The Right v. Claudine Gay

Calder McHugh at Politico:

Almost a month after a widely panned congressional hearing where she said it was context-dependent whether calls for genocide against Jews violated Harvard’s code of conduct, President Claudine Gay announced that she was resigning, a coda that followed a pronounced pressure campaign led by conservatives in Congress, prominent donors and right-leaning media and activists.

Gay’s departure marked the rare exit that occasioned widespread congressional comment. House Speaker Mike Johnson argued “the resignation of Claudine Gay is long overdue,” giving voice to the disdain held for Harvard and other elite institutions by an increasingly populist Republican Party.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the Harvard grad whose line of questioning during the hearing produced the viral moments that doomed Gay — and led to University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill’s resignation — took a victory lap Tuesday.

“TWO DOWN,” wrote Stefanik in a post on X.

Yet it was the conservative media ecosystem, not Stefanik, that struck the crowning blow leading to Gay’s resignation. Gay managed at first to escape Magill’s fate with the support of the Harvard Corporation, the smaller and more powerful of Harvard’s two governing boards. But a sustained pressure campaign that focused on allegations of plagiarism in her scholarship ultimately led to her downfall.

It began Dec. 10, when conservative activists Christopher Rufo and Christopher Brunet published a newsletter on Substack titled “ Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?”

...

“The right has excelled at and outperformed the left when it comes to television and radio opinion … where the right has always lagged is in reporting,” Eliana Johnson, the editor-in-chief of the Free Beacon, said (Johnson formerly worked at POLITICO).

American Journalists

The American Journalist Under Attack

 This survey continues the series of major national studies of U.S. journalists begun in 1971 by sociologist John Johnstone and continued in 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2013 by David Weaver, Cleve Wilhoit and their colleagues at Indiana University. Few studies of a profession as important as journalism can claim a half-century’s analytical perspective on the work, professional attitudes, and ethics from large samples of the people working in it. That’s what this study does with its contribution of important decennial measures of the pulse of American journalism. This present study, based on an online survey with 1,600 U.S. journalists conducted in early 2022, updates these findings and adds new ones concerning democracy and threats to journalism. Overall, the findings suggest that the past decade has had significant effects on U.S. journalists, some more negative than positive. Compared to 2013, the latest demographic profile reveals that U.S. journalists are now slightly more educated on average and more likely to identify as Democrats or Independents. While the gender pay gap has narrowed, there are still significantly more men than women in the profession, and fewer racial or ethnic minorities than in the general population. U.S. journalists today are slightly more satisfied with their work and more likely to say they have complete autonomy to select stories. However, about six in 10 journalists say that journalism is headed in the wrong direction, and more than four in 10 say that that their news staffs have shrunk in 2021 rather than remained the same or grown. Other findings also indicate that U.S. journalists are less likely to consider reaching the widest possible audiences and getting information to the public quickly as very important roles, and more likely to emphasize the importance of investigating government claims. U.S. journalists continue to rely heavily on social media in their daily work, despite more than half of the journalists also thinking social media have negative impacts on their profession. Most use social media to check for breaking news and to monitor what other news organizations are doing, and few use these interactive media for interviewing sources. One of the starkest findings is the gender differences in abuse now experienced by a majority of journalists. Female journalists were 7-to-14 times more likely to have experienced sexism and about 10 times more likely to have encountered threats of sexual violence, both online and offline. Additional findings are available online at www.theAmericanJournalist.org Lars Willnat, Ph.D. John Ben Snow Research Professor, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University David H. Weaver, Ph.D. Distinguished and Roy W. Howard Professor Emeritus, Media School, Indiana University Cleve Wilhoit, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Media School, Indiana University

 

Journalism and Illiberalism

A number of posts have discussed media bias.

James Bennet at The Economist:

In my experience, reporters overwhelmingly support Democratic policies and candidates. They are generally also motivated by a desire for a more just world. Neither of those tendencies are new. But there has been a sea change over the past ten years in how journalists think about pursuing justice. The reporters’ creed used to have its foundation in liberalism, in the classic philosophical sense. The exercise of a reporter’s curiosity and empathy, given scope by the constitutional protections of free speech, would equip readers with the best information to form their own judgments. The best ideas and arguments would win out. The journalist’s role was to be a sworn witness; the readers’ role was to be judge and jury. In its idealised form, journalism was lonely, prickly, unpopular work, because it was only through unrelenting scepticism and questioning that society could advance. If everyone the reporter knew thought X, the reporter’s role was to ask: why X?

