idea in the early decades of the last century. Indeed, Sulzberger prefers that media instead regard itself instead as “independent.” Sulzberger’s view: “But independence, the word we use inside the Times, better captures the full breadth of this journalistic approach and its promise to the public at large.”

By independent, he means reporting without fear or favor, as his great-great-grandfather put it, enshrining the ideal so much that it became the motto of The Times.

“It means Independence is the increasingly contested journalistic commitment to following facts wherever they lead. It places the truth—and the search for it with an open yet skeptical mind—above all else,” Sulzberger writes. “Independence asks reporters to adopt a posture of searching, rather than knowing. It demands that we reflect the world as it is, not the world as we may wish it to be. It requires journalists to be willing to exonerate someone deemed a villain or interrogate someone regarded as a hero. It insists on sharing what we learn—fully and fairly—regardless of whom it may upset or what the political consequences might be.”

Martin Baron, source; The Washington Post

This eloquent round of the argument was preceded by similar thoughts from Martin Baron, a former Washington Post executive editor. In late March, he weighed in with a straightforward – if similarly nuanced — defense of objectivity, relying on the rhetorical device of comparing journalists to professional of various sorts. The public demands objectivity in judgments by judges, police officers, government regulators and, perhaps most persuasively, by doctors, he argued.

“We want doctors to be objective in their diagnoses of the medical conditions of their patients,” Baron wrote. “We don’t want them recommending treatments based on hunches or superficial, subjective judgments about their patients. We want doctors to make a fair, honest, honorable, accurate, rigorous, impartial, open-minded evaluation of the clinical evidence.”

Neither Baron nor Sulzberger were naïve in their contentions, though. They acknowledged the arguments that reporters’ backgrounds shaped their viewpoints and their familiarity or unfamiliarity with communities they write about would be important. They recognized the problems posed by bias.

Still, Baron suggested that certain practices, well-honed by earlier generations of journalists, can elevate one above the limits. Also citing Lippman, Baron wrote: “Our job as journalists, as he saw it, was to determine the facts and place them in context. The goal should be to have our work be as scientific as we could make it. Our research would be conscientious and careful. We would be guided by what the evidence showed. That meant we had to be generous listeners and eager learners, especially conscious of our own suppositions, prejudices, preexisting opinions and limited knowledge.”

And Baron defined objectivity in negative terms, arguing: “Objectivity is not neutrality. It is not on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism. It is not false balance or both-sidesism. It is not giving equal weight to opposing arguments when the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction. It does not suggest that we as journalists should engage in meticulous, thorough research only to surrender to cowardice by failing to report the facts we’ve worked so hard to discover.”

“The goal is not to avoid criticism, pander to partisans or appease the public. The aim is not to win affection from readers and viewers. It does not require us to fall back on euphemisms when we should be speaking plainly. It does not mean we as a profession labor without moral conviction about right and wrong.”

Putting the ideas positively, Baron echoed what journalism teachers have taught for years. “The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible,” he held. “It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know. We don’t start with the answers. We go seeking them, first with the already formidable challenge of asking the right questions and finally with the arduous task of verification.”

These spirited and much-detailed arguments were all kickstarted anew in January by Leonard Downie Jr. His view, distilled, goes like this: we all are prisoners of our racial, gender, socio-economic and political backgrounds and thus cannot hope to report objectively on anything, so why bother trying? Instead, just own up to the biases and, indeed, own them.

Downie, another former executive editor at The Washington Post who now is a professor at Arizona State University, argued in a Washington Post piece that objectivity is obsolete. He and a colleague quizzed newspeople and concluded: “What we found has convinced us that truth-seeking news media must move beyond whatever ‘objectivity’ once meant to produce more trustworthy news. We interviewed more than 75 news leaders, journalists and other experts in mainstream print, broadcast and digital news media, many of whom also advocate such a change. This appears to be the beginning of another generational shift in American journalism.”

He suggested that one’s biases can’t be readily shelved and that identity is central.

“But increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality,” Downie wrote. “They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world. They believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading ‘bothsidesism’ in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

Indeed, newsrooms need to “move beyond” objectivity, he argued, though just how that would look seemed a bit gauzy.

“We urge news organizations to, first, strive not just for accuracy based on verifiable facts but also for truth — what Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward have called ‘the best obtainable version of the truth.’ This means original journalism that includes investigating and reporting on all aspects of American life.”

These debates, including the question of whether to deep-six the term “objectivity,” remind me of the contention of my former editor at BusinessWeek, Stephen Shepard. Because BW was a magazine – a venue in which readers expected a point of view in coverage – Shepard maintained that fairness was really the attainable goal. Our reporters were not akin to cameras, unblinkingly recording reality, but rather we were making judgments constantly. But our judgments and arguments had to be fact-based and fair to all views involved.

Demonstrating a few years earlier just how old this argument is, I wrote about this all in an academic piece published in 2015 in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator. The piece detailed the development of the objectivity ideal –- which is really only about a century old — and the arguments that have raged about it. The debate, as I say, is hardly new.

The bottom line, I believe, is that objectivity is a myth and an ideal. It is as unattainable as the beauty of a Greek god or goddess — but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep trying, striving to reach the grandeur of a David or the loveliness of an Athena.

We owe it to readers to report the facts thoroughly and fairly, acknowledging differing views. We need to pursue the truth as best we can determine it, quoting responsible voices on all sides of the issues we write about. That doesn’t mean showcasing “alternative facts,” or failing to call out misstatements or untruths (indeed, Trump coverage is a sorry example of the need to make such callouts). And it does mean reporting on things that might go against one’s own views and doing so well and with appropriate distance.

