It’s high time for media to enter the No Kellyanne Zone — and stay there; The Washington Post, December 17, 2018

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post; It’s high time for media to enter the No Kellyanne Zone — and stay there

"The news media continues — even now when it should know better — to be addicted to “both sides” journalism. In the name of fairness, objectivity and respect for the office of the presidency, it still seems to take Trump — along with his array of deceptive surrogates — at his word, while knowing full well that his word isn’t good.

When major news organizations publish tweets and news alerts that repeat falsehoods merely because the president uttered them, it’s the same kind of journalistic malpractice as offering a prime interview spot to Kellyanne Conway."

Newseum Says It Made a Mistake and Pulls ‘Fake News’ Shirts; The New York Times, August 3, 2018

Sopan Deb, The New York Times; Newseum Says It Made a Mistake and Pulls ‘Fake News’ Shirts

[Kip Currier: Photos of some items I bought at The Newseum when I was there for a Social Innovation Summit a couple of years ago:]

"The Newseum in Washington, which caused a stir Friday after reports that it was selling a T-shirt reading “You Are Very Fake News,” announced Saturday that it was pulling the shirts from its gift shop and online store.

“We made a mistake and we apologize,” the museum, which is dedicated to press freedom, said in a statement on its website. “A free press is an essential part of our democracy and journalists are not the enemy of the people.”

“A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin; Salon, July 17, 2018

Shira Tarlo and Joseph Neese, Salon; “A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin

"As controversy mounted over his assertion that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's word over the findings of the U.S. intelligence community, President Donald Trump attempted to walk back his remarks, in part, by claiming that "other people" could have also meddled in the 2016 presidential election."

After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the American press; The Washington Post, July 16, 2018

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post; After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the American press

"Journalism, writ large, can be proud of the Associated Press’s Jon Lemire and Reuters’s Jeff Mason, who asked well-honed, incisive questions on Monday and asked them in just the right way. (Historical note: Lemire, back in October 2016, was thrown out of a room by Trump’s campaign people, as the candidate called him a “sleazebag” for asking tough questions about sexual misconduct claims against him.)

Mason and Lemire held Trump’s feet to the fire.

If any such pride is to continue in the hours and days ahead, news organizations need to step up to the job of driving home to American citizens the larger picture, too.

It’s not enough to offer such pallid assessments as those we’ve heard too often, that “this is outside the norm,” or “there’s little precedent for what we’re hearing.

Clarity of purpose and moral force are called for. They are not always in ample supply by a too-docile press corps.

Fallows called Monday’s news conference a “moment of truth” for Republican lawmakers

So, too, for American journalists."

We are a deeply stupid country; The Washington Post, July 16, 2018

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; We are a deeply stupid country

"How foolish are we?

We brainlessly criticized Russia when it invaded Georgia and Ukraine. We idiotically protested when Russia poisoned people in Britain. Like dunces, we punished Russians for killing human rights activists. Morons that we are, we complained when Russia shot down a passenger jet. And then, revealing ourselves to be truly daft and inane, we blamed Russia for interfering in our election.

Standing at Putin’s side Monday, Trump let the world know just how doltish the people are who made this judgment, including the cretins at the CIA and the nitwits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia,” Trump announced. “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia."

Trump and Putin vs. America; The New York Times, July 16, 2018

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times;Trump and Putin vs. America 

"Listening to Trump, it was as if Franklin Roosevelt had announced after Pearl Harbor: “Hey, both sides are to blame. Our battleships in Hawaii were a little provocative to Japan — and, by the way, I had nothing to do with the causes for their attack. So cool it.”

Trump again blamed ‘both sides’ in Charlottesville. Here’s how politicians are reacting.; Washington Post, August 16, 2017

Kevin Uhrmacher, Denise Lu, Kevin Schaul and Aaron Steckelberg, Washington Post; Trump again blamed ‘both sides’ in Charlottesville. Here’s how politicians are reacting.

"Tim Scott R

SOUTH CAROLINA SENATOR

Aug. 15, 9:43 p.m. 

