Here's what political reporters care about, and it's not you

[Kid Berwyn]

Here’s what political reporters care about, and it’s not you

By Dan Froomkin
Press watchers.org - November 17, 2022

It’s a mystery to a lot of folks how political reporters who seem so smart and accomplished consistently get the big things wrong.

The reason is that political reporters are human beings. Human beings respond to incentives. And in the case of the elite Washington press corps, those incentives are skewed.

These reporters respond to four core constituencies: Their editors, their sources, their peers, and right-wing trolls.

SNIP…

Your Editors

You will never get scolded by your editors for talking trash about Democrats. That proves your independence. By contrast, if you express an even slightly negative common-sense view about the Republican Party, that is liberal editorializing that sets off alarms throughout the newsroom’s glass offices. You get rewarded for scoops – incremental tidbits of no lasting significance – not edification. Your safest place is always in the middle, pointing fingers at both sides. You are rewarded for unflappability, and looking like you care too much about something is the quickest way to lose your job.

Your Sources

If your sources don’t return your calls, your editors will find someone else to do your job. Democrats will never cut you off, no matter what you write. Democratic operatives will even admire how you play the game. Republicans will cut you off if they conclude you’re biased against them. As long as you don’t stray from the conventional wisdom, you’ll be OK.

CONTINUES…

https://presswatchers.org/2022/11/heres-what-political-reporters-care-about-and-its-not-you/

[underpants]

1. 👀

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Froomkin got canned from Washington Post...

…for calling torture, “torture.”

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Great analysis. This anti-cynic (me, realist) says it might look cynical, but it isn't. Spot on. nt

[Kid Berwyn]

5. Froomkin detailed the dilemma in the Plame Affaire.

Froomkin understood what was at stake and who in the press did what in 2007. Hope he weighs in soon on Jack Smith’s selection as Special Prosecutor.

The Cloud Over Cheney

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Excerpt…

And while Fitzgerald never directly answered that second question, he at long last made it quite clear that the depth of Vice President Cheney's role in the leaking of the identity of a CIA operative is one of the central mysteries that Libby's alleged lies prevented investigators from resolving.

"There is a cloud over the vice president . . . And that cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice," Fitzgerald said.

"There is a cloud over the White House. Don't you think the FBI and the grand jury and the American people are entitled to straight answers?" Fitzgerald asked the jury.

Libby, Fitzgerald continued, "stole the truth from the justice system."

After literally years of keeping his public pronouncements about the case to an absolute minimum, Fitzgerald yesterday finally let slip a bit of the speculation that many of us have long suspected has lurked just beneath the surface of his investigation.

Suddenly it wasn't just the defendant alone, it was "they" who decided to tell reporters about Wilson's wife working for the CIA. "To them," Fitzgerald said, "she wasn't a person, she was an argument."

And it was pretty clear who "they" was: Libby and his boss, Cheney.

Continues…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/02/21/BL2007022101033.html

Real reporters work to defend and preserve the Constitution. Besides being the right thing to do, their business is the only one named in the entire document: the free press.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

15. A free press cannot co-exist with homogenized ownership.

It's hard for the public to find independent media -- most of what they 'consume' is owned by 6 giant companies.

[Maraya1969]

4. What I notice about republicans in general. Whenever you are talking about something if you even

hint that you are going to bring up something bad that their "leaders" have done they jump in before you even get a sentence out.

I remember one time on TV after Bush sat reading "My pet goat" to a bunch of kids after he was told the country was under attack someone on "The View" tried to bring it up and that republican woman that was so annoying, (forget her name) didn't even let it come out before she jumped in with the talking point that he "Didn't want to upset the kids"

A ridiculous argument to be sure but she jumped in and cut the other woman off to say it. It happens a lot.

I am tired of these people.

[Kid Berwyn]

10. Lie First and Lie Big.

Thus, our Post-Truth Era.

Excellent observation, Maraya1969. Professional liars, including today’s Republicans, seem to believe the truth no longer matters. They understand that to win an argument requires numbers, not facts. So they are the first to speak — and lie. Not only does the truth get second billing, those who have heard the lie are already spreading it to others. And, as good journalists and libel lawyers know, it takes 100 times the truth to out one solitary lie. Faced with a firehouse of BS coming from Dimdonnie Drumpf for seven years now, most of the national press just gave up even the pretense of trying.

How this came to be:

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda

The Attack on Democracy

The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

Source: TUC Radio

Part 1: https://tucradio.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/alex-carey-corporations-and-propaganda-part-one-of-two/

Part 2: https://tucradio.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/alex-carey-corporations-and-propaganda-part-two-of-two/

And to bake in the new normal of a disinformed citizenry…

The Lewis Powell Memo - Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy

Greenpeace has the full text of the Lewis Powell Memo available for review, as well as analyses of how Lewis Powell's suggestions have impacted the realms of politics, judicial law, communications and education.

Blogpost by Charlie Cray - August 23, 2011 at 11:20
Greenpeace.org

Forty years ago today, on August 23, 1971, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an attorney from Richmond, Virginia, drafted a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that describes a strategy for the corporate takeover of the dominant public institutions of American society.