Illiberal journalists have a different philosophy, and they have their reasons for it. They are more concerned with group rights than individual rights, which they regard as a bulwark for the privileges of white men. They have seen the principle of free speech used to protect right-wing outfits like Project Veritas and Breitbart News and are uneasy with it. They had their suspicions of their fellow citizens’ judgment confirmed by Trump’s election, and do not believe readers can be trusted with potentially dangerous ideas or facts. They are not out to achieve social justice as the knock-on effect of pursuing truth; they want to pursue it head-on. The term “objectivity” to them is code for ignoring the poor and weak and cosying up to power, as journalists often have done.

And they do not just want to be part of the cool crowd. They need to be. To be more valued by their peers and their contacts – and hold sway over their bosses – they need a lot of followers in social media. That means they must be seen to applaud the right sentiments of the right people in social media. The journalist from central casting used to be a loner, contrarian or a misfit. Now journalism is becoming another job for joiners, or, to borrow Twitter’s own parlance, “followers”, a term that mocks the essence of a journalist’s role

News Preferences

From Pew:

A large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they often or sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 56% who say they do so often. This is more than the 49% who said they often got news from digital devices in 2022 and the 51% of those who said the same in 2021. The portion that gets news from digital devices continues to outpace those who get news from television. The portion of Americans who often get news from television has stayed fairly consistent, at 31% in 2022 and 32% in 2023. Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently than to digital devices and television.

When asked which of these platforms they prefer to get news on, nearly six-in-ten Americans say they prefer a digital device (58%), more than say they prefer TV (27%). Even fewer Americans prefer radio (6%) or print (5%).

Losing Newspapers

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Some national outlets are doing fine, but local newspapers are struggling.

 From the Medill School of Journalism:

The loss of local newspapers accelerated in 2023 to an average of 2.5 per week, leaving more than 200 counties as “news deserts” and meaning that more than half of all U.S. counties now have limited access to reliable local news and information, researchers at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University have found.

In addition, Medill researchers for the first time used predictive modeling to estimate the number of counties at risk of becoming news deserts. Those models show that another 228 counties are at high risk of losing local news. In creating that “Watch List,” Medill researchers and data scientists applied the characteristics of current news deserts to counties with only one news source.

Medill’s annual “State of Local News Project” report also counts about 550 digital-only local news outlets, 700 ethnic media organizations and 225 public broadcasting stations producing original local news. Most of the digital-only startups are based in metro areas, exacerbating the divide in America between news-haves and have-nots.

Also new this year, the State of Local News Project, in partnership with Microsoft, generated a “Bright Spots” map showing all local news startups in the U.S. as they’ve appeared over the past five years. The map also highlights 17 local news outlets — both startups and legacy organizations — with promising new business models for the future.

“The significant loss of local news outlets in poorer and underserved communities poses a crisis for our democracy,” said Medill visiting professor Penny Abernathy, a co-author of this year’s report who has been studying local news deserts for more than a decade. “So, it is very important that we identify the places most at risk, while simultaneously understanding what is working in other communities.”

Here are some of the report’s key findings:

• There are 204 counties with no local news outlet. Of the 3,143 counties in the U.S., more than half, or 1,766, have either no local news source or only one remaining outlet, typically a weekly newspaper.
• The loss of local newspapers ticked higher in 2023 to an average of 2.5 per week, up from two per week last year. There were more than 130 confirmed newspaper closings or mergers this past year.
• Since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers. The nation is on pace to lose one-third of all its newspapers by the end of next year. There are about 6,000 newspapers remaining, the vast majority of which are weeklies.
• The country has lost almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists, or 43,000, during that same time. Most of those journalists were employed by large metro and regional newspapers.
• There are about 550 digital-only local news sites, many of which launched in the past decade, but they are mostly clustered in metro areas. In the past five years, the number of local digital startups has roughly equaled the number that shuttered.
• Based on the demographics and economics of current news desert counties, Medill’s modeling estimates that 228 counties are at an elevated risk of becoming news deserts in the next five years. Most of those “Watch List” counties are located in high-poverty areas in the South and Midwest, and many serve communities with significant African American, Hispanic and Native American populations.

The predictive modeling analysis was conducted by faculty, researchers and staff of the Medill Local News Initiative and the Spiegel Research Center using demographic, economic and local news data from every county in the U.S.

