Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In after Baud. Damn.

This blog will pay for itself.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

When we show up, we win.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Motown is Joe-Town!

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

It’s a doggy dog world.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread – Press Watch

Open Thread – Press Watch

by | 114 Comments

This post is in: 

If you’re not following Dan Froomkin at Press Watch, you should be.

We vent a lot about the evils of the press here at Balloon Juice. But there are critics out there who have been advocating practices that speak to our concerns.

Now that Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron has announced his retirement, Los Angeles Times executive editor Norman Pearlstine stepped down in December, and (we can hope) New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet is getting ready to leave, Froomkin offers, free of charge, the script of a talk to the newsroom from their replacements.

It’s chock full of goodies that most of us here can approve. Here’s a sampling:

Effective today, you are no longer political reporters (and editors); you are government reporters (and editors). That’s an important distinction, because it frees you to cover what is happening in Washington in the context of whether it is serving the people well, rather than which party is winning.

The most important lesson of the Bush/Cheney years is that we should never assume government officials are telling us the truth, especially when it comes to matters involving war and national security. 

Here’s how we’re going to start: I want each of you to write a “beat note,” in which you describe at a high level what you see happening on your beat, what major questions you’re trying to answer, who the key players are, who seems to be operating in good faith and bad faith, what pressures they are under, and what you think the biggest challenges are ahead. Then we’ll publish them.

We too often think of whiteness as neutral. What we have all witnessed so vividly in the last four years is what nonwhite people have experienced for decades: that it is not. Whiteness can no longer be invisible in this newsroom. It must be acknowledged, studied and questioned. Non-white voices must be raised up and valued.

From now on, I’m the bad cop when it comes to dishy sources who want to talk to you anonymously. When you tell your sources “my boss won’t let me quote you unless you speak to me on the record,” that’s me.

And a lot more. As they say, read the whole thing.

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  1. 1.

    Another Scott

    Excellent.

    Froomkin is great. I need to make him a regular read again.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  4. 4.

    Benw

    @Ken: I’m going with high fantasy, and imagining it being given full Theoden-king style while riding around on a horse.

    ETA: Since I bet a lot (not all) of reporters would like to adopt most of the proposed changes, I think the stickiest sticking point in the speech is this:

    Who’s winning today’s messaging wars is a story that may get you a lot of tweets, but in the greater scheme of things it means nothing.

    Weaning major media orgs off winning the twitter-cycle is going to be hard.

  5. 5.

    Hildebrand

    @Ken: Definitely fantasy.  Would I like to see our major newspapers do this?  Absolutely.  Will they?  Nope.  Not until there is an incentive as strong as money to motivate the suits telling their reporters to actually report ‘government’ news.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    The most important lesson of the Bush/Cheney years is that we should never assume government officials are telling us the truth, especially when it comes to matters involving war and national security.

    I don’t disagree.  I would just like to point out that this doesn’t mean that those officials are lying, or that they have some herculean task to offer proof that persuades the most conspiratorial minded.  Dems tend to more when lying is presumed by people on social media.

  7. 7.

    Hildebrand

    I don’t think it’s just the suits and the editorial staff –  there are plenty of folks who don’t get into journalism to be reporters (e.g. M. Haberman and others of her ilk), they get in for the publicity.

    So, we need to have an explicit demarcation between journalists and, well, not journalists.  Journalists will get White House and Capitol press credentials, the ‘Not Journalists’ will get cast into the outer darkness of cable news chat shows.  At least then we would have a more solid foundation on which to base the stories.

  8. 8.

    H.E.Wolf

    It was an interesting essay. I thought his final line about “oh, I guess I’m fired for saying this” undermined all of his own points.

    It’s a perennial issue with theatre students – it is an emotional challenge to play serious moments fully seriously (an onstage death scene, for instance), and students often throw in a joke, or a smirk, or a shtick, to ease that feeling of difficulty.

  9. 9.

    jonas

    That distinction between reporting on politics and reporting on the activities and functioning of government is brilliant — gets precisely to the point of what ails contemporary media. Of course the reason we’re here is that political gossip = clicks, reporting on governing and policy = zzzzz.

  11. 11.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The most important lesson of the Bush/Cheney years is that we should never assume government officials are telling us the truth, especially when it comes to matters involving war and national security.

    The bit that shocked me was how the Bush admin was lying to itself on war and security. To this day I still haven’t heard the real reason for the Iraq War which convinces me it was just “Fuck it, let’s do it bois” kind of nonsense.

  12. 12.

    germy

    The most important lesson of the Bush/Cheney years is that we should never assume government officials are telling us the truth, especially when it comes to matters involving war and national security.

