Defensive caution can’t compete with right-wing propaganda

Is it so hard for journalists to clearly state that the Trump administration is lying?

There’s a line from a Yeats poem that keeps going through my head.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

A memorial for Alex Pretti — an ICU nurse at a VA medical center — on Sunday in Minneapolis, after immigration officers fatally shot Pretti the day before. Federal officials have consistently lied about the circumstances of the shooting since / Getty Images

I thought about it all weekend when I examined the media coverage of the latest horror in Minneapolis, the shocking killing by federal agents of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti.

The right-wing media— led by Fox News, as always — was immediately spilling out its propaganda with, yes, passionate intensity. The reality-based press proceeded with an overabundance of caution and, at times, the willingness to hand a megaphone to liars.

A few hours after the shooting, I watched Fox’s coverage for as long as I could stand it, and checked other right-wing sites.

The conversation was about “self-defense” by ICE and about the victim as an armed and dangerous man who — according to the feds — was about to wreak havoc and massacre well-intentioned law enforcers.

Some right-wing media sites, quoting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, were even calling the victim a “domestic terrorist.”

Yes, the propaganda was in full swing. The Trump administration really couldn’t ask for more.

Fox’s “primary purpose is to explain to viewers why it is good that masked agents of the state are executing people on the street,” Matt Gertz of Media Matters wrote.

“Network commentators repeatedly went above and beyond even the excuses DHS put out as they sought to smear Pretti, valorize his killers and justify further state executions that seem all but inevitable,” he wrote.

Meanwhile at 1 p.m. on Sunday, here was a major headline at the top of the New York Times site, as part of its live updates. “State Seeks Access to Evidence as Federal Officials Blame Shooting Victim.”

The headline magnified the statements of federal officials, even as the Times knew better because its journalists had done their own detailed analysis.

The former (celebrated) New York Times Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse, wrote to me about it, seeing this an example of the “both sides” travesty that treats lies and truth as equally deserving of attention.

“What’s sad,” Greenhouse wrote, “is that the Times reporting has been superb and precisely to the point, a fact that’s obscured by the headline.” She pointed out a Washington Post headline at the same time of day, praising it for being much more direct: “Federal agents secured gun from Minnesota man before fatal shooting, videos show.”

The Wall Street Journal did better with its straightforward headline: “Videos of Fatal Shooting of Alex Pretti Contradict U.S. Account in Minneapolis.”

A Times apologist might say, well, headlines on the live blog were changing all day long and that was just a bad example. But in print on Sunday morning, the extremely cautious sub-headline on the paper’s lead news story was a variation on this theme: “Videos Seem to Counter Federal Account of a Struggle in Minneapolis.”

The cover of the New York Times from Sunday / frontpages.com

One longtime Times reader from Canada, Michael Benedict, wrote to journalists at the Times, making a similar point about the story itself. “You write ‘even as videos appeared to directly contradict their account.’ (Benedict, a sharp observer, is a former editor at Maclean’s, the Canadian news magazine.)

“Appeared to? Really???” Benedict wrote. “Later, you correct yourself when you write: “Their accounts directly contradict video evidence of the encounter.”

So what is the reader to make of this “appeared to” and “directly contradict” distinction, Benedict demanded, adding, “You know the answer, so please tell it like it is, not as a two-sided story.”

Overall, I was appreciative of the first-day Times reporting, and that done by the Washington Post, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal — all of which did their own analyses of multiple bystander videos. These analyses contradict the Trump administration’s full-on propaganda campaign, so ably assisted by Fox and others.

In the early hours, when I wanted to know what the hell had happened — without the misleading spin from Noem and others, including Trump himself — I was grateful for the efforts of fact-based journalism.

And I do understand why they want to be cautious and not overstate their findings. But I also think about the primary mission of informing the public clearly in real time, when people are searching for answers.

If the analyses do indeed “directly contradict” the government’s claims, then say so — without fear or favor, as the motto goes.

The front-page print story itself was well-reported, including this compelling third paragraph:

“The video footage shows the confrontation apparently began when Mr. Pretti stepped between a woman and an agent who was pepper spraying her. Other agents then pepper sprayed Mr. Pretti, who was holding a phone in one hand and nothing in the other, and pulled him to the ground. His concealed weapon was found only after agents restrained and took Mr. Pretti to the ground.” It continues: “Then at least 10 shots appear to have been fired at him by the agents within five seconds…”

As so often happens, the headline fails the story. And the reader.

My takeaway:

With what amounts to civil war raging in the United States, we desperately need clear, fearless truth-telling that doesn’t pull its punches and doesn’t hand a megaphone to lies and propaganda in the name of supposed fairness.

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Readers, how are you doing? How are you responding? And what are you seeing in the media coverage that is helpful or maddening? Let me know in the comments, which I always read with great interest — even if I respond only to a few. Thank you very much for reading, commenting and caring about these issues.

I feel sick about what’s happening in America’s streets and want to do whatever I can to make a positive difference. I don’t know if it will help but I’m going to keep pointing out the good, the bad and the ugly in the media because I’m convinced that we need the fact-based truth more than ever.

Finally, a special word of thanks to those of you who decided to become paid subscribers over the past week. As I noted, only about 4 percent of total subscribers to this newsletter are paid subscribers, and that’s a challenge since I very much want to keep the paywall down. I appreciate the generosity of spirit expressed by two new paid subscribers:

My background: I am a Lackawanna, NY native who started my career as a summer intern at the Buffalo News, my hometown daily. After years as a reporter and editor, I was named the paper’s first woman editor in chief in 1999, and ran the 200-person newsroom for almost 13 years. Starting in 2012, I served as the first woman “public editor” of the New York Times — an internal media critic and reader representative — and later was the media columnist for the Washington Post. These days, I write here on Substack, as well as for the Guardian US. I’ve also written two books, taught journalism ethics, and won a few awards, including three for defending First Amendment principles.

The purpose of ‘American Crisis’: My aim is to use this newsletter (it started as a podcast in 2023) to push for the kind of journalism we need for our democracy to function — journalism that is accurate, fair, mission-driven and public-spirited. That means that I point out the media’s flaws and failures when necessary.

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