I’m a political science prof and American government textbook author. I face the same issues — enormous industry pressure to normalize and bothsides the hell out of what we are seeing play out before our eyes.
I refuse — I even changed a textbook intro to say while we always tried to be even-handed as possible, our book is now profoundly biased. In the past we have always been relentlessly objective and have consciously bothsidesed what we taught so that students had a “blank slate” to make their own judgments and discover their own views.
But that kind of objectivity is a luxury of “normal times,” when the paradigm of classical liberalism is not under profound assault. When it is being undermined from within as well as from abroad, however, its own open and objective rules of engagement will kill it.
Democracy is the only form of governance I know that invites its enemies into the living room to sit down and expound on what’s wrong with it. That’s a wonderful thing about democracy, but it means that, when the guest in the living room is authoritarianism, democracy is at an inherent disadvantage. Since democracy grants a fair hearing to authoritarianism, but authoritarianism plays dirty, democracy will always lose unless someone champions it. It doesn’t mean shutting authoritarianism down, democracy can’t become illiberal in its own defense, but it does mean taking sides.
So for the first time in my teaching and writing career, I’m no longer “objective” and I own it. I’m pro-democracy, pro-science, pro empirical fact checking, pro-rule of law, pro-civil liberties, in fact pro-all the classical liberal values that once were the foundation of both modern liberal and conservative thinking.
It’s upset some parents of students, I lost a teaching gig I had on the side because of it, and I’m sure it’s cost us textbook adoptions — especially in states where illiberal legislatures are dictating what and how professors can teach. But the entire educational enterprise depends on the values that are under assault. If we don’t defend them we are out of business for good.
The same is true of journalism. What do we have to do to make the legacy media institutions like the Times, and to a lesser extent the WaPo, understand that they are bothsidesing their way to their own demise?
You are wrong. What you are doing is being objective. Telling the truth is objective. Unfortunately, too many people don't see it that way anymore. Now they want the truth balanced with lies.
I did put it in quotation marks, because the meaning has become so corrupted. Telling the truth IS objective but I’m talking about someone more proactive — bothering to make the affirmative case for democratic values. Students today (I’m generalizing like crazy this afternoon. Obviously not ALL students) aren’t all that persuaded by the democratic (small d) case. I tell them that I used to keep my fingers off the scale altogether and let good ideas speak for themselves. Students could weigh up the arguments and decide for themselves.
Now I tell them I am putting my thumb firmly on the scale for democracy. It seems to me that it needs all the help it can get. I’m a child of the 60s and 70s. Democracy and the values of classical liberalism have always had my back. Is it’s my turn to have theirs.
Understood! I believe a basic problem is that we no longer teach Civics. Without Civics the people don't have a base for understanding democracy and the responsibilities of being a citizen. I had several years of Civics but I'm 83 years old and that was a long time ago. Today, we need your finger on the scale because many people just don't understand why our experiment is so important.
Not only is civics not often taught (and where it is, at the college-level anyway, it is increasingly a conservative-funded project with an agenda) but where students might once have taken an American government class in college, many of them have now already taken it (a version of the college class) in high school, usually from a high school teacher, for college credit. High school teachers are just not college profs. The class they get is not the class they need and once they have bagged the college credit, they don’t take it again in college and so they essentially never learn it. It’s one of the greatest frustrations of my professional life.
Some of these so-called “dual credit” classes *are* taught by college profs — kids go to the local college or the prof teaches at the high school, but that’s the exception.
Anyway, it’s a mess and it’s not going to get better.
<<It doesn’t mean shutting authoritarianism down, democracy can’t become illiberal in its own defense, but it does mean taking sides.>>
I wonder whether, to a certain extent, it DOES mean shutting authoritarianism down. Germany is a lot tougher on authoritarians than we are -- not surprising given its history and the ensuing occupation's obsession with preventing another rise of anything like Nazism -- and it still seems to be a well-operating parliamentary democracy.
And yet, look at today’s news about Germany. It hasn’t gone away.
I’d rather see the evil ideas out where they are visible and we can keep track and deal with their consequences. I worry about the consequences of driving them underground.
I’m also worried about the consequences for the defenders of truth of silencing lies. One thing I’ve noticed in the classroom over a long career is that the culture of political correctness and later being “woke” and anti-racist and anti-hate speech and anti-what have you — while it was (mostly) incredibly well intentioned — has had the perverse effect, just as JS Mill predicted it would — of producing a generation unpracticed and unskilled in defending its truth.
If you ban the unpleasant or the downright hideous, you forget how to prosecute it. My students, by and large, are rendered silent when confronted by disgusting or just terrifying speech. We are seeing a resurgence of campus activism now against both the Gaza war and anti-semitism, but it is easily manipulated and hijacked by disinformation campaigns and it deteriorates into name calling because these kids aren’t very adept at political argument. We teach critical thinking but critical thinking in isolation of practice in confronting bad ideas and fighting disinformation isn’t going to win anybody any arguments. I think we need to win the arguments.
You raise interesting points. Have you ever debated a right winger? Their ignorance is astounding and because they are ignorant of facts and history, they believe they know everything. Hate seems to be their prime motivator and fear of anything different. I don't think you can win arguments against them. I'd like to be wrong.
