A failure of journalistic ethics gave us Trump because we, the citizens, allowed the watchdogs to morph into demagogues. Check out NPR's Code of Ethics to find hope in the future of news media.
The only thing I would add to this is how important it is to financially support the few remaining independent media outlets that have no problem speaking truth to power and don’t try to be “balanced” by claiming left and right-wing extremists are equally dangerous or employ the same tactics to win at all costs. Two examples that come immediately to mind are the Texas Observer (which published my “A Party Built Entirely on Lies” article about the Texas GOP and will be publishing another one I’m working on about the danger of Christian nationalism and how it clearly contradicts the teachings of Jesus and how he treated people) and DAME magazine.
That is an excellent point, Wendi. Someone should put together a list. So glad you doing those pieces. Please share them here or on your Substack.
I am pretty sure that in December I am going to do a push for paid subscriptions, with 20% of the $65/annual going to NPR. Once I read their code of ethics, I experienced truly deep gratitude. We are thinking the same way.
Hi Eli, I don’t know her personally but am aware of her work. My article about Christian nationalism in Texas, the harm it’s done, and why more Christians need to publicly oppose it was published today: https://www.texasobserver.org/christian-nationalism-texas-pastors/.
I don’t share my political articles on Substack, since that’s not the focus of my newsletter, but if you want to read more of them you can go to https://bio.link/wendigordon and scroll to the politics subheading.
The other one will hopefully be published within a couple of weeks; I’ll share the link when it is. Also, another great organization opposing Christian nationalism is Faithful America. They have identified 20 “false prophets.” Some are political leaders, like Governors Abbott and Desantis; others are religious leaders. Here’s the list: https://americanfalseprophets.org/
Strong, strong work. When did the 4th Estate abandon ethics? When did the the watchdog become attack dog for hire? And Why? Perhaps some of the feistiest flag-bearers of “free speech” are conscious or unconscious shills for profiteers and profiteering? Or just the very profiteers themselves?! Maybe we are witnessing a strain of absolute libertarianism that is guise for profound selfishness - one that makes for the escape from or ignorance of the responsibilites of the human condition: that we are neither separate from each other or the world. Have we lost the capacity or will for the difficult work of conscious choice involved in checking evil? I, for one, hope the Alex Jones judgement holds and is a shot heard round the media world! Democracy depends on the open-minded commitment to ethics. Ethics is our guide to the ways we choose to read the world and ethics is our guide to making the difficult choices of where boundaries and guardrails and, yes, lawful punishments need be. A reviving of ethics is also how we reanimate decency in our culture. I see your work as of a piece with this. So, thank you. It’s not easy. Never has been, inter or intra-personally. But how else to live with each other and in assent with Nature or God or . . .?
Strong, strong work—right back at you. This is music to my ears. It is rare for me to encounter anyone who uses the word “ethics“ and the word “ethical“ as much as I do. It is the secret sauce of healthy democracy. Profit, profit, profit makes for highly unethical journalism and media. That is also a vital point. All that started off as ethical violations which are now invisible to us. As soon as something becomes widespread it becomes the new status quo— and that’s where we get into trouble. Active citizenship is the only answer I know. We the People must DEMAND ethical media and ethical democracy. Cheers,
I also think to an extent you miss the point. The mainstream media is increasingly irrelevant since they can’t function as gatekeepers anymore. Some conservative politicians simply refuse to be interviewed by the press. Look how few press conference Trump’s administration conducted at the end. The Right correctly concluded there was no punishment for this behavior and that their message was best amplified through social media and the echo chamber of right wing talk shows. Finally, Russian money and conservative political movements around the world have perverted the Social Media system using it to spread lies and suppress the votes of detractors. BREXIT and Trump’s narrow wins would not have been possible without this unholy alliance.
"The mainstream media is increasingly irrelevant since they can’t function as gatekeepers anymore." The mission is to bring them back––or, give up. I choose the former!