But we also can’t forget that it is often outrage at or discomfort with things we cover that drive us. We get angry at injustice. We are stirred to write about wrongdoing. Why? Because we judge that it’s wrong. And it may be that who we are informs our passion or judgment about what is right and wrong. That is hardly objective, but it can make for great journalism.

There is much wisdom in the pieces by Sulzberger and Baron and, it must be admitted, in the Downie piece — even if one disagrees with his conclusions. Reflecting the journalistic traditions these three were reared in, the arguments they make are balanced, thorough and smart. They are worth pondering.

Trump TV Starts a New Season

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Joe Weber

Donald J. Trump is slated to appear on CNN on Wednesday night for what is being billed as a town hall. This raises a host of journalistic questions that I suspect will persist throughout the campaign. Already, folks are weighing in on the propriety of CNN granting this showcase.

As Kyle Pope of Columbia Journalism Review asks, for instance: “Do you give Donald Trump airtime or ignore him? Fact-check him in real time or let him discredit himself? Pick apart his most noxious ideas or hope they go away?”

So, let me join the parade with a few matters media outlets – and viewers — need to consider. First, of course, is whether the man is newsworthy. That’s an easy one – he’s currently the frontrunner in GOP circles in the race for the presidency and, like it or not, he did occupy that office. By definition, he’s newsworthy and many viewers – perhaps especially those who shun CNN – would want to see him.

This is different, of course, from the 2016 campaign – at least in its early stages. Back then, he had clown appeal and few, probably including many in his inner circle, thought his efforts were anything but a PR stunt. He offered comic relief. Now, he needs to be taken seriously.

The question then becomes: if he is to be taken seriously, how is he best dealt with? He is almost certain to lie, perhaps about the election results and certainly about the various legal problems piling up for him. One technique, of course, would be to call on various pundits who could disembowel him with facts.

Women who have alleged improprieties by Trump. Source: Time

But Trump is so shameless and effective at bluster – a master salesman who at least appears to believe his own pabulum — that he won’t respond the way a normal candidate would. A normal candidate would be set back on his heels by the truth. But he’ll barrel on through, keeping the limelight focused on his untruths as if they were real (likely to the applause of his supporters, who want nothing to do with a normal candidate).

Indeed, the problem raised by CNN allowing disinformation on the air was suggested in a CNBC piece. The author, Alex Sherman, referred to a promise that CNN chief Chris Licht made last year when he took over the outlet, a pledge to avoid putting on anyone who engaged in disinformation.

“The analogy I love to use is some people like rain, some people don’t like rain. We should give space to that. But we will not have someone who comes on and says it’s not raining,” Licht said in an October interview with CNBC.

He was referring to election denier nonsense, in particular, there.

But, as Sherman suggested, Licht appears to be backtracking. “This seems to be a case of Licht bending his own rules,” he wrote. “Clearly, CNN has different standards for Trump than it does spokespeople for Trump that cycle through cable news networks as daily guests.”

Still, CNN does want to treat this appearance in serious journalistic fashion. That will mean fact-checking of some sort, as CNN officials have acknowledged.

“We obviously can’t control what Donald Trump says—that’s up to him,” CNN Political Director David Chalian told Vanity Fair. “What we can do is prod, ask questions, follow up, and try to get as revealing answers as possible.”

That certainly sounds reasonable. The problem, of course, is what is reasonable in dealing with Donald Trump?

The sad fact is that in modern times we’ve never had a president like Trump or a candidate like him, either. In recent memory, extramarital shenanigans – or something as benign as tears — would disqualify a contender. Now, even an indictment (much less two impeachment proceedings) is insufficient. How low have we sunk?

So, let me make a modest proposal. On one of the innumerable TV talent competitions, whenever a judge finds someone unacceptable, he or she hits a button that puts a big red X on the screen. If a majority of the judges hits such buttons, the auditioner is bounced.

What if CNN did something like this with Trump? Each time he lies, a big red X and a loud buzzer could sound. As soon as he hit, say, six red Xs, he’d be escorted off the stage to the tune of the Beatles “Nowhere Man.”

The host would explain the rules in advance – perhaps in an effort to confine Trump to true statements. And after each lie, the host would explain the truth.

The only problem with this approach would likely be that Trump’s appearance would be short and CNN would then need to find a way to fill the airtime. Perhaps the network could then put on a credible candidate, from either party. Almost certainly, that would better serve the public than this town hall is likely to.

Making Enemies

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Joe Weber

For decades, journalists have made enemies as they report on corrupt politicians, companies that behave illegally and criminals infuriated by coverage of their misdeeds. Nowadays, however, some reporters have become the target of right-wing zealots who, in some places at least, seem to be on the ascent in the seemingly never-ending, stunningly vile Trump era.

Consider the case of Doni Chamberlain, a 66-year-old small-town journalist in northern California. The Guardian profiled the challenges she is facing in publishing a news site, A News Cafe, that has covered the rise of a motley bunch of conservatives in Shasta County, the home of about 250,000 people some 250 miles north of San Francisco.

As the outlet reports, Chamberlain has seen a nasty turn in the atmosphere over her nearly 30 years reporting on the area. Some critics have called her a communist who doesn’t deserve to live and a radio host suggested she should be hanged. “Her writing has made her a public enemy of the conservative crowd intent on remaking the county,” The Guardian account says. “Far-right leaders have confronted her at rallies and public meetings, mocking and berating her. At a militia-organized protest in 2021, the crowd screamed insults.”