    “Now that Biden/Harris are in, let’s get tough.”

  13. 13.

    germy

    People like Maggie Haberman and Chuck Todd are mostly showing off for their colleagues, not trying to inform us.

  14. 14.

    feebog

    @germy:

    “Now that Biden/Harris are in, let’s get tough.”

    You know what?  I don’t think Joe and Kamala care.  They are focused on doing the right thing, and won’t be afraid to admit mistakes.

  15. 15.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud: ​
     

    I would just like to point out that this doesn’t mean that those officials are lying, or that they have some herculean task to offer proof that persuades the most conspiratorial minded.

    He actually goes into this in a bit more detail in the full article:

    We should be particularly skeptical if they claim that secrecy precludes them from showing us concrete, persuasive evidence. The government routinely uses secrecy to protect itself, not the people.

    I think this is a really critical lesson. On of the most important ways they lie about national security is to claim their sources are classified so they can’t share them. It’s a very convenient way to hide their lies. IMO, if a reporter can’t confirm this kind of information from non-classified sources, they shouldn’t be reporting it. It’s basic journalistic malpractice to report something you can’t confirm.
    More generally, they need to take this same basic attitude toward all kinds of reporting where the thing their talking about is what someone said. This is one of the main ways they’ve repeated Trump’s lies. That somebody important said something doesn’t make it inherently newsworthy, no matter how important the person saying it is. If you can confirm what they’re saying, great; it’s now a fact you can report as a fact. If you can confirm they’re wrong, great; you can now report the facts along with a comment that so-and-so got it wrong. If so-and-so is constantly getting it wrong, you need to report that, too. If you believe so-and-so is deliberately lying, the lie can be a story, and the truth they’re lying about can be a story, but “so-and-so incorrectly claimed X” should never be the framing of the story.

  16. 16.

    MagdaInBlack

    Well, since it says open thread;

    Cheryl, I saw an article the other day ( in WaPo I think) about Ukraine being a wee bit more forthcoming about Giuliani and his activity there, now that there is a new administration, but I’ve seen nothing else since. Perhaps I haven’t been paying attention, but it seemed important.

  18. 18.

    germy

    Psaki calls out a reporter for asking a "many people are saying" question he can't back up pic.twitter.com/OyweIQiVwB— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 1, 2021

    This particular reporter is from CBS, and he’s always trying to stir up shit. I get strong “College Republican” vibes from him. I don’t know if that’s his origin story, but he’s constantly creating false scandals for Norah O’Donnell to scoop up.

  21. 21.

    germy

    @geg6:

    A few weeks ago there was some puff piece about Maggie, written by one of her colleagues.  He described sitting across from her while she badgered a source on the phone.  His article was all “What a rock star!” but I got the impression she was bullying this source just to show off for him.

    It’s all about their careers and prestige.  Maggie, Todd, the rest of the national pundits. We’re just the peanut gallery.

  22. 22.

    the pollyanna from hell

    My plan is to patronize non-profit news outfits. Market forces can produce perverse incentives even among non-profits, but I think it would be a step forward to starve the for-profits.

  23. 23.

    evodevo

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: ​
      Darth Cheney had been wanting to do it for literally years (see: PNAC) but needed excuses that would convince GW and other squishes like Powell…so he stocked the Defense Dept with minions who would gin up some “evidence” without quibbling about the sources or the verity (see: pushback at the time from knowledgeable sources like Valerie Plame’s husband), and then wrapped it all up by totally ignoring the testimony from Blix and his team of weapons inspectors that Saddam did NOT have any WMD ANYWHERE and telling them to evacuate because the bombers were on their way to Baghdad…and here we are, 18 years later…

  24. 24.

    Roger Moore

    @Hildebrand: ​
     

    So, we need to have an explicit demarcation between journalists and, well, not journalists.

    I think you have the basic concept right but not the terminology. We need to distinguish between fact journalists, opinion journalists, and gossip journalists. Fact journalists are traditional reporters. They chase after stories, talk to sources, and try to figure out what’s going on in the world. Opinion journalists look at the facts dug up by fact journalists and try to put it into a bigger picture of the way the world ought to work. They focus on should and could rather than is. This is still useful, but it needs to be clearly separated from the fact journalism. Gossip journalists report on what people are saying without bothering to dig into the facts. They should not be given a platform at a reputable news organization.

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: ​
     

    To this day I still haven’t heard the real reason for the Iraq War which convinces me it was just “Fuck it, let’s do it bois” kind of nonsense.