Fox Audience and Economics

 From Pew:

According to Comscore TV Essentials® data, viewership decreased for CNN and MSNBC but increased for Fox News in 2022. The average audience (defined as the average number of TVs tuned to a program throughout a time period) for the prime news time slot (8 to 11 p.m.) decreased by 25% for CNN, from 1.1 million in 2021 to 828,000 in 2022. MSNBC’s audience declined by 6% over this period, from about 881,000 to 827,000. On the other hand, Fox News’ audience increased from 1.9 million in 2021 to 2.1 million in 2022, a 10% increase.

Newsmax, a relatively smaller cable news channel that gained prominence during the 2020 election, had an average audience of 129,000 in 2022, an 18% decline from 2021.

For the daytime news time slot (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.), CNN, MSNBC and Newsmax saw decreases to their average audiences in 2022 while Fox News saw a 12% increase.

...

Total revenue decreased for CNN and MSNBC and increased for Fox News in 2022, according to estimates from Kagan, a media research group in S&P Global Market Intelligence. CNN’s total revenue decreased by 5%, from $1.9 billion in 2021 to $1.8 billion in 2022. Similarly, MSNBC’s revenue fell from $977 million to $903 million, an 8% decrease. Fox News saw a 5% increase, from $3.1 billion in 2021 to $3.3 billion in 2022.

License (affiliate) fees, one of two main sources of revenue for the major cable channels, remained relatively stable for all three. Advertising revenue, these channels’ other main source of revenue, decreased by 13% for CNN and by 11% for MSNBC in 2022, while Fox News saw an 11% increase.

In 2022, Newsmax made $66 million in revenue, a 14% decrease from 2021. Since Newsmax had zero license fee revenue, virtually all of the channel’s revenue came from advertising.

Fox Strikes Again

Many posts have discussed Fox News.

Drew F. Lawrence at Military.com:

The Marine Corps worked behind the scenes last month in an attempt to convince Fox News to retract its false story claiming a Gold Star family was forced to pay $60,000 to ship the remains of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, according to emails obtained by Military.com.

A service spokesman notified the news network that it was pushing an incorrect story and accused it of using the grief of fallen Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee's family to draw in readers, the email exchanges, released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request, show. Fox News eventually deleted the story with no correction, and it never reached out to the Gee family with an apology as the Marine Corps requested, the family said.

The Fox News story came from Republican Rep. Cory Mills, a freshman congressman from Florida, who claimed Gee's next of kin were strapped with the $60,000 charge after a meeting with the families of Abbey Gate bombing victims, a suicide attack where 13 service members were killed outside of the Kabul airport in 2021.

Gee's family never paid a dollar to transport her remains, and the Marine Corps let Fox News know -- in no uncertain terms -- that the July 25 story was false in a series of emails over the following days.

"This headline correction is still misleading and your story is still false," Maj. James Stenger, the lead spokesperson for the Marine Corps, wrote to Fox News in an email after the publication changed the headline and body of the story in an attempt to soften the accusation.

"Using the grief of a family member of a fallen Marine to score cheap clickbait points is disgusting," Stenger wrote. The spokesman was one of several military officials frustrated with the story, according to the documents.

Oliver Darcy at CNN:

Fox News apologized Saturday to a Gold Star family for publishing a false story last month claiming that the family had to pay $60,000 to ship the remains of their fallen relative back from Afghanistan because the Pentagon refused to pay.

“The now unpublished story has been addressed internally and we sincerely apologize to the Gee family,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement, referencing the family of fallen Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, who was one of 13 service members killed in a terror attack at the Kabul airport in 2021 while assisting with US withdrawal efforts.

...

Deleting an entire story is exceedingly rare in news media and is seen as a last-ditch measure if the entire premise of the article is incorrect. Deleting a story without offering readers an explanation or correction is widely considered to be unethical.

Texas Trubune Cuts

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Some national outlets are doing fine, but state and local news organizations are struggling.

Angela Fu at Poynter:

Driven by unsteady economic conditions and changes in the media industry, The Texas Tribune executed layoffs Wednesday for the first time in its 14-year history.

In an email to staff, CEO Sonal Shah wrote that 2023 has been a particularly challenging year for the outlet, which many have come to see as a model for nonprofit journalism. At a time when newsrooms across the country are shrinking, the Tribune has maintained a largely upward trajectory, growing both its staff and budget as it expands its coverage of the state.