As a result, Chamberlain has to watch over her shoulder. “No meeting sources in public,” the outlet reports. “She livestreams rowdy events where the crowd is less than friendly and doesn’t walk to her car without scanning the street. Sometimes, restraining orders can be necessary tools.”

With her critical coverage, Chamberlain has earned the enmity of a new majority that has arisen in a county that was long red but in recent times has tilted into the Twilight Zone. The group, The Guardian reports, is “backed by militia members, anti-vaxxers, election deniers and residents who have long felt forgotten by governments in Sacramento and Washington.” This group has “fired the county health officer and done away with the region’s voting system. Politically moderate public officials have faced bullying, intimidation and threats of violence. County meetings have turned into hours-long shouting matches.”

Her battle with the new right has commanded the attention of news outlets elsewhere. The Los Angeles Times in a 2021 profile called her a “one-woman watchdog” and explained how she had reported for and then wrote a column for a local newspaper, Redding’s Record Searchlight, until she and an editor in 2007 split on the direction her writing should take. She was so popular back then that 100 supporters picketed the paper in protest of her departure. Soon, she started the blog that grew into A News Cafe.

To be sure, as an opinion-writer (someone once quaintly called a columnist), Chamberlain has been vocally unhappy with the changes she has seen in Shasta County. She has documented the turn away from civility in an era where a president made it acceptable to insult critics and the media in what once were intolerably coarse terms. “As the shit storm of civil unrest piles up, the North State has become a tinderbox at the ready, on the verge of ignition,” she wrote she wrote in August 2020. “Slogans and memes are the kindling. Calls to action, aggression and civil war are often found on the same Facebook pages as family photos, holiday greetings and birthday wishes.”

More recently, she wrote critically about a local district supervisor, Kevin Crye, who, she said, “has racked up a host of stunningly destructive decisions at breakneck speed. He gallivanted to Minnesota on the county’s tab to visit MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for hand-counted-ballot advice. (Although the public paid for his jaunt, Crye has still not disclosed exactly that happened on that trip.) Following his Lindell visit, in short order Crye introduced to Shasta County a number of election-machine-denying Lindell pals, such as Alexander Haberbush and Clint Curtis, each of whom were graciously granted by Chair Jones permission to speak well over the public’s 3-minute allotments.”

There’s no question that Chamberlain has little use for election-deniers and the rest, much as they have no use for her. So, perhaps, she should not be surprised by the hostility she runs into. Still, as with any good journalist, her work is fact-based, something even that district supervisor would be hard pressed to deny. And the question then arises: why would reporting such facts be objectionable to right wingers, so unsettling that some would call for her to be hanged?

Whether the material it uses is opinionated or a matter of straightforward reporting, the press shines a light on news developments and trends that may make some blanch. It illuminates hypocrisy and nonsense. It uncovers abuses and misuses of public money. That, it seems, is enough to earn the hostility – perhaps the unprecedented venom — of some who apparently cannot abide the glare.

Local news, of course, has been under assault by economic forces, as well as political ones, for a long time now. The answer in many places has been the creation of online outlets that have spread far and wide across the country (Nebraska, for instance, has Flatwater Free Press and the Nebraska Examiner. Colorado has outfits including The Colorado Sun and, more locally, the Boulder Reporting Lab).

One must hope that outlets like those and A News Café can long brave the storms and that journalists such as Chamberlain can endure.

Muzzling the Press

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Joe Weber

Freedom of the press, a revolutionary idea pioneered in Britain by courageous government critics in the 1720s and then enshrined in the American Bill of Rights in 1791, is under extraordinary assault at home in the United States and elsewhere. That’s no wonder; the right to free expression threatens politicians everywhere who equate criticism of them with criticism of all that’s right and proper.

Of course, the assault is driven partly by ego — “L’etat, c’est moi,” said King Louis XIV, a phrase echoed in various forms by Donald J. Trump and his imitators (see Ron DeSantis) who seek to tame a rambunctious press. And, in places such as Russia and China, it reflects longstanding state policy that lately is growing more troublesome. Elsewhere, the threats to journalists are from literally murderous non-state actors.

Kyle Pope of the Columbia Journalism Review outlines the varying (and vastly unequal) threats around the world. He focuses on Russia, where Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is a victim of Vladimir Putin’s ego and the fragility of the Russian military, but he sets that into a global context. “The fact is that journalism and democracy are in retreat around the world, including in the United States. The Committee to Protect Journalists, in its annual tally, reported that at least sixty-seven journalists and media workers were killed in 2022, the highest number in four years and a 50 percent jump from the previous year,” Pope writes. “Nearly as many journalists were killed in Mexico as in Ukraine.”

Jeff German, source: Las Vegas Review-Journal

Thankfully, threats to journalists’ lives are not as much an issue in the United States (though isolated assassinations have occurred, such as that last year of Jeff German of the Las Vegas Review-Journal). But other threats to American journalism are more subtle, including such matters as technological change and economic forces that are killing newspapers nationwide, as well as efforts by DeSantis and others to change laws that have protected journalism. As Pope notes, DeSantis “has proposed a series of measures that hobble reporters’ ability to do their jobs, including one that would ensure comments made by anonymous sources would be presumed false in defamation lawsuits.”

Pope also notes that threats to the media come from within, from a decline in credibility. He points to Fox’s settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, suggesting that Fox News had “essentially abandoned its role as an independent chronicler of the news.” He went on: “Here we had executives and on-air anchors at the most-watched cable network in the country admitting that their devotion was more to advancing a cause—the easily disputed notion that Donald Trump had won the presidential election—than in reporting the facts. Fox’s viewers cheered the lie along. Journalism was not what they had in mind when they turned on the television.”

