Monday, February 20, 2023

What Is "Journalism," Anyway?

What is "journalism," anyway?

Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi claim to be journalists.  But, like Seymour Hersh, they are more properly clowns than not.  Yes, Hersh has published in the New Yorker and major newspapers, but the consensus right now is Hersh needs a good editor who refuses to run single-sourced stories that are essentially bullshit.  So I'm happy to classify him with Greenwald and Taibbi.

But what is a journalist?  There is no legal definition of "journalism." Journalists aren't licensed by the state, like doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are; or like barbers are, for that matter; so anybody can call themselves one.  I'm sure there's a basic First Amendment reason for that, and I'm not arguing for the licensure of journalists.  We'd probably have even more Jeff Gerths and Judy Millers if we did license journalists.  The most regulation of journalism I can see now comes from CJR, but they have their own problems, having turned over their critical faculties to...Jeff Gerth his own self.  Yikes!


Nowhere did AP reveal that Donald Trump was the only one guilty of the crime that Comer wants to pursue. Nowhere did AP reveal other instances where Twitter coddled Trump, as when they rewrote their content moderation standards on attacks on immigrants, which previously had banned the use of the term, “Go back to where you came from,” to retroactively excuse their approval of a Trump attack on AOC and others.

Worse still, AP was silent about the degree to which members like Clay Higgins started baselessly calling for the arrest of witnesses not accused, much less credibly, of a crime.

In other words, AP let James Comer dictate the terms of their story even after the premise of it had been debunked.

That’s not journalism.

emptywheel on the coverage of the Comer Twitter hearing, a hearing that went spectacularly wrong.  As emptywheel says:

The finding of Comer’s hearing is clear: the witnesses all rebutted any claim that government influence drove the decision to throttle the NYPost report on a laptop that Rudy Giuliani claimed belonged to Hunter Biden. The hearing exposed that the claimed basis for legislative interest in Twitter’s actions was baseless. That should been the headline: James Comer’s conspiracy theory flopped. James Comer exposed, wasting taxpayer dollars.

And some reporting acknowledged that:

Daily Beast was one of the few outlets that reported, accurately, that the hearing showed the opposite of what Republicans claimed: in fact, Trump had been the one to use government power to attempt to silence speech on Twitter. Rolling Stone reported on another pathetic detail from Comer’s hearing, when Byron Donalds got Yoel Roth to explain what was implicit in all of Chairman Comer’s discussions of the scope of the hearing: Republicans were complaining that Twitter took down nonconsensual dick pics of Hunter Biden, some posted as part of a campaign by Steve Bannon associate Guo Wengui.

Context, as Forster pointed out, is all.  And that should be a sacred principle of journalism.  Except it isn't.  No, the context of modern journalism is the narrative.  It's what other people, "smart people," are saying; where "smart" has little or nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with being fashionable, au courant, of the moment.  You know:  in with the "in" crowd.  But if you point that out journalists start getting all huffy and respond "Well, that's not what journalism is!", even though I know more about the Gerth/CJR follies from Twitter than from any news outlet, and I never really heard any journalists explain/criticize/analyze the failures of Jeff Gerth or Judy Miller the way they did those of President Carter when he was sitting President Carter.

Now, of course, is the time for encomiums of Jimmy Carter, the greatest ex-President the country has ever had.  Eleanor Clift was asked recently what she remembered about being a "journalist" (I still use the term loosely) covering the Carter White House, and she recalled when Carter's Press Secretary (IIRC) told her that he knew Nixon complained about the White House press corps distorting reality, and he had begun to think Nixon had a point.  The press, of course, loves stories like this, because it means they're "doing it right".  But does it?  Personally I look upon the hagiography of Carter now, especially by Reaganauts who vilified him at the time (especially after Reagan took the White House) and who now think Carter is a moral exemplar, especially post-Trump.  Men of great moral standing tend to be praised at the end, or after the end, of their days, when they are no longer a threat to our own amorality.  We generally can't stand the truth they practice; we prefer the truth we preach and thereby can hide behind while we do as we please.  Now that Carter is safely consigned to history we can afford to be magnanimous in our praise of him, even of his presidency which so many of us once despised and condemned (especially the afore-mentioned Reaganauts).  Morality is always easier paid lip service to than observed; and especially when it is observed does it make us feel small and diminished in comparison, which we deeply resent.  So once that light is dimming, we feel safe to come out and praise that it was once among us, relieved that it is going away again.  By the same token we condemn Trump not because he is amoral, but because he is so nakedly so.  We see ourselves in his mirror, and we don't like the reflection at all.  Condemning him means we aren't that bad; but our anger stems from the same root that makes us denounce people like Carter, until they are safely stored away in memory, when we can take comfort in the fact we praised his greatness as the funeral procession was passing.

Journalists aren't, in other words, the only set who trade in convenient narratives.

And there’s one more reason why the press needs to treat these hearings not as a both-sides affair but as an effort to flip truth upside-down.

While neither have said this outright, both Comer’s hearing and the first hearing of Jim Jordan’s insurrection protection committee attacked the nation’s ability to push back against disinformation, including, but not limited to, Russian disinformation.