That momentum appeared to come to a halt Wednesday when 11 journalists were laid off, some of whom had worked at the outlet for years. Tribune copy chief Emily Goldstein posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the paper’s entire copy desk was eliminated, and senior editor and writing coach David Pasztor shared that he and the paper’s demographics and criminal justice reporters were all laid off. The layoffs also included two longtime multimedia reporters, one of whom won the outlet its first national Edward R. Murrow award, according to a post by former Tribune reporter Elise Hu.

“This year has proven more challenging for us than others — changes in the industry, the unsteady economy and the need to explore new platforms and modes of storytelling are all things the Tribune must address head on. We know we must change to stay ahead,” Shah wrote in her email to staff. “There are, of course, other challenges facing the media industry: AI, uneven news readership and engagement, changing audience behaviors and the growing phenomenon of news avoidance."

...

The Tribune currently has more than 100 people listed on its staff page, and it won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards just last week, including one for its breaking news coverage of the Uvalde mass shooting.

The layoffs come at a time of turmoil within the news industry. Dozens of news outlets have initiated layoffs this year, including nonprofits and newsrooms that had previously been regarded as relatively stable. Those cuts include NPR, which laid off roughly 100 employees in March, and the Los Angeles Times, which announced 74 cuts in June, its first layoffs since billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired the paper five years ago.

Global employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas estimated in June there were at least 17,436 layoffs in the media industry during the first five months of 2023 — a record high.

Another Newspaper Bites the Dust

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Some national outlets are doing fine, but local newspapers are struggling.

Joshua Molina at Noozhawk:

Following a bankruptcy filing by its parent company Friday, a key executive of the Santa Barbara News-Press has informed staff that the daily newspaper has “stopped publishing,” Noozhawk has learned.

According to an email sent by managing editor Dave Mason: “I have some bad news. Wendy (owner Wendy McCaw) filed for bankruptcy on Friday. All of our jobs are eliminated, and the News-Press has stopped publishing. They ran out of money to pay us. They will issue final paychecks to us when the bankruptcy is approved in court.”

Nick Mathews at The Missourian:

In my research, I explore the de-localization of the news industry, wherein the essence of “local” is stripped away from local news organizations. Through ownership transfers, corporate mergers and -fund takeovers, these organizations too often face consolidation, dismantling and closures. In short, when local ownership is replaced by larger absentee corporations solely driven by financial gains, the vital connection between the news organization and the community is severed. Readers feel detached, amplifying the pervasive nature of the deteriorating local news segment, which continues to experience its worst year every passing year.

Many scholars, including myself, advocate for the merits of local ownership, which prevailed for generations until about the 1980s. A local owner brings invaluable benefits to a community. These owners are attuned to the social and informational needs of the community, understanding the pulse of the community firsthand. They perceive their organizations as vital local institutions, not just commercial enterprises. For the best of local owners, their primary mission is to serve and support their communities, with financial profits taking a backseat to a more noble cause.

 Today, the local news landscape has dramatically shifted, with less than one-third of the nation’s 5,000 weekly newspapers and a mere 10 of the 100 largest circulation daily newspapers maintaining their independence, according to a team of researchers at Northwestern University. The top six largest newspaper corporations in the United States have partial or full ownership by financial firms. This transition away from local ownership not only deprives communities of their stake in newspapers but also places the destiny of surviving publications in the clutches of a limited number of chains. These funds now wield disproportionate power over the local news landscape, shaping its trajectory, essence and even its very existence.

While local newspaper owners in the past prioritized their readers as customers, funds primarily cater to pension funds, mutual funds and commercial banks. funds exhibit no concern for a newspaper’s history, its employees or its ties to the community. Their focus is purely on cold, calculated financial gains. To funds, a newspaper organization is treated like any other asset. If it fails to generate sufficient returns, it becomes subject to downsizing, sale or closure. Cost-cutting tactics are evident from the moment of acquisition, as the firms swiftly slash expenses, reduce newsroom staff and strive to boost their bottom lines.

Craigslist and Local Newspaper Decline

Many posts have discussed the decline of American newspapers.

