I guess it’s better than the alternative:
Chris Quinn knew he had a problem when Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance repeatedly used the phrase “dirty” while talking about immigrants.
Back in March, Quinn — the top editor at Cleveland.com and the Cleveland Plain Dealer — instituted a policy to ignore false, irresponsible and potentially dangerous statements made by political candidates. Four months later, statehouse reporter Andrew Tobias wanted to do a story focused on Vance’s xenophobic comments, made at a campaign rally in July.
“I said we’re not doing that. That flies in the face of what we told people we were doing,” Quinn said, “There are thoughtful ways to do what he wanted to do without putting the hate out there.”
Instead, Tobias wrote a deep dive on how candidate Vance’s speech patterns and comments have changed over the past four years. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” had once been highly critical of former President Donald Trump and held himself out as the representative of people in poverty. Now, as he seeks Trump’s endorsement, Vance has apologized for his past criticism and has undergone a dramatic change in his tone and rhetoric to sound more and more like the former president.
You have to give Quinn credit for understanding the problem:
“We’re just not okay with somebody weaponizing our platform and using our traditional coverage methods to spread bullshit,” Quinn said.
That “weaponizing” quote is in the context of coverage of a Trump rally near Cleveland.
We know for sure that “fact checking” doesn’t work. First, it’s exhausting — Trumpers can tell a dozen lies in the time it takes for a fact checker to investigate and debunk one. Second, the fact checkers reflexive desire for balance ends up with them finding one or two minor mis-statements by Democrats to “balance” their coverage of the hundreds of bald-face and consequential lies uttered by Republicans. So maybe just not repeating the lies and instead looking at a bigger picture (as with Vance) will work. At least outlets like the Plain Dealer won’t look like a bunch of chumps.
RaflW
I’m kinda down for some yellow journalism. “Vance attacks Afghans interpreters who supported US war” seems like an okay headline to me
But, more seriously, Jay Rosen and others have been saying for a long time that US press is totally ill equipped lets Rs weaponize their platforms.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@RaflW: A little yellow journalism wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. When cities became one newspaper towns, the newspaper mgt decided they need to be all things to all people. Better to have the “Democratic” paper and the “Republican” paper. Even if the editorial page of these modern newspapers is Democratic, both sides rules the rest of the paper.
Roger Moore
I think they have the essential points right. The goal is to avoid repeating bullshit. If you feel the need to make a story about them lying, mention the general subject of the lie and say they lied about it, but don’t repeat the substance of the lie. The other critical thing is to keep yourself in control of the story. You can’t do that if you take a short term look at things and make the story each day be about what the candidate decides to talk about that day. You can only do it by taking a step back, looking at broader patterns, and choosing to make the story about those bigger patterns.
Betty Cracker
I understand the desire to not let xenophobic shits like Vance use the newspaper’s platform to spread lies, but I lean toward RalfW’s solution at #1 rather than analyzing Vance’s speech patterns, as if the fact that he’s changed is the problem. No, the fact that’s he’s ginning up hate against a vulnerable group of people is the problem, and not calling him out for it is letting him off the hook. What am I missing?
RaflW
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Even worse now, as papers have been gutted, they run national wire stories like “Justice Thomas decries perceptions of partisanship on Scotus” and the Gannett (or AP or NYT reprint) story won’t even mention the 100s of cases he’s consistently voted the “R” interests on.
How are people even supposed to understand what’s happening in the world when the goal is obfuscation.
hells littlest angel
@Roger Moore: Saying someone lied without quoting them seems like a bad idea. Better: “During his inflammatory speech, the candidate made the following false statements — [ …] This newspaper sees no public service in reporting the speech in its entirety.”
artem1s
this is a 180 degree turn around for the PD. Used to be an excellent paper and completely ruined their brand in 2000. The editorial board was set to endorse Gore but let the RWNJ owners pressure them into not endorsing anyone at all. The state GOP was operating in lockstep with Rove and pulled all kinds of voter suppression stunts aided and abetted by all the local media. I canceled my subscription and stopped going to the website completely because of the racists trolls in the comments sections.