    I’ve said it before: nothing as big as the Iraq war happens for a single, simple reason. The Iraq war happened because there were too many groups within the Republican party who wanted it, but each group wanted it for different reasons. There were people who wanted it because they were mad GHWB never pushed through an unseated Saddam when he had the chance. There were Neocons who literally said we need to trash some little country once in a while to prove how serious we are. There were political operatives like Karl Rove who thought it was the key to winning elections. There was the whole MIC who wanted a war to have a chance to use all their new, very expensive weapons. There were oil and gas interests who thought they could take over the Iraqi oil industry. There was something for everyone, and that’s what made it so hard to fight; there was no single counter-argument because there was no single motivation.

  28. 28.

    PPCLI

    @evodevo: And of course, Cheney ran the dishonest two-step with Judith Miller of the NYT to perfection. He would give her some information “on background”, she would uncritically publish it, it would go on the front page, and then Cheney would appeal to the story as if it were independent verification. “Look, even the New York Times said this yesterday.”

  29. 29.

    germy

    @Roger Moore:  We need to distinguish between fact journalists, opinion journalists, and gossip journalists.

    I agree, but reporters like Ed O’Keefe are presenting as fact journalists, while focusing on gossip. His question at the press conference (see my comment #18) was “Some Democrats say…” nonsense that he couldn’t back up when she asked him “Which Democrats?”

    They blur the lines themselves.

  30. 30.

    sab

    @Roger Moore: Wasn’t there also something about Iran trying to break the dollar as world reserve currency by getting contracts in euros, which incensed Cheney.

  33. 33.

    Soprano2

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: To this day I still haven’t heard the real reason for the Iraq War which convinces me it was just “Fuck it, let’s do it bois” kind of nonsense.

    In his book about his brief time working at the Bush White House, Richard Clarke says they were talking about going to war with Iraq from the moment Bush came into office. So the reason for it has nothing to do with 9-11 or terrorism, that’s for sure. My husband thinks it was to get revenge on Saddam for trying to kill Bush Sr. I think it was the neocons trying to implement their “domino theory” about getting all the countries in the Middle East to become U.S.-loving democracies that recognize Israel. Whatever the reason was, it definitely was not any of the reasons they said it was.

  34. 34.

    Kent

    @schrodingers_cat: How much control does the government actually have over twitter in India?  It is an honest question, I have no idea, but I’m curious how much twitter is laying over for the Indian government and doing their bidding.

  35. 35.

    artem1s

    got to this section and well… not promising.  bold face mine

    One major lesson from the Obama years is: Don’t become complacent just because the president appears to know what he’s doing. The White House is a bubble, no matter its occupant. Power not only corrupts, it distorts, it distances, it detaches. The president and his staff must be constantly questioned, challenged, and exposed to reality outside the bubble. Critics must be heard. Transparency must be enforced. The press is uniquely capable of making that happen.

    and yet journalists didn’t ‘make it happen’ because they were too busy inventing things so as to appear to constantly questioned, challenged, and exposed to reality outside the bubble. In what universe was the Obama administration not constantly questioned?  This my friend is another steaming load of both-siderism designed to prove he’s being equally critical of the Democrats.

    The big lesson from the 2016 election was not that we were out of touch with real people. It was that we had ignored – and, indeed, contributed to – a massive, viral outbreak of know-nothingism whose co-morbidities included white supremacy, white grievance, disinformation spread through the media and social media, mental illness, and, yes, some legitimate disillusionment about an uncaring and unresponsive government by the elites. We in the media helped by offering a divisive megalomaniac free and often unfiltered attention, by normalizing the radical extremism of the modern-day Republican Party, and by blowing Democratic failings wildly out of proportion to create false equivalence.

    OK, fine, he tries to recoup here.  but who are these REAL PEOPLE they were so out of touch with?  They’ve been trying for three decades to tell us if Dems just listened more to the REAL PEOPLE everything would be Okey-Dokey.  OK fine, so they go on coffee shop woke, twitter rose safari’s instead of rural diner cletus safari’s?   Like I said, there are some good points to consider here, but he back tracks on almost all of them in an effort to not speak the most obvious lesson of not speaking the truth while silently watching a major party completely devolve. Sometimes you need to make the hard choice to NOT listen to every voice. Not every voice deserves equal space at the table, especially if that voice is the batshit ravings of sycophants loyal to a fascist authoritarian, narcissistic lunatic. We have had at least one VP, two Presidents, and dozens Congresscritters in the last half century who have fit that description. They were put in place by design by one party. It’s time for journalist to be up front about saying, “I’m not giving column inches or airtime to crazy people, so until you stop acting crazy, we’re not covering you, even if that means we give you no coverage at all”. And they shouldn’t pick the people trying to emulate them to fill that void.  There is plenty of news out there without having give a voice to the latest grifter trying to get his mug all over the news.

