The media obsesses over Biden because of his age and too often portrays him as feeble. They didn’t cover Trump that way despite the fact that he is clearly far less healthy or mentally fit than Biden. Once again they have chosen a preferred narrative frame — this time it’s Biden is slipping mentally and physically — and skew their reporting to promote that narrative. This is the same media that chose to ignore Reagan’s clearly weakening mental state and still usually doesn’t admit he was suffering from Alzheimer’s during his last years in office. He got so bad his staff seriously considered invoking the 25th amendment.
Yes, I believe the failing of Reagan medically in the last few years was eventually documented.
And the narrative of what happened to Richard Nixon at the end, with the drinking and taking heavy medication, falling apart and crying while also telling the military to nuke his enemies, is largely forgotten. Forgotten in the Vietnam sands of time but it is documented in historical archives. Kissinger had to hold the president up at one point when he was falling apart so this is not new to the GOP.
The toll of letting trump continue even though he was unfit: over one million preventable deaths from covid, in the most medically advanced country in the world.
Nixon: legacy of 2 million Vietnamese dead, and over 55,000 American young men dead in what Secretary MacNamara later called a "mistake."
Joe Biden has pulled off an incredible feat considering what the world is going through so this is the issue of ageism is rearing its ugly head.
“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James
Thanks for another great article! I join everyone, I am sure, in wishing you and yours the best possible outcome and health! Our medicine is very advanced so we have to be grateful for the many things we have in our time, that are new inventions of genius.
The article is part Joseph Heller and part pure Douglas Adams, c'est tres amusant! :)
"The White House press corps has lost its mind, or at least its perspective."
"Today offered a classic illustration—if you can stand to watch it, which I recommend that you don’t."
There used to be a phrase, "dumbing down."
Maybe we are all tumbling down, or some of us are, because of the swamp pit that we were in during the trumpster era. Dumbing down without being aware of it, and sinking so low in standards.
Journalists such as the one quoted in the article need to be aware of the easy trap of the dumbing down phenomenon, and avoid it.
I attended a lefty panel with some journalists in Boston one time, and a Time Magazine reporter was asked who her audience was, when she wrote her stories.
" I was on an airplane trip, and the gentleman in the next seat struck up a conversation. I explained I was a journalist covering the Middle East. 'Oh, you mean like Ohio?' said the seat neighbor. "
" That's who I write for."
" We call it Cuisinart Journalism. "
Playing to the lowest common denominator, like in the world of Time Magazine or CNN, is a slippery slide into the empty-headed wrongness that we now call trumpworld. Misleading the masses.
Maybe we can start a movement to educate the masses, who desperately need what we used to call Civics Affairs Class. How Government works. What is the role of the citizen in "self-interest rightly understood," the description that French author deToqueville used in the 1800's to describe America's unique, self-governing style.
Douglas Adams:
“The [Hitchhiker's] Guide says there is an art to flying," said Ford [Prefect], "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that. ' ”
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Claiming that you are writing for that demographic doesn’t explain misleading the public into thinking that Hillary Clinton’s email practices were unusual or even illegal or that Trump was a very successful businessman or that Al Gore had claimed to have invented the internet.
agree! This event with the journalists that I mentioned was a really long time ago, in the era of Reagan. The road we have all travelled since then is a really long, and sometimes very dark, one in terms of expectations about our media. Were similar slants used in the time of George McGovern or even in the Al Gore escapade? That would make an interesting research project. The media scene was completely different in the past.
I think that groups like Common Cause say that about 85% of our news stories are influenced by or directly paid for by the commercial advertisers. So, the commercialization and the "selling out" - another old phrase - of the media as a source of real news, results in the fairness problems we have today with coverage.
Many local reporters that I know in our rural area are just trying to keep their jobs, maybe it is the same all the way up the reporter ladder. People need their jobs.