Nice to see someone there standing up again. I may resubscribe if they keep this up.
Redshift
Seems worth a try, and much better than the usual insistence that attitudes and perceptions “just happen” and ignoring the news media’s role in them (even when it’s involuntary.)
News media has long seen their role as reporting “what happened.” That’s fine if you’re reporting actions, but if you’re reporting what people say, the objective should be to report truth, not events. When someone first proposed the idea of having to go to a fact-checking column to find out the truth because it wasn’t in the articles, that really should have been a wake up call, but it wasn’t. The fact that there’s are now people deliberately using this flaw to disseminate false information (well, a lot more is them) should be even more of one.
Baud
Now that I watch MSNBC a lot less, it’s jarring how much of their programming consists of airing the latest offensive thing a Republican or Fox News has said in order to have their guests respond to it.
dr. bloor
@Roger Moore:
This is what Daniel Dale advocates–the story isn’t the issue that the politician is addressing, the story is the lie.
dr. bloor
@Baud: I rarely watch anymore for precisely that reason. Watching Rachel Maddow whip herself into a frenzy during the opening segment night after night gets as exhausting as listening to TFG.
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: And the weasel words “critics say Vance’s anti-immigrant rhetoric may have a link to rising hate crimes” just doesn’t do sh*t. Or, worse, “Democrats say Vance is whipping up anger” as if only Democrats are noticing this?
That convention in journalism is a tool of the devil.
It may have worked in more genteel times (I’m not convinced it did) but this method actually rewards the GOP lying because any story about a Democratic speech, policy proposal etc has to have a “Republican critics say the earth will explode and sulphur will rain down if wind turbines are installed” type rebuttal for, eghad, balance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: What are you missing? That this step is progress. If portions of the press are starting to see a problem and are looking for solutions, that is a good thing. They didn’t get to where they are in one step; they won’t get out (if they do) in one step either.
ETA: A paper recognizing again that there are objective facts and not just Dem and GOP statements is a good thing.
MattF
However, Vance is such an utterly shameless, pants-on-fire, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t liar that he’s hard to ignore.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
The problem is that by reporting on what he’s saying, you’re helping him gin up hate among the people who are receptive to that message. They won’t care about the spin you put on it, they’ll get the message that Vance hates the right people. Making the story about Vance changing from anti-Trump to Trump clone changes the story to be about how he’s just one more guy who’s faking it and willing to say whatever he thinks will win him the election.
Redshift
@hells littlest angel: I agree that seems like a better approach.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Someone on the internet – I forget who – noted that for the last thirty years or so, the “news” is always “what are Republicans mad about today?”
gvg
@RaflW: How about “Vance uses a racist attack on a vulnerable group that helped the US, so that he can gain votes and money.”
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: Aren’t the people who are receptive to Vance’s message about “dirty immigrants” tuning in to OAN, Newsmax, Fox News and right-wing radio hosts (who haven’t yet died of COVID) to get their two-minutes hate rather than reading the PD? I mean, yeah, the fact that Vance is a phony is a story, but so is the fact that he’s a hate-monger.
RaflW
I agree with Omnes that this step the Plain Dealer is taking is worth trying, and extending upon. There is no question that the press writ large is not equipped to deal with the huge amount of bad faith coming out of the right in this country (probably not able to deal with it abroad that great either, come to think of it).
There are a few ideas out there. Lakoff’s truth sandwich idea seems decent to me when dealing with a lie such as “immigrants take our jobs”, but doesn’t work for straight hate like calling them dirty.
Big picture I think the whole system wherein public figures do things like give speeches, and the press dutifully reports the content, is broken (see my comment above in ref to how the press is just credulously reporting the now-coordinated-seeming Coney Barret/Thomas/Breyer bullshit handwringing about ‘partisan perceptions’).