In that regard, it’s heartening that in the wake of embarrassing disclosures in that case Tucker Carlson is now leaving Fox. He shredded his credibility by publicly embracing Trump while privately saying he hated the man “passionately” and calling the voter fraud claims “insane.”

Yes, there are bad actors in journalism as in any other field. Carlson’s departure suggests that the marketplace — when it includes the proper functioning of the legal system — gets things right, at least over time.

Matters of life and death are at stake in censorship. State restrictions and their cousins — efforts to rewrite the past — ill serve history and the lessons we can learn from it. Some governments have sought to maintain private histories at times (one thinks of The Pentagon Papers), presumably with plans to keep such accounts secret until some undisclosed time in the future. But such efforts risk bias by the authors and deprive the public of vital information on a timely basis.

Leaders of all sorts, though particularly government officials, are threatened by free expression, of course. When the public learns of their failures, it can cost them their coveted positions, something few politicians can abide. That is why the separation of media and government must be preserved.

A Chinese colleague and I in 2016 published a study in Human Rights Quarterly, “How Chinese Journalism Students View Domestic and Foreign Media: A Survey on Credibility, Censorship, and the Role of the Communist Party in Media,” detailing how idealistic young people in China at the time valued independent thought and the freedom to publish information. Since then, the leashes have been tightening around journalism there and elsewhere and, while that may serve politicians in the short run, it shortchanges the citizens of particular countries and the world.

For a couple decades, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has published a World Press Freedom Index that assesses the state of journalism globally. In 2022, it ranked 180 nations and territories based on the health of their media environments. Some of the results are surprising (the United States, for instance, placed 42^nd, with the group explaining that “chronic issues impacting journalists remain unaddressed. These include the disappearance of local newspapers, the systematic polarisation of the media, and the erosion of journalism by digital platforms amid a climate of animosity and aggression towards journalists, among others.”) Other results are more predictable: China placed 175^th and Hong Kong fell 68 places to 148^th, as a result of Beijing’s crackdown there. Russia ranked 155^th.

Citizens across the globe are hurt when press freedom suffers. Britain, now ranked 24^th in the world index, taught the world that centuries ago. It’s a lesson best never forgotten.

Are Book Publishers Censors?

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Joe Weber

Much-published novelist Richard North Patterson’s disturbing piece in The Wall Street Journal, “Why My New Novel About Racial Conflict Ran Into Trouble,” recounts his problems as a white author getting a publisher for his new novel, “Trial.” The book, which he says focuses on “America’s accelerating racial discord,” was rejected by about 20 imprints of major New York publishing houses, even though some editors in them said it was this New York Times best-selling author’s best work.

Why the turndowns? His ethnicity had much to do with it, Patterson writes. “One publisher responded that I would be ‘rightly criticized’ for writing the book; another that she only cared to hear on such subjects from ‘marginalized voices’; another, more colorfully, that I was ‘too liberal for white people and too white for Black people.’”

“Not once did anyone suggest that any aspect of the manuscript was racially insensitive or obtuse,” writes Patterson, a lawyer and journalist who interviewed many people of all backgrounds to write the book. “Rather, the seemingly dominant sentiment was that only those personally subject to discrimination could be safely allowed to depict it through fictional characters.”

Perhaps he was lucky that he was not pitching university presses. Patterson’s woes reminded me of my troubles in getting my second book, “Divided Loyalties: Young Somali Americans and the Lure of Extremism,” published. While my race and gender did not seem to be at issue – so far as I know – the topic certainly was. The book, a journalistic work of nonfiction, focuses on a group of young Black Muslim men in Minnesota who conspired to make their way to Syria to join ISIS between 2013 and 2015 (some got there and were killed, while others were tried and sentenced to prison for terms of up to 35 years).

Because the book is both journalistic and academic, I pitched it to several academic presses. It passed muster with an editor and the staff at the distinguished Columbia University Press, but was tripped up in the final step, consideration by the press’s publication committee. Such committees, staffed by faculty, ultimately make the call on whether to issue a book contract or not at university presses.

Why the problem? As the editor wrote me: “Our internal staff is very much in favor of your book, but the publications committee had some reservations. In particular, we have one board member who is generally very skeptical of our terrorism studies list and books that align with it. This member felt strongly that your book needs to be vetted by a scholar with a background in the study of the Muslim-American experience before it could be approved, and the rest of the board agreed.”

In other words, a faculty member didn’t care to have Columbia publish books about terrorism and found my book unpalatable, even though it was written from the viewpoint of a young Somali Muslim man (a would-be terrorist who became an FBI informant). Two out of three independent reviewers had recommended publication. But, as requested by the committee, the editor found a fourth reviewer, who sided with the objecting faculty member. Indeed, this fourth reviewer took umbrage at the idea that I relied in part on law enforcement sources, as well as on the would-be ISIS members (evidently, an unacceptable breadth and fairness in sourcing).

Defeated by her faculty committee, the kindly editor suggested I seek another publisher. So, in 2020, Michigan State University Press published the book. Indeed, the MSU press relied on the four reviews Columbia had obtained to make the decision to publish (the Columbia editor was kind enough to share those reviews with her MSU colleague). And, in fairness to the academic review process, the helpful suggestions in those critiques, as well as advice by both editors, did improve the book.