Reporters like Woodward and Bernstein did their jobs in spite of the fact that their work would bring down the government. They did it because they had to look at themselves in the mirror. And because some journalists are just born that way, unable to toe the commercial line if it requires less than the journalistic best. Perhaps it is a good definition of bravery, something we are seeing also in the Jan 6 committee. As in the nixon era when a corrupt government fell and the vietnam war stopped, bravery is what is called for.
that is very kind, thank you! it is always fun to brighten someone's day :)
This forum provides a really fun way to express ourselves, or to connect. Substack really seems to be a great world of ideas and it is fun to connect with you!
“Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.” (From 1862)
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil...preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.”
That is no joke. After the American Enterprise Institute’s political scientist Norm Ornstein wrote the 2012 book “It’s Even Worse than it Looks” with Thomas Mann describing the dangerous radicalization of the Republican Party, he stopped being asked on political opinion shows. Before then he had been a frequent guest asked to five expert commentary on our political system but after he became personal non grata because he had blown a hole in their faux balance coverage.
Appreciate all the kind thoughts! To wax sincere about this briefly: It *is* true that after the book 'Breaking the News' came out in 1996, I was involved in, ummm, disagreements with some other parts of the DC-centered press. Howell Raines, the since-cashiered then-editor of the NYT, really took offense, and had a series of editorials, including a signed on by him, about how bad I was. For more than a decade I'd done weekly commentaries on NPR. I stopped that as a regular feature — but that was (a) because I'd become a newsmagazine editor, at US News ["the years we don't talk about"], (b) because Morning Edition was, as always, changing its format, and (c) a specific big shot at NPR had a very deep personal grudge, which lasted through this person's life.
And I didn't go on many TV talk shows, after mocking the entire genre! But I could not feel more fortunate about what I have been able to see, learn about, and report on — and the outlets through which I have been able to reach an interested audience. It was in the early after this dust-up that: (a) Deb and I lived in Seattle and Berkeley for three years, and I reported about (and worked in) tech; (b) I did Iraq war reporting and books, which was amply recognized [National Mag Award etc] though obviously didn't change policy; (c) we got to live in China for nearly five years, and write all about it; and (d) we got to do all the work stemming for 'Our Towns.'
So I feel very well favored rather than the reverse.
I am so glad to hear that it has worked out well for you but it has definitely been a loss to people like me who see our mainstream “liberal” media as a serious weak link for our democracy.
I wasn’t joking. My perception is that after the publication of Breaking the News, he disappeared from all outlets other than NPR. Maybe my perception is wrong, or maybe my timing is off, but for such an active and influential author I never see him on the Tee Vee anymore.
I meant that as an agreement with what you said. I noticed that that Mr. Fallows disappeared after that excellent book came out. Not sure how those examples happened but I do know that higher ups at one network killed a story about the Iran Contra Independent Counsel report saying Colin Powell had lied to investigators. The higher didn’t want to anger Powell and lose him as a guest.
The press isn't likely to "get a grip" when there is so much profit in grandstanding and theatrics.
Journalism professors used to grade assignments on the basis of objectivity and adherence to provable fact; perhaps they still do. But everyone "in the business" knows that success (meaning higher profits, of course) lies in the exact sort of questions referred to in this post. Once some genius realized the news department could be a source of profit instead of "overhead," the downhill slide began. And I'm afraid it won't end until there is no longer the possibility of publishing content without the express approval of the powers that be.
Yes — there are various hypotheses about what was the "descent from Eden" moment for the modern news business. Was it when '60 Minutes' proved that "news" shows could be highly profitable? Was it when Roone Arledge got control of *both* news and sports at ABC? Was it when Ted Koppel launched 'America Held Hostage' during the Iranian-hostage crisis in Jimmy Carter's time? Was it when Les Mooves (CBS) and Jeff Zucker (CNN) both discovered in 2015 that wall-to-wall Donald Trump rallies made for great TV, even if they were bad for the country? Etc etc,
So, I have no conclusive Answer to what you say. But I agree about the forces.
I have a question for you, Jim, that is rarely asked in this context: Who, in your opinion, is more "responsible" for the atrocious work product of so many (but not all) of the members of the White House press corps: the reporters or their bosses? Put differently, for things to change for the better, who needs to lead the way? I suppose I could include the consumers of their work product, too, but that's a big ask when there is so much else to do on any given day. The journalists are supposed to be the pros, right?