  36. 36.

    germy

    @Soprano2:

    I remember when W. Bush won the election, the first thing I said to my wife was “Watch… they’re going to invade Iraq.”

    And I wasn’t particularly connected politically at the time.  I just knew there was a strong “Finish The Job!” sentiment swirling around Republicans.

    And then 9/11 happened…

  37. 37.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kent: Pretty substantial is my guess. It is probably the price of doing business in India.

    One of the selling points for Modi’s groupies is that he is supposedly  enhancing India’s reputation abroad. He is making India Great, if you will. Western opprobrium could act as somewhat of a brake to the increasingly self destructive trajectory that India is currently on

    That’s why we should publicize what the GoI doesn’t want to be widely seen.

  43. 43.

    MisterForkbeard

    @mrmoshpotato: I was in my senior year of high school, had taken the ASVAB, had a 4.0, had been accepted to a lot of good colleges, etc. At the time I was being headhunted by a lot of military recruiters.

    When Bush was elected, I told them all “I do not want to join the military at this time, because I’m sure that Bush is going to start a stupid war in the Middle East for no reason and I don’t want to support that, and I do not want to kill people out there for no reason.”

    I was oddly prescient for an 18-year-old. More so than most of our media. I think because it was real to me.

  45. 45.

    germy

    @zhena gogolia:

    I get a “Smart person who did well in school and takes her job seriously” vibe from her.  Trump’s press secretary gave me a “Dumb person who threw wine in someone’s face” vibe.

  46. 46.

    Cacti

    My father in law is being removed from life support today.

    Has been in the hospital from Covid for 3 weeks now, and has been comatose and losing brain function for the past several days.

    CT of his chest showed his lungs were too badly damaged for any meaningful recovery to occur, and that he will likely never awaken, so, in accordance with his advance directive of not wanting to be kept alive as an invalid, his family is honoring his wishes.

     

    Fuck mother fucking Donald Trump, and the mother fucking Republican Party for their hand in making this happen.

  50. 50.

    natem

    it frees you to cover what is happening in Washington in the context of whether it is serving the people well, rather than which party is winning.

    “Ahh, but who are *we* to tell the people what is serving them well or not?! Should it not be the other way around? Should we not listen to them? At the ballot box?!”

  51. 51.

    brendancalling

    In my fantasy world, this is playing on loop in an enormous auditorium, while Chris Cillizza, Chuck Turd, and the rest of the upsy-downsy/sidesy-widesy/both-siderist crown is forced to watch, Ludovico Technique-style, until they have absorbed the lesson.

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    @artem1s:

    and yet journalists didn’t ‘make it happen’ because they were too busy inventing things so as to appear to constantly questioned, challenged, and exposed to reality outside the bubble.

    I think it’s even simpler than that.  The journalists couldn’t expose the Obama administration to reality outside the bubble because the media were themselves the ones creating and enforcing the bubble.  A big chunk of the rest of the article is about how to ensure journalists aren’t inside the bubble themselves.

  68. 68.

    wjs

    From now on, I’m the bad cop when it comes to dishy sources who want to talk to you anonymously. When you tell your sources “my boss won’t let me quote you unless you speak to me on the record,” that’s me.

    Maggie Haberman would end up at Fox News if this ended up being enforced in any meaningful way.

  69. 69.

    Starboard Tack

    @Cacti:
    May you and yours come to peace in your sorrow. And, yes, fuck ’em all. Killed my Dad, too. I’m with ya’.

  72. 72.

    geg6

    @Dan Froomkin:

    Great piece!  My mom was a local newspaper reporter and she would be horrified by the state of her profession.  Especially those with the biggest megaphones.

  73. 73.

    Dan B

    @Cacti: Stories like yours flood me with a range of emotions.  Rage is a prominent part of the mix but also deep sadness and despair not only for your famiky but for our neighbors and family members who do not “believe in Covid”.  They will believe when it is too late.

    In the meanwhile I’m scheduled for my first jabs in early March.  I’m in 1A.  My friends and my partner who are 1B have already had their first.  Who knows how many crises we will endure before I’m “safe” in mid April.

    Your rage and your sorrow show your humanity.  Hold on to them as tight as you can and lean on us as much as you need.