Politicians (and yeah, Scotus judges are politicians, thanks for coming to my Ralf talk) have always peppered their speeches and TV hits with fibs, exaggerations and spin. But the absolute eyeball-floating levels of outright bullshit shoveled these days makes the “he said, and then he went, and we were all like wow” form of reporting events means the news system is just rewards the bullshit factory. And I don’t have a fix. Maybe because I’m not a newspaper editor or J school prof. But let’s keep working towards solutions.
Another Scott
There have always been cranks in America. Media pretending that they have to let almost any opinion on their platforms or that it’s too hard to pick out truth from disinformation is a bunch of revisionist nonsense. Good for Chris Quinn and the CPD for speaking up.
Relatedly, https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-vaccinated-11631880296
Poor, poor, Z can’t get his message about getting vaccinated out to his billions because
science is boring and doesn’t drive his totally objective Engagement algorithmreasons. Whatever will he do??!Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Not a blessed thing. And in Vance’s efforts to be a mini-Trump, I’m sure there’s a pattern there that could be reported on, of his ginning up hate against probably a whole bunch of marginalized groups.
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
This is something I’ve been thinking about for years. While a left-wing Fox News (irrespective of medium) isn’t something I want, a genuinely Democratic paper would cover a different set of stories, and cover stories differently.
Like those stories about restaurant owners not being able to find workers to hire – if any of them bothered to interview former workers from those restaurants, I missed it. Or the reconciliation bill – let’s see some stories on the programs it would pay for, and the effects of those programs on people at various walks of life. (And leave out all the “who’s helped politically” out of it; just say who voted for and against it, and let the readers decide.)
CindyH
@Betty Cracker: if only it were 2 minutes – more like 24/7 – I think they sleep with it on so they can rage dream as well.
rikyrah
Vance is a complete an utter fraud.
Those of us who already knew it are just sitting back in the cut watching everyone else catch up.
lowtechcyclist
@James E Powell:
That Atrios guy has pointed this out more than a few times.
RaflW
@Another Scott: The revelations that FB has what I would call ZiL lanes (all roads are equal, but some lanes of traffic are more equal than others) for celebrity users that get a much lighter touch for moderation should be a g-d damned bombshell.
My question is: If it’s true — and I’m pretty damn certain it is — that the moderation of disinfo and lies is notably softer for high-powered users, isn’t FB in essence curating content? If so, they they’re fucking liable for it.
They’ve always claimed they’re just a platform. But if the filters are porous in ways that are clearly preferential, then they are making editorial decisions. Hold them responsible when the hate speech they let through triggers predictably tragic events.
Another Scott
@RaflW: +1
It’s access-journalism calcified.
ICYMI, Jay Willis at BallsandStrikes.org – Legal journalism is broken:
It’s a great piece. Click on over.
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@Another Scott: Yep, Jay Willis’ piece is part of why I’m in this very grumpy mood this morning. It’s great — but depressing.
Mike in NC
Asshole J D Vance would look good in a nice coating of tar and feathers. That’s an honorable American tradition, after all.
bnateAZ
Proud of my hometown paper today
RaflW
@lowtechcyclist: And of course the ‘balance’ is: Here’s what Democrats are mad about, and what Republicans have to say about that anger.
Whoever it is who tracks the partisan lean of the Sunday show guests does yeoman work, but at this point, yeah we know that the weekly news-setting programs are 75%+ GOP. It’s gross, but so far basically a fixed target.
Benw
It’s good to see a newspaper step up and self-reflect and do something.
It hard to remember, but deplatforming TFG and the cable networks refusal to carry his bullshit just showed how much of his terrorizing of the country came from the endless coverage. It was seriously like cutting a toxic person out of your life; it just felt freeing. This seems like continuing in that direction by exposing more toxic assholes and cutting them out of our lives.
Ohio Mom
Here at the other end of the state, The Cincinnati Enquirer hardly mentions any of the candidates, either Republican or Democratic, for Senator or Governor.
They are laser-focused instead on the upcoming circus of Cincinnati’s city council race. I can only describe it as peak term-limits. They’ve been in place for about 25 years now, thanks to the Vast Right-Wing Machine.
Benches aren’t that deep, after everyone who has the qualifications and temperament to be a judicious council member has been term-limited, all that is left is the dregs.