Unfortunately that genie is out of the bottle. I think seriously regulating social media platforms like Facebook is essential to stop the spread of lies. Yes, it will introduce friction into the system and reduce profits but that is a small price to pay for maintaining democracy. Mainstream print and TV media are really irrelevant except in setting elite opinion. Fox News and its ilk need to be sued off the air. Meanwhile, small and medium sized towns in the US have no one reporting on the increasing corruption by their officials. I think every town or city should create an endowment for a non-profit reporting entity - it will pay huge dividends in terms of good governance. The model could be something like the Guardian in the UK.
And even NPR has “experts” from right wing talk shows that spout utter nonsense and lies while their journalists adhere to both-siderism trying to parse an insurrection and a President that has broken more Federal laws than I have fingers and toes. The New York Times is even worse in this regard having paved the way for Trump at the expense of Hillary Clinton. If these are our watchdogs bound by a code of ethics they are asleep and chained.
Angus, I think you are agreeing with the overall thesis of this piece, right? You think we should strengthen journalistic ethics and the watchdog function? LMK if otherwise. This might help the problem you describe: NPR and other outlets should fact-check both sides and not run any stories (or allow them to go live) unless they adhere to some baseline of the vital facts.
I am just reading today an interesting piece from an Australian newspaper. An opinion writer wrote, of the Jan. 6 insurrection, "The Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators are the unindicted co-conspirators of this continuing crisis." Correct.
A smart friend emailed me, saying "I would have been harder on the mainstream media here. They did not take their job seriously and took way too long to adapt." Damn good point––similar to yours, Angus.
Completely agree. The problem with journalism in the US, especially NPR and the NYT, is that they are so afraid of offending the power structure (and losing access) and their paymasters (subscribers and the US taxpayer in the case of NPR) that they hide behind a reporting approach of “both sides and you decide” while amplifying the lies of the Right. There is no longer any objective truth. No one is a liar, no one is a criminal, no one an insurrectionists, or a fascist. In fact, if we are to believe the media in the US today the problem lies with voiceless immigrants, Antifa, BLM, and radical environmentalists who just won’t accept the situation and submit to the police and the law. Truly Orwellian times we live in but a predictable backlash to white fragility, and the growing weakness of the media as it is hollowed out by Social Media and ownership concentrated in the hands of increasingly conservative plutocrats.
I don't think it's a lack of moral courage. I think it's a fundamental shift in the paradigm of journalism in this country. Now it is all horse races, both-siderism, and the desperate need for appearing "objective". Meanwhile, the truth is strangled and alternative facts rule the day in the minds of a majority of citizens. Murrow and Cronkite must be turning in their graves.
To build on the objectivity point, the problem is that the truth has a liberal bias. People interested in making better policy, improving the world, using empirical facts and scientific data are on the left. How do you stay "impartial" and "objective" as defined by the Right when the Right is a swamp of lies, dishonesty, and winning at any cost is acceptable behavior? You can't.
“A failure of journalistic ethics gave us Trump in 2016 because we, the citizens, allowed the watchdogs to morph into demagogues.” Our media choices matter. Let’s work to take Fox out of our cable boxes.
Strong, strong work—right back at you. This is music to my ears. It is rare for me to encounter anyone who uses the word “ethics“ and the word “ethical“ as much as I do. It is the secret sauce of healthy democracy. Profit, profit, profit makes for highly unethical journalism and media. That is also a vital point. All that started off as ethical violations which are now invisible to us. As soon as something becomes widespread it becomes the new status quo— and that’s where we get into trouble. Active citizenship is the only answer I know. We the People must DEMAND ethical media and ethical democracy. Cheers,
The below comes to me by email from a smart friend. Good analysis, I think:
The media should always be thought of in two distinct and opposing ways, though these roles often conflict.
As a special type of entity in our political/economic system, with unique responsibilities and unique rights and powers.
As just participant player in our system, engaged in the pursuit of wealth, prestige and power like all the others.
During “peacetime” so to speak, it’s easy if you are in the media to forget about #1, and just engage in #2 because there is no real threat. An army in peacetime sometimes gets soft. The media in peacetime loves the demagogue because he’s colorful and attracts readers, rather than fear him as they should because he’s dangerous to society and the political system.
Fox has always blatantly prioritized #2. CNN and others give lip service to #1.