Maybe I should have said “we need to have the arguments.” We won’t win most of them, that’s for sure. The environment is too toxic and people are locked too securely in their own information bubbles. In some real senses we aren’t even in the same universes with the people we are arguing with.
But it’s not for them, it’s for the rest of us.
If we don’t keep teaching kids and training them to defend democracy with ideas and words in the same way that we train them to do it in the military with drones and guns or whatever, they won’t remember WHY it’s worth doing. That’s my fear. The kids I see sneering at or cynical about democracy now are also ridiculously complacent about. They assume all the benefits as if, of course they will always have the freedoms and opportunities that come from living in a (classical) liberal system. And then they tell me that they don’t think democracy is all that great and don’t see why they shouldn’t vote for a third party or even vote for Trump to “blow it all up.” The idea that at the end of it they could wake up in a country with no meaningful freedom of speech, no cultural or artistic freedom, no academic freedom to study what they want, no ability to determine whether or when they will have a family, or what religious beliefs will be taught in their child’s school, no autonomy to make a variety of health care or consumption decisions that might impact their future fertility, certainly no guarantees freedom to live their authentic lives as they determine them to be, or to love and create a family with the partner of their choice, and, for if they are women, no financial independence or ability to buy a car or a home of their own, no ability to vote in an election where the outcome is genuinely unknown. No, they think that all the stuff they like will still be available for them and only the stuff they find inauthentic or annoying or undesirable will suddenly disappear.
What teaching them to argue and defend democracy will do it help them understand it. It will strengthen their truths. It will remind them of what is at stake. It’s not that I think that standing up for the good of the imperfect system we are so. lucky to have will change the minds of right wingers, it’s that I think it will improve the minds of everyone else.
My own mind is exhausted right now and I may not be making any sense. Apologies for my long windedness and for the millions of typos that I’m sure have slipped right by my tired eyes. I care passionately about this stuff and occasionally passion outlasts coherence. 😏. ‘Night all!!
I’ve been a Times reader since I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, and even after my family moved to the Midwest, I remained a loyal reader (and subscriber) going on more than 50 years now. The paper continues to do outstanding work, but there are days, now increasingly frequent, when I want to tear my hair out. The article you cite is but one among countless examples. How about the headline last week over an utterly deranged op-ed (that should never have been printed) by Rich Lowry – “Trump Can Win on Character”? I thought I’d somehow been redirected to “The Onion.”
As for the Dana Bash interview: horrible. Right-wing talking points dressed up as serious questions. Really, Dana? Walz lied when he said his wife used IVF when, in fact, she underwent a different medically-assisted procedure? You have 25 minutes to interview them and this is what you choose to ask? (And never mind your utter failure to push back on Trump’s fire hose of lies during the Biden-Trump debate.) Asking Harris about Trump’s blatantly racist assertion that she “happened to turn Black” out of political expediency? (I thought her dismissive response was pitch perfect.) It was gotcha journalism, plain and simple. An opportunity to learn more about what a Harris presidency would look like totally squandered.
I was particularly outraged by Bash playing “gotcha” by trying to get Kamala to say Bidenomics is a success as if that would be a huge mistake. There is a Republican ad running on cable programs mocking Harris for saying just that. What is particularly infuriating is that ad would not work if not for the media’s long running refusal to acknowledge that Bidenomics really has been an amazing success. Many of them still won’t acknowledge that Reaganomics blew up the debt with its tax cuts for the rich that were supposed to pay for themselves. They use that term in a positive way but refuse to do the same for Bidenomics.
David Rothkopf had the same reaction:
“Kamala Harris Hits It Out of the Park, CNN Not So Much
” When Harris rightly pushed back and spoke about the strengths in the economy while also smartly identifying ways she would bring down the cost of living further, Bash asked the VP, nearly sneering, if that meant Harris thought Bidenomics was…..gak…a success?”
CNN is under orders from Warner Brothers-Discovery's vastly overpaid/underperforming CEO David Zaslav - following orders from major stockholder/right wing Trump supporter John Malone - to become "more like Fox."
I’ve cone to the (admittedly uneducated) conclusion that a big part of the problem is that the national and DC press corps basically only cares about itself. Ie, Trump is good for business; let’s get really worked up about Biden or Harris not giving us the interviews *we* deserve. Watch the press go nuts if they feel a member of their own has been mistreated in any way.
They’ve become their own echo chamber of self satisfied and self appointed arbiters of history who are certain they know better than what they view as the stupid, naive, and overly partisan customers who keep them in business.
But what choice do we have? A free and independent press is crucial to a functioning democracy. Writers like you, Jay Rosen, Greg Sargent and d Josh Marshall show there are still plenty of great journalists doing a great job. They’re just drowned out by the BS flooding the zone from most of their colleagues. Amazing and depressing how similar that is to Karl Rove’s famous media strategy. I guess he won.
As a retired journalist (L.A. Times), I believe you are exactly correct, Benjamin.
Reporters care only about getting a good story and getting it on the front page and, now, getting the most clicks online. Trump provides that (truth or false equivalence be damned). Copy editors care only about a snappy headline that fits the column width (ditto).