So I understand why the paper is fascinated, lots of inanity to write up.
piratedan
i think the part that is going somewhat unnoticed is that by playing fast and loose with women’s rights, skewering the law to only be seen as a positive for all things Conservative and watching the media normalize all of the heinous behavior on the right as “just the cost of doing business” is that inevitably, they’re going to grow a radical left to match them.
Everyone is chill right now, peaceful protests, pink hats, civil disobedience without violence (at least initiated by the protestors) but there’s going to come a time, where someone’s daughter is going to get caught up in a bad abortion, or someone’s wife, and that someone (male or female) is going to understand that thru the funhouse mirrors of legal standings that there is no recourse for justice and there will be some alternative justice levied (or attempts to do so). The Conservatives have already shown us that this is an expected outcome and the media coverage of said same will default to a lone wolf setting, especially so if the perpetrator is white.
Do I want to see this outcome… no, do I expect it’s arrival within the next two years, yes.
Cameron
@CindyH: Their whole existence is grievance; that’s why they love Trump: “Nobody has ever been treated as unfairly as me.” That’s why cognitive dissonance doesn’t exist for them – they’ll bellyache that Biden deserted allies in Afghanistan, but they sure don’t want any of those people in their state. It’s free-form; the hatred and grievance just gets pointed towards whoever/whatever their leaders feel like at any time.
Betty Cracker
@Benw: It really did feel that way, didn’t it? Still does! I remember thinking Trump’s deplatforming was like having an airhorn that had been blowing in your face for four years suddenly go silent.
But while Vance is a Trump wannabe, he hasn’t been anything like that obnoxious airhorn for most people. Will a story about how he’s a phony-baloney second-rate imitator be enough for low-info voters to truly grasp the danger he represents because he’s spewing white supremacist tropes about “dirty” immigrants?
I don’t know the answer. I commend the PD for waking the fuck up and realizing something has to change, but I’m not convinced this tactic will improve things.
Ramiah Ariya
Fact-checking has its limitations; and the other side has agency. By now, experienced propagandists have learnt to side-step or game fact checking. Certainly, newspapers/journalists themselves are masters at this; and therefore they have figured out this new-fangled tool of fact-checking.
I wrote about this in FB – the Washington Post had an editorial a couple of days back, on the mistaken identity drone strike in Kabul, which killed an aid worker and several children. The editorial starts this way:
You can see that editorial team is pushing everyone reading toward the “error” framing. But there is another possibility – one that the WaPo would have considered if the country involved was not from the West. In fact, they would have considered it if Trump was President.
That possibility is that, given the criticism the Biden admin faced for the initial Kabul bombing, the US military simply lashed out, possibly with approval from the civilian administration.
That is certainly the tack that liberals would have taken if Trump was President – there would be references to his advice for the military to take the gloves off.
But, since the Biden administration is now in, WaPo is back to its “normal” framing – which is the interpretation that this is the “fog of war”, with that old stand-by, “terrorists mingled with civilians” thrown in.
RaflW
@Benw: TFG is of course still ‘tweeting’ though much less frequently. When he puts out one of his ~280 character ‘press releases’ and a buncha people share the image, I move past and try to not engage at all.
I know it’s (toxic) catnip for folks, but deplatforming only works if he is kept tf off the sites.
Just Chuck
What’ll work is chasing bigots like Vance completely out of society. No more coverage at all.
Kent
That is probably true. But on the other hand, those are the hard-core unreachable anyway. But I’m guessing the PD does reach a percentage of independent suburban swing type votes who actually do decide elections
Besides, I love the idea of doing stories about what a fake he is. What is his response? “No, I, promise, I really really am a bigot…honest!!!”
