Dan Froomkin of PressWatch wrote a widely-linked piece yesterday about the role of the press in modern-era Washington. Here's a piece of it, framed as a speech that a new editor delivers to her newsroom:
First of all, we’re going to rebrand you. Effective today, you are no longer political reporters (and editors); you are government reporters (and editors)....Historically, we have allowed our political journalism to be framed by the two parties. That has always created huge distortions, but never like it does today.
....Defining our job as “not taking sides between the two parties” has also empowered bad-faith critics to accuse us of bias when we are simply calling out the truth. We will not take sides with one political party or the other, ever. But we will proudly, enthusiastically, take the side of wide-ranging, fact-based debate.
....Political journalism as we have practiced it also too often emphasizes strategy over substance. It focuses on minor, incremental changes rather than the distance from the desirable – or necessary — goal. It obfuscates, rather than clarifies, the actual problems and the potential solutions.
....Tiresomely chronicling who’s up and who’s down actually ends up normalizing the status quo. I ask you to consider taking — as a baseline — the view that there is urgent need for dramatic, powerful action from Washington, not just when it comes to the pandemic and the economic collapse, but regarding climate change and pollution, racial inequities, the broken immigration system, affordable health care, collapsing infrastructure, toxic monopolies, and more.
The reason I'm highlighting this is because it distills a widely held belief on the left: namely that national political reporters are consumed with both-siderism; horse race coverage; faux balance; and giving too much exposure to bad faith arguments. Instead, as Froomkin suggests, they should take a broader view that downplays insider politics and instead focuses on the big picture.
But there's a problem here: we already have media outlets that do this. They're called monthly magazines, which often focus on analysis and broad trends.
By contrast, a daily newspaper (or TV news show) reports on the news. That is, the stuff that happened that day. This is totally legitimate, since lots of people want to know what's happening on a day-to-day basis. In fact, since you're reading this on the internet, you're most likely someone who wants to keep up with the news on an hour-by-hour basis. Waiting a whole day is for your grandparents, amirite?
So what's a daily political reporter to do? If President Biden proposes a $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill, you have to report it. If a group of Republicans counteroffers with $600 billion, you have to report that. And if Biden agrees to meet with them, once again we have news. And there's really no way to report this except through a partisan lens. The entire thing is fundamentally driven by the fact that Democrats and Republicans disagree about what should be in the package. And as with so many things, there is no disembodied truth about who's right.
Unless, of course, you simply assume that liberals are always right, as Froomkin gives away in the last paragraph I excerpted. If that had been written by a conservative, it would look something like this:
I ask you to consider taking — as a baseline — the view that there is urgent need for dramatic, powerful action from Washington, not just when it comes to the pandemic and the economic collapse, but regarding a ballooning welfare state, a stifling culture of political correctness, a broken immigration system, and increasing hostility to religious freedom.
There's something to the lefty critique of political reporters, but not because they report the news that actually happens on a daily basis. Nor because they ignore background and context. Generally speaking, I find that they usually do a good job on that score. For my money, I'd say they spend too much time on Twitter and too much time printing rumors from anonymous sources without much backup.
I am, of course, talking here about legitimate news outlets like the New York Times or CBS News. I am decidedly not talking about places like Fox News, which don't even attempt to provide any kind of balanced treatment of the day's events. That's a whole different topic.
It's fine for a daily political reporter to write about Biden's $1.9T proposal, the Republicans' $600B counteroffer, meetings of the two, and so on. The question is what details the pieces should be filled with. Currently the rest of the content is WHAT ABOUT UNITY AND BIPARTISAN.
I'm pretty sure Froomkin's point was that greater focus should be on the specifics of what is in the $1.9T bill, who and what are affected by those specifics, what gets dropped by going to the $600B bill, and who is affected by that. Then maybe some discussion of the overall macroeconomic effects of each and whether the "alarming burgeoning debt" is bad (hint: no). I think actual news consumers prefer such analysis over more UNITY melodrama.
Right, and could even toss in some commentary by economists about the economic impacts, epidemiologists on proposed measures for countering the pandemic.
Yeah, there are lots of pieces of information that are useful to figuring out what each of the proposals contains, what the Gang of 10 proposal eliminates, how popular certain provisions are, what are likely sticking points. Even what's a serious proposal (the Gang of 10 doesn't have the leverage to reduce the package by 2/3 and they know that.) But usually it ends up as something between a drama and a sporting event, where the actual real world effects of any of this are ignored in favor of speculation about which team is winning and who has the coolest uniforms.
All the TV news outlets I saw framed the Gang of 10 as a test of whether Biden really wanted to be.bipartisan rather than as a test of whether the Republicans really wanted to help the people suffering the most from the pandemic. Focusing on the gop plan as a political chess move rather than on how it would affect people.