In addition, the NYT has all but declared a vendetta against Biden and Harris for ignoring it in favor of reaching voters through other means.
Meanwhile, at the WaPo, Glenn Kessler hands out overstated Pinocchios to Harris to show "balance" with the 30,000 Trump lies he's had to record.
One wonders if these two important newspapers would have sought to find equivalence between FDR and Stalin.
Keep up the great work, Ms. Sullivan. You have the knowledge and credentials to not have self-righteous journalists write you off as a crank or partisan, as they do the rest of us.
The problem I see is that they don't hesitate to challenge Harris but they are afraid to challenge trump. Rachel Scott did challenge him and has been subject to death threats since then. So I think it's unfair to subject Harris to grueling interviews when they are afraid to do it to trump.
Notice he's afraid to go on with Nicole Wallace or Joy Reid or Lawrence O'Donnell or Rachel Maddow because he can't intimidate them. He turns to fox and cnn.
I loved that Kamala Harris didn't let Dana determine the level of engagement with her question about Trump's comment on Kamala's ethnicity. Her "same, old, tired playbook. Next question." seemed to surprise Dana. Good. It's about time someone stopped letting Trump devolve the dialogue into arguments about race or identity. In my view, she schooled the media to get serious with their questions. By refusing to stoop to Trump's level of thought, she offers us a way out of the mud-slinging that currently passes for debate. "The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better." (Richard Rohr).
It was gracious of vp harris to respond with a bit of a tired, bored chuckle. She is not letting Trump takeover the agenda, even by proxy. Excellent strategically and tactically. Watch and learn.
"What did you think of Dana Bash’s CNN interview with Kamala Harris?" I thought she did a very good job for a High School newspaper reporter interviewing her favorite band member's chief rival.
At this point, I’m very close to preferring the high school reporter. What would a random junior, prepped by a decent faculty advisor, ask these candidates with no prior knowledge of the candidates and maybe just two hours with Google to prepare? I’m intrigued to find out.
Every day lately, I’ve opened the NYT app or asked my smart speaker to play NPR, and wondered, “What have they done now?” As for your point that NPR broke the Arlington story, I distinctly remember hearing the first spot (short news story) from Arlington during an afternoon news cast. It played audio from the appearance without mentioning that candidates are not allowed to campaign there. I knew they were not because my grandparents are buried in another national cemetery, and visitors are made aware of what is appropriate. Once social media lit up with links to national cemetery guidelines, they and eventually others zeroed in on the story. (NPR still has a public editor, where the NYT as we know does not. Perhaps that was a factor.)
Happy Labor Day Margaret. I suggest that you task your class at Columbia with one very important question: How to cover Trump or perpetual intentional liars?
Perhaps the next generation of journalists, unconstrained by the old rules, customs and pressures of the current media marketplace, will find new ways, tools and media disincentives to hold Trump or anyone accountable for intentionally lying.
I may be late in the game but it’s finally become clear to me that Trump knows very well that lying is a sure-fire way to make and dominate the news. And that’s really all he cares about. The media thus rewards Trump for lying with headlines — instead of finding new ways to discourage him from lying or to hold him publicly accountable for what’s clearly a perverted media strategy.
Just reporting that Trump lied doesn’t tell the whole story and the cost of doing so to ethical public discourse, democratic values and the search for truth may be too high without more.
I admit I don’t have the answer on how to handle Trump - but I hope your students do. My wish is that there is a future Pulitzer Prize winner in your class. Good luck!
Steve Bannon taught trump that you have to fill the space with shit. When Bannon took over his first campaign, trump was dejected because his advisors wanted him to act more like a regular candidate. Bannon took him in the opposite direction and told him he had to do more of what he wants to do so. Fill the space with shit so they don't have the time or energy to rebut what you are saying.
Steve Bannon also said it’s the mainstream media that does the real damage to Democrats. He always worked to get the MSM to buy into some of his lies by having them published by his respectable-sounding Government Accountability Institute. For example Bannon’s partner at GAI, Peter Schweizer, wrote the book “Clinton Cash” which was a dishonest hit job on the Clinton Foundation and Hillary. Schweizer then got the NY Times and WaPo to sign exclusives with him to publish excerpts before the book was published. They clearly didn’t properly fact check Schweizer’s easily debunked claims before publishing them even though they knew he was Bannon’s partner and that the GAI was funded by the Mercers. Those reports did a lot of damage to Hillary’s approval ratings and started the “Crooked Hillary” storyline.
Schweizer and the GAI were also involved in peddling the Biden Ukraine slander to the media. Schweizer wrote about that in another book “Secret Empires”, then got his pal John Solomon to write about it in The Hill. Solomon wound up being fired for his role in peddling that scandal.
It infuriates me that the media hasn’t made an effort to inform people where these stories originated and how Bannon and Schweizer played the mainstream media.
The exact term Bannon used was "flood the zone with shit," but you're absolutely right. The goal was to tell so many lies that any single attempt by news media to correct one single lie would be overwhelmed by all the others. And to a great extent, it is still working nine years later.