It took the media somewhere between one and two years to snap to their senses and realize that their responsibilities under #1 are more important now than their opportunities and constraints under #2. In some respects they are still not fully there, for example the way so many mainstream journalists still engage in false-equivalence of “what aboutism?”
An example of the partial wake-up was when the media moved from saying “Trump claimed that…” and then inviting some Democrat to provide an opposing quote, to saying “Trump falsely claimed that…” and putting themselves on record. That’s a positive development but it’s not enough.
First, the media amplifies falsehoods even by talking about them - Clinton's emails anyone. So not reporting on lies is the key. Then reporting about them in the context that you say X is a lie because of evidence Y: Former President Trump lied that he won the election. Then spelling out the story connecting the dots: Former President Trump orchestrated the insurrection on J6 and did nothing to stop the violence which was a dereliction of duty as head of state and broke his oath of office. Haven't heard a peep of that from the mainstream media....As you say above the mainstream media is only now starting to wake up to the threat .... meanwhile Desantis has learned the model and is waiting in the wings.
Wake up indeed … To deal with the current high levels of demagoguery and manipulation, it might not only take a resurrection of old codes of ethics but entirely new and innovative ones. Both laws and ethical standards governing the media must ADAPT to contemporary threats in order to keep truth and democracy alive.
Ultimately we need a better educated and more discriminating electoral which means civics lessons combined with a course of the critical evaluation of information and its sources. Given that the GOP's bases is now geared towards poorly educated whites in rural areas that is an uphill lift unfortunately. As Trump said he loves the poorly educated and we know why. The GOP base is clearly being duped since the party platform / objectives do not align with poor rural white people's need - elimination of Social Security and the Welfare state, tax cuts for the wealthy, elimination of Obamacare etc although the sustained hate on Democrats, urban elites, people of color, LGBT, disabled people etc does resonate.
The only thing I would add to this is how important it is to financially support the few remaining independent media outlets that have no problem speaking truth to power and don’t try to be “balanced” by claiming left and right-wing extremists are equally dangerous or employ the same tactics to win at all costs. Two examples that come immediately to mind are the Texas Observer (which published my “A Party Built Entirely on Lies” article about the Texas GOP and will be publishing another one I’m working on about the danger of Christian nationalism and how it clearly contradicts the teachings of Jesus and how he treated people) and DAME magazine.
That is an excellent point, Wendi. Someone should put together a list. So glad you doing those pieces. Please share them here or on your Substack.
I am pretty sure that in December I am going to do a push for paid subscriptions, with 20% of the $65/annual going to NPR. Once I read their code of ethics, I experienced truly deep gratitude. We are thinking the same way.
Wendi, do you know this writer? She seems right up your alley. Best,
https://katherinestewart.me
Hi Eli, I don’t know her personally but am aware of her work. My article about Christian nationalism in Texas, the harm it’s done, and why more Christians need to publicly oppose it was published today: https://www.texasobserver.org/christian-nationalism-texas-pastors/.
I don’t share my political articles on Substack, since that’s not the focus of my newsletter, but if you want to read more of them you can go to https://bio.link/wendigordon and scroll to the politics subheading.
Thanks, Eli. Here’s the link to the first article I mentioned: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-republicans-lie/
The other one will hopefully be published within a couple of weeks; I’ll share the link when it is. Also, another great organization opposing Christian nationalism is Faithful America. They have identified 20 “false prophets.” Some are political leaders, like Governors Abbott and Desantis; others are religious leaders. Here’s the list: https://americanfalseprophets.org/
Thank you, Jean in Florida (if you are seeking this comment). Your support is very much appreciated.
