Sidebar: Sunday School 1/15/23

Last week, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd aka What's-his-name (WHN) received a lot of attention from folks on the left for his interview with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. 

Cheers rang out for how Johnson was 'handled' and how WHN was 'finally doing his job.' The video of the interview was widely shared, too. (Here's the transcript if you want to follow along.)

Give the accolades, you'd think it was a journalistic powerhouse of an interview, right? Well, not unless you think that mocking, laughing, taunting belligerence is the right way to conduct an interview. I don't agree; I think prior hosts of the show would be appalled, and I think WHN is the wrong person for this job.

I'm no Johnson fan; I think he's a partisan hack. Even as I dislike him, I admit he's not wrong on everything. For example, he and I agree, the American people deserve to hear about the bad behavior of government officials, and Congress deserves the chance to provide 'oversight' of the government, even if no criminal statutes have been violated. 

WHN thinks that's ridiculous.

So, I guess the problem that I feel like you run into with that decision is what you're saying is if the Justice Department decides a crime wasn't committed, they're not going to prosecute a crime, it sounds like you still want the information out there because you want to politically damage the person that was investigated?

Or - maybe - we'd like to see bad actors held accountable for their actions? 

Would WHN say that if the subject of the investigation was Clarence Thomas? Brett Kavanaugh? Marjorie Taylor Green? Matt Gaetz? Ron Johnson? Has he ever said that about any Donald Trump investigation?

That leads to another point on which Johnson and I agree: there is a lot of bias in the media, and in politics, of course. We know Johnson and the Rs have no interest in investigating their own guys, or Jared Kushner, or Trump, even as they relish going after the other side; that was clear in this interview. The Dems aren't much different. 

In addition to bias, there's a striking inability by many to discern the difference between a news report and an opinion piece. And a good part of the blame for that belongs to folks like WHN, when they clearly, even eagerly, cross the line between fact-seeking and smoke-blowing in their interviews.

Here's an example; this exchange came after Johnson said the FBI suppressed information about Hunter Biden's laptop before the election. (I clarified which 'they' Johnson was referring to in his comment, and I added emphasis).

JOHNSON: Chuck, Chuck. My concern -- you know, Chuck. You know, part of the problem, and this is pretty obvious to anybody watching this, is you don't invite me on to interview me, you invite me on to argue with me. 

That's true - more on that in a bit. 

JOHNSON: You know, I'm just trying to lay out the facts that certainly Senator Grassley and I uncovered. They (the facts) were suppressed. They (the facts) were censored. They (the FBI) interfered in the 2020 election. Conservatives understand that. Unfortunately, liberals in the media don't. And that's part of the things that -- part of the reasons our politics are inflamed is we do not have an unbiased media. We don't. It's unfortunate. I'm all for free press.

WHN: Well, Senator -- JOHNSON: It needs to be more unbiased. WHN: Senator, look, this is -- JOHNSON: There's misinformation on both sides -- WHN: Look, go to partisan -- JOHNSON: -- but the censorship and suppression -- WHN: Senator -- Senator -- look, we’re trying to do issues here and facts.  JOHNSON: -- primarily occurs on the left. WHN: Partisan cable -- JOHNSON: It's frustrating. WHN:  Look, you can go back on your partisan cable cocoon and talk about media bias all you want. I understand it's part of your identity. 

Notably, this exchange came after WHN said, "I am a journalist. I have to deal in facts." No one believes a word of that - or, I should say, no one should believe a word of that.

Sidebar: The "Post-truth" Society

In the latest Sunday School Extra Credit post, I shared some of the discussion on Meet the Press about our 'post-truth' society, which is how Chuck Todd described our current state of affairs. 

The show devoted a segment to Todd's conversation with the executive editors of the Washington Post and NY times - Martin Baron and Dean Baquet, respectively; a segment to how lies become 'truths' using Crowdstrike as an example; and a segment to the Russian art of spreading propaganda and misinformation. 

The panel discussion was all about social media, its lack of regulation, and how personal responsibility is important in helping stop the spread of misinformation and the suspension of truth. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Chuck Todd managed to bring both Alexander Hamilton and LBJ into the conversation, ensuring his place in whataboutism history. 

One of the most interesting comments in the panel discussion came from Todd, who said

I mean, we are now aware that there are some politicians who want to come on this show, because they're hoping to get a viral moment to use for fundraising. And the minute we caught wind of that, we won't put those folks on. 