The Harris/Walz campaign gives me much hope, but the NYT coverage of Biden (and now Harris) gave me more than a mere headache. I no longer refer to the NYT or WAPO as mainstream. They, and other similar entities, are "corporate media” - no longer holding the moral high ground of journalism.
As regards the Dana Bash interview, she followed the corporate mold covering Harris and Walz - only to be upstaged by Harris.
Let me add that the NYT coverage of Biden caused me to cancel my longtime subscription. I found their editorials and reporting repugnant. Sorry to be negative, but I felt I needed to be rid of their negative (or, more appropriately, insidious) coverage.
“well, when both sides are mad at us, we must be doing it right.” Had to laugh (and roll my eyes) at a journalism professor's social media post yesterday who defended Dana Bash;s interview questions with essentially the same comment. Such lazy reasoning!
The media coverage is disgusting. I watch a Smerconish clip with the mother-in-law of the dead soldier and she is obviously a trump supporter and he can do no wrong in her eyes. She didn't honor the sacred ground when she invited him there.
Bash's interview was equally disgusting. Rather than discuss issues, she chose to discuss right wing talking points. I used to l like Bash but she's been very disappointing.
I think Charlie Pierce had it right a couple of days ago when he suggested that the CNN staff must have had a big meeting and decided that asking some of those absurd & inane questions were the most important issues they could raise in the interview with the Vice President. I used to think Dana Bash was an excellent reporter, but then there was the debate on June 27th in which she and Jake Tapper utterly failed, and then this interview. Additionally the interview, which lasted less than 25 minutes took an hour to be shown, which was one more example of media treating serious matters as entertainment.
Agree, Margaret, about the Times repeated “both-sidism.” Also worth noting is how in Dana Bash’s recent interview of Harris and Walz almost all her questions were based on Trump’s (often false) narrative. Walz a liar because he mis-spoke and one line, and now she questions his support of the military. Likewise Harris’s flip flopping. Are you kidding me? Have they looked at Trump’s and Vance’s constant change in tune? I had to stop watching it. Just keep going….
Good morning, Margaret. Not much gives me hope about U.S. corporate media. There are a few bright spots here and there -- Jennifer Rubin's column writing for the Washington Post comes to mind -- but their political coverage is mostly a wasteland of both-siderism. This has been true at the Times for decades, as has been the tendency of their political reporters to dismiss all criticism, no matter how valid, as motivated by partisanship or by an inability by the reader to understand "what we do here at the Times." I don't know how you get them to "snap out of it" other than a Cher-esque slap to the face. (For those who don't know, that's a reference to the movie "Moonstruck.")
I thought Dana Bash's interview of VP Harris was worth a "D" at best. She constructed right-wing talking points as questions and expected serious responses. Finally, even Harris wasn't having it. On the "question" regarding her race, she dismissed the whole premise as nonsense, which apparently caused the entire Politico staff to have kittens simultaneously. I wish Harris and Walz would respond to more such stupid questions in exactly the same way. I think it would be instructive to those members of the public who don't understand just how bad the press corps has gotten.
I love the cartoon you included in your essay! Cartoonists seem to understand better what is going on and get it across more effectively than many of the article written in MSM.
I actually wrote a letter to the Editors of the NYT pointing out how bad their headlines were and how there must be a Trumpie in Corporate who loves his Cult of Personality. I told them what I was seeing was that the tone of a lot of the pieces being published did not support Democracy and the Rule of Law and how foolish. Were they thinking that because they are the “powerful” NYT, that they could control Trump and his minions? I also told them that the only reason I still got the paper was because they had some good journalists/reporters who do the in-depth stories and take a lot of risk and I do want to support them.
Thank you, Margaret, for staying on this issue! I'm sure it feels like a hopeless quest at times, but there are multitudes who agree with you!
What arguments would The Times find persuasive, given that they don't want to change and deflect valid criticism? How about this one? They're a lot like Trump: They've risen to dominance in their media world and wield power in a way that serves their interests. They're blind to the moral consequences of their coverage on the public and our democracy. They're cognitively compromised by not remembering their excellent reporting and editorials on Trump's unfitness to be president. They refuse to look at themselves and admit mistakes. They're afraid of losing their high status and think the only way to keep it is to keep doubling down on what they're doing...The pressure to change keeps building and will at some point blow!
Excellent article, Margaret! Maybe this question cuts a little too close for you, so I will understand if you delete it.
Here's what I don't get: Why is the NYT treated like this Faberge egg that can never be touched let alone criticized? Why all the groupthink? Why -must- other papers emulate the NYT in terms of what stories to cover and the language used in reporting?
A variety of philosophies, writing styles and attitudes would result in healthier journalism overall. It's also good business! Any decent editor should remember his/her history: Remember when Detroit automakers became too complacent in the 80's? Newcomers from abroad handed the Big Three their lunch! Is something similar happening within Big Journalism now?
I’m a political science prof and American government textbook author. I face the same issues — enormous industry pressure to normalize and bothsides the hell out of what we are seeing play out before our eyes.