  77. 77.

    dnfree

    @geg6: having gone to J-school in the 1960s, before Watergate but during the Vietnam era, it makes me stabby too. Student journalists and our professors were well aware that the government lies, and our job was to find out what they were lying about and why.  It was life and death to many students at that time

    Story we heard around 1964 or 1965:  a former student serving in the military came back to campus and spoke to a seminar of about a dozen journalism students. He mentioned that the body counts of Viet Cong were being exaggerated. This was at a lesser state school in a rural area. Within less than a week, someone from the government had contacted the head of the journalism department and the professor to “correct” the information from the guest. No one had any idea how this got up the chain of command so quickly.

    But young journalists then understood the mission. Woodward and Bernstein weren’t unique.

  78. 78.

    different-church-lady

    We too often think of whiteness as neutral.

    Ex-ACT-FUCKING-lee. And it’s what makes me crazy when people supposedly on our side start lecuring us about dropping “identity politics”. Well, ain’t it just interesting that every other race or minority group is an “identity” but somehow straight and white isn’t?

  81. 81.

    Dan B

    @schrodingers_cat: That’s what it looked like to me.  This  will be very disturbing to my friends who are from Delhi.  We stayed at an Austin’s home in Delhi.  Her husband is Sikh.  This is just a couple degrees of separation for me and one degree for my dear friends.

  82. 82.

    Geminid

    @different-church-lady: You remind me of last year’s primary season, when advocates for the Junior Senator from Vermont loudly decried “identity politics.” But when Joe Rogan said nice things about their candidate, these advocates raved about how this could bring critical support from the young white men in Rogan’s audience.

  84. 84.

    prostratedragon

    @Cacti:  My sincere condolences to you and your family, and to all those who have been victims of this bout of malevolent insanity on a large scale.

  89. 89.

    planetjanet

    Just what bubble was Obama stuck in?  None that I can tell.  He was completely grounded in the real world.

  91. 91.

    Roger Moore

    @Geminid: ​
     
    I’ll believe we’ve put identity politics behind us when we stop treating white working class people as having separate interests from minority working class people.

  94. 94.

    Bill Arnold

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Had a look at history for the Wikipedia page on pogroms.
    The wikipedia pogrom page now has nothing for India excep the “1984 anti-Sikh pogrom”
    Going through history I see this (2020) has been removed a few times:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pogrom&diff=968602039&oldid=968601470
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pogrom&diff=944036879&oldid=944024542
    and the 2002 pogram has been gone a while:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pogrom&diff=942057911&oldid=941792402 (removed by an Indian ip address)
    Since Wikipedia is a go-to for many/most, such removals can be significant in shaping the discourse.
    (Assuming you’ve not been watching that page.)

  96. 96.

    planetjanet

    I agree with Froomkin on anonymous sourcing. I am sick of it.

    No anonymous sourcing unless you and your editor agree that the information is vital to an important story, otherwise unattainable, and you are either satisfied of your source’s altruistic motives or prepared to describe their more venal ones to your readers.
    Warn them that if they lie to you, you will out them.

    But he left out the last step. Don’t just warn liars that you may out them. DO IT!!

  101. 101.

    DaveInOz

    I’m old enough to remember when Dan Froomkin was the only sane voice in the Washington Post opinion section.

  104. 104.

    dimmsdale

    @H.E.Wolf:   FYI, Dan Froomkin was employed by the Washington Post for some years as a reporter. He also served as the paper’s ombudsman–a position from which he was fired, because he was too damn effective. So when he talks about being fired, it may not be as tongue-in-cheek as it appears.

    For a long time afterward, the Post lacked an in-house ombudsman/ press critic. I believe under Marty Baron’s editorship, Margaret Sullivan is it, and frequently gets front-page space for her work critiquing the Post and other media bobbleheads.

    But Froomkin has been daily reading in my household ever since his days at the Post. His newsletter is eminently worth attention. Here endeth my TED talk

    @cacti: adding my condolences, I am so sorry for your loss.

  106. 106.

    SWMBO

    @Cacti: ​
      I’m so sorry to hear this. My mother died of Covid November 18. It is one of the hardest goodbyes ever. Peace and comfort to all who loved him.
    Fuck mother fucking Donald Trump, and the mother fucking Republican Party for their hand in making this happen with a rusty chain saw. Hard, no grease. I’m right with you there on this.

  108. 108.

    Tenar Arha

    @Cacti: So sorry to hear this Cacti. May his memory be a blessing for you all.

    Fcuk Trump & his GOP enablers for the avoidable pain they’ve caused our country.

  112. 112.

    Amir Khalid

    @Cacti:

    My condolences. Your anger is justified; they still have a lot to answer for. I hope it doesn’t keep you and your family from finding peace.

  113. 113.

    Miss Bianca

    @jonas: Yep. I call myself the “government reporter” for my paper, not the “political reporter” – for the reason that the author states, although I’ve never thought to express it that way before!

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