To which I offer these two words: Ted Cruz.  But I digress. Here are some things that I didn't see covered, that I wish had been.

• Where is the separation between the journalists and the politicians, and what level of separation should there be? Think about the White House Correspondents Dinner (as it used to be pre-Trump), or the various versions of that same model that play out in the states (here in NY, it's the Legislative Correspondents Association). The dinner, the skits, the roasts - what journalistic purpose is advanced by having these engagements, and how do readers benefit from them? 

• The role of the 'media star' - the Sunday Show and cable show hosts, the nightly news anchors are just some examples. This is more of a TV thing than a print thing, but there are media stars in print, too. The oversized personae of these folks actually gets in the way of the news they're reporting, or the conversation we're supposed to be learning from. Case in point? Chuck Todd, again, and his conversation with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in which Todd fought harder than ever before - on a question about Johnson 'wincing' at something. What was the point of that battle, and all the kudos he received? Another example: ANY political debate, in which the questioners (the media stars) end up being the center of attention, not the candidates. How would they address that?

• The conversation tended to focus on issues with conservatives, with Republicans, with Fox News, to the exclusion of any ill will or bad acts on the part of Democrats, CNN, MSNBC, etc.  Are they pretending that misinformation, disinformation and incorrect reporting is a problem only on one side of the spectrum? Or are they ignoring it? I fact-check posts from Dems just as much as I do posts from Republicans. The Rs are better at the disinformation - they have the president, after all. But that poses another question: should the Dems fully engage in the battle? And what would the media folks do if that happened? 

• The issue of trust, which was brought up not only by the print folks but also by Joshua Johnson, the former radio guy who's moving full time to MSNBC. Nothing was said about bad reports that get into print in a rush to be first; nothing was said about false reporting that is never corrected by the media outlet that issued it; and nothing was said about reporters and talking heads who have lied, quite publicly, but still have their face time and are still given an audience, because they said they were sorry. 

• They talked about misinformation or disinformation posts being shared tens of millions of times. I've shared patently ridiculous memes on social media -  sometimes for fact-checking but more because they're funny - but I'm surely included in the sharing data, as are the folks in this post about a great WaPo article on a satirical social media page. We don't get much nuance, particularly on TV, but it's an issue in the print media, too. How can journalists address that, in the context of our 30-second attention span? And as consumers, would the experts recommend we ignore the bad memes and articles, or that we share to educate? 

• And finally, to Todd's comment about not booking these folks? I don't know who they're not booking, but if they're booking members of the Trump Administration, the GOP and Dem leadership of the House and Senate, or any of the usual suspects - and we know who they are - they're not following that policy. And, I wonder what value the 'balanced' Sunday Shows provide us? The practice of booking a Dem and a Republican with opposing views on the same subject, without any fact-checking, accomplishes what? Does it build trust in the journalistic process? Does it help educate us? Or does it merely promote the show and bring in ad revenue? 

I guess my overarching question is, what would any of these folks - print, television, or radio - change in their media to help break through the mess they talked about? It seemed they're saying we need to do better, but what are they going to do better?

Sunday School Extra Credit 12/29/19

In our final Sunday School Extra Credit of the year, I sat in on what could be the one of the most un-self-aware moments of 2019, Meet the Press and "National Menace" Chuck Todd (hear that reference at around 23:30 of this video) looking at "the assault on truth" and "our post-truth society, and how a changing media landscape has created chaos out of order."

The opening of the show include Kellyanne Conway ("alternative facts"), Rudy Giuliani ("truth isn't truth"), Donald Trump ("what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening") -- and Bill Clinton ("it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is").

That's right: he brings in a two-decades old example, suggesting equivalency between what's happening today, every single day, and Bill Clinton answering a question on whether he is or is not still not having "sexual relations with that woman" while fighting for his presidency. I'm not pretending Clinton wasn't a liar - of course he was - but if the point of the show is to delve into our "post-truth society," is Todd really trying to sell us on this being a two-decades-old problem? And if yes, where the hell has he been for the past 20 years? 

Anyway. The first segment begins with fake news being pumped out by Russia, not, he said, to influence the Trump/Clinton race, but to make money on Facebook. And, he continued, the idea of "fake news" has become a growth industry, morphing into "a political weapon in our nationalized politics." 