I refuse — I even changed a textbook intro to say while we always tried to be even-handed as possible, our book is now profoundly biased. In the past we have always been relentlessly objective and have consciously bothsidesed what we taught so that students had a “blank slate” to make their own judgments and discover their own views.
But that kind of objectivity is a luxury of “normal times,” when the paradigm of classical liberalism is not under profound assault. When it is being undermined from within as well as from abroad, however, its own open and objective rules of engagement will kill it.
Democracy is the only form of governance I know that invites its enemies into the living room to sit down and expound on what’s wrong with it. That’s a wonderful thing about democracy, but it means that, when the guest in the living room is authoritarianism, democracy is at an inherent disadvantage. Since democracy grants a fair hearing to authoritarianism, but authoritarianism plays dirty, democracy will always lose unless someone champions it. It doesn’t mean shutting authoritarianism down, democracy can’t become illiberal in its own defense, but it does mean taking sides.
So for the first time in my teaching and writing career, I’m no longer “objective” and I own it. I’m pro-democracy, pro-science, pro empirical fact checking, pro-rule of law, pro-civil liberties, in fact pro-all the classical liberal values that once were the foundation of both modern liberal and conservative thinking.
It’s upset some parents of students, I lost a teaching gig I had on the side because of it, and I’m sure it’s cost us textbook adoptions — especially in states where illiberal legislatures are dictating what and how professors can teach. But the entire educational enterprise depends on the values that are under assault. If we don’t defend them we are out of business for good.
The same is true of journalism. What do we have to do to make the legacy media institutions like the Times, and to a lesser extent the WaPo, understand that they are bothsidesing their way to their own demise?
You are wrong. What you are doing is being objective. Telling the truth is objective. Unfortunately, too many people don't see it that way anymore. Now they want the truth balanced with lies.
I did put it in quotation marks, because the meaning has become so corrupted. Telling the truth IS objective but I’m talking about someone more proactive — bothering to make the affirmative case for democratic values. Students today (I’m generalizing like crazy this afternoon. Obviously not ALL students) aren’t all that persuaded by the democratic (small d) case. I tell them that I used to keep my fingers off the scale altogether and let good ideas speak for themselves. Students could weigh up the arguments and decide for themselves.
Now I tell them I am putting my thumb firmly on the scale for democracy. It seems to me that it needs all the help it can get. I’m a child of the 60s and 70s. Democracy and the values of classical liberalism have always had my back. Is it’s my turn to have theirs.
Understood! I believe a basic problem is that we no longer teach Civics. Without Civics the people don't have a base for understanding democracy and the responsibilities of being a citizen. I had several years of Civics but I'm 83 years old and that was a long time ago. Today, we need your finger on the scale because many people just don't understand why our experiment is so important.
Not only is civics not often taught (and where it is, at the college-level anyway, it is increasingly a conservative-funded project with an agenda) but where students might once have taken an American government class in college, many of them have now already taken it (a version of the college class) in high school, usually from a high school teacher, for college credit. High school teachers are just not college profs. The class they get is not the class they need and once they have bagged the college credit, they don’t take it again in college and so they essentially never learn it. It’s one of the greatest frustrations of my professional life.
Some of these so-called “dual credit” classes *are* taught by college profs — kids go to the local college or the prof teaches at the high school, but that’s the exception.
Anyway, it’s a mess and it’s not going to get better.
Great point!!!
<<It doesn’t mean shutting authoritarianism down, democracy can’t become illiberal in its own defense, but it does mean taking sides.>>
I wonder whether, to a certain extent, it DOES mean shutting authoritarianism down. Germany is a lot tougher on authoritarians than we are -- not surprising given its history and the ensuing occupation's obsession with preventing another rise of anything like Nazism -- and it still seems to be a well-operating parliamentary democracy.
And yet, look at today’s news about Germany. It hasn’t gone away.
I’d rather see the evil ideas out where they are visible and we can keep track and deal with their consequences. I worry about the consequences of driving them underground.
I’m also worried about the consequences for the defenders of truth of silencing lies. One thing I’ve noticed in the classroom over a long career is that the culture of political correctness and later being “woke” and anti-racist and anti-hate speech and anti-what have you — while it was (mostly) incredibly well intentioned — has had the perverse effect, just as JS Mill predicted it would — of producing a generation unpracticed and unskilled in defending its truth.
If you ban the unpleasant or the downright hideous, you forget how to prosecute it. My students, by and large, are rendered silent when confronted by disgusting or just terrifying speech. We are seeing a resurgence of campus activism now against both the Gaza war and anti-semitism, but it is easily manipulated and hijacked by disinformation campaigns and it deteriorates into name calling because these kids aren’t very adept at political argument. We teach critical thinking but critical thinking in isolation of practice in confronting bad ideas and fighting disinformation isn’t going to win anybody any arguments. I think we need to win the arguments.
You raise interesting points. Have you ever debated a right winger? Their ignorance is astounding and because they are ignorant of facts and history, they believe they know everything. Hate seems to be their prime motivator and fear of anything different. I don't think you can win arguments against them. I'd like to be wrong.
Maybe I should have said “we need to have the arguments.” We won’t win most of them, that’s for sure. The environment is too toxic and people are locked too securely in their own information bubbles. In some real senses we aren’t even in the same universes with the people we are arguing with.