Milena Djourelova† Ruben Durante‡ Gregory J. Martin§ April 2023 

 The Impact of Online Competition on Local Newspapers: Evidence from the Introduction of Craigslist∗ 

Abstract 

How does competition from online platforms affect the organization, performance, and editorial choices of newspapers? What are the implications of these changes for the information voters are exposed to and for their political choices? We study these questions using the staggered introduction of Craigslist — the world’s largest online platform for classified advertising — across US counties between 1995 and 2009. This setting allows us to separate the effect of competition for classified advertising from other changes brought about by the Internet, and to compare newspapers that relied more or less heavily on classified ads ex ante. We find that, following the entry of Craigslist, local newspapers reliant on classified ads experienced a significant decline in the number of management and newsroom staff, including in the number of editors covering politics. These organizational changes led to a reduction in news coverage of politics and resulted in a decline in newspaper readership, particularly among readers with high political interest. Finally, we document that reduced exposure to local political news was associated with an increase in partisan voting and increased entry and success of ideologically extreme candidates in congressional elections

Local News: Green Shoots or Dead Leaves?

Could News Bloom in News Deserts?

By Howard Husock American Enterprise Institute

Key Points

• Due to the steady decline of print news in America, many Americans now live in news deserts, where there is no newspaper covering local issues. The absence of information on local news and local politics weakens our communities and our political process.
• Despite this trend, over 100 new papers or online local news sites have opened within the past several years. To stay in business, they have experimented with new approaches to staffing and funding.
• It may be time to expand the role of government or philanthropy in supporting local news, which produces countless benefits for communities but is rapidly disappearing.

Read the PDF.

REALITY CHECK.  Three years ago, Simon Owens looked into Patch, the most prominent effort to remedy the problem.

But as I read article after article about the company’s health, one number kept jumping out at me: its editorial headcount. Back during its AOL days, it employed around 500 journalists, with roughly one editor assigned to each hyperlocal site. Now, it has an editorial staff of 120, even though it’s more than doubled the number of local verticals. That means it employs one journalist for every 10 locations.

So what type of coverage does Patch actually offer? Out of all the journalists who wrote about its profitability, only Recode’s Peter Kafka touched upon the issue. “If your idea of a local news operation involves a team of reporters and editors that can exhaustively cover your hometown, you will be disappointed with Patch, which usually assigns a single journalist to cover multiple towns,” he wrote in 2019. “Those reporters then generate five to 10 stories a day, which means those stories are almost always generated quickly.” Patch president Warren St. John admitted to Kafka that “we’re not as deep as we aspire to be. We’re acutely aware of what we’re capable of and what we’re not capable of.”

...

Next, I went back to Patch’s homepage and then navigated to a cluster of sites around Tampa, Florida. Again, I opened 10 articles at random and then went through them one by one. Out of those 10 articles, only one article seemed to contain some original reporting, though it was sometimes hard to tell. An article about how Tampa doctors were utilizing telemedicine had several quotes from doctors in it, but when I Googled the quotes, I found that some came from press releases, while others may have come from an actual interview.

In fact, I noticed suspect sourcing on a few articles. Here’s a quote from my notes I made while reading an article about a local politician distributing unemployment applications: “At first I thought this maybe had some original quotes in it, but after Googling some of them I found them on other websites, which seems fishy. The reporter certainly isn’t going out of their way to say where the quotes are coming from.”

Bad Signs for Newspapers

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Some national outlets are doing fine, but local newspapers are struggling.

Will Huntsberry and Scott Lewis, the Voice of San Diego

San Diego’s daily paper of record, the Union-Tribune, was sold by billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and his family to MediaNews Group, owned by Alden Global Capital – a company that has come to be feared across the ever-dwindling newspaper landscape. Just 10 minutes after U-T staffers learned of the sale, they received an email notifying them of staff reductions to come, one staffer tweeted. Alden would offer buyouts “in an effort for staff reductions to be voluntary,” the email read. Alden was referred to as a ruthless corporate strip-miner “seemingly intent on destroying local journalism,” by one prominent media critic in 2018. But in a struggling local newspaper environment, it’s hard to tell the difference between strip mining and regular mining.

,,,

The veteran courts and criminal justice reporter Greg Moran captured the feeling of many that the paper was an afterthought to the Los Angeles billionaire who owned it. “All we did at the [Union-Tribune] since [Soon-Shiong] bought us is be profitable, executeon a plan to transition to a digital op. Didn’t hemorrhage money like the LAT, didn’t get a boatload of hires. And for that, the richest guy in LA sells us to the biggest chop shop in journalism,” Moran wrote on Twitter.

Outfits such as Alden buy the paper, flip the real estate, and literally sell the hardware for scrap. 