Good question. My main answer — which, as you know, was the whole point of my 'Breaking the News' book and everything since then — is, "It's complicated." In the end I think it is *more* cultural — culture of the White House press and its incentives — than it is boss-driven or purely economic. But of course the "cultural" aspects for the reporters also include things from the economic realm. Like book contracts and being on TV.
Understood, of course, but I would describe it as more of a "chicken-and-egg" conundrum with this followup: What needs to change first: the journalists/reporters or their editors/bosses?
What would happen if the main media outlets formally prohibited their reporters from writing the ex post facto "memoirs" based, in large part, on the entree that they have been given but which contain information that would have been of great value if reported in full and in 'real time' (eg., I am thinking of academic research labs that impose patent obligations on their staff who discover interesting things while teaching...).
The 'other hand' is harder to imagine in this context: young journalists want jobs that are as interesting and as career-positive as possible, and their "bosses" impose the business model drives the constant grasping for the sensational over the subtle and the simple over the complex...
These questions - and the inherent dilemma - are not limited to the WH press corps, of course... but they seem to be the most obvious and easily understood cohort.
It means that the White House press corps and political media are reminding us again that the overwhelming majority of them fit an unfortunate description, though not in the way he intended it, from someone whose presidency they made possible: They are the enemies of the people.
The press has been a monumental failure on so many fronts (see: bothsiderism) for so long, this does not surprise me. It disgusts me... but it doesn't surprise me. Where are the "adults in the room" for the Washington Press Corps? Where's Walter Cronkite to tell them to get a f-ing grip? (I added "f-ing" to your headline because I'm pissed.)
The media obsesses over Biden because of his age and too often portrays him as feeble. They didn’t cover Trump that way despite the fact that he is clearly far less healthy or mentally fit than Biden. Once again they have chosen a preferred narrative frame — this time it’s Biden is slipping mentally and physically — and skew their reporting to promote that narrative. This is the same media that chose to ignore Reagan’s clearly weakening mental state and still usually doesn’t admit he was suffering from Alzheimer’s during his last years in office. He got so bad his staff seriously considered invoking the 25th amendment.
https://www.history.com/news/reagan-health-25th-amendment
Yes, I believe the failing of Reagan medically in the last few years was eventually documented.
And the narrative of what happened to Richard Nixon at the end, with the drinking and taking heavy medication, falling apart and crying while also telling the military to nuke his enemies, is largely forgotten. Forgotten in the Vietnam sands of time but it is documented in historical archives. Kissinger had to hold the president up at one point when he was falling apart so this is not new to the GOP.
The toll of letting trump continue even though he was unfit: over one million preventable deaths from covid, in the most medically advanced country in the world.
Nixon: legacy of 2 million Vietnamese dead, and over 55,000 American young men dead in what Secretary MacNamara later called a "mistake."
Joe Biden has pulled off an incredible feat considering what the world is going through so this is the issue of ageism is rearing its ugly head.
Thank you; well put.
“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James
Thanks for another great article! I join everyone, I am sure, in wishing you and yours the best possible outcome and health! Our medicine is very advanced so we have to be grateful for the many things we have in our time, that are new inventions of genius.
The article is part Joseph Heller and part pure Douglas Adams, c'est tres amusant! :)
"The White House press corps has lost its mind, or at least its perspective."
"Today offered a classic illustration—if you can stand to watch it, which I recommend that you don’t."
There used to be a phrase, "dumbing down."
Maybe we are all tumbling down, or some of us are, because of the swamp pit that we were in during the trumpster era. Dumbing down without being aware of it, and sinking so low in standards.
Journalists such as the one quoted in the article need to be aware of the easy trap of the dumbing down phenomenon, and avoid it.
I attended a lefty panel with some journalists in Boston one time, and a Time Magazine reporter was asked who her audience was, when she wrote her stories.
