presswatchers--2020-06-05--This powerful protest movement deserves more what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it journalism from the p

This powerful protest movement deserves more what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it journalism from the press

The people pouring into the streets in cities across the nation to protest police brutality and systemic racism are passionately and powerfully calling for change .
The violence of the law-enforcement response to these almost entirely peaceful demonstrations has turned into a major story in itself , only adding to the moral force of the protesters ’ message .
The spectacles understandably catch the eye .
But journalists covering the protests shouldn ’ t just be watching , they should be listening .
And they should be taking the protesters ’ message straight to officials in a position to respond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officials intend to do about it .
Journalists have access to the powerful in way that protesters don ’ t .
This is our moral obligation .
This is our calling .
Unfortunately , the first instinct for too many political reporters , is to just ask the president .
But asking Donald Trump or anyone else in his administration what they ’ re going to do to increase racial justice is no use at all .
They ’ ll lie , inflame , or both .
Trump ’ s only interest right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ further dividing the country to rile up his base .
The one time he addressed the George Floyd killing at any length , his main message was that Floyd ’ s memory was “ being dishonored by rioters , looters , and anarchists.
” He revoltingly endorsed the view that protesters are actually terrorists .
On Friday , he revoltingly suggested that Floyd – the black man whose life was casually snuffed out by a police officer as he begged for breath , the man whose death launched this powerful , passionate movement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” and celebrating slightly reduced unemployment numbers .
Donald Trump has no clue , no empathy , no sense of decency .
Historically , the U.S. attorney general would take the lead here .
The Department of Justice used to be in the business of investigating and forcefully addressing not only individual acts of police misconduct but systemic patterns and practices .
This often led to consent decrees demanding wholesale changes in police conduct , along with independent monitoring and federal court enforcement .
In the Trump era , however , individual cops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” but police departments can do no wrong .
And as far as William Barr is concerned , it ’ s evidently protesters – especially those who oppose fascism — who deserve to be punished , not the police .
What about Congress ?
Well , Senate Republicans are as usual marching in lockstep behind Trump and have exactly nothing of value to say .
House Democrats – when they eventually come back to town – will inevitably pass a few bills that would make changes around the margins .
But then they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight .
What ’ s the point of talking to any of them ?
Look to the states The moral center of this country can not be said to reside in Washington these days .
All we have here is chaos .
So when it comes to police brutality and racism , as with so many other important issues these days , if there is an answer , it lies outside Washington .
And as it happens , Trump ’ s vast malfeasance regarding the coronavirus and his ongoing attempts to dump his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation ’ s governors relevant again .
Many governors have also started making themselves more available to the press .
( And thanks to a wonderful news resource , the automated transcription of many news events by the AI-transcription company Rev , their public statements are more accessible than ever . )
Some governors are taking action .
Minnesota ’ s Democratic governor , Tim Walz , said on Tuesday said the Floyd killing would be an “ inflection point ” for the state , and by Friday , the state ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department and got the department to ban the use of chokeholds and to require police to report and intervene anytime they see an unauthorized use of force by another officer .
Democratic New York Gov .
Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday , acknowledged that Floyd ’ s death was “ not an isolated instance.
” He continued : It goes back to Rodney King and Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima and Eric Garner and cases just like it all across this country .
And at one point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ I can ’ t believe this is still going on after all of this time.
” Rightful outrage , and by and large , the protesters have been peaceful .
They ’ re upset , they ’ re angry , yes , but they have not been violent .
They have been peaceful protests .
And what do they want ?
They want overdue reforms .
They want reforms that should have been done 30 , 40 , 50 years ago .
They want America to be better .
On Friday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Name ” reform agenda , expected to pass the legislature next week , which includes more transparency for disciplinary records and a ban on chokeholds .
That ’ s a start .
But reporters should be relentless in pressing these and other governors to respond to the protest movement ’ s message .
One immediate concern should be police response to the protests themselves .
“ Rioting police , ” as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie described them , should be held to account .
Governors need to push for less militaristic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of de-escalation rather than incitement .
And they need to stress that the government has a solemn obligation to protect the First Amendment rights of the protesters .
They should demand an end to journalists being attacked by the police .
As far as policing in general goes , states could make enormous improvements when it comes to training , adopting detailed and modern use of force standards , and banning of specific tactics .
They could eliminate special layers of due process protections for police officers , and make police disciplinary records @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Ohio on Tuesday committed to working with the General Assembly to set up a state licensing board that could certify and decertify police officers on account of their conduct .
That could have powerful ramifications .
States could refuse – indeed , give back – surplus military equipment .
They could put in place strong accountability and review mechanisms , including independent oversight commissions .
And states could restructure payouts for police misconduct so that departments feel more pressure to limit it .
Cities , of course , set a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Former president Barack Obama has called on mayors and city council members to pledge to introduce common-sense limits on police use of force , complete with a handy eight-point checklist reporters can use to hold them accountable .
That list calls for requiring officers to de-escalate situations where possible ; prohibiting maneuvers that cut off oxygen or blood flow ; requiring officers to intervene , stop and report excessive or unnecessary force used by other officers ; ordering officers not to shoot at moving vehicles ; limiting the types of force and weapons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ specific cases ; and so on .
George Floyd ’ s unbearable death , the flood of heartbroken and angry protesters , and the unapologetically and seemingly endlessly violent response by the police – all coming at a time of unprecedented strain to our society , our democracy , our sense of well-being , and our faith in our leaders – have put incredible demands on the nation ’ s journalists simply to tell the stories .
But we must also demand responses from those in a position to make things better .

The people pouring into the streets in cities across the nation to protest police brutality and systemic racism are passionately and powerfully calling for change. The violence of the law-enforcement response to these almost entirely peaceful demonstrations has turned into a major story in itself, only adding to the moral force of the protesters’ message.
The spectacles understandably catch the eye. But journalists covering the protests shouldn’t just be watching, they should be listening. And they should be taking the protesters’ message straight to officials in a position to respond — and demanding to know what those officials intend to do about it.
Journalists have access to the powerful in way that protesters don’t. This is our moral obligation. This is our calling.
Unfortunately, the first instinct for too many political reporters, is to just ask the president. But asking Donald Trump or anyone else in his administration what they’re going to do to increase racial justice is no use at all. They’ll lie, inflame, or both. Trump’s only interest right now is in fluffing himself up and further dividing the country to rile up his base. The one time he addressed the George Floyd killing at any length, his main message was that Floyd’s memory was “being dishonored by rioters, looters, and anarchists.” He revoltingly endorsed the view that protesters are actually terrorists.
On Friday, he revoltingly suggested that Floyd – the black man whose life was casually snuffed out by a police officer as he begged for breath, the man whose death launched this powerful, passionate movement – was “looking down right now” and celebrating slightly reduced unemployment numbers. Donald Trump has no clue, no empathy, no sense of decency.
Historically, the U.S. attorney general would take the lead here. The Department of Justice used to be in the business of investigating and forcefully addressing not only individual acts of police misconduct but systemic patterns and practices. This often led to consent decrees demanding wholesale changes in police conduct, along with independent monitoring and federal court enforcement. In the Trump era, however, individual cops can occasionally be “bad apples,” but police departments can do no wrong. And as far as William Barr is concerned, it’s evidently protesters – especially those who oppose fascism — who deserve to be punished, not the police.
What about Congress? Well, Senate Republicans are as usual marching in lockstep behind Trump and have exactly nothing of value to say. House Democrats – when they eventually come back to town – will inevitably pass a few bills that would make changes around the margins. But then they’ll let them die without a fight. What’s the point of talking to any of them?
Look to the states
The moral center of this country cannot be said to reside in Washington these days. All we have here is chaos.