So when I hear that Dominion has proven that FoxNews is a clear and present danger to democracy in America, I have to ask myself about that argument: cui bono?  Because the main difference between the FoxNews personalities in those texts (almost none of whom are the "serious" journalists FoxNews insists it has on staff, but the "entertainers" it insists air only at night because...night time is for entertainment, and everybody knows that?  I dunno, that never did make much sense....) and reporters for other services is:  at least a handful of the FoxNews people (but not, apparently, Maria Bartiromo; at least) recognized they are trading in lies and slanted news coverage.

Because honestly, what does Chuck Todd do?  Or the AP, for that matter?  Or the politics reporters of the NYT?  Or every person you've ever heard of/seen on TeeVee in the White House Briefing Room, waiting like baby birds for Mama to regurgitate something pre-digested into their open mouths? Leaving out context is slanting coverage, or at least fitting it into the "narrative" that either both sides do it, or this is how coverage is "fair and balanced." I understand what the White House Press office employees are doing in that room at that podium, and it isn't providing context, except to report "The White House today said..." and then, maybe, to offer the opposing view from the House or the Senate via the opposing party. But what are the journalists doing in the briefing room, besides shouting like beasts on the floor of the Bourse (Auden; very classy!) and yelling at the President when they get the chance to?  What they are doing for news reporting calls to mind the old criticism of "trickle-down" economics, once more vividly called "Horse and Sparrow" economics, because the horse got the grains and corn, and the sparrow got to pick out what "trickled down" in...the horse's shit.  "Trickle down" does sound nicer, doesn't it?  But the meaning wasn't supposed to change.

What are we getting from the White House press corps, except the droppings they produce after Mama bird spits up in their open mouths?

Is that journalism?

I can call Matt Taibbi a pseudo-journalist because he's just engaged in tendentious twaddle:

The same is true for Seymour Hersh.  emptywheel tends to be far more grounded in facts than speculation, though some of her posts/tweets about legal matters make me cringe because she clearly doesn't understand what's going on (it's okay, really.  But funny how journalists defer to doctors in discussions of medical matters, but think they an out-reason lawyers in legal matters.  Or rather understand what's going on in a trial when in fact they are as clueless in the courtroom as they would be in an operating theater.).  This post, for example, where she points out a law firm has withdrawn from representation (of whom is not clear) on the "Project Veritas Special Master's Docket" because, she asserts,  the Special Master has been paying attention to "crime fraud submissions" and researching the issues around that topic.  I assume this refers to the exception to attorny-client privilege; and it probably means the firm withdrew so there wouldn't be a confict between their client and the firm being a subject of investigation.  Which is interesting, in that it tells you the usual narrative of judges (we all have them, you see!) is to not breach the attorney-client privilege.  Like the sanctity of the confessional as presented in popular media, the privilege is supposed to be almost sacrosanct, too.  But Trump's Make Attorneys Get Attorneys has pretty much eliminated all that, and since everybody else is doing it judges feel safe to find the exception, too.  It's not a new exception, but it's like my black car.  When I bought my black car I thought I was getting a rare and unique color (sure, they make some every year for almost every model; but not that many, right?).  And suddenly, driving around in my black car, all I saw was black cars (it was actually more popular than I'd first realized).  But whether it was me finally noticing, or the color choice finially becoming popular again (tastes change), the outcome is the same: now everybody is doing it.  And now judges find it easier to make attorneys into witnesses (another comparison, to beat the dead horse, would be malpractice claims.  In the early '60's my parents had a potential medical malpractice claim, but no one would touch it because it required expert medical testimony, and no doctor would testify against another doctor, no matter how egregious the error.  Within 10 years medical malpractice was booming business, and suing anyone with a license (including lawyers) became SOP.  So it is now with piercing attorney-client privilege.).  So, this is notable; but also...meh.  The firm needs to withdraw because they've probably been told they're likely to be witnesses.  Even that used to be as rare as hen's teeth; but in the world left in the wake of Donald Trump....

You can take emptywheel's interest in such things with a grain of salt and move on, because there is useful information even among the dross.  Taibbi just deals in bullshit anymore, and there's nothing useful in it.  Rather like Gerth on Whitewater, or Miller on WMD.

Or a lot of journalism, for that matter.  Her examples of AP not reporting on Twitter changing its moderation standards stands out as an example of omitting information presented at the hearing which just didn't fit the narrative (or the space allotted) for the AP story.  The example of Clay Higgins is even more on point, because Rep. Higgins was making essentially a legal claim (that the power of government could be used to prosecute witnesses whose testimony Higgins didn't like), a claim that was absolutely baseless in law or fact.  AP could excuse the former as an editorial decision (what to include, what to leave out), and the latter as not reporting "opinion" (i.e., Higgins was an ignorant lout).  Both are a failure to provide relevant context; the former because it ignores evidence presented, the latter because it allows a fatuous claim to stand under the rubric of "some people say."  No, that is not journalism; nor would it be subjective to say Rep. Higgins was just spouting bullshit.

Journalism excuses such things on those grounds, or on the broader claim that, after all, it's just a "first draft" of history.  Yeah; that's another problem.  Journalists really should accept that mostly they trade in gossip, and police reports (which are also more gossip than "truth").  A little honesty would produce an appropriate amount of humility; and for that we'd all be better off, and maybe learn to be a little more generous in our acceptance of people like Jimmy Carter while they're still effective in the world.
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