But it’s not for them, it’s for the rest of us.
If we don’t keep teaching kids and training them to defend democracy with ideas and words in the same way that we train them to do it in the military with drones and guns or whatever, they won’t remember WHY it’s worth doing. That’s my fear. The kids I see sneering at or cynical about democracy now are also ridiculously complacent about. They assume all the benefits as if, of course they will always have the freedoms and opportunities that come from living in a (classical) liberal system. And then they tell me that they don’t think democracy is all that great and don’t see why they shouldn’t vote for a third party or even vote for Trump to “blow it all up.” The idea that at the end of it they could wake up in a country with no meaningful freedom of speech, no cultural or artistic freedom, no academic freedom to study what they want, no ability to determine whether or when they will have a family, or what religious beliefs will be taught in their child’s school, no autonomy to make a variety of health care or consumption decisions that might impact their future fertility, certainly no guarantees freedom to live their authentic lives as they determine them to be, or to love and create a family with the partner of their choice, and, for if they are women, no financial independence or ability to buy a car or a home of their own, no ability to vote in an election where the outcome is genuinely unknown. No, they think that all the stuff they like will still be available for them and only the stuff they find inauthentic or annoying or undesirable will suddenly disappear.
What teaching them to argue and defend democracy will do it help them understand it. It will strengthen their truths. It will remind them of what is at stake. It’s not that I think that standing up for the good of the imperfect system we are so. lucky to have will change the minds of right wingers, it’s that I think it will improve the minds of everyone else.
My own mind is exhausted right now and I may not be making any sense. Apologies for my long windedness and for the millions of typos that I’m sure have slipped right by my tired eyes. I care passionately about this stuff and occasionally passion outlasts coherence. 😏. ‘Night all!!
I’ve been a Times reader since I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, and even after my family moved to the Midwest, I remained a loyal reader (and subscriber) going on more than 50 years now. The paper continues to do outstanding work, but there are days, now increasingly frequent, when I want to tear my hair out. The article you cite is but one among countless examples. How about the headline last week over an utterly deranged op-ed (that should never have been printed) by Rich Lowry – “Trump Can Win on Character”? I thought I’d somehow been redirected to “The Onion.”
As for the Dana Bash interview: horrible. Right-wing talking points dressed up as serious questions. Really, Dana? Walz lied when he said his wife used IVF when, in fact, she underwent a different medically-assisted procedure? You have 25 minutes to interview them and this is what you choose to ask? (And never mind your utter failure to push back on Trump’s fire hose of lies during the Biden-Trump debate.) Asking Harris about Trump’s blatantly racist assertion that she “happened to turn Black” out of political expediency? (I thought her dismissive response was pitch perfect.) It was gotcha journalism, plain and simple. An opportunity to learn more about what a Harris presidency would look like totally squandered.
I was particularly outraged by Bash playing “gotcha” by trying to get Kamala to say Bidenomics is a success as if that would be a huge mistake. There is a Republican ad running on cable programs mocking Harris for saying just that. What is particularly infuriating is that ad would not work if not for the media’s long running refusal to acknowledge that Bidenomics really has been an amazing success. Many of them still won’t acknowledge that Reaganomics blew up the debt with its tax cuts for the rich that were supposed to pay for themselves. They use that term in a positive way but refuse to do the same for Bidenomics.
David Rothkopf had the same reaction:
“Kamala Harris Hits It Out of the Park, CNN Not So Much
” When Harris rightly pushed back and spoke about the strengths in the economy while also smartly identifying ways she would bring down the cost of living further, Bash asked the VP, nearly sneering, if that meant Harris thought Bidenomics was…..gak…a success?”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kamala-harris-hits-it-out-of-the-park-cnn-not-so-much?ref=author
CNN is under orders from Warner Brothers-Discovery's vastly overpaid/underperforming CEO David Zaslav - following orders from major stockholder/right wing Trump supporter John Malone - to become "more like Fox."
Follow. The. Money.
I’ve cone to the (admittedly uneducated) conclusion that a big part of the problem is that the national and DC press corps basically only cares about itself. Ie, Trump is good for business; let’s get really worked up about Biden or Harris not giving us the interviews *we* deserve. Watch the press go nuts if they feel a member of their own has been mistreated in any way.
They’ve become their own echo chamber of self satisfied and self appointed arbiters of history who are certain they know better than what they view as the stupid, naive, and overly partisan customers who keep them in business.
But what choice do we have? A free and independent press is crucial to a functioning democracy. Writers like you, Jay Rosen, Greg Sargent and d Josh Marshall show there are still plenty of great journalists doing a great job. They’re just drowned out by the BS flooding the zone from most of their colleagues. Amazing and depressing how similar that is to Karl Rove’s famous media strategy. I guess he won.
As a retired journalist (L.A. Times), I believe you are exactly correct, Benjamin.
Reporters care only about getting a good story and getting it on the front page and, now, getting the most clicks online. Trump provides that (truth or false equivalence be damned). Copy editors care only about a snappy headline that fits the column width (ditto).