Michael McCarthy at Front Office Sports:

Less than six years ago, the New York Times asked whether the upstart sports site The Athletic would “pillage” newspapers of their best talent.

After today’s stunning announcement that the Times is shuttering its Sports section in favor of The Athletic, some wonder if that divide-and-conquer strategy is still in effect. But now it will be implemented by the august Times – not the money-losing Athletic.

On Monday, the Times announced it would dissolve its storied Sports section in favor of daily coverage from The Athletic, which it purchased for $550 million last year.

...

Sounds nice. Think of one big, national sports section in the future for the Gray Lady of journalism.

But what’s to stop the Times from doing what The Athletic threatened years ago?

Namely, stealing all the good, young sportswriters from around the country and putting their local papers, those are that are left, out of business?

Coup Misinformation

Matt Binder at Mashable:

The potential coup attempt in Russia by a paramilitary organization may already be over(opens in a new tab), but the misinformation sure did flow during the breaking global event.

... 

Since Elon Musk acquired the platform, Twitter has gone through changes that don't exactly bode well for it as an invaluable breaking news resource like it once was.

For example, prior to Musk, the blue checkmark meant that a user was verified by Twitter as the journalist or expert that the individual claimed they were. Remember, the purpose of the checkmark was to make sure these users couldn't be impersonated. Now, however, anyone who pays $8 per month for Twitter's premium subscription service, Twitter Blue, gets a blue checkmark.

Furthermore, those paid blue checkmark users now get priority placement in Twitter's For You feed algorithm, and in the replies to other users' tweets. And, echoing the issue on Telegram, many Twitter Blue subscribers are not far, ideologically speaking, from the Putin regime.

 

From WNYC "On the Media":

Myths, Misinformation, and RFK Jr.

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

Julia Shapero at The Hill:

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested Wednesday that Russia has been “acting in good faith” in various efforts to end the war in Ukraine and placed blame on the U.S. for the 16-monthlong conflict.

Kennedy said in an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Briefing with Steve Scully” that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “repeatedly said yes” to negotiations.

Joan Walsh at The Nation:

I’ve been doing my best to ignore the farcical presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His noxious views on vaccines, the origin of AIDS, the alleged dangers of wi-fi and other forms of junk science deserve no wide hearing. Polls showing he’s favored by 20 percent of likely Democratic voters over President Biden are almost as laughable as Kennedy’s views. It’s early; he’s got iconic American name recognition; and there’s almost always an appetite, among Democrats anyway, for anybody but the incumbent. His lies have been thoroughly debunked by Judd Legum at Popular Info, Michael Scherer in The Washington Post, Naomi Klein in The Guardian, and Brandy Zadrozny on NBC News.

But I’ve come to believe I have a responsibility to write about Kennedy because of my own shameful role in sending his toxic vaccine views into public discourse: I was the Salon editor, in partnership with Rolling Stone, who 18 years ago published his mendacious, error-ridden piece on how thimerosal in childhood vaccines supposedly led to a rise in autism, and how public health officials covered it up. From the day “Deadly Immunity” went up on Salon.com, we were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data. Some of his sources turned out to be known crackpots.

///
But as subsequent articles and books continued to debunk Kennedy’s conspiracy theory, it felt irresponsible to leave it up. Six years later, in 2011, my successor as editor in chief, Kerry Lauerman, in consultation with me and others, decided we should take it down. Rolling Stone later did the same. (In the interests of transparency, we preserved the corrections page.)

Jake Tapper at CNN:

Go back to 2005. I was a reporter with ABC News and Salon.com reached out to see if we were interested in doing a TV spot tied to the publication of the Kennedy Jr. piece. I interviewed him via phone, with a TV crew in his office, and prepared a spot for “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.”

In Kennedy’s bizarre retelling a few days ago (the relevant part starts at 27:55 into the interview), I worked with him “for three weeks doing this incredible documentary” (no and no) about his Rolling Stone story – please note he makes zero mention of the article having since been retracted and disappeared – and then “the night before the piece was supposed to run, he called me up and said, ‘The piece just got killed by corporate.’” (I didn’t say that in any way and the piece wasn’t killed.) “All my career, I have never had a piece killed by corporate and I’m so mad,” he said I said. (I hadn’t. I had been at ABC News for two years. I had had plenty of pieces killed. Not once did “corporate” play a role in killing any of them.)

