'New York Times' Editor: 'We Owed It To Our Readers' To Call Trump Claims Lies; NPR, 9/22/16

NPR Staff, NPR; 'New York Times' Editor: 'We Owed It To Our Readers' To Call Trump Claims Lies:

"The Times is using that word "lie" often in its coverage of Donald Trump, and Dean Baquet, the paper's executive editor, explains why on NPR's Morning Edition.

Interview Highlights

Has something changed in the way the paper covers and writes about Trump?

Yes, the simple answer is yes. Politicians often exaggerate their records, obfuscate, say they did something great when it wasn't so great. I think in the last few weeks, he's sort of crossed a little bit of a line where he's actually said things – I think the moment for me was the birther story, where he has repeated for years his belief that President Obama was not born in the United States. [Editor's note: On Friday, Trump reversed that claim and said Obama was born in the U.S.] That's not an obfuscation, that's not an exaggeration. I think that was just demonstrably a lie, and I think that lie is not a word that newspapers use comfortably...

NPR has taken a different approach and has not used the word "lie" in its coverage of Trump. In a post Mike Oreskes, NPR senior vice president for news, explains that NPR should give "citizens the information they need to make the choices that democracy asks them to make. We should not be telling you how to think. We should give you the information to decide what you think."...

Has the paper used the word "lie" in reference to Hillary Clinton much?

I don't think Hillary Clinton, to be honest, has crossed the line the way Donald Trump did with the birther issue."

Britain’s Paper Tigers; New York Times, 8/10/16

Stig Abell, New York Times; Britain’s Paper Tigers:

"The Sun can still call an election correctly, can still elicit outrage and comment. The Mirror, The Sun and The Mail hope to turn their vast online audiences into a profitable business model.

And there is a gradual resurgence of a willingness to pay for quality. The Times and The Sunday Times, paywalled and protected, have become profitable perhaps for the first time in history. Paywalls — once seen as an embodiment of Luddism in the giddy world of the free internet — now seem essential to the survival of professional writing.

Yet there has never been a more hostile environment to journalism than exists today, and not only in economic terms. The democratizing effect of social media, a potentially healthful development, has also given rise to a cynicism directed toward the mainstream media. This is all part of a new angriness in politics."

Sexism in Olympics Coverage; New York Times, August 2016

[Video] Natalia V. Osipova and Katie Rogers, New York Times; Sexism in Olympics Coverage

'Worst Olympic flop': Chinese media bemoan Rio medal tally; Guardian, 8/17/16

Tom Phillips, Guardian; 'Worst Olympic flop': Chinese media bemoan Rio medal tally:

"Beijing sees sporting prowess as a key soft power weapon and sensitivities over China’s performance at Rio 2016 were on show on Wednesday morning when Chinese television censors briefly pulled the plug on a BBC World broadcast about the plight of China’s gymnasts.

As presenter Rico Hizon introduced a story about how Chinese gymnasts had won “zilch” and an image of a prostrated You Hao appeared, the screen went black, as routinely happens during stories considered politically inconvenient to the Communist party."

ln defense of pointy-heads and MSM puppy-dogs; Washington Post, 8/15/16

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post; ln defense of pointy-heads and MSM puppy-dogs:

"Ignorance is not a virtue. Knowledge is not a vice. Pointy-heads who spend years gaining expertise in a given field may make mistakes, but the remedy is to replace them with pointy-heads who have different views — not with know-nothings who would try to navigate treacherous terrain on instinct alone...

Many who attack the media for being feckless or out of touch really have a different complaint: You should spend more column inches and airtime reinforcing my view of the world.

Sorry, but that’s not what we’re here for.

When he bought The Post in 1933, Eugene Meyer published a set of seven “principles,” which began with this one: “The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.”

There is such a thing as the truth, just as there is such a thing as valuable expertise. Even if it’s “elite” and “mainstream” to say so."

"On “political correctness""; jensorensen.com, August 2016

Jen Sorensen:

"On “political correctness""

Journalism: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO); HBO via YouTube, 8/7/16

HBO via YouTube; Journalism: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) :

"The newspaper industry is suffering. That’s bad news for journalists — both real and fictional."