Irrespective of the merits or shortcomings in “Divided Loyalties,” the decision by the Columbia publication committee was troubling on several counts. First, why would it be unacceptable for a non-Somali journalist to write (sympathetically) about Somali American culture by relying on members of that community, including academics, for their insights about it? Second, why should one faculty member’s skepticism about an important area of publication – Columbia’s distinguished list of books about terrorism – carry such sway?

Indeed, given that Columbia is a mere 10 miles from the worst terrorist incident of the modern era, the 9/11 attack, wouldn’t it be natural for the university’s press to publish works about terrorism? Thankfully, the press has continued to publish on the topic (though I don’t know whether the faculty member remains on the committee).

As with Patterson’s novel, which will be released in June by an independent publisher, readers are free to find flaws in “Divided Loyalties.” But that’s only because officials at one university press took a viewpoint differing from that of another. In my Columbia press experience, it seems that biases based on cultural, religious and political factors play an insidious role, a role perhaps as troubling as the idea that a person from one ethnic group cannot write well about members of another such group.

I look forward to reading Patterson’s book.

Fox News Could Have Made Things Right

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Joe Weber

Fox’s settlement of the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems comes as a great disappointment to anyone interested in truthful, accurate and fair journalism.

For those who stand against demagoguery and ignorance — the stock-in-trade in the journalistic Potemkin village that is Fox News — the chance to see Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo (among others) squirm on the courtroom stand would have been a great consolation. Having them admit their dishonesty and hypocrisy under the aggressive questioning of the brilliant Dominion legal team would have gone far to correct the public record for those who still cling to Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election.

As of this writing, full terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. Certainly, the $787.5 million that Fox reportedly will pay will be welcomed by Dominion, which asked for $1.6 billion. But here are a few suggestions that would have been helpful to everyone else:

have each host say on the air that they lied and misrepresented the truth about that election.
have them say that they routinely did so to pander to their audiences’ demands, chasing ratings, no matter how irrational those demands were.
have them say that they, in fact, repudiate Donald J. Trump and all he stands for and that they hope he is convicted of the various crimes for which he stands accused.
have them urge the man to never run again and say they will speak only ill of him in any future commentaries, on the air or off.

Ideally, the hosts would make these statements while wearing signs around their necks that say “I am a liar.” And they would do so during each show for a month. Such repetition – perhaps matching the repetition of their untruths – may be required for the message to sink in with the Fox audience.

In addition, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch would publicly apologize for his refusal to rein in the dishonest impulses of his staff and he should commit to turn Fox News into a genuine news source after this month of public shaming. The new Fox would be recast into a true fair and balanced entity, not a mouthpiece for the partisan biases of any political party or racist right-wing group in the United States.

The new Fox would be staffed by decent, fair-minded journalists and commentators. They would reject support of dictators far and wide, domestic and foreign. And, in the new Fox, commentary would be the least of its offerings. Instead, straight reporting would fill the airwaves for all but an hour or so a night — with none of the aforementioned commentators on board.

Does any of this seem unreasonable, in light of the potent influence that Fox had in the rise of Trump and his continuing support? Is it unreasonable to demand such contrition for the outlet’s role in leading up to the potential overthrow of the government on that infamous Jan. 6, its spreading of untruth at the behest and in the service of Trump, its feeding of misinformation to the mob and to the broader electorate among its viewers?

Such terms, of course, would be impossible. Indeed, Fox’s statement about the settlement conspicuously avoided any detailed admissions, other than to say “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” Then, Fox added the gaslighting and ludicrous sentence: “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

For those who believed the election falsehoods, it will be all too easy to dismiss the Dominion settlement as a bow to pressure from the Deep State. They likely will gin up some conspiracy theory to buttress such beliefs.

Fox owed Dominion an enormous amount for its perfidy. But it owes far more to the American public, to the preservation of democracy at home and abroad, and to our system of government. The outlet is responsible for a host of woes that it had the opportunity to correct with at least some form of public contrition. It failed in even that.

Putin’s Inhumane Gambit

Posted on April 8, 2023 by Joe Weber

Reporter Evan Gershkovich is a pawn in a cruel geopolitical game

The drumbeat of condemnation in the U.S. of Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich continues. In a rare show of bipartisanship, U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell issued a joint statement demanding “the immediate release of this internationally known and respected independent journalist.” This came a week after the Biden Administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, similarly condemned Gershkovich’s arrest, blasting “the Kremlin’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish journalists and civil society voices.”

And it follows other expressions of support by news organizations such as the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, which warned that, “The arrest of Gerschkovich may signal a broader crackdown on the remaining Western reporters in Russia, which already has made it a crime for its citizens to criticize the unlawful invasion of Ukraine.” The National Press Club awarded its highest honor for press freedom, the John Aubuchon Award, to the journalist well ahead of its normal year-end schedule. A club official said: “we want to do what we can to call out his situation and stand up next to him.”

For its part, The Wall Street Journal has run a continuing series of pieces about such developments. In one piece it described how readers can offer their support for the reporter through social media posts featuring his photo and such phrases as “#IStandWithEvan. “Readers can download this collection of media assets to surface and share across their personal social-media accounts—from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn, Instagram and beyond,” the Journal advised. “They can be added as user profile photos, banners or posts.”

Of course, the Journal also editorialized against his detention. “The timing of the arrest looks like a calculated provocation to embarrass the U.S. and intimidate the foreign press still working in Russia,” the paper’s editorial board opined. “The Kremlin has cowed domestic reporting in Russia, so foreign correspondents are the last independent sources of news. Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest comes days after his byline was on a revealing and widely read dispatch documenting the decline of the Russian economy. The Kremlin doesn’t want that truth told.”