So when it comes to police brutality and racism, as with so many other important issues these days, if there is an answer, it lies outside Washington.
And as it happens, Trump’s vast malfeasance regarding the coronavirus and his ongoing attempts to dump his responsibility on the states have made the nation’s governors relevant again.
Federalism lives.
Many governors have also started making themselves more available to the press. (And thanks to a wonderful news resource, the automated transcription of many news events by the AI-transcription company Rev, their public statements are more accessible than ever.)
Some governors are taking action. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, said on Tuesday said the Floyd killing would be an “inflection point” for the state, and by Friday, the state’s Department of Human Rights had launched a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department and got the department to ban the use of chokeholds and to require police to report and intervene anytime they see an unauthorized use of force by another officer.
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, acknowledged that Floyd’s death was “not an isolated instance.” He continued:
It goes back to Rodney King and Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima and Eric Garner and cases just like it all across this country. And at one point, enough is enough and people say, “I can’t believe this is still going on after all of this time.” Rightful outrage, and by and large, the protesters have been peaceful. They’re upset, they’re angry, yes, but they have not been violent. They have been peaceful protests. And what do they want? They want overdue reforms. They want reforms that should have been done 30, 40, 50 years ago. They want America to be better.
On Friday, Cuomo announced a “Say Their Name” reform agenda, expected to pass the legislature next week, which includes more transparency for disciplinary records and a ban on chokeholds.
That’s a start. But reporters should be relentless in pressing these and other governors to respond to the protest movement’s message.
One immediate concern should be police response to the protests themselves. “Rioting police,” as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie described them, should be held to account. Governors need to push for less militaristic responses to protests, with a goal of de-escalation rather than incitement. And they need to stress that the government has a solemn obligation to protect the First Amendment rights of the protesters. They should demand an end to journalists being attacked by the police.
As far as policing in general goes, states could make enormous improvements when it comes to training, adopting detailed and modern use of force standards, and banning of specific tactics. They could eliminate special layers of due process protections for police officers, and make police disciplinary records public.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio on Tuesday committed to working with the General Assembly to set up a state licensing board that could certify and decertify police officers on account of their conduct. That could have powerful ramifications.
States could refuse – indeed, give back – surplus military equipment. They could put in place strong accountability and review mechanisms, including independent oversight commissions. And states could restructure payouts for police misconduct so that departments feel more pressure to limit it.
Cities, of course, set a lot of the rules for police as well. Former president Barack Obama has called on mayors and city council members to pledge to introduce common-sense limits on police use of force, complete with a handy eight-point checklist reporters can use to hold them accountable.
That list calls for requiring officers to de-escalate situations where possible; prohibiting maneuvers that cut off oxygen or blood flow; requiring officers to intervene, stop and report excessive or unnecessary force used by other officers; ordering officers not to shoot at moving vehicles; limiting the types of force and weapons that can be used to respond in specific cases; and so on.
George Floyd’s unbearable death, the flood of heartbroken and angry protesters, and the unapologetically and seemingly endlessly violent response by the police – all coming at a time of unprecedented strain to our society, our democracy, our sense of well-being, and our faith in our leaders – have put incredible demands on the nation’s journalists simply to tell the stories. But we must also demand responses from those in a position to make things better.


presswatchers--2020-06-11--There’s a better way to present opinions online – with radical transparency – and the New York Times

There’s a better way to present opinions online – with radical transparency – and the New York Times should lead the way

The removal of James Bennet as editorial page editor of the New York Times is a powerful sign of the dawning recognition within the news industry of two massive failures : • The failure to properly adjust to the modern Republican Party ’ s rejection of fact-based arguments in favor of deceit , divisiveness and incitement .
• The failure to proudly advocate for legitimate journalistic values when they are under siege , starting with the truth and the First Amendment , but extending to civil liberties , civil rights and a humane society .
These failures were not the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Technically , Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger fired Bennet because he created and oversaw a system in which vile , dangerous , inaccurate racist right-wing trolling could zip right through the editorial process and onto the Times homepage without any difficulty .
But that system was the byproduct of those failures .
And Bennet ’ s departure provides a rare and much-needed opportunity to rethink the role of opinion within news organizations everywhere , in a way that rectifies them .
The New York Times editorial pages have been both wonderful and deeply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for a very long time .
But the most immediate problem is that the Times opinion section is ostensibly devoted to hosting a wide range of views , at a time when some of the people who hold power in the United States are advancing arguments that are dishonest as well as morally and politically repugnant — at least by the standards of a society that we thought was gradually bending toward justice .
Simply ignoring those arguments deprives readers of the full spectrum of views that are being debated in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the imprimatur of the Times — which right now is widely and reasonably interpreted as the Times vouching for them , at least to some extent — isn ’ t a satisfactory option , either .
Sulzberger himself identified this as a major problem at a fiery all-hands Times staff meeting he led on Friday to address the roiling controversy over editorial-page policies .
According to the transcript published by Vice , Sulzberger acknowledged what he called “ the brokenness of [ the ] form , the ambiguity of , like , what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Were we trying to say , ‘ Here ’ s this view ; you should be alarmed by it ’ ?
Were we trying to say , ‘ Here ’ s this view ; you should agree with it ’ ?
… Was it supposed to speak just in opposition to the editorials we ’ ve run ?
” His conclusion : “ That ’ s part of the reason why I think there ’ s a structural problem with the form itself.
” I think the form can be salvaged if the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ambiguity over its motives — by publicly revealing them .
What I ’ m suggesting is something that folks in the industry call radical transparency .
In this case , it provides a way forward that would allow the editors of the Times ( or any other news organization ) to present a very wide range of opinion indeed — even in crazy times — without sacrificing their moral and journalistic obligations .
It would require Times opinion editors to establish clear , public standards for accuracy , good faith and pertinence .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ an opinion piece , editors would provide an honest and defensible explanation of why they chose that particular topic and author .
If and when they feel it ’ s essential to publish a piece even though it fails to meet their standards in some way , they would describe how it failed , and would explain why they ran it anyway .
This would allow the Times editorial editors to maintain and even clarify their values , while at the same time exposing readers to the full range of the sometimes appalling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from it .
As a bonus , radical transparency could also force the Times to address other long-term problems , including its wildly insufficient identification of opinion writers ’ sometimes spectacular conflicts of interests , and its employment of liberal-trolling columnists whose only value is that the Times can hold them up as evidence that they don ’ t just publish liberal views .
Furthermore , providing readers with honest and defensible reasons for why something is being published would dissuade the distribution of trolling and clickbait — because there are no defensible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The crucial backstory here is that the Times last Wednesday published on its website an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton , Republican of Arkansas , headlined “ Send in the Troops.
” Crooked ’ s Brian Beutler described it as “ a manifesto for suppressing dissent in America with state-sanctioned violence.
” David Roberts , writing in Vox , called it “ paranoid domination porn about state violence visited on political enemies , meant to whip up authoritarian sentiment.
” The Cotton op-ed provoked an open revolt among many Times staffers , among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it as not just objectionable , but manifestly dangerous .
Sulzberger , in an initial message to staff on Thursday defending the op-ed ’ s publication , wrote : “ I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions , even those we may disagree with.
” He also noted : “ We don ’ t publish just any argument — they need to be accurate , good faith explorations of the issues of the day.
” What Sulzberger eventually recognized , however , was that Cotton ’ s op-ed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good-faith exploration of the issue , and was meant as pure incitement rather than a serious policy proposal .
The staff complaints were legitimate .
On Thursday night , an editors ’ note was appended to the top of Cotton ’ s essay , saying that it “ fell short of our standards and should not have been published.
