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Mistrust in Media Justified

The role of journalism in a free society is essential.  Concurrently, the responsibility of journalists to accurately report facts is equally important. The numerous, indeed, continuous examples of not just media bias, but outright dishonesty on the part of many major news organizations, as well as the refusal to even report key facts, should worry every American, regardless of political or ideological affiliation.

Although both should be avoided, falsification of a news story differs significantly from bias, or editorializing a particular reported item.

Examples are numerous. During the Obama Administration, media reports continued a constant drumbeat of alleged good news about unemployment levels decreasing, and job growth rebounding from the Great Recession.  The reality was startlingly different.

Even a cursory review of official statistics revealed a far less rosy scenario.  Middle class employment continued to decline. Since longevity in a position contributes to income level, that information was relevant, as well.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported, for example, in the fall of 2016 that the median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was descending. An analysis at the time by Bloomberg outlined the dilemma: the minimal amount of jobs that were being created were in traditionally lower-paying fields, furthering a transfer of employment from middle income to lower income. Payrolls at factories fell by 13,000, after a 16,000 drop in the previous month, while retailers, who traditionally provide lower salaries, increased payrolls by 22,000. Employment in leisure and hospitality, also lower paying fields, rose 15,000.

As Obama left office, the American Enterprise Institute pointed out the reality that the media largely, and intentionally, ignored: “… job growth was lackluster…There are ninety-five million people out of the workforce…growth during the current expansion has been at its slowest rate since just after World War II…The number of people on food stamps has grown substantially…”

These worrisome facts were buried by many major news media.
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The same could be said for foreign affairs. Both Russia and China dramatically built up their armed forces while the United States cut Pentagon spending. Outside of a few outlets, the extent of the challenge was barely mentioned.

Some news sites have criticized others for their failures. In 2016 Fox News reported, “After the ‘big three’ networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC neglected to cover the State Department Inspector General (IG) doling out a subpoena to the Clinton Foundation…PBS NewsHour Democratic Debate moderators Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff failed to even mention this, Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal or Benghazi.”

The Free Beacon recently provided an example of how CNN’s Chris Cuomo misled viewers on a gun control issue.  “CNN host Chris Cuomo recently spread a misleading story on Twitter about how easy it is to purchase an AR-15, only to double down when called out on the error. Cuomo retweeted a viral tweet with a picture of a young man holding a gun and text reading, ‘I was able to buy an AR-15 in five minutes. I’m 20 and my ID is expired.’ That quote and picture were taken from a 2016 story on the Tab headlined, ‘I was able to buy an AR-15 in five minutes.’ But once one reads the actual story, they learn that the author did not buy the AR-15; he stopped the purchase at the point at which he would have had to actually fill out paperwork.”

A Pew  analysis of trust in the media revealed that “Only about two-in-ten Americans (22%) trust the information they get from local news organizations a lot, whether online or offline, and 18% say the same of national organizations.”

That mistrust is well placed.

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U.S. Journalism Loses its Way, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its two-part examination of how deeply biased journalism has come.

 

Examples of bias against candidate Trump were abundant.  Just a few examples: Public Integrity describes:

“New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an ‘ugly and xenophobic campaign.’ What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in her dispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April…Carole Simpson, a former ABC “World News Tonight” anchor who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to moderate a presidential debate, is not moderate about her personal politics: the current Emerson College distinguished journalist-in-residence and regular TV news guest has given Clinton $2,800.” The vast majority of journalist who supported either candidate supported Clinton, according to Public Integrity. “In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.”

Fox News has generally been viewed as more conservative outlet, and was regularly criticized by former President Obama. In the aftermath of the 2016 campaign, it reported:

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A Media Research Center report  provides an extraordinary example of bias: “Sneaky Russian influence in American politics is a huge story if it involves Republicans/Donald Trump, but a non-story if it involves Democrats/Hillary Clinton… The Hill published new information about Russian efforts to infiltrate the American uranium industry, including $31.3 million in payments to the Clinton Foundation, as well as a huge speaking fee delivered to Bill Clinton personally, while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. In eight days, the network evening news coverage of this story amount to a mere 20 seconds on ABC’s World News Tonight…But Bill Clinton’s big payday has generated ZERO network news coverage this week, and only a single reference on ABC’s This Week back in 2015, when the book Clinton Cash first disclosed the potential scandal.In fact, from April 2015 through [October 24] the Clinton/Uranium/Russia story has been granted only 3 minutes, 21 seconds of evening news coverage — less than one-half of one percent of the coverage doled out just this year to the conspiracy theories surrounding Trump and Russia…Combined, the three evening newscasts have aired a total of 5,015 minutes of coverage of the Trump administration since Inauguration Day, which means the Russia story alone has comprised almost exactly one-fifth of all Trump news this year.

Some media notables have spoken up. The Washington Times  reported that “Journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame has some advice for his younger peers — stop “binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.”