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
In this regard, they are ahead of the NYT & WaPo.
debbie
Yo, Ohio: Not responding is a response.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Even worse, he’s a Stephen Miller wannabe.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: That’s my point — those people need that info. The fact that Vance is a phony is absolutely newsworthy, but again, the thing that’s sticking in my craw is the deliberate decision to not inform readers that Vance is a fucking hate-monger who’s spewing white supremacist tropes because reporting on that would entail repeating his hateful statements.
trnc
I agree. In fact, just report that the candidate lied numerous times about topics A, B, C. Skip the fact check – just write that he lied once per lie. IE, pile on with the “lie” label. That’s how repubs have been doing it for decades.
Alce_e_ardillo
@RaflW: It’s weaseling in an attempt to avoid liability. If you couch everything in a conditional, no one can say you libeled them…
RaflW
@piratedan: I’ll see if I can tell this story compactly, but yes.
Minneapolis is still a city very much working through the trauma of not just the George Floyd killing, but of decades of police abuse of the citizenry, and a police union with inordinate power that has protected them.
Citizens tried, via the official process, to have our Charter Commission change our (police-installed) mandated minimum police force size and make other changes that would shift things from the status quo (but not ‘defund’ per se).
The Charter Commission, which is unreachably unaccountable, thumbed their noses at the citizenry.
So 22,000 citizen signatures were gained to get a ballot measure to effect changes. Cool! But wait, the (shitty, kinda-fake-liberal, but mostly just overwhelmed and worried about his re-elex) Mayor got several stooges to sue to have the ballot language changed or struck.
A Tim Pawlenty-appointed crony judge (wife of TPaw’s asst Chief of Staff at the time) has ruled several times in ways that seemed engineered to have the ballot question not be on the ballot!
Thankfully there was an emergency appeal to the State Supreme Court. Now, I don’t know if the MN S.C. judges watch twitter — I’m guessing mostly no — but in the several days of the crony judge’s antics, the anger in Minneapolis was surging.
So much so that pretty boy mayor suddenly asked his friends who generated the lawsuit to promptly ‘work with the petitioners to fix the language’. This city is a powderkeg. And it isn’t the only one. The MN S.C., perhaps sensing the winds of rage, ruled the ballot Q could stay.
I think there’s a ton of anger over things like the vax-scoffers, the TX bounty law, and so much more. We are fed the fk up. We aren’t the types to have guns and pipe bombs like they do on the right, but the sort of street unrest that unfolded here in 2020 (and in some other cities) is very, very much the strong undercurrent.
ps. The Star Tribune also ran a fkng A1 above the fold puff piece about that crony judge and how darn nice she is. Quoted various retired colleagues, but not one critic, nor even a law school prof or political analyst for any history or context. Failed media experiment indeed!
[OK none of that wasn’t brief or compact. Sorry, the wheels of whiteness retaining power are a long grind.]
Kent
@Betty Cracker: The OAN watchers aren’t seeking out those sources in an effort to seek actual information. They are watching OAN in order to see their pre-existing racism and hate confirmed for them. They are beyond reach. Or at least beyond the reach of some PD article. It is an impenetrable world view. Information that confirms their prejudices is embraced. Information that challenges their prejudices is discarded as “liberal media bias”.
I have relatives who are like this. All we can really do is wait for them to die of Covid or old age, and make sure they are out-voted. Wish I had a better answer.
But I do like pointing out how fake JD is. Although I’m sure that approach really worked with Trump. There were plenty of stories that pointed out what a fake he was too, and people still ate it up. I’m not sure if that means Trump was especially talented at the fakery or messaging or what.
Sure Lurkalot
It seems to me that the whole “fact checking” industry undermines journalism, because even acknowledging the chicken and egg problem, it leads to (or illustrates) complacency in getting the story right before you hit “publish”. There have always been corrections to stories front and center or buried back on page 22, but FFS, Wapo has their very own fact checker…who checks his facts?
RaflW
@Kent: Fakeness in pursuit of right wing power is no vice.
If anything, the ‘base’ ate it up. They took it as a sign of how powerful he was to lie without consequence.
Woodrow/asim
In related news, Politico shat the bed today.