" I was on an airplane trip, and the gentleman in the next seat struck up a conversation. I explained I was a journalist covering the Middle East. 'Oh, you mean like Ohio?' said the seat neighbor. "
" That's who I write for."
" We call it Cuisinart Journalism. "
Playing to the lowest common denominator, like in the world of Time Magazine or CNN, is a slippery slide into the empty-headed wrongness that we now call trumpworld. Misleading the masses.
Maybe we can start a movement to educate the masses, who desperately need what we used to call Civics Affairs Class. How Government works. What is the role of the citizen in "self-interest rightly understood," the description that French author deToqueville used in the 1800's to describe America's unique, self-governing style.
Douglas Adams:
“The [Hitchhiker's] Guide says there is an art to flying," said Ford [Prefect], "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that. ' ”
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Claiming that you are writing for that demographic doesn’t explain misleading the public into thinking that Hillary Clinton’s email practices were unusual or even illegal or that Trump was a very successful businessman or that Al Gore had claimed to have invented the internet.
agree! This event with the journalists that I mentioned was a really long time ago, in the era of Reagan. The road we have all travelled since then is a really long, and sometimes very dark, one in terms of expectations about our media. Were similar slants used in the time of George McGovern or even in the Al Gore escapade? That would make an interesting research project. The media scene was completely different in the past.
I think that groups like Common Cause say that about 85% of our news stories are influenced by or directly paid for by the commercial advertisers. So, the commercialization and the "selling out" - another old phrase - of the media as a source of real news, results in the fairness problems we have today with coverage.
Many local reporters that I know in our rural area are just trying to keep their jobs, maybe it is the same all the way up the reporter ladder. People need their jobs.
Reporters like Woodward and Bernstein did their jobs in spite of the fact that their work would bring down the government. They did it because they had to look at themselves in the mirror. And because some journalists are just born that way, unable to toe the commercial line if it requires less than the journalistic best. Perhaps it is a good definition of bravery, something we are seeing also in the Jan 6 committee. As in the nixon era when a corrupt government fell and the vietnam war stopped, bravery is what is called for.
Love it!!
thanks and hope it brought a smile to your day! have a good one!
It did indeed. Looking forward to more.
that is very kind, thank you! it is always fun to brighten someone's day :)
This forum provides a really fun way to express ourselves, or to connect. Substack really seems to be a great world of ideas and it is fun to connect with you!
“Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.” (From 1862)
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil...preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.”
Adlai Stevenson in last major speech, 1965
And now we know why Jim doesn't get invited to sit on the panels on the "news" shows.
That is no joke. After the American Enterprise Institute’s political scientist Norm Ornstein wrote the 2012 book “It’s Even Worse than it Looks” with Thomas Mann describing the dangerous radicalization of the Republican Party, he stopped being asked on political opinion shows. Before then he had been a frequent guest asked to five expert commentary on our political system but after he became personal non grata because he had blown a hole in their faux balance coverage.
Appreciate all the kind thoughts! To wax sincere about this briefly: It *is* true that after the book 'Breaking the News' came out in 1996, I was involved in, ummm, disagreements with some other parts of the DC-centered press. Howell Raines, the since-cashiered then-editor of the NYT, really took offense, and had a series of editorials, including a signed on by him, about how bad I was. For more than a decade I'd done weekly commentaries on NPR. I stopped that as a regular feature — but that was (a) because I'd become a newsmagazine editor, at US News ["the years we don't talk about"], (b) because Morning Edition was, as always, changing its format, and (c) a specific big shot at NPR had a very deep personal grudge, which lasted through this person's life.
And I didn't go on many TV talk shows, after mocking the entire genre! But I could not feel more fortunate about what I have been able to see, learn about, and report on — and the outlets through which I have been able to reach an interested audience. It was in the early after this dust-up that: (a) Deb and I lived in Seattle and Berkeley for three years, and I reported about (and worked in) tech; (b) I did Iraq war reporting and books, which was amply recognized [National Mag Award etc] though obviously didn't change policy; (c) we got to live in China for nearly five years, and write all about it; and (d) we got to do all the work stemming for 'Our Towns.'