Far too often, the argument over biased media is framed in terms of  Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative. Lately, it has also included pro-Trump vs. “Never Trumpers.” That misses the point entirely.  Journalists are human, bound to have personal biases and developed points of view. What distinguishes the current state of the profession is the phenomenon of so many being of the same political mindset.

A vigorous and independent media is vital to the success of a free people. An abundance of perspectives and, most importantly, a devotion to truth, regardless of one’s own political biases, is desperately needed.  It is a need that is going largely unfilled by many media outlets.

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U.S. Journalism Loses its Way

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government examines how deeply biased journalism has become in this two-part series.

What is the appropriate response to the biased and sloppy journalism that diligently sought to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and which ignored the offenses of the elected officials and appointees whom they supported?

Recent revelations have been truly extraordinary: It was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that “colluded” with Moscow. The Charges against the Trump campaign appear to be little more than an attempt to coverup unlawful surveillance by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department has apologized for its harassment, under the former President, of the Tea Party.  The FBI, under James Comey, squashed the Clinton email investigation. The Democrat National Committee inappropriately “fixed” the primary process to ensure that Bernie Sanders lost. In terms of the politicians and bureaucrats involved, Congress will investigate, the wheels of justice will turn.  But what of a media that intentionally or negligently propagated falsehoods?

A study by the Pew Research Center found that “Allegations about Russia and the 2016 election tied to Trump and his administration, as well as the White House’s relationship with Moscow, dominated stories on U.S.-Russia relations…, only about one-in-ten stories (11%) delivered an overall positive assessment of the [trump] administration’s words or actions. Four times as many (44%) offered a negative assessment, while the remaining 45% were neither positive nor negative.”  In total, the early coverage of the Trump Administration by the media was 62% negative versus only 5% positive.  That contrast sharply with the coverage of former President Obama’s coverage, which was 42% positive and only 20% negative.

A similar result was found by a Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy study, which noted that “Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.”
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Anthony Fisher reported for Reason about the coverage of the events surrounding President Trump’s inauguration. “One journalist…was Natasha Lennard, who penned a popular article for The Nation wherein she writes about how she actively participated in the ‘anti-capitalist, anti-fascist bloc’ which rejected ‘polite protest’ in favor of tactics such as ‘human blockades, smash[ing] corporate windows, trash-can fires, burning [a] limousine…”

Is it intentional bias or something else that has divorced accuracy from media reports? Politico notes that the outcome of the 2016 election, which most of the media was convinced would be a landslide victory for Clinton was “an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers…”  The website cites FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. ‘As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,’ Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. ‘The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,’ Bannon said. ‘It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f***** idea what’s going on.”

The Federalist, in a Feburary 2017 article by Daniel Payne,  reported that “16 fake news stories reporters have run since Trump won…Since at least Donald Trump’s election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis…there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves…day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel… Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse—sometimes on a daily basis? How has it come to this point?”

The Report concludes tomorrow.

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The Real Agenda Behind the Fake News Controversy

The concept of “fake news” should be obvious: reporting which is not based on facts. But in the absurd world of America’s biased media, “fake News” has been the term applied to reporting which challenges the prevailing political beliefs held by the “establishment” media.

Pamela Geller notes that “The left-wing elites…are in one of their fictional publicity campaigns that they masquerade as urgent news. Their latest terror is ‘fake news’ sites. The New York Times reported shortly after the election that Google and Facebook ‘have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome.’ That was fake news in itself: fake news’ didn’t influence the presidential election’s outcome, all too real news about the wrong direction in which our nation was headed under Barack Obama did. Nevertheless, the Times said that ‘those companies responded by making it clear that they would not tolerate such misinformation by taking pointed aim at fake news sites’ revenue sources.’ If a blogger or news writer gets a story wrong, does that designate him or her, or his or her site, as ‘fake news’? If that’s the case, they’ll have to shut down the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, etc. They get things wrong all the time. Every article written about my colleagues, my work, or myself is fake. Most of what they wrote and didn’t write about the Orlando mass slaughter at the gay nightclub was disinformation and deception… is an end-run around the First Amendment, and it’s disastrous. It is indeed true that Facebook has too much power, but banning ‘fake news’ sites is hardly the solution. That’s Zuckerberg’s fix-it? It would be funny if it weren’t so Hitlerian. Facebook has too much power. Its news curators, mini-Goebbelians — are more frightening than Kafka’s antagonists.”

Adam H. Johnson, writing in The Nation  reports that “…Over the past month, three separate lists of “fake news” websites—boosted and shared by major media outlets, journalists, and pundits—have gone viral, despite the fact that all three lists included legitimate outlets well within the mainstream…[the] blacklist included “WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites…[and] libertarian venues.”… While many who legitimately think fake news is a problem … this story is a problem in search of evidence..”