The moral authority of this nation rests upon clarity of convictions & actions that reinforce our commitment to the greater good for all! My party&our nation must stand united against hate, racism& groups/individuals who want to reject the truth that we are all from one blood.

Kamala Harris D

CALIFORNIA SENATOR

Aug. 15, 4:26 p.m. 

“Many sides” suggests that there is no right side or wrong side, that all are morally equal. But I reject that. It's not hard to spot the wrong side here. They're the ones with the torches and the swastikas.

Marco Rubio R

FLORIDA SENATOR

Aug. 15, 5:27 p.m. 

The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons [Later tweet:] Mr. President,you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain

Patty Murray D

WASHINGTON SENATOR

Aug. 15, 5:38 p.m. 

There is only one side. White supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazis, & hate groups have no place in our country. The President needs to say that.

Paul Ryan R

HOUSE SPEAKER AND WISCONSIN CONGRESSMAN

Aug. 15, 6:01 p.m. 

We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity."

The false equivalency of Trump blaming “many sides” in Charlottesville; Vox, August 12, 2017

German Lopez, Vox; The false equivalency of Trump blaming “many sides” in Charlottesville

"In short, there aren’t multiple morally equivalent sides here. There’s one side — white supremacists — that has long oppressed all other groups of people. Their protests aim to ensure that oppression continues, even if it means using violence. The people counterprotesting, on the other hand, are trying to end that oppression.

So while it’s true that both sides participated in the brawls seen throughout the protests, one side — in a country that supposedly values equality — has the much stronger case by actively working against the hate, bigotry, and violence that the white supremacist side is actively trying to perpetuate.

But Trump won’t acknowledge any of that. Asked to clarify his remarks, a White House official said, “The President was condemning hatred, bigotry and violence from all sources and all sides. There was violence between protesters and counter protesters today.” Trump is deliberately not calling out the white supremacists who led to the unrest in Charlottesville."

False Equivalences; Wiley Miller, Go Comics, 11/7/16

Wiley Miller, Non Sequitur, Go Comics; False Equivalences

Hillary Clinton Gets Gored; New York Times, 9/5/16

Paul Krugman, New York Times; Hillary Clinton Gets Gored:

"So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.

And here’s a pro tip: the best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.

In other words, focus on the facts. America and the world can’t afford another election tipped by innuendo."

Both Sides Now?; New York Times, 7/18/16

Paul Krugman, New York Times; Both Sides Now? :

"And in the last few days we’ve seen a spectacular demonstration of bothsidesism in action: an op-ed article from the incoming and outgoing heads of the White House Correspondents’ Association, with the headline “Trump, Clinton both threaten free press.” How so? Well, Mr. Trump has selectively banned news organizations he considers hostile; he has also, although the op-ed didn’t mention it, attacked both those organizations and individual reporters, and refused to condemn supporters who, for example, have harassed reporters with anti-Semitic insults.

Meanwhile, while Mrs. Clinton hasn’t done any of these things, and has a staff that readily responds to fact-checking questions, she doesn’t like to hold press conferences. Equivalence!

Stung by criticism, the authors of the op-ed issued a statement denying that they had engaged in “false equivalency” — I guess saying that the candidates are acting “similarly” doesn’t mean saying that they are acting similarly. And they once again refused to indicate which candidate was behaving worse.

As I said, bothsidesism isn’t new, and it has always been an evasion of responsibility. But taking the position that “both sides do it” now, in the face of this campaign and this candidate, is an act of mind-boggling irresponsibility."

Controversial film linking vaccines and autism to premiere in Pittsburgh; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/7/16

Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Controversial film linking vaccines and autism to premiere in Pittsburgh:

"A controversial film that asserts a government cover-up on a purported link between autism and vaccines will premiere in Pittsburgh on Friday.

“VAXXED,” pulled from New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in March after groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics voiced concerns to actor and festival founder Robert De Niro, will be shown for seven days at the Parkway Theater in Stowe...