Yes, this is a huge problem. I just listened to a podcast where Jay Rosen says a big part of it is the reporters who approach the job like they have to pretend they know a lot more than they really do, or could. I think he's right about that. They feel like they have to take the God view, or at least pack things inside a "philosophical" big-picture question.
In practice, what really happens is that they accept gop framing like "is this unity" (in large part because gop talks nothing but big-picture and Dems talk almost all details, tbh-- Dems need much better messaging). Doing this also lets reporters avoid getting too much into details-- we're told it's because readers don't want it (boooring), but a lot of reporters aren't interested in details themselves because of the effort involved in getting and presenting them.
I agree with clawback that more effort should go into laying out the consequences for voters and citizens of different policy choices and proposals. The Biden people seem like they're trying to spoon-feed that to reporters, which they should, and maybe that can help shift things. Media need to think more about the public, less about the test-of-strength narrative they seem to love so much.
The GOP "big picture" is simply propaganda; that's why they don't detail policy goals that might alarm some of their base who don't benefit from the party's actual accomplishments.
Upvote this.
Another complaint is one often voiced by Dean Baker (https://cepr.net/blog/dean-bakers-beat-the-press/).
The press too often takes Republican statements on their motives at face value ("The bailout is too expensive, think of the children!" vs "We were fine with deficits under Trump and now we're lying in your face").
The press sometimes even engages in Republican mind reading, essentially doing the lying for them ("Republicans, who care deeply about deficits, oppose the size of the Biden bailout").
To the best of my knowledge there isn't even a '$1.9T bill'. There's an outline from the White House of what they'd like to see in a bill. We're seeing a repeat of the frustrating process that happened during the six months leading up to the election, where the White House held talks with this group or that about a relief bill but the parties in Congress who would have to pass the damn thing never got to sit down with each other face-to-face until the last moment.
The Biden proposal includes a $15 minimum wage. I’ve had a devil of a time trying to find out of this would be in increments over a period of time or if it would be immediate. I suspect it would be in increments but the news doesn’t mention that at all. It makes it seem as if it is immediate.
If the hike is immediate the news should say so. If it isn’t, the news should say what the increments are. If it’s unclear that’s what the news should say. Doing it the way the way being done is misleading.
I've been thinking about this for some time, and but what I've come up with are My Two Big Guidelines for Newspapers:
1.) Report what happened or is happening in such a way that your readers get a clearer, better understanding of what's happening in the world.
2.) Write editorials about what you think, feel, and care based on the information in #1.
These are not always easy to follow and there are always gray areas. But this is what a newspaper generally should strive for, and it's what seems to get lost when they get into the details of their stories.
The NYT got pushback for a headline today that said that the gang of 10 "seeks to scale back Covid relief package." OK. Well, how much do they want to scale it back? How much was it before? Why are they trying to scale it back? Not everything can make it into the headline, but "Moderate Senators seek to scale back 1.9 billion relief package by 2/3" would be a lot clearer and more useful.
There are ways to report what the various parties and actors are doing that gives readers an accurate picture of the situation, but usually, reporters are more concerned with adjudicating partisan spin.
If what you're publishing makes readers less informed about what is happening, it should be rewritten. Repeating each side's talking points and proposals doesn't achieve that.
I think there's a very good counter-example of what Froomkin is saying here.
Very recently, the news media began to consistently report that there was no evidence that the election was rigged. I think this is fairly unprecedented and seemingly required a violent attack on the seat of government. They've refused to take such a stand in many other areas where there is near-unanimous agreement, including as Froomkin points out, anthropogenic climate change.
Anthropogenic climate change should be reported as a political disagreement, but where scientists nearly unanimously agree. Sometimes, it is reported that way, but in my experience, not usually.
The problem I have with news, and particularly TV news, is that they regularly report on the future: this will happen, or this means, etc. First of all, we don't know the future, we can't know the future, and so this type of reporting is nonsense and I think feeds into the QAnon nonsense. Second, most TV reporters and many news reporters are essentially well groomed airheads. I once was a public relations person for a federal agency and regularly worked with news people and found they were totally into vanity and nothing more. Reporting on the future allows them to avoid appearing stupid because you can't call them on something that hasn't happened.
When I was studying politics and journalism in college I remember debating that we'd have lots more citizen engagement if politics was covered more like sports: fast paced, opinionated analyists, "inside baseball," wins vs losses, etc. As opposed to the admittedly stultifying "worthwhile city council initiative" reporting that was standard fare.
Ironically just a few months later Reagan came to office and the first buzz about post-announcement "spin doctor" scrums showed up. And "spin doctoring" in turn became its own story. Reporters seemed to truly enjoy getting spin handed to them... much the way sports writers love getting those post-game interviews with coaches and players.
Bottom line: I you see me with a magic lamp take it away from me. I appear to make very bad wishes.