” Bennet was fired on Sunday .
“ Both of us concluded that James would not be able to lead the team through the next leg of change that is required , ” Sulzberger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ground rules were not the problem .
The ground rules are solid .
There is indeed great value in exposing readers of the Times to a wide range of arguments about legitimate topics of debate that are accurate and made in good faith .
The problem is : What do you do with the other stuff ?
What do you do with the arguments being made in social media , on Fox News , in the White House and by Donald Trump himself that are unhinged , untethered to reality , unconstitutional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nevertheless unavoidably part of the national debate ?
As Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote in a particularly brave and astute column on Thursday about Cotton ’ s essay , it ’ s become an ongoing predicament : The Cotton essay was not a tough call , because it was puerile and inflammatory , as well as being deeply offensive .
But even if a point of view is disgusting — even if it ’ s hurtful — it may be important enough that it ’ s worth publishing .
And if that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do , you need to explain why you ’ re doing it , rather than just shoving things out there in a way that readers may plausibly interpret as you vouching for it .
So first you would explain the ground rules : That you publish a wide range of opinion , as long as it is within the realm of what you consider reasonable debate , and is factually correct , and is written in good faith .
And then you would explain why you are making an exception .
You would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that aren ’ t factual , you would identify and explicate how certain arguments are made in bad faith , you would explain why you consider the views morally abhorrent .
And then you would explain why it ’ s important enough that you decided to run it anyway .
You would explain whether you solicited it , whether you edited it , why this author was given a platform and why now .
If there were internal arguments about the piece , you could publish those too .
( Under the previous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Times apparently had an email group of several dozen people , called “ Op-Discuss , ” where drafts circulated and people provided feedback .
Now , of course , they have Slack , too . )
You would link to alternate views , to news stories and to good sources for context .
Maybe you would even enable some form of online annotation so that staff , other opinion writers , experts or select readers could comment on specific assertions .
This would a revolutionary move .
News organizations have historically been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ identifying who opinion writers are — presumably a relic of the space limitations in print .
But that ’ s a real disservice to readers .
Online , vast amounts of useful information can be raised up without taking away anything from the text .
Wait — it gets better On a radically transparent editorial page , you wouldn ’ t just explain your rationale for publishing opinions that are an exception to your ground rules .
You ’ d do it for every opinion piece you run , and for every columnist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ op-eds , that wouldn ’ t be difficult at all .
If the person is a legitimate expert in their field and the topic is pressing , you would simply explain that — and , of course , note the presence or absence of any conflicts of interest .
But for a lot of political opinion pieces , you would need to explain more .
Why did you pick this author , among others who share the same view ?
Are they saying something new ?
Where are they coming from ?
Is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
( This is one of the things I ’ m always trying to figure out . )
Is their argument obviously in their own interests , or is it an admission against interest ?
That kind of information would hugely enrich a reader ’ s understanding — or skepticism — about what they are reading Radical transparency would get trickier when it comes to explaining why certain people have been given regular columns .
But readers deserve to know more about what makes them so special , where they ’ re coming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Admittedly , being forced to explain the presence of certain people , in an honest and defensible way , would be particularly difficult .
Notably , two of Bennet ’ s first hires , Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss , were added to the mix to give the appearance of “ broadening the range of Times debate about consequential questions , ” as Bennet put it at the time .
But their columns have amounted to little more than “ trolling the libs , ” while failing to actually represent anything remotely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dominates the Republican Party .
In fact , having to defend their choice of columnists might encourage the Times editors to truly broaden a range of views that Glenn Greenwald wrote in 2017 consists of “ the vague , safe , Washington-approved middle ground , members in good standing of the newly overt neoliberal-neoconservative alliance.
” Two of Bennet ’ s more recent hires , Goldberg and Jamelle Bouie , have distinguished themselves as serious , left-leaning thinkers who consistently make tremendous contributions to our discourse .
But there is still no regular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left .
And of course there is no one wiling to honestly defend Trumpism — although such a person may not exist .
Radical transparency would also require a public and accountable commitment to diversity — in terms of race , ethnicity , gender , sexuality , socioeconomic status and age — both in hiring and in choosing who to publish .
The Times should be more transparent about who comprises the opinions staff .
Going forward , it should keep a running tally of the backgrounds of its contributors — at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If the Times continues to find what it ’ s looking for disproportionately from elite , white people , then maybe it ’ s looking for the wrong things .
The huge investment Bennet made in investigative reporting projects for the opinion section — which seems redundant to me — could be better used finding and raising up underrepresented voices , especially voices of oppressed people .
Multimedia and social media are great ways to bring a wider range of people into the discourse .
I ’ d also like to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — not simply by parroting their words across a diner table , but as part of an exploration into the ugly world of racist fantasies and incitement in which so many of them live , how they got there , and what if anything would make them turn away .
( See my column from last October , “ Political journalists are doing voter interviews all wrong.
” ) Good for the whole newsroom Radical transparency is the absolute opposite of the “ view from nowhere ” neutrality that news organizations so often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ achieves the goals that neutrality is intended , but fails , to realize : It fully informs the readers and earns their trust .
And it ’ s good for the whole newsroom , not just for the opinion side .
Radical transparency , in fact , was the top journalism recommendation in a terribly underappreciated 2019 report from the Knight Commission on Trust , Media and Democracy titled “ Crisis in Democracy : Renewing Trust in America.
” “ This includes a call for news entities to disclose the context for every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business infrastructure to editorial decision-making to community engagement , ” the report said .
It ’ s a powerful and journalistically appropriate alternative to the old ways that are increasingly being rejected by the future leaders of the industry .
Consider the words of Wesley Lowery , the talented young reporter who left the Washington Post after running afoul of its arbitrarily-enforced social media rules .
He tweeted a week ago : New York Times media columnist Ben Smith on Sunday described the tension between , on the one hand , “ a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible audience that its reporting is neutral , ” and on the other , “ journalists who believe that fairness on issues from race to Donald Trump requires clear moral calls.
” He concluded that “ the shift in mainstream American media … now feels irreversible.
” If Smith sounded a bit sad about it , here ’ s why : In a Twitter thread the next day , he shared the view that by giving up the perception of objectivity , “ you surrender some power to persuade.
” But my sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ application of moral clarity — whether in the opinion section or the news section — doesn ’ t surrender the power to persuade , but enhances it .
From what I ’ ve seen , there ’ s no evidence that political reporting that maintains “ objectivity ” through the application of strained euphemisms , flagrant false equivalence , amnesia and credulousness does a damn thing to build trust with readers and viewers .
Indeed , there ’ s plenty of evidence ( on Twitter alone ! )
that it does the opposite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we do as journalists , then we are best off doing it with complete transparency .
We preach about the need for open governance and the dangers of unnecessary secrecy .
Let ’ s practice it , too .

[This post has been updated since publication. The original opening paragraphs have been moved to the end.]
The New York Times editorial pages have been both wonderful and deeply problematic, in a number of ways, for a very long time.
But the most immediate problem is that the Times opinion section is ostensibly devoted to hosting a wide range of views, at a time when some of the people who hold power in the United States are advancing arguments that are dishonest as well as morally and politically repugnant — at least by the standards of a society that we thought was gradually bending toward justice.
Simply ignoring those arguments deprives readers of the full spectrum of views that are being debated in the public sphere.
But publishing them under the imprimatur of the Times — which right now is widely and reasonably interpreted as the Times vouching for them, at least to some extent — isn’t a satisfactory option, either.
Sulzberger himself identified this as a major problem at a fiery all-hands Times staff meeting he led on Friday to address the roiling controversy over editorial-page policies.