“It’s a dangerous and misleading attempt to perpetuate a conspiracy theory that is completely discredited,” said Arvind Venkat, a physician at Allegheny General Hospital who specializes in educating emergency departments on the acute needs of patients with autism.

“There aren’t two sides to this issue — there really aren’t — and we need to be careful about putting movies out there and portraying them as truthful when they aren’t.”...

The film has drawn protests in cities where it has been shown, such as Atlanta, and cities where it has been pulled from film festivals, such as New York and Houston. Mr. Wakefield’s landmark study was retracted by The Lancet medical journal that published it and the United Kingdom stripped him of his medical license...

As for the criticism, Mr. Stubna believes that there’s no downside to more information."

Silence = Death; Huffington Post, 5/31/16

Bob Garfield, Huffington Post; Silence = Death:

"The usual false balance. The usual staged cable bickering. The usual dry contextual analysis. The usual intermittent truth-squading to garnish our careless daily servings of uncontested hate speech, incitement and manifest lies. The usual reluctance to “be part of the story” — which, in fact, we are inextricably part of because we in large measure created it by giving oxygen to his every incendiary outrage and being our soundbitten, compulsively enabling selves.

Again.

It is precisely this craven faux objectivity, after all, that fueled the historically ruinous Iraq war. It is just this fetishized impartiality that gave us a decade of stenography as the country’s political center moved to the far fringes of the right. (Alas, this is not my first call to vigilance.) When one side of a story is madness, medieval anti-intellectualism, scapegoating. demagoguery and lies, the neutral broker in the middle has in fact made a choice. The wrong choice.

The only right choice is for truth. And righteous condemnation, not ghettoized on opinion pages but front and center. Every day.

Are we not supposed to be the watchdogs, the speakers of truth to power, the guardians of democracy? It’s time for a gut check. Colleagues, stop gawking. Stop debating. Stop obsessing on the process. Stop being distracted by the daily Trumpruption. Stop analyzing his “policy” positions, his vp choice, his potential Supreme Court nominees, his unreleased tax returns."

THE DANGEROUS ACCEPTANCE OF DONALD TRUMP; New Yorker, 5/20/16

Adam Gopnik, New Yorker; THE DANGEROUS ACCEPTANCE OF DONALD TRUMP:

"The American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history—an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power. The right thing to do, for everyone who believes in liberal democracy, is to gather around and work to defeat him on Election Day. Instead, we seem to be either engaged in parochial feuding or caught by habits of tribal hatred so ingrained that they have become impossible to escape even at moments of maximum danger. Bernie Sanders wouldn’t mind bringing down the Democratic Party to prevent it from surrendering to corporate forces—and yet he may be increasing the possibility of rule-by-billionaire...

If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by Peróns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal. Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians—or Germans. The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile and their ability to resist a dictator that weak. If he can rout the Republican Party in a week by having effectively secured the nomination, ask yourself what Trump could do with the American government if he had a mandate. Before those famous schoolroom lines, Pope made another observation, which was that even as you recognize that the world is a mixed-up place, you still can’t fool yourself about the difference between the acceptable and the unacceptable: “Fools! who from hence into the notion fall / That vice or virtue there is none at all,” he wrote. “Is there no black or white? / Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain; / ’Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.” The pain of not seeing that black is black soon enough will be ours, and the time to recognize this is now."

Robert De Niro Pulls Anti-Vaccine Documentary From Tribeca Film Festival; New York Times, 3/26/16

Stephanie Goodman, New York Times; Robert De Niro Pulls Anti-Vaccine Documentary From Tribeca Film Festival:

"Facing a storm of criticism over its plan to show a documentary about the widely debunked link between vaccines and autism, the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday pulled the film from its schedule next month.

In a statement, Robert De Niro, a co-founder of the festival, wrote: “My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”

The film, “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” was directed and co-written by Andrew Wakefield, the author of a study that was published in the British medical journal The Lancet and then retracted in 2010. Mr. Wakefield’s medical license was also revoked over his failure to disclose financial conflicts of interest and ethics violations."