They wanted to do a hit-piece on Jennifer Rubin, positioning her as “a shill for Biden”. When they asked her to comment, she sent an email clearly labeled Off the Record. They chose to pretend that journalistic convention means nothing, and published her email: https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1438884463308644353
Getting rightly dragged on the Twitters.
cain
@Betty Cracker:
I think the problem is then it starts looking like an editorial than a news article or at least people will interpret it that way.
chopper
white people in poverty. that’s the difference
cain
@Baud:
Like Fox News, the whole idea is to keep your audience outraged. I suppose that this top 500 blog also keeps me outraged, but jackals are so much better than MSNBC commentators!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Woodrow/asim: It’s a shit move from Politico, obviously, but I gotta say, I love her email
Has anyone posted Politico’s story about the divisiveness of torture apologist and trump-sucker Marc Thiessen?
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: There are ways to call out the lies, in detail, without amplifying them. I would hope that that would be one of the things taught in J School.
I’m reminded of stories like this – BBCNews – Patty Hearst:
It shouldn’t be up to readers to find ways to be informed without being brainwashed or becoming clickbait victims. That’s one of the main reasons why we have professional journalists and editors, I think. News people should do journalism. Entertainers should do entertainment. Mixing the two or treating them as the same is dangerous.
How? Beats me. But giving up judgment and editorial control isn’t the way.
Cheers,
Scott.
There go two miscreants
No need to apologize that I can see. It all seems like significant info about the situation.
sdhays
@Betty Cracker: Dead thread, but it occurs to me that the timing matters. Vance wants every Republican in the state to know how much he hates and despises immigrants because he needs them to vote for him in the Republican primary. An article criticizing him for being a Nazi isn’t going to hurt him right now – it could actually help him in his primary. But his cynicism and phoniness is very last thing he wants anyone talking about. There are plenty of Nazis to choose from in the GQP primary; there’s no need to support a fake one.
If he manages to become the GQP nominee for Senate, which seems doubtful(?), then a different approach should be necessary.
Another Scott
Good related piece at TheConversation via GovExec:
A good read. Click on over.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
And I wonder, who’s watching the man who’s watching me?
artem1s
To be clear, the PD isn’t doing this completely out of a sense of actual fair and balanced journalism. The 1% in NEO and mainstream state GOP want Vance out of the picture for the Senate race. He is screwing up their master plan to put some old GOP vanguard toady in that seat. The PD has published similar think pieces about Mandel pretending to be some outside, rural rube. The PD owners are fine with the screaming militia wingnuts in the state getting out of control at BLM events or Forced Birthers trying to pass TX style reproductive laws. But they don’t want them turning on DeWine and/or any of the NeoCons and Chamber of Commerce types who are currently in control of the Party money. The PD is helping marginalize Vance and that will likely benefit one of the other GOP candidates. But at least they aren’t going full metal QAnon as they have been in the past. As someone noted, it’s a step in the right direction – not a total fix
Benw
@Betty Cracker: it took away a stressor that I didn’t even really know was as bad as it was!
@RaflW: for non-twitter normies like me, he is just GONE. I never see that shit, unless bits of it show up here…
Jeffery
Mark. 8 Verses 34 to 38
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?
This was written for the J. D.s of the world.
Ramalama
@RaflW: Dan Froomkin has also covered the media on the campaigns tirelessly. Like so.
Another Scott
@Ramalama: An excellent piece. Thanks for the pointer. Froomkin is good and should get more visibility.
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Jeffery:
But for Ohio, JD?
sab
@artem1s: Chris Quinn has been doing great work for years on the local PBS and NPR outlets as a reporter from the PD. It is a real pleasure to watch him get enough clout to have some impact on the PD.
J R in WV
I doubt that any immigrants coming to America through authorized channels, esp. from Afghanistan, could possible be dirtier than I am after a day of summertime work around the homeplace and farm. I assume Vance has never lifted a finger to work on a farm or suburban home needing major upkeep.
Neighbor had a heart attack a couple or 3 weeks ago. After his workup in the Cardiac center in town, his first question of the cardiologist was “Can I mow around the place?” and his wife shouted NO!! You can’t mow! Vance could not have formulated that question… What a monster he has become.