In addition, the NYT has all but declared a vendetta against Biden and Harris for ignoring it in favor of reaching voters through other means.
Meanwhile, at the WaPo, Glenn Kessler hands out overstated Pinocchios to Harris to show "balance" with the 30,000 Trump lies he's had to record.
One wonders if these two important newspapers would have sought to find equivalence between FDR and Stalin.
Keep up the great work, Ms. Sullivan. You have the knowledge and credentials to not have self-righteous journalists write you off as a crank or partisan, as they do the rest of us.
The problem I see is that they don't hesitate to challenge Harris but they are afraid to challenge trump. Rachel Scott did challenge him and has been subject to death threats since then. So I think it's unfair to subject Harris to grueling interviews when they are afraid to do it to trump.
Notice he's afraid to go on with Nicole Wallace or Joy Reid or Lawrence O'Donnell or Rachel Maddow because he can't intimidate them. He turns to fox and cnn.
I loved that Kamala Harris didn't let Dana determine the level of engagement with her question about Trump's comment on Kamala's ethnicity. Her "same, old, tired playbook. Next question." seemed to surprise Dana. Good. It's about time someone stopped letting Trump devolve the dialogue into arguments about race or identity. In my view, she schooled the media to get serious with their questions. By refusing to stoop to Trump's level of thought, she offers us a way out of the mud-slinging that currently passes for debate. "The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better." (Richard Rohr).
It was gracious of vp harris to respond with a bit of a tired, bored chuckle. She is not letting Trump takeover the agenda, even by proxy. Excellent strategically and tactically. Watch and learn.
"What did you think of Dana Bash’s CNN interview with Kamala Harris?" I thought she did a very good job for a High School newspaper reporter interviewing her favorite band member's chief rival.
At this point, I’m very close to preferring the high school reporter. What would a random junior, prepped by a decent faculty advisor, ask these candidates with no prior knowledge of the candidates and maybe just two hours with Google to prepare? I’m intrigued to find out.
Every day lately, I’ve opened the NYT app or asked my smart speaker to play NPR, and wondered, “What have they done now?” As for your point that NPR broke the Arlington story, I distinctly remember hearing the first spot (short news story) from Arlington during an afternoon news cast. It played audio from the appearance without mentioning that candidates are not allowed to campaign there. I knew they were not because my grandparents are buried in another national cemetery, and visitors are made aware of what is appropriate. Once social media lit up with links to national cemetery guidelines, they and eventually others zeroed in on the story. (NPR still has a public editor, where the NYT as we know does not. Perhaps that was a factor.)
Happy Labor Day Margaret. I suggest that you task your class at Columbia with one very important question: How to cover Trump or perpetual intentional liars?
Perhaps the next generation of journalists, unconstrained by the old rules, customs and pressures of the current media marketplace, will find new ways, tools and media disincentives to hold Trump or anyone accountable for intentionally lying.
I may be late in the game but it’s finally become clear to me that Trump knows very well that lying is a sure-fire way to make and dominate the news. And that’s really all he cares about. The media thus rewards Trump for lying with headlines — instead of finding new ways to discourage him from lying or to hold him publicly accountable for what’s clearly a perverted media strategy.
Just reporting that Trump lied doesn’t tell the whole story and the cost of doing so to ethical public discourse, democratic values and the search for truth may be too high without more.
I admit I don’t have the answer on how to handle Trump - but I hope your students do. My wish is that there is a future Pulitzer Prize winner in your class. Good luck!
Thanks so much!
Steve Bannon taught trump that you have to fill the space with shit. When Bannon took over his first campaign, trump was dejected because his advisors wanted him to act more like a regular candidate. Bannon took him in the opposite direction and told him he had to do more of what he wants to do so. Fill the space with shit so they don't have the time or energy to rebut what you are saying.
Steve Bannon also said it’s the mainstream media that does the real damage to Democrats. He always worked to get the MSM to buy into some of his lies by having them published by his respectable-sounding Government Accountability Institute. For example Bannon’s partner at GAI, Peter Schweizer, wrote the book “Clinton Cash” which was a dishonest hit job on the Clinton Foundation and Hillary. Schweizer then got the NY Times and WaPo to sign exclusives with him to publish excerpts before the book was published. They clearly didn’t properly fact check Schweizer’s easily debunked claims before publishing them even though they knew he was Bannon’s partner and that the GAI was funded by the Mercers. Those reports did a lot of damage to Hillary’s approval ratings and started the “Crooked Hillary” storyline.
Schweizer and the GAI were also involved in peddling the Biden Ukraine slander to the media. Schweizer wrote about that in another book “Secret Empires”, then got his pal John Solomon to write about it in The Hill. Solomon wound up being fired for his role in peddling that scandal.
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/timeline-how-trump-allies-and-propagandists-teamed-try-smear-biden-over-ukraine
It infuriates me that the media hasn’t made an effort to inform people where these stories originated and how Bannon and Schweizer played the mainstream media.
The exact term Bannon used was "flood the zone with shit," but you're absolutely right. The goal was to tell so many lies that any single attempt by news media to correct one single lie would be overwhelmed by all the others. And to a great extent, it is still working nine years later.