Strong, strong work. When did the 4th Estate abandon ethics? When did the the watchdog become attack dog for hire? And Why? Perhaps some of the feistiest flag-bearers of “free speech” are conscious or unconscious shills for profiteers and profiteering? Or just the very profiteers themselves?! Maybe we are witnessing a strain of absolute libertarianism that is guise for profound selfishness - one that makes for the escape from or ignorance of the responsibilites of the human condition: that we are neither separate from each other or the world. Have we lost the capacity or will for the difficult work of conscious choice involved in checking evil? I, for one, hope the Alex Jones judgement holds and is a shot heard round the media world! Democracy depends on the open-minded commitment to ethics. Ethics is our guide to the ways we choose to read the world and ethics is our guide to making the difficult choices of where boundaries and guardrails and, yes, lawful punishments need be. A reviving of ethics is also how we reanimate decency in our culture. I see your work as of a piece with this. So, thank you. It’s not easy. Never has been, inter or intra-personally. But how else to live with each other and in assent with Nature or God or . . .?
Strong, strong work—right back at you. This is music to my ears. It is rare for me to encounter anyone who uses the word “ethics“ and the word “ethical“ as much as I do. It is the secret sauce of healthy democracy. Profit, profit, profit makes for highly unethical journalism and media. That is also a vital point. All that started off as ethical violations which are now invisible to us. As soon as something becomes widespread it becomes the new status quo— and that’s where we get into trouble. Active citizenship is the only answer I know. We the People must DEMAND ethical media and ethical democracy. Cheers,
I also think to an extent you miss the point. The mainstream media is increasingly irrelevant since they can’t function as gatekeepers anymore. Some conservative politicians simply refuse to be interviewed by the press. Look how few press conference Trump’s administration conducted at the end. The Right correctly concluded there was no punishment for this behavior and that their message was best amplified through social media and the echo chamber of right wing talk shows. Finally, Russian money and conservative political movements around the world have perverted the Social Media system using it to spread lies and suppress the votes of detractors. BREXIT and Trump’s narrow wins would not have been possible without this unholy alliance.
"The mainstream media is increasingly irrelevant since they can’t function as gatekeepers anymore." The mission is to bring them back––or, give up. I choose the former!
Unfortunately that genie is out of the bottle. I think seriously regulating social media platforms like Facebook is essential to stop the spread of lies. Yes, it will introduce friction into the system and reduce profits but that is a small price to pay for maintaining democracy. Mainstream print and TV media are really irrelevant except in setting elite opinion. Fox News and its ilk need to be sued off the air. Meanwhile, small and medium sized towns in the US have no one reporting on the increasing corruption by their officials. I think every town or city should create an endowment for a non-profit reporting entity - it will pay huge dividends in terms of good governance. The model could be something like the Guardian in the UK.
Brilliant.
And even NPR has “experts” from right wing talk shows that spout utter nonsense and lies while their journalists adhere to both-siderism trying to parse an insurrection and a President that has broken more Federal laws than I have fingers and toes. The New York Times is even worse in this regard having paved the way for Trump at the expense of Hillary Clinton. If these are our watchdogs bound by a code of ethics they are asleep and chained.
Angus, I think you are agreeing with the overall thesis of this piece, right? You think we should strengthen journalistic ethics and the watchdog function? LMK if otherwise. This might help the problem you describe: NPR and other outlets should fact-check both sides and not run any stories (or allow them to go live) unless they adhere to some baseline of the vital facts.
I am just reading today an interesting piece from an Australian newspaper. An opinion writer wrote, of the Jan. 6 insurrection, "The Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators are the unindicted co-conspirators of this continuing crisis." Correct.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/29/january-six-hearing-donald-trump-comfirmed-unhinged-traitor/
A smart friend emailed me, saying "I would have been harder on the mainstream media here. They did not take their job seriously and took way too long to adapt." Damn good point––similar to yours, Angus.
Completely agree. The problem with journalism in the US, especially NPR and the NYT, is that they are so afraid of offending the power structure (and losing access) and their paymasters (subscribers and the US taxpayer in the case of NPR) that they hide behind a reporting approach of “both sides and you decide” while amplifying the lies of the Right. There is no longer any objective truth. No one is a liar, no one is a criminal, no one an insurrectionists, or a fascist. In fact, if we are to believe the media in the US today the problem lies with voiceless immigrants, Antifa, BLM, and radical environmentalists who just won’t accept the situation and submit to the police and the law. Truly Orwellian times we live in but a predictable backlash to white fragility, and the growing weakness of the media as it is hollowed out by Social Media and ownership concentrated in the hands of increasingly conservative plutocrats.