The New York Times also weighed in, pairing its condemnation with an attack on Putin and a defense of Ukraine. “The Kremlin’s readiness to seize an accredited journalist as a hostage demonstrates again why the United States and its allies need to stand firm to block Mr. Putin’s designs on Ukraine,” the Times argued. “Ukraine has chosen to be part of a Europe that is stable, peaceful and governed according to rules and law. Mr. Putin would supplant that with fear and force.”

Both papers also suggested that Putin may have grabbed Gershkovich in retaliation for the United States indicting Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Russian national suspected of spying against the U.S. Noting that Cherkasov posed as a Brazilian and reportedly entered an American university, the Times added the caveat that “there has been no indication so far that the Russians are looking to swap for him.” The papers also recalled the swap of athlete Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, with the Times noting she was held for about 10 months. In an unhelpful note, the Journal took a swipe at the Biden Administration, expressing its thanks for the administration’s condemnation but adding, “But it’s fair to ask why Mr. Putin believes he can snatch Americans and come out ahead.”

All these protests are necessary, of course. If Gershkovich’s arrest were met with silence, the Kremlin would likely take away the absurd message that this distinguished journalist was spying for the U.S. In fact, what he was doing – in open sight and perhaps even more infuriating to Putin – was churning out exceptional journalism, including work about how the war in Ukraine was weakening the Russian economy. The Journal republished much of his work here.

The question, though, is whether such protests will have any effect on Putin. Instead of finding them troubling, would he take narcissistic and sadistic delight in so riling up his enemies? Would he be gladdened that in Gershkovich he has taken a prize that really stings? Will he milk that for all its worth by keeping the gifted reporter in the notorious Lefortovo Prison for months to come. Putin is, after all, a former KGB operative who understands the West’s emotional reaction when individuals are tormented and who himself is insensitive to immiserating others: witness his murderous attacks on thousands of Ukrainians and his tolerance of huge losses on the Russian side. To say the man is an animal is an insult to animals.

Sadly, despite the condemnatory reporting, Putin already has cowed Western reporters with this move – or at least made it difficult for Western media to get reporting on the ground in Russia. The Journal’s bureau chief has left and the Times has no staffers in the country any longer, as the Times reported. From his perspective, Putin has won big with this single arrest.

Western media and governments, as well as ordinary citizens, should keep up their criticisms of Putin for this appalling move, if only to remind themselves of the sort of man and government they are dealing with. However, if the past is prologue, only two things will really matter: when Putin has squeezed the arrest for all its value to him and the size of the ransom – human or otherwise — he’ll get for Gershkovich.

Will this move weaken the West’s resolve on Ukraine, moving it down the isolationist path some Republicans hope for? That is doubtful, but Putin’s gamble suggests that the reporter could be a captive as long as that war goes on. Happily, that didn’t happen with Griner. But Putin’s game with Gershkovich seems much more calculated and inhumane.

Is J School Moral?

Posted on March 15, 2023 by Joe Weber

When I began this blog back in 2009, newspapers and magazines were endangered, journalism jobs were disappearing and students were rethinking their futures. It was all enough to make me wonder whether keeping J Schools open was immoral. After all, how could we ethically take money from students, train them for the fading types of careers we older journalists had enjoyed, and send them out to flip burgers instead of produce news stories?

Now, as my time in academia is nearing its end, many things have gotten worse. Newspapers and magazines continue to die, journalism jobs continue to fade away (or get hacked away by vulture capitalists and others), and J School students are wise to think about alternative futures. So, the question is even more compelling: is it moral for J Schools to stay open?

My answer then – and still – is yes. Why? Well, first, while lots of traditional journalism jobs are going away, alternative media outlets have been surging. Online outfits, often operating as nonprofits, have sprouted all over the country. Many of them cover things more narrowly than general-interest newspapers, focusing on state legislatures, for instance. Some for-profit ventures, with broader missions, have emerged, too.

There has been so much growth that I led a special-topics course about it in the spring of 2022. I had many leaders of such programs speak to my students. They hailed from new outfits such as The Texas Tribune, The Colorado Sun, Nebraska Examiner, Flatwater Free Press, The Oaklandside, and Boulder Reporting Lab and older ones taking innovative paths, such as Chicago Public Media. Sure, such outfits will provide fewer jobs than the once-robust newsrooms veteran faculty members were used to, but as fewer students seek traditional reporting jobs, the smaller numbers are tolerable.

And let’s not forget the big-name outfits, whose brands have become only more important lately. Even more than before, the big-name outlets are available to students. Yes, The Washington Post and even The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are under pressure. But they still offer opportunities, especially internships. And specialized media, such as Bloomberg News and Reuters, remain vibrant, thank you.

Second, J School is not just about job training for reporters. Most students in such schools nowadays major in PR and advertising, where opportunity abounds. And, within journalism, the skills students acquire would serve them well in whatever field they go into. These skills include researching, analyzing, seeing different viewpoints and writing clearly. Remember that critical thinking – in such short supply throughout society – is at the base of what journalism faculty teach.

J School remains great preparation for particular professions, too. Several of my students went into law, for instance (some did so after stints in journalism and some went directly to law school). The skills they learned in our classes were essential. Similarly, some of my business journalism students went into accounting and related fields, where their writing skills were enhanced by training they got from us.