The Harris/Walz campaign gives me much hope, but the NYT coverage of Biden (and now Harris) gave me more than a mere headache. I no longer refer to the NYT or WAPO as mainstream. They, and other similar entities, are "corporate media” - no longer holding the moral high ground of journalism.
As regards the Dana Bash interview, she followed the corporate mold covering Harris and Walz - only to be upstaged by Harris.
Let me add that the NYT coverage of Biden caused me to cancel my longtime subscription. I found their editorials and reporting repugnant. Sorry to be negative, but I felt I needed to be rid of their negative (or, more appropriately, insidious) coverage.
“well, when both sides are mad at us, we must be doing it right.” Had to laugh (and roll my eyes) at a journalism professor's social media post yesterday who defended Dana Bash;s interview questions with essentially the same comment. Such lazy reasoning!
The media coverage is disgusting. I watch a Smerconish clip with the mother-in-law of the dead soldier and she is obviously a trump supporter and he can do no wrong in her eyes. She didn't honor the sacred ground when she invited him there.
Bash's interview was equally disgusting. Rather than discuss issues, she chose to discuss right wing talking points. I used to l like Bash but she's been very disappointing.
I read, re Bash's interview, that all be four of the questions she asked were based on GOP talking points.
Same thing that I read. It's disgusting that she plays their part so well.
I think Charlie Pierce had it right a couple of days ago when he suggested that the CNN staff must have had a big meeting and decided that asking some of those absurd & inane questions were the most important issues they could raise in the interview with the Vice President. I used to think Dana Bash was an excellent reporter, but then there was the debate on June 27th in which she and Jake Tapper utterly failed, and then this interview. Additionally the interview, which lasted less than 25 minutes took an hour to be shown, which was one more example of media treating serious matters as entertainment.
Agree, Margaret, about the Times repeated “both-sidism.” Also worth noting is how in Dana Bash’s recent interview of Harris and Walz almost all her questions were based on Trump’s (often false) narrative. Walz a liar because he mis-spoke and one line, and now she questions his support of the military. Likewise Harris’s flip flopping. Are you kidding me? Have they looked at Trump’s and Vance’s constant change in tune? I had to stop watching it. Just keep going….
Good morning, Margaret. Not much gives me hope about U.S. corporate media. There are a few bright spots here and there -- Jennifer Rubin's column writing for the Washington Post comes to mind -- but their political coverage is mostly a wasteland of both-siderism. This has been true at the Times for decades, as has been the tendency of their political reporters to dismiss all criticism, no matter how valid, as motivated by partisanship or by an inability by the reader to understand "what we do here at the Times." I don't know how you get them to "snap out of it" other than a Cher-esque slap to the face. (For those who don't know, that's a reference to the movie "Moonstruck.")
I thought Dana Bash's interview of VP Harris was worth a "D" at best. She constructed right-wing talking points as questions and expected serious responses. Finally, even Harris wasn't having it. On the "question" regarding her race, she dismissed the whole premise as nonsense, which apparently caused the entire Politico staff to have kittens simultaneously. I wish Harris and Walz would respond to more such stupid questions in exactly the same way. I think it would be instructive to those members of the public who don't understand just how bad the press corps has gotten.
I love the cartoon you included in your essay! Cartoonists seem to understand better what is going on and get it across more effectively than many of the article written in MSM.
I actually wrote a letter to the Editors of the NYT pointing out how bad their headlines were and how there must be a Trumpie in Corporate who loves his Cult of Personality. I told them what I was seeing was that the tone of a lot of the pieces being published did not support Democracy and the Rule of Law and how foolish. Were they thinking that because they are the “powerful” NYT, that they could control Trump and his minions? I also told them that the only reason I still got the paper was because they had some good journalists/reporters who do the in-depth stories and take a lot of risk and I do want to support them.
Thank you, Margaret, for staying on this issue! I'm sure it feels like a hopeless quest at times, but there are multitudes who agree with you!
What arguments would The Times find persuasive, given that they don't want to change and deflect valid criticism? How about this one? They're a lot like Trump: They've risen to dominance in their media world and wield power in a way that serves their interests. They're blind to the moral consequences of their coverage on the public and our democracy. They're cognitively compromised by not remembering their excellent reporting and editorials on Trump's unfitness to be president. They refuse to look at themselves and admit mistakes. They're afraid of losing their high status and think the only way to keep it is to keep doubling down on what they're doing...The pressure to change keeps building and will at some point blow!
Thanks for these observations.
Excellent article, Margaret! Maybe this question cuts a little too close for you, so I will understand if you delete it.
Here's what I don't get: Why is the NYT treated like this Faberge egg that can never be touched let alone criticized? Why all the groupthink? Why -must- other papers emulate the NYT in terms of what stories to cover and the language used in reporting?
A variety of philosophies, writing styles and attitudes would result in healthier journalism overall. It's also good business! Any decent editor should remember his/her history: Remember when Detroit automakers became too complacent in the 80's? Newcomers from abroad handed the Big Three their lunch! Is something similar happening within Big Journalism now?
I wish, but nobody is eating the Times's lunch right now. Its combined print and online circulation is extremely healthy.