Powell and his friend Eugene Sydnor, then-chairman of the Chamber’s education committee, believed the Chamber had to transform itself from a passive business group into a powerful political force capable of taking on what Powell described as a major ongoing “attack on the American free enterprise system.”

An astute observer of the business community and broader social trends, Powell was a former president of the American Bar Association and a board member of tobacco giant Philip Morris and other companies. In his memo, he detailed a series of possible “avenues of action” that the Chamber and the broader business community should take in response to fierce criticism in the media, campus-based protests, and new consumer and environmental laws.

SNIP...

The overall tone of Powell’s memo reflected a widespread sense of crisis among elites in the business and political communities. “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack,” he suggested, adding that the attacks were not coming just from a few “extremists of the left,” but also – and most alarmingly -- from “perfectly respectable elements of society,” including leading intellectuals, the media, and politicians.

To meet the challenge, business leaders would have to first recognize the severity of the crisis, and begin marshalling their resources to influence prominent institutions of public opinion and political power -- especially the universities, the media and the courts. The memo emphasized the importance of education, values, and movement-building. Corporations had to reshape the political debate, organize speakers’ bureaus and keep television programs under “constant surveillance.” Most importantly, business needed to recognize that political power must be “assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination – without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/the-lewis-powell-memo-corporate-blueprint-to-/blog/36466/

A life-and-death example from Greg Mitchell, a real journalist, how WaHoPo helped lie America into war.

Mitchell was editor of the industry standard, Editor & Publisher, until it got bought by Carlyle Group. They don't like the truth all that much, either.

http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2013/03/that-piece-killed-by-post.html?m=1

Only one business is mentioned by name in the entire US Constitution: the Press.

[Maraya1969]

11. That is very interesting - and depressing. But maybe that is what people have been like forever.

The ruling class wants more power and they do any and all sorts of corrupt things to get it.

Makes me glad that I am not like that though. And the people that I am closest too are not like that either.

I've watched this series "Rich and shameless" and one thing I have come away with is that people who want more and more power and money are not happy. They are like drug addicts looking for a fix and they are never satisfied. I bet that is what Elon Musk is like too; never happy with all the money and power he has so he has to find more. And the interesting thing is a lot of these people have tragic ends. Hell if I had the money he had I would give most of it away to help people and the world and then sit back and enjoy a comfortable life.

[Srkdqltr]

6. IMHO... Reporters are after interesting stories. Common everyday experiences are not interesting.

The more flamboyant. the more press. It is that simple
If it bleeds it leads.
If everyone is getting along and doing well it's boring and reporters have nothing interesting to report. They ask provocative questions to get interesting answers.

[HUAJIAO]

7. Just like the weather reader..

[NCDem47]

8. Conflict. Drama. Heroes. Villians. Winners. Losers. Perpetrators. Victims. That's what sells.

Competent people doing their job has no value to anyone reporting "the news."

[Kid Berwyn]

13. That's exactly what most, if not many, reporters want.

My aim as a reporter was to “Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable.”

The problem comes in with the bosses, who edit, publish, air, print, and otherwise disseminate exactly what the owners want.

If the lead bleeds, great. Just don’t rock the “money trumps peace” boat, meaning don’t point out how the bastards who make money from merely by having money also make big bucks off war, colonialism and mineral extraction. It’s the natural order of things, the System, whereby the rich get richer and the middle class evaporates.

In the following moment from a presser on Feb. 14, 2007, not a single follow up was asked regarding the warmongering.

[Peacetrain]

9. Truth to that!!

[Kid Berwyn]

14. The Alien

And I do mean Alien.



A little backstory on Mr. Ailes, above in the Oval Office with Bebe Rebozo's best buddy. The fellow's been around and as much as any CEO, lowly clerk or hireling is responsible for producing the stinking heap of rightwing crap people see, hear, read, think and believe:

Memo from 1970: ‘A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News’

https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2011/memo-from-1970-a-plan-for-putting-the-gop-on-tv-news/

Additional history:

Richard Nixon and Roger Ailes 1970s plan to put the GOP on TV

Melissa Bell
Washington Post

EXCERPT...

A memo entitled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News,” buried in the the Nixon library details a plan between Ailes and the White House to bring pro-administration stories to television networks around the country. It reads: “Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. [font color="red"]The thinking is done for you.[/font color]”

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/richard-nixon-and-roger-ailes-1970s-plan-to-put-the-gop-on-tv/2011/07/01/AG1W7XtH_blog.html

Rolling Stone provides another good read:

How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525#ixzz1i4D2slCf

[crickets]

12. K&R for the post and the discussion.

[Kid Berwyn]

16. Thank you, crickets! Here's to American History forgotten intentionally.

The Banksters who Stole Uncounted Trillions (2008) Should PUT IT BACK.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10025093415

For some reason, Corporate McPravda didn’t mention restitution back then.

Thank Goodness for DU.