According to the transcript published by Vice, publisher A.G. Sulzberger acknowledged what he called “the brokenness of [the] form, the ambiguity of, like, what were we trying to say there? Were we trying to say, ‘Here’s this view; you should be alarmed by it’? Were we trying to say, ‘Here’s this view; you should agree with it’?… Was it supposed to speak just in opposition to the editorials we’ve run?”
His conclusion: “That’s part of the reason why I think there’s a structural problem with the form itself.”
So what’s the solution?
I think the form can be salvaged if the Times, going forward, resolves the ambiguity over its motives — by publicly revealing them.
What I’m suggesting is something that folks in the industry call radical transparency. In this case, it provides a way forward that would allow the editors of the Times (or any other news organization) to present a very wide range of opinion indeed — even in crazy times — without sacrificing their moral and journalistic obligations.
It would require Times opinion editors to establish clear, public standards for accuracy, good faith and pertinence.
Then, every time the paper publishes an opinion piece, editors would provide an honest and defensible explanation of why they chose that particular topic and author.
If and when they feel it’s essential to publish a piece even though it fails to meet their standards in some way, they would describe how it failed, and would explain why they ran it anyway.
This would allow the Times editorial editors to maintain and even clarify their values, while at the same time exposing readers to the full range of the sometimes appalling public discourse, rather than protecting them from it.
As a bonus, radical transparency could also force the Times to address other long-term problems, including its wildly insufficient identification of opinion writers’ sometimes spectacular conflicts of interests, and its employment of liberal-trolling columnists whose only value is that the Times can hold them up as evidence that they don’t just publish liberal views.
Furthermore, providing readers with honest and defensible reasons for why something is being published would dissuade the distribution of trolling and clickbait — because there are no defensible reasons to publish trolling and clickbait.
The Cotton op-ed
The crucial backstory here is that the Times last Wednesday published on its website an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, headlined “Send in the Troops.”
Crooked’s Brian Beutler described it as “a manifesto for suppressing dissent in America with state-sanctioned violence.” David Roberts, writing in Vox, called it “paranoid domination porn about state violence visited on political enemies, meant to whip up authoritarian sentiment.”
The Cotton op-ed provoked an open revolt among many Times staffers, among others. Black reporters in particular saw it as not just objectionable, but manifestly dangerous.
Sulzberger, in an initial message to staff on Thursday defending the op-ed’s publication, wrote: “I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions, even those we may disagree with.” He also noted: “We don’t publish just any argument — they need to be accurate, good faith explorations of the issues of the day.”
What Sulzberger eventually recognized, however, was that Cotton’s op-ed was not accurate, was not a good-faith exploration of the issue, and was meant as pure incitement rather than a serious policy proposal. The staff complaints were legitimate. On Thursday night, an editors’ note was appended to the top of Cotton’s essay, saying that it “fell short of our standards and should not have been published.”
Editorial page editor James Bennet was fired on Sunday. “Both of us concluded that James would not be able to lead the team through the next leg of change that is required,” Sulzberger said in a statement.
Sulzberger’s ground rules were not the problem. The ground rules are solid. There is indeed great value in exposing readers of the Times to a wide range of arguments about legitimate topics of debate that are accurate and made in good faith.
The problem is: What do you do with the other stuff?
What do you do with the arguments being made in social media, on Fox News, in the White House and by Donald Trump himself that are unhinged, untethered to reality, unconstitutional, racist and dangerous — but are nevertheless unavoidably part of the national debate?
As Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote in a particularly brave and astute column on Thursday about Cotton’s essay, it’s become an ongoing predicament:
Before Donald Trump became president, most newspaper op-ed pages sought to present a spectrum of politically significant opinion and argument, which they could largely do while walling off extremist propaganda and incitement. The Trump presidency has undermined that model, because there’s generally no way to defend the administration without being either bigoted or dishonest. … It’s important to understand what the people around the president are thinking. But if they’re honest about what they’re thinking, it’s usually too disgusting to engage with. This creates a crisis for traditional understandings of how the so-called marketplace of ideas functions. It’s a subsidiary of the crisis that has the country on fire.
The Cotton essay was not a tough call, because it was puerile and inflammatory, as well as being deeply offensive.
But even if a point of view is disgusting — even if it’s hurtful — it may be important enough that it’s worth publishing.
And if that’s what you’re going to do, you need to explain why you’re doing it, rather than just shoving things out there in a way that readers may plausibly interpret as you vouching for it.
Opening up
So first you would explain the ground rules: That you publish a wide range of opinion, as long as it is within the realm of what you consider reasonable debate, and is factually correct, and is written in good faith.
And then you would explain why you are making an exception.
You would call attention to and refute the assertions that aren’t factual, you would identify and explicate how certain arguments are made in bad faith, you would explain why you consider the views morally abhorrent.
And then you would explain why it’s important enough that you decided to run it anyway. You would explain whether you solicited it, whether you edited it, why this author was given a platform and why now. If there were internal arguments about the piece, you could publish those too. (Under the previous editorial page editor, Andy Rosenthal, the Times apparently had an email group of several dozen people, called “Op-Discuss,” where drafts circulated and people provided feedback. Now, of course, they have Slack, too.)
You would link to alternate views, to news stories and to good sources for context. Maybe you would even enable some form of online annotation so that staff, other opinion writers, experts or select readers could comment on specific assertions.
This would a revolutionary move. News organizations have historically been minimalist even when it comes to accurately identifying who opinion writers are — presumably a relic of the space limitations in print. But that’s a real disservice to readers. Online, vast amounts of useful information can be raised up without taking away anything from the text.
Wait — it gets better
On a radically transparent editorial page, you wouldn’t just explain your rationale for publishing opinions that are an exception to your ground rules. You’d do it for every opinion piece you run, and for every columnist you hire.
For a lot of op-eds, that wouldn’t be difficult at all. If the person is a legitimate expert in their field and the topic is pressing, you would simply explain that — and, of course, note the presence or absence of any conflicts of interest.
But for a lot of political opinion pieces, you would need to explain more. Why did you pick this author, among others who share the same view? Are they saying something new? Where are they coming from? Is this argument surprising, coming from them? (This is one of the things I’m always trying to figure out.) Is their argument obviously in their own interests, or is it an admission against interest?
That kind of information would hugely enrich a reader’s understanding — or skepticism — about what they are reading
Radical transparency would get trickier when it comes to explaining why certain people have been given regular columns. But readers deserve to know more about what makes them so special, where they’re coming from and the range of their views.
Admittedly, being forced to explain the presence of certain people, in an honest and defensible way, would be particularly difficult.
Notably, two of Bennet’s first hires, Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss, were added to the mix to give the appearance of “broadening the range of Times debate about consequential questions,” as Bennet put it at the time. But their columns have amounted to little more than “trolling the libs,” while failing to actually represent anything remotely like the extremist right-wing ideology that now dominates the Republican Party.
As Goldberg put it:
Opinion sections, eager to maintain ideological diversity without publishing lies or stuff that belongs in Breitbart, have therefore filled up with anti-Trump conservatives. As a result, newspapers like this one have often been criticized for elevating an intellectual clique that has little mass base or political influence.
In fact, having to defend their choice of columnists might encourage the Times editors to truly broaden a range of views that Glenn Greenwald wrote in 2017 consists of “the vague, safe, Washington-approved middle ground, members in good standing of the newly overt neoliberal-neoconservative alliance.”
Two of Bennet’s more recent hires, Goldberg and Jamelle Bouie, have distinguished themselves as serious, left-leaning thinkers who consistently make tremendous contributions to our discourse. But there is still no regular writer genuinely challenging Times readers from the left. And of course there is no one wiling to honestly defend Trumpism — although such a person may not exist.