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The overt, biased agenda of media actors propagating the “fake news” concept is crystal clear.  As outlined by the Daily Caller: “A list of ‘fake news’ sites compiled by a liberal college professor — a list that was uncritically accepted and distributed by some liberal journalists — included top right-of-center sites like Independent Journal Review (IJR) and The Blaze alongside objectively fake sites. Left-leaning media organizations like the Los Angeles Times and New York magazine distributed the list to their readers. One website that the Washington Post labeled “fake news” — without providing a single piece of evidence — is threatening to sue the Post for defamation, after being included on a similar list. In an article last summer, liberal New York Magazine writer Brian Feldman tried to argue that “conservative news” and “fake news” are the same thing. That some liberal journalists are lumping in legitimate news organizations alongside objectively false sites while at the same time calling for censorship of fake news has lead to concerns that the crackdown on fake news sites — the actual influence of which remains unknown — will be used by liberals to censor their conservative competitors.”

The overwhelming impulse on the part of those in a position of authority–whether in government or those controlling major media sources-is to control what the public gets to know.  Labeling those who publish information that is embarrassing to those in power as purveyors of fake news is merely the latest excuse to exercise censorship.

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Comedy and Satire vs. Serious Journalism

The concept of “fake news” has become a major topic in recent months.

There has always been an ample supply of reporting that is demonstrably reality-challenged. Supermarket tabloids breathlessly headline stories that strain credulity, discussing ridiculous topics about visitors from outer space, the whereabouts of Elvis, or other nonsense. Even in more respected sources, unsubstantiated articles devoid of provable facts have creeped into publications, defying journalistic ethics.

But there are two new aspects to the issue. One involves the increased frequency with which many, particularly young people, get their “news” from non-news sources, such as comedy shows. The second is using the pejorative label of “fake news” for articles that reveal facts that accurately contradict preconceived notions based on the ideology of those making the accusation.

Comedy and Satire vs. Real News

A Harvard Crimson analysis found that “Political satire outlets have risen in popularity considerably in recent years. In fact, Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” were the two most-watched late night talk shows among 18- to 49-year-olds in the first quarter of 2013. ‘The Onion’, a well-known satirical newspaper and website with a political section, started with modest beginnings and now boasts 7.5 million viewers monthly. This meteoric rise has led scholars and laymen alike to question the impact humorous news outlets have on politics… political satire chooses reports based on comedic value, which—instead of deviating from essential information… some have argued that political satire encourages cynicism, trivializes politics, and promotes a narrow point of view (stemming from the predominantly liberal leanings of most political satirists and comedians).

A Pew Research study  found that a significant portion of Americans get their news from non-news sources, particularly comedy and entertainment television programs. Pew noted that in 2014, 10% overall got their news from the Colbert Report comedy program. Within that 10%, Younger males were “the most likely to use and trust The Colbert Report as a source of news about government and politics.” In the survey of online adults, according to Pew, nearly a quarter (22%) of 18- to 29- year-old males say they got news about politics and government from The Colbert Report in the previous week. That is more than twice that of 18- to 29- year-old women and significantly higher than any other age group. Also, these younger males are more likely to trust The Colbert Report as a source of political news; almost three-in-ten say that they trust it, more than any other age group.”
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The Report also found that Those with consistently liberal political views are the most likely to use and trust The Colbert Report. “Roughly a quarter (26%) of consistent liberals reported getting news about government and politics from The Colbert Report in the previous week. That is far more than other ideological groups. In fact, a mere 1% of consistent conservatives say they get news from the show. The share of consistent liberals who get news from The Colbert Report is similar to that of The Huffington Post (29%) and CBS News (30%), but somewhat lower than its lead-in The Daily Show (34%), as well as a number of more traditional sources including NPR (53%) and CNN (52%). Trust follows the same pattern. About a third (36%) of consistent liberals trust The Colbert Report, more than any other ideological group.”

The Impact on the National Conversation

The impact on national politics, according to a recent review by the Boston Globe, is significant. The Globe calls it “The John Oliver Effect” – an influence on the national conversation that has been known to affect policy.

Joe Hale Cutbirth, writing in Columbia University’s Academic Commons,  notes “the blurring of lines between news and entertainment, public policy and popular culture, is not a new phenomenon. Yet, re cent concerns that journalism is being subsumed within the larger field of mass communication and competing with an increasingly diverse group of narratives that includes political satire are well-founded… When Time recently asked readers to identify “the most trusted newsperson in America,” Stewart was the runaway winner… It argues that they seek him out because the para-political talk he offers helps them connect with a larger community of like-minded fellows Early scholarship on the increasingly complex relationship between satire and traditional journalism has focused on the satirists and attempted to define their narratives as something more than comedy – some type of popular journalistic hybrid or emerging narrative that is a new form of journalism.…”

Comedy and satire have always been a part of the political conversation. They play a valuable role in highlighting absurdities and inconsistencies among leaders. However, there is a growing problem in that many if not most of the most popular comedians and satirists of the day tend to be less interested in pointing out hypocrisy than in promoting a particular point of view, generally skewing to the left, rendering them partisan participants in the political process rather than objective critics and observers of that process.

Tomorrow: The Fake News Debate