After giving some pretty well known examples, including the lies about the inaugural crowd, the 15,413 false or misleading Trump statements; the administration's campaign against the press, and social media disinformation. Todd also quoted UK author/tech expert Ben Nimmo on the "four things that disinformation actors" do: Dismiss, Distort, Distract (this includes whataboutism, which is Todd's interview stock-in-trade) and Dismay.

So, let's hear from the print media experts - Martin Baron (exec editor of the WaPo) and Dean Baquet (exec editor of the NYT) on this. Baron noted our current environment is one where conspiracy theories and lies are spread regularly, and how people tend to pay attention to 'news' sources that "confirms their pre-existing points of view..." but that

...(journalists) still have the responsibility for determining what's true and what's false and, in particular, holding our government officials accountable for what they say and telling people they're telling the truth, or they're not telling the truth. That's fundamental to the responsibilities that we have as a journalistic institution.

Todd shared data from a CBS poll showing that 91% of Trump supporters said he, Trump, is where they go for accurate information, and wondered how that challenges the papers. Baron said that's how Trump likes it, saying

(Trump) wants to disqualify the mainstream media as an arbiter of facts and of truth... And he wants to disqualify the courts. He wants to disqualify historians. He wants to disqualify scientists, any independent source of information.

Todd wondered if they need to "market the truth" and "start campaigning, around the country" to explain how facts work. Here's Baquet on that.

What I think we're going to have to get very aggressive at is to be really transparent, to assume nothing, and to make sure people know where we are, how we do our work, to show our work more aggressively. That's a different muscle for us.... To my mind, that's a form of marketing our journalism... as well as what we're doing now...for Marty and I and others to be out in the world, talking about what we do and very aggressively defending our institutions, defending the truth and defending our important role in democracy. 

They also talked about whether voters want to be lied to, something that the MTP executive producer apparently says often, according to Todd, and there was some disagreement on that. Baquet noted

I'm not convinced that people want to be lied to. I think people want to be comforted. And I think politicians sometimes say comforting things to them, and our job is to jump into the breach and jump into those conversations, to do the deep reporting, to say "look, I'm sorry. What I have to say may be uncomfortable. But that think you just heard that made you feel good is a lie." And I think that's our job. 

Todd brought up an example, saying  "Coal jobs is what comes into my head. "Oh, we're going to bring coal jobs back." And you're like, "That's not going to happen," right, Marty?" Baron was more circumspect than Todd ever is.

I think we have to be careful. I don't want to be dismissive of people who support the president. I think they're owed our respect, and they certainly have mine. But you know, they've, they feel the so-called elites in Washington have not paid attention to them, that they don't understand their lives... their concerns... and that they're not being heard. And they feel that the president is actually listening to them and addressing their concerns and so they tend to believe him. And they're deeply suspicious of so-called elites, like us, at least people who are described as elites. 

Baquet said he struggles with being considered one of the elite, having grown up poor in New Orleans, but that "we have to do a much better job."

I agree with what Marty said, understanding some of the forces that drive people in parts of American that maybe are not as powerful in New York or Los Angeles. We have to do a better job covering religion. We have to do a better job understanding why some people support Donald Trump... we cannot dismiss everybody who supported Donald Trump... First off, that's not journalistically moral. It's journalistically moral to reach out, understand the world, and be read. That's our job.

They moved on to a discussion of how to describe journalism at mainstream news organizations, with "fair" or "objective" or "balanced" as possibly appropriate. Baron mentioned fairness, open-mindedness, being listeners more than talkers, and being fair to the public.

We can’t -- you know, we need to be direct and straightforward and tell people what we've actually learned. And so I believe in being fair in the sense of being open-minded, going into a story, but being fair with the public at the end, once we've done our jobs, telling them what we've found.

Todd offered his own thoughts, first saying

The phrase I like to use these days is simply -- Go ahead.

Baquet added a couple more descriptors.

I was going to add my two. I agree with all those, of course. But empathetic, I think great journalists are empathetic, which means they listen, and they try to understand. That's not pandering. And then, I think the most powerful word, for me, is independent -  independent, which means independent of everybody, by the way, except, except our principles and our readers.

And here's where they left this segment, with a second thought from Todd ('Go ahead' not being simply enough, apparently).

All, all good words, there. I use a phrase these days, around here -- “Don't round the edges. Simply, say what you see.” 

There were other segments in the show, as well as the roundtable discussion. I'll pull together a highlight reel of anything noteworthy, and I'll also share some thoughts on this, because while I think it's good to talk about this kind of thing, there were many things left unsaid.

See you around campus.