Roger that, Angus. Lack of moral courage is another way of putting it.
I don't think it's a lack of moral courage. I think it's a fundamental shift in the paradigm of journalism in this country. Now it is all horse races, both-siderism, and the desperate need for appearing "objective". Meanwhile, the truth is strangled and alternative facts rule the day in the minds of a majority of citizens. Murrow and Cronkite must be turning in their graves.
To build on the objectivity point, the problem is that the truth has a liberal bias. People interested in making better policy, improving the world, using empirical facts and scientific data are on the left. How do you stay "impartial" and "objective" as defined by the Right when the Right is a swamp of lies, dishonesty, and winning at any cost is acceptable behavior? You can't.
Thanks for this, Angus. My next piece is Failure #2 = the U.S. Education System. This is grist for the mill.
“A failure of journalistic ethics gave us Trump in 2016 because we, the citizens, allowed the watchdogs to morph into demagogues.” Our media choices matter. Let’s work to take Fox out of our cable boxes.
Strong, strong work—right back at you. This is music to my ears. It is rare for me to encounter anyone who uses the word “ethics“ and the word “ethical“ as much as I do. It is the secret sauce of healthy democracy. Profit, profit, profit makes for highly unethical journalism and media. That is also a vital point. All that started off as ethical violations which are now invisible to us. As soon as something becomes widespread it becomes the new status quo— and that’s where we get into trouble. Active citizenship is the only answer I know. We the People must DEMAND ethical media and ethical democracy. Cheers,
The below comes to me by email from a smart friend. Good analysis, I think:
The media should always be thought of in two distinct and opposing ways, though these roles often conflict.
As a special type of entity in our political/economic system, with unique responsibilities and unique rights and powers.
As just participant player in our system, engaged in the pursuit of wealth, prestige and power like all the others.
During “peacetime” so to speak, it’s easy if you are in the media to forget about #1, and just engage in #2 because there is no real threat. An army in peacetime sometimes gets soft. The media in peacetime loves the demagogue because he’s colorful and attracts readers, rather than fear him as they should because he’s dangerous to society and the political system.
Fox has always blatantly prioritized #2. CNN and others give lip service to #1.
It took the media somewhere between one and two years to snap to their senses and realize that their responsibilities under #1 are more important now than their opportunities and constraints under #2. In some respects they are still not fully there, for example the way so many mainstream journalists still engage in false-equivalence of “what aboutism?”
An example of the partial wake-up was when the media moved from saying “Trump claimed that…” and then inviting some Democrat to provide an opposing quote, to saying “Trump falsely claimed that…” and putting themselves on record. That’s a positive development but it’s not enough.
First, the media amplifies falsehoods even by talking about them - Clinton's emails anyone. So not reporting on lies is the key. Then reporting about them in the context that you say X is a lie because of evidence Y: Former President Trump lied that he won the election. Then spelling out the story connecting the dots: Former President Trump orchestrated the insurrection on J6 and did nothing to stop the violence which was a dereliction of duty as head of state and broke his oath of office. Haven't heard a peep of that from the mainstream media....As you say above the mainstream media is only now starting to wake up to the threat .... meanwhile Desantis has learned the model and is waiting in the wings.
Wake up indeed … To deal with the current high levels of demagoguery and manipulation, it might not only take a resurrection of old codes of ethics but entirely new and innovative ones. Both laws and ethical standards governing the media must ADAPT to contemporary threats in order to keep truth and democracy alive.
Ultimately we need a better educated and more discriminating electoral which means civics lessons combined with a course of the critical evaluation of information and its sources. Given that the GOP's bases is now geared towards poorly educated whites in rural areas that is an uphill lift unfortunately. As Trump said he loves the poorly educated and we know why. The GOP base is clearly being duped since the party platform / objectives do not align with poor rural white people's need - elimination of Social Security and the Welfare state, tax cuts for the wealthy, elimination of Obamacare etc although the sustained hate on Democrats, urban elites, people of color, LGBT, disabled people etc does resonate.