Radical transparency would also require a public and accountable commitment to diversity — in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status and age — both in hiring and in choosing who to publish. The Times should be more transparent about who comprises the opinions staff. Going forward, it should keep a running tally of the backgrounds of its contributors — at least internally — to better understand the problem.
If the Times continues to find what it’s looking for disproportionately from elite, white people, then maybe it’s looking for the wrong things.
The huge investment Bennet made in investigative reporting projects for the opinion section — which seems redundant to me — could be better used finding and raising up underrepresented voices, especially voices of oppressed people. Multimedia and social media are great ways to bring a wider range of people into the discourse.
I’d also like to see the Times host non-elite, pro-Trump voices — not simply by parroting their words across a diner table, but as part of an exploration into the ugly world of racist fantasies and incitement in which so many of them live, how they got there, and what if anything would make them turn away. (See my column from last October, “Political journalists are doing voter interviews all wrong.”)
Good for the whole newsroom
Radical transparency is the absolute opposite of the “view from nowhere” neutrality that news organizations so often strive to maintain — yet it actually achieves the goals that neutrality is intended, but fails, to realize: It fully informs the readers and earns their trust.
And it’s good for the whole newsroom, not just for the opinion side.
Radical transparency, in fact, was the top journalism recommendation in a terribly underappreciated 2019 report from the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy titled “Crisis in Democracy: Renewing Trust in America.”
“This includes a call for news entities to disclose the context for every facet of their operations, ranging from business infrastructure to editorial decision-making to community engagement,” the report said.
It’s a powerful and journalistically appropriate alternative to the old ways that are increasingly being rejected by the future leaders of the industry. Consider the words of Wesley Lowery, the talented young reporter who left the Washington Post after running afoul of its arbitrarily-enforced social media rules. He tweeted a week ago:
New York Times media columnist Ben Smith on Sunday described the tension between, on the one hand, “a tradition that aims to persuade the widest possible audience that its reporting is neutral,” and on the other, “journalists who believe that fairness on issues from race to Donald Trump requires clear moral calls.” He concluded that “the shift in mainstream American media … now feels irreversible.”
If Smith sounded a bit sad about it, here’s why: In a Twitter thread the next day, he shared the view that by giving up the perception of objectivity, “you surrender some power to persuade.”
But my sense is that an honest, transparent journalistic application of moral clarity — whether in the opinion section or the news section — doesn’t surrender the power to persuade, but enhances it.
From what I’ve seen, there’s no evidence that political reporting that maintains “objectivity” through the application of strained euphemisms, flagrant false equivalence, amnesia and credulousness does a damn thing to build trust with readers and viewers. Indeed, there’s plenty of evidence (on Twitter alone!) that it does the opposite.
If we truly believe in what we do as journalists, then we are best off doing it with complete transparency. We preach about the need for open governance and the dangers of unnecessary secrecy. Let’s practice it, too.


presswatchers--2020-06-15--The exorcism of Donald Trump from America’s psyche has begun

What a strange time to be feeling a sense of hope .
The coronavirus pandemic rages on .
More than 20 million Americans are unemployed .
Protests against police violence have been met with yet more police violence .
Donald Trump spews divisive conspiracy theories and hatred .
There is no one the nation can turn to for solace .
Eight out of 10 voters believe that things are out of control in the United States , and I don ’ t understand what ’ s wrong with the other two .
And yet , the millions of protesters expressing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the agonizing videotaped police killing of George Floyd have made something almost magical happen in this country .
They ’ ve reminded a super-majority of Americans that we are better than this .
Ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election , I ’ ve been concerned about how we as a nation would recover , once he was gone .
I never imagined things would be this bad , of course .
But I worried a lot about what would happen to the bumpy but gradual march toward justice and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during my lifetime , and that was so important to me and my love and respect for this country .
Trump ’ s presidency had stopped it cold and set it back decades .
Suddenly , all the things that were becoming unacceptable to say out loud in civil society were being shouted by the man in the White House .
Soon enough , they became baked into national policy .
The ugliest voices in our country became among the loudest , and they seemed to have no shame .
Once Trump was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for us to get back to where we were ?
How long would it be before bigots and racists felt stigmatized again ?
How long before we could undo what Trump had done , restore the norms he had broken , and set the country back on course ?
How long before we could start actually making progress again ?
How much work would it take ?
I was afraid it would be a very long time , and would take an awful lot of work .
But something incredibly moving has happened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a powerful catalyst .
As Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi explained to the New Yorker : After three weeks of sustained protest — and the incredible outpouring of public support for the protesters seen in opinion polls — it feels like a lot of Americans are sharing the sentiment that enough is enough .
The knee on the neck with the hand casually in the pocket as a Black man struggles to live – that has become a powerful , lasting meme for Trumpism , its racism , cruelty , and abuse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assault on peaceful protesters outside the White House so Trump could stage a political photo op .
But over the course of three weeks of the broadest protests in U.S. history , change feels possible .
You can almost hear Americans saying : “ This is not who we are.
” And that is hopeful .
Breathtakingly hopeful .
Black Lives Matter has gone from being a radical slogan to being a simple fact .
And the protests are about more than just police violence , as New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already responding in a way that feels like the beginning of something momentous .
What happens in Congress and the White House and the statehouses and the city halls in the next few weeks could be significant .
But beyond that , one can now imagine Democrats clinching both Houses of Congress as well as the presidency and passing legislation as sweeping and historic as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 .
One can also imagine Congress passing post-Trump reforms along the lines of post-Watergate reforms , to fix the huge flaws in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and exploited — from voting rights and the Electoral College to the immense unchecked powers that have been granted to the American presidency .
Don ’ t look to the news media to explain what ’ s happening , though .
Our top news organizations have never been honest with the public about how profoundly dangerous and retrograde a president Trump has been , even though it was incredibly obvious that he would be , from the get-go .
They normalized his behavior when they should have been declaring national emergencies .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his malignancy screams out in every interview and tweet , the national media ’ s only response is slightly more daring euphemisms .
They can ’ t write that the country is purging itself of an infection , because they ’ d have to admit they failed to diagnose that infection in the first place .
Trump was a mad king long before all of this started , abusing his power for corrupt and cruel purposes .
But in the last several months , he has been more fully revealed to the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic was incoherent , ignorant , clueless , duplicitous , and just plain stupid .
The consequences have been deadly .
And now the protests have further exposed his very soul : The nation is in pain , and Trump can ’ t even conceive of it – not to mention feel it , or respond to it as anything but a personal attack .
This man so clearly needs to be rejected from the body politic .
But fully rejecting Trump and Trumpism was always going to take more than an election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him , because he has been so good to them financially .
Many evangelicals will still vote for him because of abortion .
Many southern and small-town conservatives will still vote for him because being a Republican is a tribal thing for them now .
Some of them — maybe a lot of them — will have to look past their revulsion over his racism , his lying , his lack of empathy , his narcissism , the way he treats other human beings .
But they ’ ll vote for him anyway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be the nearly-universal rejection of Trump and Trumpism the country needed .
It turns out that what we needed was a movement .

What a strange time to be feeling a sense of hope.
The coronavirus pandemic rages on. More than 20 million Americans are unemployed. Protests against police violence have been met with yet more police violence. Donald Trump spews divisive conspiracy theories and hatred. There is no one the nation can turn to for solace.
Eight out of 10 voters believe that things are out of control in the United States, and I don’t understand what’s wrong with the other two.
And yet, the millions of protesters expressing their rage and suffering in the wake of the agonizing videotaped police killing of George Floyd have made something almost magical happen in this country.