Think about the parallel with another endangered academic species – the English major, my own focus as an undergraduate. I studied the works of 18th and 20th century writers, in particular – works with as much practical value as philately, at least in terms of occupations. And yet, the tightly written prose and verses of Swift, Pope and Johnson taught me how to write with economy. Certainly, the work of Hemingway – who got his professional start as a reporter — was inspirational and worth trying to emulate.

For a time, I considered grad school in English, even gaining admission to a fine program. But the paucity of academic jobs on the horizon in the field back then (in the 1970s), helped me to choose graduate J School instead. Much as my heart may have been in literature, the public prints were my destiny. Even so, that training in the most impractical area of English proved helpful – enriching me personally and professionally.

Moreover, J Schools usually require students to take many courses outside of the field. The way I described this to prospective students was that journalism classes can teach you how to say something well, but other academic areas help give you something to say. Along with Journalism 101, students should take classes in such areas as law, business and economics. Indeed, the most intellectually adventurous might want to double-major in English.

So, should J Schools endure? Is it moral to train students in journalism? I believe so. The faculty must keep close tabs on the rapid changes in the field and make sure students are equipped with the skills they will need. But the core skills remain essential, whether the students wind up covering news, toiling in the courts, running businesses or doing anything else where good writing and clear thinking are vital.

Ups and Downs in Business Journalism

Posted on August 7, 2019 by Joe Weber

Two very different stories that slipped into my feeds this morning shed telling, if unsettling, light on the state of business journalism. Indeed, the tales of Suzanne McGee, an author and longtime Wall Street Journal reporter now working retail in a Banana Republic store, and Julia Angwin, a fired and rehired editor at an online startup, are curious statements on the health and challenges of our field today.

McGee, 57, had a distinguished career at the Journal for 14 years. She toiled in her native Canada, London and New York for the paper, bringing to bear her prior experience working for an English-language newspaper in Japan. After the trauma of 9/11, when she was working near Ground Zero, she left the Journal to become a corporate writer for an investment management and research firm. In time, she left there, freelanced for various big-name publications and then wrote a notable book about the 2008-09 financial crisis, “Chasing Goldman Sachs.”

So why is she now folding clothes and helping customers, even occasionally sweeping the floor, at a retail outlet in a shopping mall in Providence, Rhode Island?

The answer is likely quite complicated. Why does anyone slip from a great height professionally to wind up pinching pennies, to working for what likely is minimum wage or not far from it? Lots of reasons, both professional and personal, could enter in.

But McGee shared some thoughts with Providence Journal columnist Mark Patinkin. He shared them in an intriguing piece that sketches out this distinguished reporter’s troubling career trajectory. It doesn’t answer every question, but does help us understand a few elements.

First, there’s the professional part – McGee was doing okay freelancing, especially after she moved out of New York to lower-cost Rhode Island. But then a regular $4,500-a-month gig with The Guardian ended in about 2016, when the paper trimmed ties to independent contractors (though she still did some work for the paper afterward, with a byline as recent as August 2017). The loss of that steady paycheck put a dent in her finances, a dent big enough that she avoided even opening a credit card when she was pitched one at the Banana Republic outlet where she now works.

Patinkin reported that McGee still gets offers to freelance. But the pay is pathetic, $125 or less for pieces on subjects such as where the markets are headed – this for a savvy, experienced journalist with lots of insights to share. Three decades ago, McGee broke into journalism with a piece for a Canadian paper that paid $200 for it back then. Clearly, the numbers aren’t going in the right direction and Patinkin noted that McGee’s career path in part reflects tough times in journalism.

Then, there’s the personal part. McGee was extraordinarily lucky on 9/11. She was due at a conference that morning in 2001 atop the north tower of the World Trade Center. But by happenstance she got there an hour late, arriving just when the second plane hit. After the horrors of being at the focus of that disaster, however, the migraines she was prone to worsened. All that, it seems, led her into PR, to freelancing and ultimately to Providence.

McGee told Patinkin she’s not done with writing. Indeed, it’s ironic that a piece she did in July for the Wall Street Journal focused on a well-heeled and successful Morgan Stanley money manager. Moreover, she has another book in the works and she and a friend are looking into starting a business writing personal histories for families. A friend of mine in Omaha works in a similar business, Legacy Preservation, so that line may have potential for her.

In the meantime, folding clothes seems like a low-stress way to keep the bills paid. And she told him that her story is about both renewal through change and the dignity of making ends meet.

On another front, there’s Julia Angwin’s peculiar tale. Angwin was a hard-charger at Propublica and The Wall Street Journal, where she helped the paper win a Pulitzer Prize. Armed with a B.A. in math from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Columbia, Angwin had left those news outlets to help create a news start-up, The Markup, that would cover technology with investigative and data-driven journalistic techniques. Last April, she was fired after differing with the executive director, a cofounder of the site, over the cofounder’s suggestion that the site advocate against tech (the cofounder, Sue Gardner, disputed that, according to The New York Times, citing leadership issues on Angwin’s part. Gardner also wound up leaving).

But now, Angwin is back at The Markup. She has several distinguished journalists by her side, including most of those who quit with her. And they expect to launch the site by year-end. It is backed by a host of nonprofits, principally the Craig Newmark Philanthropies, but also the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and others. They all chipped in about $23 million to get the site going.

The Times account leaves a lot unanswered. The paper reported that Angwin and six of the seven staffers who quit in support of her are all back and were paid while they were out. Indeed, they had continued to work on pieces the site will produce, meeting roughly once a week in Angwin’s living room in Harlem.

So had they really been fired? Were they made whole after returning? What was the fracas all about anyway?