So I feel very well favored rather than the reverse.
I am so glad to hear that it has worked out well for you but it has definitely been a loss to people like me who see our mainstream “liberal” media as a serious weak link for our democracy.
Thank you; I appreciate it.
I wasn’t joking. My perception is that after the publication of Breaking the News, he disappeared from all outlets other than NPR. Maybe my perception is wrong, or maybe my timing is off, but for such an active and influential author I never see him on the Tee Vee anymore.
I meant that as an agreement with what you said. I noticed that that Mr. Fallows disappeared after that excellent book came out. Not sure how those examples happened but I do know that higher ups at one network killed a story about the Iran Contra Independent Counsel report saying Colin Powell had lied to investigators. The higher didn’t want to anger Powell and lose him as a guest.
Here is a link to the Colin Powell story:
https://www.salon.com/2000/03/20/powell_3/
Deliberate censorship.
The press isn't likely to "get a grip" when there is so much profit in grandstanding and theatrics.
Journalism professors used to grade assignments on the basis of objectivity and adherence to provable fact; perhaps they still do. But everyone "in the business" knows that success (meaning higher profits, of course) lies in the exact sort of questions referred to in this post. Once some genius realized the news department could be a source of profit instead of "overhead," the downhill slide began. And I'm afraid it won't end until there is no longer the possibility of publishing content without the express approval of the powers that be.
Yes — there are various hypotheses about what was the "descent from Eden" moment for the modern news business. Was it when '60 Minutes' proved that "news" shows could be highly profitable? Was it when Roone Arledge got control of *both* news and sports at ABC? Was it when Ted Koppel launched 'America Held Hostage' during the Iranian-hostage crisis in Jimmy Carter's time? Was it when Les Mooves (CBS) and Jeff Zucker (CNN) both discovered in 2015 that wall-to-wall Donald Trump rallies made for great TV, even if they were bad for the country? Etc etc,
So, I have no conclusive Answer to what you say. But I agree about the forces.
I have a question for you, Jim, that is rarely asked in this context: Who, in your opinion, is more "responsible" for the atrocious work product of so many (but not all) of the members of the White House press corps: the reporters or their bosses? Put differently, for things to change for the better, who needs to lead the way? I suppose I could include the consumers of their work product, too, but that's a big ask when there is so much else to do on any given day. The journalists are supposed to be the pros, right?
Good question. My main answer — which, as you know, was the whole point of my 'Breaking the News' book and everything since then — is, "It's complicated." In the end I think it is *more* cultural — culture of the White House press and its incentives — than it is boss-driven or purely economic. But of course the "cultural" aspects for the reporters also include things from the economic realm. Like book contracts and being on TV.
Understood, of course, but I would describe it as more of a "chicken-and-egg" conundrum with this followup: What needs to change first: the journalists/reporters or their editors/bosses?
What would happen if the main media outlets formally prohibited their reporters from writing the ex post facto "memoirs" based, in large part, on the entree that they have been given but which contain information that would have been of great value if reported in full and in 'real time' (eg., I am thinking of academic research labs that impose patent obligations on their staff who discover interesting things while teaching...).
The 'other hand' is harder to imagine in this context: young journalists want jobs that are as interesting and as career-positive as possible, and their "bosses" impose the business model drives the constant grasping for the sensational over the subtle and the simple over the complex...
These questions - and the inherent dilemma - are not limited to the WH press corps, of course... but they seem to be the most obvious and easily understood cohort.
It means that the White House press corps and political media are reminding us again that the overwhelming majority of them fit an unfortunate description, though not in the way he intended it, from someone whose presidency they made possible: They are the enemies of the people.
The press has been a monumental failure on so many fronts (see: bothsiderism) for so long, this does not surprise me. It disgusts me... but it doesn't surprise me. Where are the "adults in the room" for the Washington Press Corps? Where's Walter Cronkite to tell them to get a f-ing grip? (I added "f-ing" to your headline because I'm pissed.)