They’ve reminded a super-majority of Americans that we are better than this.
So much damage
Ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I’ve been concerned about how we as a nation would recover, once he was gone.
I never imagined things would be this bad, of course.
But I worried a lot about what would happen to the bumpy but gradual march toward justice and human rights that we had been experiencing during my lifetime, and that was so important to me and my love and respect for this country.
Trump’s presidency had stopped it cold and set it back decades. Suddenly, all the things that were becoming unacceptable to say out loud in civil society were being shouted by the man in the White House. Soon enough, they became baked into national policy. The ugliest voices in our country became among the loudest, and they seemed to have no shame.
Once Trump was gone, how long would it take for us to get back to where we were? How long would it be before bigots and racists felt stigmatized again? How long before we could undo what Trump had done, restore the norms he had broken, and set the country back on course? How long before we could start actually making progress again? How much work would it take?
I was afraid it would be a very long time, and would take an awful lot of work.
But something incredibly moving has happened, a combination of profound despair and a powerful catalyst. As Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi explained to the New Yorker:
[W]e have been sitting in our homes, navigating the pandemic, dealing with loved ones being sick, dealing with a great deal of fear and concern about what the day and the future will hold. We have millions of people who have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment and are living paycheck to paycheck and hand to mouth, and I believe they are just thoroughly fed up and thoroughly beside themselves with grief and concern and despair because the government does not seem to have a plan of action that is dignified and comprehensive and seeks to address the core concerns that the average American has.
After three weeks of sustained protest — and the incredible outpouring of public support for the protesters seen in opinion polls — it feels like a lot of Americans are sharing the sentiment that enough is enough.
Out of pain, hope
The knee on the neck with the hand casually in the pocket as a Black man struggles to live – that has become a powerful, lasting meme for Trumpism, its racism, cruelty, and abuse of power.
So has the violent assault on peaceful protesters outside the White House so Trump could stage a political photo op.
But over the course of three weeks of the broadest protests in U.S. history, change feels possible.
You can almost hear Americans saying: “This is not who we are.”
And that is hopeful. Breathtakingly hopeful.
Black Lives Matter has gone from being a radical slogan to being a simple fact. And the protests are about more than just police violence, as New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote last week:
They’re about structural racism and the persistence of white supremacy; about the unresolved and unaddressed disadvantages of the past, as well as the bigotry that has come to dominate far too much of American politics in the age of Trump. Born of grief and anger, they’re an attempt to turn the country off the path to ruin.
Policymakers are already responding in a way that feels like the beginning of something momentous. What happens in Congress and the White House and the statehouses and the city halls in the next few weeks could be significant. But beyond that, one can now imagine Democrats clinching both Houses of Congress as well as the presidency and passing legislation as sweeping and historic as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
One can also imagine Congress passing post-Trump reforms along the lines of post-Watergate reforms, to fix the huge flaws in the American political system that Trump exposed and exploited — from voting rights and the Electoral College to the immense unchecked powers that have been granted to the American presidency.
Media failure
Don’t look to the news media to explain what’s happening, though.
Our top news organizations have never been honest with the public about how profoundly dangerous and retrograde a president Trump has been, even though it was incredibly obvious that he would be, from the get-go.
They normalized his behavior when they should have been declaring national emergencies.
So even now, when the evidence of his malignancy screams out in every interview and tweet, the national media’s only response is slightly more daring euphemisms.
They can’t write that the country is purging itself of an infection, because they’d have to admit they failed to diagnose that infection in the first place.
A more powerful rejection
Trump was a mad king long before all of this started, abusing his power for corrupt and cruel purposes. But in the last several months, he has been more fully revealed to the American people.
His response to the coronavirus pandemic was incoherent, ignorant, clueless, duplicitous, and just plain stupid. The consequences have been deadly.
And now the protests have further exposed his very soul: The nation is in pain, and Trump can’t even conceive of it – not to mention feel it, or respond to it as anything but a personal attack.
This man so clearly needs to be rejected from the body politic.
But fully rejecting Trump and Trumpism was always going to take more than an election.
Many plutocrats will still vote for him, because he has been so good to them financially. Many evangelicals will still vote for him because of abortion. Many southern and small-town conservatives will still vote for him because being a Republican is a tribal thing for them now.
Some of them — maybe a lot of them — will have to look past their revulsion over his racism, his lying, his lack of empathy, his narcissism, the way he treats other human beings. But they’ll vote for him anyway.
So the election was never going to be the nearly-universal rejection of Trump and Trumpism the country needed.
It turns out that what we needed was a movement.


presswatchers--2020-06-18--Reporters should be holding Trump more personally accountable for the mounting death toll

Here ’ s what you should be reading or hearing from our top news organizations : Donald Trump today condemned tens of thousands of Americans to death , opting to almost completely ignore the ongoing coronavirus pandemic for political and personal reasons rather than take a series of simple but hugely consequential steps that public health officials consider imperative .
Rather than promote the use of face masks , Trump refuses to wear one in public and criticizes those who do .
Rather than urge the public to continue social distancing , Trump is about to convene what is likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the world since the danger of the coronavirus became understood .
Rather than use his office to inform and educate citizens about how to minimize their exposure to the virus , Trump lies , and says the threat is behind us .
“ The numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was .
It ’ s dying out , ” he told one TV reporter on Wednesday .
“ The virus is , uh , abating .
We know how to handle it .
We know where to go , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told another .
And rather than head a national push for contact-tracing – which public-health experts say is the key to finding and controlling outbreaks going forward — Trump is undermining even something as basic as testing , calling it “ overrated ” and saying it makes us look bad ” in a Wall Street Journal interview .
There is so much going on in this crazy world right now , I get that .
But our top news organizations still need to keep a singular focus on the Covid-19 pandemic and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And they need to be relentless in holding Trump personally to account .
This , or some variation thereof , is the story that every news organization should be running , every day , until the president of the United States starts acting like pretty much any other human being would in his place .
There ’ s a danger of repetition , sure , but Trump ’ s failure is an ongoing tragedy , and our journalism should reflect the alarm , the feeling of panic that every day that goes by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ needless suffering and death .
Trump ’ s failure at contact tracing in particular One element of the story that has not been pursued very much at all is Trump ’ s role in the absence of any kind of national contact tracing initiative – even though that absence is central to why people and institutions across the country are responding so inconsistently to the virus .
In short , the lack of contact tracing guarantees that Americans — collectively and individually — will both overreact and underreact to the virus .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the information we need to react appropriately .
When contact-tracing works the way it ’ s supposed to , people in a community who are identified as having the virus are not only quickly identified through testing , but the people with whom they ’ ve had contact are also quickly identified , and told they need to be quarantined or isolated .
In a community with effective contact-tracing , the chance of your getting exposed to the virus from a random person is pretty small .
Is it safe to go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your community is being carefully monitored and people who may have been exposed to the virus are staying home .
Without contact tracing , you simply can not make an informed decision , so you are bound to be either more scared than you should be – or less .
Experts couldn ’ t be more clear about the need for an effective program : Trump ’ s failure to back a coordinated national approach to contact tracing has been in evidence for months .
A bipartisan group of health leaders in April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tracers , at a cost of $ 12 billion – along with about $ 35 billion to support people who voluntarily self-isolate .
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Andy Levin have been pushing for the creation of what they call a ” Coronavirus Containment Corps ” to hire , train and deploy contact tracers , support specialists , and investigators , at a cost of about $ 10 billion .
Trump has barely ever talked about contact tracing , except to falsely brag about it .
“ We ’ ve gotten good at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ April 23 press conference .
An NBC fact-check concluded otherwise .