The $23 million that the backers anted up could buy a lot of good journalism for a quite a while. One of the tales that would be fascinating to hear is just what came off the rails at The Markup in the spring and what put it back on track. That may take an outside journalist’s work to tell.

Still, it’s encouraging that even as much of mainstream journalism struggles – driving some folks to work in shopping malls – opportunities continue to arise in other areas. These areas are not dependent on advertising, the loss of which to online outfits such as Facebook and Google has been killing news organizations nationwide. Such startups, tumultuous as they may be, likely will offer a better future for business journalists alongside of or as substitutes in time for today’s big publishing names.

Tenure is more than a job for life

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Joe Weber

The letter was short, barely filling a page. But the message, for me, was a big deal. The vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln let me know this week that I had successfully run a 5 ½-year long gauntlet and qualified for tenure.

I choked up. I felt like a 17-year-old getting accepted into the college of his dreams. The news about what technically is called “continuous appointment” meant more to me than I had expected. It meant more than just job security; it meant I had been accepted by my peers, my dean and the people who fill the upper reaches of my Big Ten university as someone they’d like to work with for as long as I could command a podium in a classroom.

That acceptance, that ratification of my role as a mentor to young people, that endorsement of my teaching and research skills – it was like getting my first car or going on a first date. It summoned up sepia-colored images of my father – someone who had not even graduated from high school – calling me and an academically inclined sister his little professors. We were the ones who pulled As, the ones he could see in classrooms, occupying places he respected.

I was surprised at my own reaction, though, partly because I’ve been conflicted about tenure. After all, I managed to stay 22 years at my last job, at BusinessWeek, without it, and had worked at three other news organizations before without it. At each place, I was only as good – and secure – as my next story. My job security depended on shifting arrays of bosses and the economic health of my employer. And that seemed fine to me – even just, if one believes healthy capitalism requires dynamic labor markets where jobs must come and go, where there is no room for sinecures.

For years I’ve been sympathetic to a view that a former colleague at BusinessWeek put into writing recently. Sarah Bartlett, marking her first anniversary as dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, complained that the “tenure system can create a permanent class of teachers who may not feel much pressure to constantly refresh their skills or renew their curricula.” Tenure, she suggested, would atrophy programs rather than create the “vibrant academic cultures” that journalism schools, in particular, need at a time of great industry ferment.

But does tenure serve mainly to shield those who would resist change? Does it do little more than protect aging old bulls and cows who should long ago have been turned out to pasture? Does it guarantee that hoary old fossils will dominate classrooms, spouting outdated and irrelevant approaches? Does the pursuit of tenure, moreover, drive aspiring faculty members to do pointless impractical research that doesn’t help the journalism world or the J schools themselves, as Sarah also implied?

Well, I look around at my tenured colleagues at UNL and see the opposite. As one pursued tenure, she wrote a textbook for training copy editors. Sue Burzynski Bullard’s text – “Everybody’s An Editor: Navigating journalism’s changing landscape” – should be standard fare in any forward-looking J school. Because it is an interactive ebook, the now-tenured Bullard is able to – and does – refresh the book regularly. Another colleague, John R. Bender, regularly updates “Reporting for the Media,” an impressive text that he and three colleagues wrote. It’s now in its 11th edition. A third colleague, Joe Starita, produced “I Am A Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice,” setting a high bar for storytelling and research that contributes to an emphasis at our school in journalism about Native Americans. This was Starita’s third book and he’s toiling on a fourth, even as he inspires students in feature-writing and reporting classes.

And that productivity by tenured faculty isn’t limited to written work. Starita teamed up with multimedia-savvy journalism sequence head Jerry Renaud to shepherd the impressive Native Daughters project about American Indian women. Bernard R. McCoy, a colleague who teaches mainly (but not exclusively) in the broadcasting sequence, has produced documentaries including “Exploring the Wild Kingdom,” a public-TV effort about the most popular wildlife program in television history. Another of his works, “They Could Really Play the Game: Reloaded,” tells the story of an extraordinary 1950s college basketball team. And he’s now working on a production about WWI Gen. John J. Pershing.

Tenure doesn’t mean that creative work ends or innovations in the classroom cease. Each of my colleagues has had to adapt to the digital world. Some still prefer to teach in older ways – one quaintly requires students to hand in written papers that he grades by hand, for instance. But even he teams up with visually oriented colleagues to guide students to produce work as today’s media organizations demand it. Charlyne Berens, a colleague, and I teamed up with the Omaha World-Herald just last spring to guide students to produce a 16-part series that boasts print, online and multimedia elements, The Engineered Foods Debate. Charlyne, who recently retired as our associate dean, wrote several works, including “One House,” about the peculiar unicameral Nebraska legislature, and another about the former Secretary of Defense, “Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward.”

As for me, the pursuit of tenure gave me the impetus to write my first book, “Transcendental Meditation in America: How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa.” I’m now working on a second book, exploring the reasons that drive people to join cults. I’m also developing curricula for business and economic journalism instruction that I hope will serve business school and J school students, including those interested in investor relations. The pursuit of tenure also drove me to develop research for academic journals, encouraging me to look into areas as far-flung as journalism training in China, as well as such practical work as the teaching of business journalism, the challenges of teaching fair-minded approaches to aspiring journalists, and the pros and cons of ranking journalism schools – all topics for forthcoming journal publication.

Forgive me for beating my own chest. I don’t mean to. I am humbled by the work that my colleagues at the J school and across the university do. It is an enormous honor for them to consider me a peer and, assuming that the university’s regents in September agree with our vice chancellor, I expect that I will spend the next decade or so trying to live up to that.

The Big Picture

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