 

 

The Collapse of Local News

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Some national outlets are doing fine, but local newspapers are struggling.

  Jan-Werner Mueller at LAT:

By some estimates, one-third of the newspapers that existed in the U.S. in 2005 will be gone by 2025. Some 70 million Americans already live in “news deserts,” or will soon. In the United Kingdom, 320 local newspapers closed between 2009 and 2019. The private equity firms that have been buying up news organizations tend to make things worse. Rather than investing in journalism, their focus is on ruthlessly reducing the size of newsrooms and selling off newspaper buildings (many of which are in lucrative downtown locations).

 The implications for democracy are beyond debate. Social scientists who study the issue have demonstrated clearly that less local journalism results in higher levels of corruption, undermines political competition and reduces citizen engagement.

From the Society of Professional Journalists:

The Society of Professional Journalists is concerned about the increased number of layoffs to journalists in 2023. This year has seen a record number of media job cuts with the most recent being LAist, run by Southern California Public Radio, and dot.LA, which focuses on tech and startup news. LAist announced Tuesday that it is eliminating 21 positions, 10% of staff, as part of a restructuring due to a revenue shortfall. Dot.LA laid off its entire editorial staff of seven journalists on Monday as it shifts focus to newsletters.

Thursday, SPJ expressed concern over the Los Angeles Times elimination of 74 positions, about 13% of staff. At the time, SPJ Vice President Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins said, “This is yet another sign of a disturbing trend across our industry. When newsroom management makes these kinds of cuts, the public becomes less informed, which puts our very Democracy at risk.” A new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, found at least 17,436 jobs have been cut as of May 31, a 315% increase from this time last year. This is the highest amount of job cuts on record, including surpassing cuts made during the beginning of the pandemic.

Trying to Get Fox to Do the Right Thing

 Former Fox executive Preston Padden at The Daily Beast:

In a months-long series of email exchanges, I tried to get Rupert to stop the false news on Fox News Channel. Without my knowledge, Fox produced those emails as part of discovery in the Dominion case. I would not otherwise share them here.

On Jan. 5, without a clue what would happen the next day, I sent Rupert the following email

It would be a great service to the Country that I know you love, and to the party, to record and saturate a spot with Sean, Tucker, Laura, etc. saying something like: ‘We will never stop fighting for Freedom and the American way of life and against extreme liberal policies. While we are frustrated just like you are, the facts are that President Trump and his lawyers have not produced any evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the fact that Joe Biden was elected President on November 3. All of us at Fox will work tirelessly for you and to serve as a watchdog on the Biden Administration. Meanwhile, please wear a mask and get vaccinated so that we can crush the virus.’

I knew from earlier email exchanges that Rupert did not believe that the election had been stolen. This was his response:

“I’ll think about it. Perhaps something like that in a few days!”

From the finding below in Judge Davis’ Order we know that Rupert followed up on my suggestion on the same day:

On January 5, 2021, Rupert Murdoch emailed Ms. Scott [CEO of FNC] that it was suggested the ‘prime time three should independently or together say something like “the election is over and Joe Biden won.”’ Ms. Scott forwarded it to Ms. Cooper and said, ‘I told Rupert privately they are all there—we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers but they know how to navigate.’

To my knowledge, no such statement ever was telecast.

Gannett's News Deserts

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Some national outlets are doing fine, but local newspapers are struggling.

Katie Robertson at NYT:

Hundreds of journalists for the country’s largest newspaper chain walked off the job on Monday, accusing the company’s chief executive of decimating its local newsrooms, and demanding a change at the top. The walkout was the biggest labor action in Gannett’s history, said the union representing the journalists. It included workers from about two dozen newsrooms, including The Palm Beach Post, The Arizona Republic and The Austin American-Statesman. The demonstrations are expected to continue on Tuesday for some newsrooms. The collective action is timed to coincide with Gannett’s annual shareholder meeting, which is being held on Monday. The NewsGuild, which represents more than 1,000 journalists from Gannett, sent a letter to Gannett shareholders in May urging a vote of no-confidence against Mike Reed, the chief executive and chairman. In the letter, the NewsGuild criticized the company’s merger with GateHouse Media in 2019, saying it “mortgaged the future of our company” by loading it up with debt.

...

“Gannett has created news deserts everywhere you look,” said Peter D. Kramer, a reporter for the USA Today Network. “That’s Mike Reed’s Gannett.”

...