 How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage; The Nation, 6/2/16

Eric Alterman, The Nation; How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage:

" Journalistic abdications of responsibility are always harmful to democracy, but reporters and pundits covering the 2016 campaign will be doing the public a particularly grave disservice if they continue to draw from the “both sides” playbook in the months leading up to the November election. Now that Donald Trump has emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, some simple facts about him and his campaign should be stated clearly and repeatedly, not obfuscated or explained away or leavened into click bait. Trump is a pathological liar and conspiracy theorist, a racist, misogynist, and demagogic bully with a phantasmagoric policy platform and dangerously authoritarian instincts. Hillary Clinton’s flaws and failures are many, and they should not be discounted, either. But they are of an entirely different order. Love her or hate her, at least we don’t have to wonder whether she believes in democracy. When it comes to sane and even semi-sensible policy proposals for America’s future in the 2016 presidential election, there is only one side."

Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism; New York Times, 8/7/16

Jim Rutenberg, New York Times; Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism:

"If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?

Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.

But the question that everyone is grappling with is: Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their place?"

Why a Trump loss in November could still be destructive; Washington Post, 8/5/16

Dana Milbank, Washington Post; Why a Trump loss in November could still be destructive:

"Mix that paranoia with the propensity for violence seen at Trump events, and you can see where this could go after Nov. 8.

At a Trump rally in Pennsylvania this week, a video posted by PennLive shows Trump supporters shoving, throwing to the ground and bloodying the nose of a demonstrator.

A video montage published this week by the New York Times captures the rage at Trump rallies: Trump supporters proclaiming “F--- those dirty beaners,” “F--- Islam,” “F--- that n------,” “Hang the bitch”; Trump responding to a protest by telling supporters “come on — get him”; and various scenes of pushing and shoving of demonstrators."

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."

Truth and Trumpism; New York Times, 5/6/16

Paul Krugman, New York Times; Truth and Trumpism:

"In the end, bad reporting probably won’t change the election’s outcome, because the truth is that those angry white men are right about their declining role. America is increasingly becoming a racially diverse, socially tolerant society, not at all like the Republican base, let alone the plurality of that base that chose Donald Trump.

Still, the public has a right to be properly informed. The news media should do all it can to resist false equivalence and centrification, and report what’s really going on."

World Press Freedom Day Is A Terrifying Reminder Of What Reporters Could Face If Trump Is Elected; Huffington Post, 5/3/16

Alana Horowitz Satlin, Huffington Post; World Press Freedom Day Is A Terrifying Reminder Of What Reporters Could Face If Trump Is Elected:

"f the way Donald Trump and his supporters have treated journalists during the campaign is any indication, the media will be anything but free if he wins the presidency.

World Press Freedom Day, commemorated on Tuesday, comes just days after a GQ writer was hit with a barrage of antisemitic attacks following the publication of an article that criticized Melania Trump’s skincare line."

Access denied: Reporters say federal officials, data increasingly off limits; Washington Post, 3/30/15

Paul Farhi, Washington Post; Access denied: Reporters say federal officials, data increasingly off limits:

"Tensions between reporters and public information officers — “hacks and flacks” in the vernacular — aren’t new, of course. Reporters have always wanted more information than government officials have been willing or able to give.

But journalists say the lid has grown tighter under the Obama administration, whose chief executive promised in 2009 to bring “an unprecedented level of openness” to the federal government.

The frustrations boiled over last summer in a letter to President Obama signed by 38 organizations representing journalists and press-freedom advocates. The letter decried “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies” by spokesmen. “We consider these restrictions a form of censorship — an attempt to control what the public is allowed to see and hear,” the groups wrote.

They asked for “a clear directive” from Obama “telling federal employees they’re not only free to answer questions from reporters and the public, but actually encouraged to do so.”

Obama hasn’t acted on the suggestion. But his press secretary, Josh Earnest, defended the president’s record, noting in a letter to the groups that, among other things, the administration has processed a record number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, established more protection for whistleblowers and posted White House visitor logs for the first time."