As public health officials point to contact tracing as a key component for tracking the spread of the coronavirus and preventing a flare-up of cases amid the wave of reopenings , some agencies are wrestling with a lack of necessary resources from the federal government , a need for more qualified workers and a growing backlash of misinformation .
Making matters worse are the absence of a cohesive national plan and coherent communication from the White House about the importance of contact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development who coordinated the United States ’ humanitarian response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa .
“ It ’ s a massive messaging failure from this administration , ” he said… Konyndyk added that the country is “ not as ready as we could have been ” if the government had started preparing the public for the idea of tracing and the effort involved while most people were still isolating at home .
“ But the federal government chose not to own the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote this week in the New Yorker : Although Anthony Fauci , the President ’ s leading public-health adviser on the crisis , said at a press conference in mid-April that “ the real proof of the pudding ” of reopening would be how quickly new outbreaks could be traced and isolated , the federal government has offered little guidance on how states should do that… The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that contact tracing was warranted for anyone who had been within six feet of an infected person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guidance on program design .
How many people each state would need , whether the hires needed to be medical professionals , what outcomes they ought to measure , and what standards would indicate success—all of this was left up to the states.… .
Tom Frieden , who led the C.D.C .
during the Obama Administration and is consulting on New York ’ s contact-tracing project , told me , “ Big picture , the U.S. is just way behind.
” Without widespread contact tracing , the U.S. doesn ’ t know how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ source of transmission , but it ’ s almost certainly in the tens of thousands .
“ We have this enormous outbreak , we ’ re working really hard on it , there ’ s a lot you can do to control it—but , look at this , we ’ ve got unlinked spreading in the community , and that means it could explode.
” Frieden said .
The American response , in his view , was characterized by “ this kind of lack of seeing the essence of what ’ s important.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tuesday wrote about Trump ’ s Tulsa rally being “ only the most dramatic example of the President ’ s refusal to temper his behavior any longer to reflect a pandemic that has buckled the rhythm of normal life.
” He continued : Sheryl Gay Stolberg , Noah Weiland , Sarah Mervosh and David E. Sanger had a terrific , broad take in the New York Times on Thursday about how Trump ’ s mixed messages come as he has basically silenced “ Washington ’ s public health bully pulpit ” : They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Vice President Mike Pence ’ s attempt to be reassuring resulted in some feisty reporting .
Ryan Lizza and Renuka Rayasam wrote for Politico : “ Pence abruptly reinvented himself as a coronavirus skeptic this week , with comments and an op-ed article that stray into pandemic denialism.
” In his Wall Street Journal op-ed , Pence declared that “ The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way , ” and he called 750 deaths a day “ a cause for celebration.
” Katie Rogers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times about how Pence also “ encouraged governors on Monday to adopt the administration ’ s explanation that a rise in testing was a reason behind new coronavirus outbreaks , even though testing data has shown that such a claim is misleading.
” Science writer Ferris Jabr summed up where things stand in this tweet : Even New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman , who I don ’ t think I ’ ve ever quoted favorably before , captured the sweep of what ’ s going on : I ’ ll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Post political blogger Paul Waldman , whose post on Wednesday was one of the best things I ’ ve read on Trump ’ s viral failure in a long time .
His outrage should be your outrage : [ I ] n a propaganda effort that can only be described as obscene , the Trump administration is trying to convince us not only that the pandemic is all but behind us , but also that its spectacularly incompetent response has been a great triumph .
This will without a doubt go down as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American history .
And we can see now that it had three distinct ( if overlapping ) phases .
The first was the denial phase , in which President Trump dismissed the danger from the virus and did almost nothing to prepare for its arrival .
The second was the mismanagement phase , in which his administration utterly failed to control the virus as it swept across the country .
The third was the polarization phase , in which , for his own vulgar political reasons , Trump attacked Democratic governors trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and mask-wearing , and quite intentionally created an atmosphere in which loud refusal to take the measures that we know reduce the spread of infection is how you prove you ’ re a loyal Republican .
I ’ ve written a lot about Trump ’ s response to the pandemic , and here is what has been clear all along : It ’ s an ongoing tragedy that he has no real plan to restore the country to health other than to peddle false hope , predict a quick end , adopt fake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The most urgent need is to test , test , and test even more , but Trump has never liked testing because the results “ look bad ” .
The media has blown its coverage of the federal response by letting political reporters lead instead of health reporters .
Political reporters pay way too much attention to whatever Trump says , such that whatever it is makes headlines .
They let Trump set the agenda instead of letting knowledgeable people do it .
Political reporters also give Trump way too much credit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They cover up for his incoherence , ignorance , cluelessness , gaslighting , and yes , just plain stupidity .
They generally fail to properly exploit their rare access to him by confronting him with facts and piercing his bubble .
They remain complacent in the face of a massive death toll , instead of relentlessly demanding more forceful action .
Please consider supporting my work , which is dependent on donations and grants .

Here’s what you should be reading or hearing from our top news organizations:
Donald Trump today condemned tens of thousands of Americans to death, opting to almost completely ignore the ongoing coronavirus pandemic for political and personal reasons rather than take a series of simple but hugely consequential steps that public health officials consider imperative.
Rather than promote the use of face masks, Trump refuses to wear one in public and criticizes those who do.
Rather than urge the public to continue social distancing, Trump is about to convene what is likely the largest crowd at any indoor event in the world since the danger of the coronavirus became understood.
Rather than use his office to inform and educate citizens about how to minimize their exposure to the virus, Trump lies, and says the threat is behind us. “The numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It’s dying out,” he told one TV reporter on Wednesday. “The virus is, uh, abating. We know how to handle it. We know where to go, and how to do it,” he told another.
And rather than head a national push for contact-tracing – which public-health experts say is the key to finding and controlling outbreaks going forward — Trump is undermining even something as basic as testing, calling it “overrated” and saying it makes us look bad” in a Wall Street Journal interview.
Holding him accountable
There is so much going on in this crazy world right now, I get that. But our top news organizations still need to keep a singular focus on the Covid-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s calamitous response. And they need to be relentless in holding Trump personally to account.
This, or some variation thereof, is the story that every news organization should be running, every day, until the president of the United States starts acting like pretty much any other human being would in his place.
There’s a danger of repetition, sure, but Trump’s failure is an ongoing tragedy, and our journalism should reflect the alarm, the feeling of panic that every day that goes by without Trump changing his ways means more needless suffering and death.
Trump’s failure at contact tracing in particular
One element of the story that has not been pursued very much at all is Trump’s role in the absence of any kind of national contact tracing initiative – even though that absence is central to why people and institutions across the country are responding so inconsistently to the virus.
In short, the lack of contact tracing guarantees that Americans — collectively and individually — will both overreact and underreact to the virus. That’s because we don’t have the information we need to react appropriately.
When contact-tracing works the way it’s supposed to, people in a community who are identified as having the virus are not only quickly identified through testing, but the people with whom they’ve had contact are also quickly identified, and told they need to be quarantined or isolated.
In a community with effective contact-tracing, the chance of your getting exposed to the virus from a random person is pretty small.
Is it safe to go to your neighborhood restaurant? Only if your community is being carefully monitored and people who may have been exposed to the virus are staying home.
Without contact tracing, you simply cannot make an informed decision, so you are bound to be either more scared than you should be – or less.
Experts couldn’t be more clear about the need for an effective program:
Stopping Covid means reducing unlinked infections, isolating infected patients quickly, and ensuring new cases only arise from quarantined contacts of Covid patients. To do all this, we need intensive, high-quality contact tracing programs across the US. https://t.co/jpSinRgA0y — Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) June 16, 2020
Trump’s failure to back a coordinated national approach to contact tracing has been in evidence for months.