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As to your immediate question about daily news, Kevin, my answer would be that instead of nitpicking or reporting on day-to-day jostling a newsroom could pick measurable anchor positions set by governments, parties, or candidates: government goals, goals set by party or candidate platforms, perhaps court orders, and report on how the day's activities move things towards or away from those.
In that context *government* reporting would go something like "Sen. Lindsey Graham pressured Senator Chuck Shumer to allow votes on the long-term Republican goal of XYZ." As opposed to *political* reporting that seems to go along the lines of "Sen. Graham thrilled his fans by calling Chuck Schumer a traitorous pooh-pooh head."
There'd still be all sorts of room for editorial decision making with a goals-based approach, particularly in the context of selecting or rejecting particular criteria, debating whether they're specific, measurable, achievable, timely, etc. But that's sort of what editors are supposed to do in the first place to establish directions for reporting.
(Note: see my caveat about granting me wishes. But I still think a goal-based, votes-to-pass, s approach rather than a personality/party approach could still generate interest and even engagement.)
I don’t disagree that the real news outlets do a decent job of reporting on the facts and of course both Biden’s rescue plan and the GOP counter proposal are justifiably news.
The issue I have is the way many issues are wired for the GOP, as Josh Marshall has persuasively argued. The press takes it as a given that of course deficits should be lower, for example, or that Social Security needs to be “reformed”, meaning a cut in benefits or raising the retirement age (which is far easier for reporters at desk jobs to imagine being reasonable).
The other main problem is the stenographic nature of much political reporting, aptly ridiculed by Paul Krugman years ago (“views differ on shape of the Earth”). The existence of anthropogenic climate change isn’t controversial and hasn’t been for years, yet news stories still often treat it as such. $2000 checks to most Americans just polled at a net plus 56% in Georgia, yet it is “controversial” because elected GOP officials oppose it.
I don’t know if our press is learning, but I do take heart that Trump’s election lies are being called lies in the New York Times. Baby steps.
Congrats on your new freedom. I have always wanted to comment on your posts at MJ but posting was too onerous. This is much better. Ok here we go- you said the RW would want to report on a ballooning welfare state but is it really ballooning? I would like to see one of your charts showing whether this is in fact true or a lie. Stifling culture of pc- this just sounds subjective-maybe there is way to measure this but from my POV what I see is just increased whining. Broken immigration-we all agree it is a problem but again how is it when compared with other times. As to religion, I just don’t see any hostility to the practice of religion-people are free to worship in any manner they see fit and nobody objects to this.
“regarding a ballooning welfare state, a stifling culture of political correctness, a broken immigration system, and increasing hostility to religious freedom.” Are you really suggesting these are equally valid views of society, culture, economy?
"For my money, I'd say they spend too much time on Twitter and too much time printing rumors from anonymous sources without much backup."
To which I'd add: and too much time slavishly reporting what Person A said and what Person B said in response, with no attempt to inform readers which one (if either) is telling the truth. How often do we read that "We reached out* to X for a comment ..."? Why? How about digging into the story to provide some journalistic insight instead of passively waiting for a self-interested comment from one of the people in it?
*And why not simply 'ask' for a comment? You're not a troubled soul on the verge of self-harm, at least not in this context.
Yeah, that brings a lot of drama to a simple request, doesn't it? Seems to be showing up a lot more and almost always about mundane, ordinary questions. I'm almost making my peace with it, because usages do change, but I do get a little charge from imagining what Tom Nichols would have to say.
One really huge improvement reporters of all stripes can make right away is to _stop_ telling us what politician A "believes" already.
You don't know, and you can't know, what anyone else _believes_. Not unless you're like the Shadow and can see what's in the hearts of men. It's divination. It's soothsaying. It's psychiatry without a license.
All you can know is what politician A _says_. Politicians say a lot of things. Sometimes it's even consistent with other things they say. It might even reflect what they really think. But that isn't a good bet. Let's stay up here in the phenomenal world we all share, with words uttered and committed to paper and twitter, and stay away from matters of belief, okay?
If you are going to report the Biden covid plan, you should detail exactly what is in it in paragraph 1. If you are going to report the GOP counter proposal, you should detail exactly what is in it in paragraph 1. instead of say, this
"A coalition of 10 Republican senators took a stimulus counterproposal to the White House on Monday evening, urging President Biden to scale back his ambitions for a sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package in favor of a plan less than one-third the size that they argued could garner the bipartisan consensus the new president has said he is seeking."*
Which tells readers absolutely nothing except "big number, not so big number"
* Courtesy of the New York Times, the country's leading purveyor of content free column inches.
bingo
I would humbly suggest that there is a bias to the coverage which should be present, and that bias is the fact that one party has consistently used the political system to cripple government, and thereby to lay claim that government is not a venue for solving problems encountered by the wider society.
Simply reporting the news (this happened, and then that happened) manages to fly above the underlying nature of the game in a manner which suspiciously yields improved bottom lines.