The NewsGuild said The Austin American-Statesman’s newsroom had 41 employees this year, down from 110 in 2018. In that same period, The Arizona Republic’s newsroom in Phoenix had shrunk to 89 workers from 140, while The Milwaukee Sentinel had been cut to 82 from 104. “You have communities that go uncovered, and when things go uncovered it allows people to abuse their positions,” said Kaitlyn Kanzler, a reporter for NorthJersey.com and The Record in Northern New Jersey.

Fake Story about Vets and Migrants

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

Aidan McLaughlin at Mediaite:

The New York Post dropped a bombshell report last week: amid a nationwide influx of migrants, nearly two-dozen homeless veterans were kicked out of hotels where they were being temporarily housed in order to make room for migrants in upstate New York.

The story, which was based on a claim by a veterans advocate, got the front page treatment: “VETS KICKED OUT FOR MIGRANTS,” bellowed the Post last Saturday. “Outrage as upstate hotels tell 20 homeless veterans to leave.”

It was a juicy story that could have been cooked up in Roger Ailes’s rage-fear lab: Red-blooded American veterans put out on the street to make way for foreign invaders!

The story rocketed around the right-wing ecosystem. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine said President Joe Biden “should burn in hell for this.” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called it “shameful.” Donald Trump Jr. declared, “Fuck Democrats.” Nikki Haley said the tale was “Liberal insanity at work.”

Naturally, Fox News covered the story enthusiastically, treating it as gospel on nearly every program. On Outnumbered, one of Fox’s most popular daytime programs, hosts pinned blame for the very local story on Biden.

It proves he “doesn’t mean it” when he says “God bless the troops” at the end of his speeches, one host said. “Why is Joe Biden doing this?” another asked. “Because it is intentional… he is a globalist. He’s more concerned about the needs of the U.N., about the World Economic Forum than he is about his own American citizens.”

Then, the story fell apart.

First, the hotels that veterans were supposedly booted from told Mid-Hudson News they had no idea what the advocate, YIT Foundation Executive Director Sharon Finch, was talking about. Then, a local Republican New York lawmaker dug into her claims and concluded that she lied.

Small local publications are in trouble, but they provide vital information. 

 

Digital News in Trouble

Margaret Sullivan at The Guardian:

In a seminal 2009 essay, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, the brilliant New York University professor Clay Shirky made the point that journalism as we had known it for decades was finished – and for good reason.

The reason, in a mere two words: the internet.

And he certainly proved right. With a few notable exceptions, newspapers – once the core of American journalism – have been dying right and left.

Now, big digital media-news companies, once the great hope of post-print news, seem to be going in the same direction. Down, down, down.

In recent weeks and months, digital newsrooms have taken huge hits. BuzzFeed News suddenly shuttered, leaving scores of extremely talented journalists without employment (and lest you think of BuzzFeed as strictly a place for viral videos about cats, recall that its news division did plenty of prize-winning journalism over the years). Vox Media recently laid off 7% of its staff and raised money based on a valuation about half of what it was worth in 2015.


Then, on Monday, another major blow: Vice was filing for bankruptcy. A New York Times report was unsparing, calling Vice a “decayed digital colossus”, and noting that at one point it was thought to be worth a now-unfathomable $5.7bn.

...

The problem in digital news? The audience, in many cases, was there. But the profits didn’t follow, or at least not in a sustainable way. Digital advertising revenue, once thought to be based on audience size, was going instead to social-media platforms, particularly Facebook.

World Press Freedom

 A number of posts have dealt with press freedom.

From Reporters Without Borders:

According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index – which evaluates the environment for journalism in 180 countries and territories and is published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May) – the situation is “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries. In other words, the environment for journalism is “bad” in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten.

...

The United States (45th) has fallen three places. The Index questionnaire’s US respondents were negative about the environment for journalists (especially the legal framework at the local level, and widespread violence) despite the Biden administration’s efforts. The murders of two journalists (the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Jeff German in September 2022, and Spectrum News 13’s Dylan Lyons in February  2023) had a negative impact on the country’s ranking. Brazil (92nd) rose 18 places as result of the departure of Jair Bolsonaro, whose presidential term was marked by extreme hostility towards journalists, and Lula da Silva’s election, heralding an improvement. In Asia, changes in governments also improved the environment for the media and accounted for such significant rises in the Index as Australia’s (up 12 at 27th) and Malaysia’s (up 40 at 73rd).