A bipartisan group of health leaders in April called for Congress to fund 180,000 contact tracers, at a cost of $12 billion – along with about $35 billion to support people who voluntarily self-isolate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Andy Levin have been pushing for the creation of what they call a ”Coronavirus Containment Corps” to hire, train and deploy contact tracers, support specialists, and investigators, at a cost of about $10 billion.
Trump has barely ever talked about contact tracing, except to falsely brag about it. “We’ve gotten good at tracing,” Trump said at an April 23 press conference. An NBC fact-check concluded otherwise.
NBC News’s Erik Ortiz wrote a powerful article in May:
As public health officials point to contact tracing as a key component for tracking the spread of the coronavirus and preventing a flare-up of cases amid the wave of reopenings, some agencies are wrestling with a lack of necessary resources from the federal government, a need for more qualified workers and a growing backlash of misinformation. Making matters worse are the absence of a cohesive national plan and coherent communication from the White House about the importance of contact tracing, said Jeremy Konyndy, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development who coordinated the United States’ humanitarian response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. “It’s a massive messaging failure from this administration,” he said… Konyndyk added that the country is “not as ready as we could have been” if the government had started preparing the public for the idea of tracing and the effort involved while most people were still isolating at home. “But the federal government chose not to own the issue,” he said.
And Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote this week in the New Yorker:
Although Anthony Fauci, the President’s leading public-health adviser on the crisis, said at a press conference in mid-April that “the real proof of the pudding” of reopening would be how quickly new outbreaks could be traced and isolated, the federal government has offered little guidance on how states should do that… The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that contact tracing was warranted for anyone who had been within six feet of an infected person for ten minutes, but offered no guidance on program design. How many people each state would need, whether the hires needed to be medical professionals, what outcomes they ought to measure, and what standards would indicate success—all of this was left up to the states.…. Tom Frieden, who led the C.D.C. during the Obama Administration and is consulting on New York’s contact-tracing project, told me, “Big picture, the U.S. is just way behind.” Without widespread contact tracing, the U.S. doesn’t know how many cases do not have an identifiable source of transmission, but it’s almost certainly in the tens of thousands. “We have this enormous outbreak, we’re working really hard on it, there’s a lot you can do to control it—but, look at this, we’ve got unlinked spreading in the community, and that means it could explode.” Frieden said. The American response, in his view, was characterized by “this kind of lack of seeing the essence of what’s important.”
Some sufficiently alarmist news stories
CNN’s Stephen Collinson on Tuesday wrote about Trump’s Tulsa rally being “only the most dramatic example of the President’s refusal to temper his behavior any longer to reflect a pandemic that has buckled the rhythm of normal life.” He continued:
In order to push economic openings, he is continuing to spread disinformation about the disease and the state of US testing. The cumulative effect is that it makes it seem like the worst public health crisis in 100 years has all but passed. By suppressing the White House appearances of leading governmental health officials and flouting his government’s advice on wearing a mask, Trump is also downplaying the seriousness of a virus that is still killing thousands of Americans every week.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Noah Weiland, Sarah Mervosh and David E. Sanger had a terrific, broad take in the New York Times on Thursday about how Trump’s mixed messages come as he has basically silenced “Washington’s public health bully pulpit”:
“As states are moving to reopen the economy, as people are increasing their social activities, it becomes even more important that the public understand the critical value in following public health guidance — wearing masks, social distancing, washing hands, staying home if you’re sick,” said Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose regular briefings during the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 have been cited as a model of good crisis communications. But, he added, “without that daily reinforcement, you have what is happening around the country — people not believing the pandemic is real, cases rising in some places and the possibility that some communities’ health care systems will get overwhelmed.”
They provided an important reminder of the context:
About 800 Americans a day are still dying of Covid-19, a pace that, if sustained over the next few months, would yield more than 200,000 dead by the end of September. Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Oregon and Texas all reported their largest one-day increases in new cases on Tuesday.
Vice President Mike Pence’s attempt to be reassuring resulted in some feisty reporting.
Ryan Lizza and Renuka Rayasam wrote for Politico: “Pence abruptly reinvented himself as a coronavirus skeptic this week, with comments and an op-ed article that stray into pandemic denialism.”
In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Pence declared that “The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way,” and he called 750 deaths a day “a cause for celebration.”
Katie Rogers and Jonathan Martin wrote for the New York Times about how Pence also “encouraged governors on Monday to adopt the administration’s explanation that a rise in testing was a reason behind new coronavirus outbreaks, even though testing data has shown that such a claim is misleading.”
Science writer Ferris Jabr summed up where things stand in this tweet:
It's been nearly four months since the start of the pandemic. How has the U.S. used that time?
-Not testing nearly enough
-Far too little contact tracing
-Repeated miscommunication from federal agencies
-Inconsistent lockdowns
-Hasty re-openings
-Still arguing about masks — Ferris Jabr (@ferrisjabr) June 16, 2020
Be outraged
Even New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who I don’t think I’ve ever quoted favorably before, captured the sweep of what’s going on:
When the full record of the coronavirus in America is written, historians may argue that President Trump’s biggest mistake was not what he failed to do in early 2020, when the right strategy for combating the virus was widely debated, unproven and hard. No, they will point to what Trump failed to do in June 2020, when the right strategy was clear, proven and relatively easy.… It is absolutely devilish — like Trump wakes up every morning and asks himself: What health expert’s advice can I defy today? What simple gesture to reduce the odds that the coronavirus continues to surge, post-lockdowns, can I ignore today? What quack remedy can I promote today?
I’ll leave you with the words of Washington Post political blogger Paul Waldman, whose post on Wednesday was one of the best things I’ve read on Trump’s viral failure in a long time. His outrage should be your outrage:
[I]n a propaganda effort that can only be described as obscene, the Trump administration is trying to convince us not only that the pandemic is all but behind us, but also that its spectacularly incompetent response has been a great triumph. This will without a doubt go down as one of the worst presidential failures in American history. And we can see now that it had three distinct (if overlapping) phases. The first was the denial phase, in which President Trump dismissed the danger from the virus and did almost nothing to prepare for its arrival. The second was the mismanagement phase, in which his administration utterly failed to control the virus as it swept across the country. The third was the polarization phase, in which, for his own vulgar political reasons, Trump attacked Democratic governors trying to contain the virus, discouraged social distancing and mask-wearing, and quite intentionally created an atmosphere in which loud refusal to take the measures that we know reduce the spread of infection is how you prove you’re a loyal Republican.
Waldman concludes:
This pandemic is an era-defining catastrophe, and it didn’t have to be this way. It’s almost impossible to imagine a president more ill-prepared, by virtue of experience and temperament and judgment, to handle it, and all our worst fears have come true. Don’t let him or any of his lackeys tell you otherwise.
A note from Dan Froomkin:
I’ve written a lot about Trump’s response to the pandemic, and here is what has been clear all along: It’s an ongoing tragedy that he has no real plan to restore the country to health other than to peddle false hope, predict a quick end, adopt fake deadlines and shift the blame to others. The most urgent need is to test, test, and test even more, but Trump has never liked testing because the results “look bad”. The media has blown its coverage of the federal response by letting political reporters lead instead of health reporters. Political reporters pay way too much attention to whatever Trump says, such that whatever it is makes headlines. They let Trump set the agenda instead of letting knowledgeable people do it. Political reporters also give Trump way too much credit for trying, which he is not. They cover up for his incoherence, ignorance, cluelessness, gaslighting, and yes, just plain stupidity. They generally fail to properly exploit their rare access to him by confronting him with facts and piercing his bubble. They remain complacent in the face of a massive death toll, instead of relentlessly demanding more forceful action.
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