It’s not just Big Media that are surrendering

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION CREATED WITH CHATGPT

While everyone knows of the national media organizations that have altered their journalism for political reasons, it’s equally alarming when this happens in smaller places around the country. Like Alaska. And Memphis.

Four journalists at two Alaska newspapers resigned Sept. 29 after an online story about a local vigil for Charlie Kirk was temporarily taken down and re-edited to describe Kirk in softer words. More notably, the edits were done at the corporate level after a Republican Alaska legislator complained to the corporate office that the original language was “vile and slanderous.”

The story initially described Kirk in the second paragraph as a “Christian-Nationalist icon” who expressed “often racist and controversial views.”  The revision, which was not acknowledged with a published note, moved the characterization of Kirk 10 paragraphs lower and altered it to say his views “have been tied by many to a rise in Christian nationalism across the U.S.” and that he was critical of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act.

The resigning journalists wrote that they objected to corporate-level management “changing a story at the behest of an elected official. We believe this destroys the credibility the public has placed in us.” The corporation, Carpenter Media Group, which owns 250 publications around the nation and is based, of all places, in Tuscaloosa, responded that it “made the decision to edit a piece of content that fell well short of our standard and the standards of unbiased community journalism.”

Neither description of Kirk is wrong. One leans on adjectives, the other gets more specific. The revision does not obliterate the point. And a good media organization listens to complaints, including from powerful and partisan people. But corrections should be driven strictly by journalistic considerations, and even though owners and publishers have the right to do as they wish, the people who can best prioritize journalism over politics or corporate interests work in the newsroom.

An ugly case emerged in Memphis without a politician’s complaint.

The Daily Memphian, a nonprofit website with a previously excellent reputation, declined to publish a strident anti-Donald Trump commentary written by a longtime freelance columnist and pegged to Trump’s decision to send federal law enforcement agents to Memphis. After the columnist claimed political censorship and resigned on Oct. 2, the editors posted a different explanation: The columnist refused to make a few necessary edits that didn’t change the thrust of the piece. They pointed to previous anti-Trump columns, and published the column in question after all, as originally submitted. Kind of a “We’ll show you” move.

SCREENSHOT OF THE CONTROVERSIAL DAN CONAWAY COLUMN IN THE DAILY MEMPHIAN. ______________________________________________________________________________

Then the columnist went nuclear and posted on Facebook verbatim emails from his immediate editor. That editor referenced instructions from the CEO, who has atypically extensive newsroom experience. Out of fairness, here’s a longish excerpt from the editor: “My marching orders, which (the CEO) said he explained to you in detail months ago, are no more columns focused on criticizing Trump. I’ve been very lenient so far and have pushed the envelope to the point that I am under scrutiny for letting particularly inflammatory rhetoric of yours publish. And, now, in this highly charged political environment in which conservatives are being hunted down and murdered for merely exercising their First Amendment rights, we have an obligation to tone down the rhetoric, not ratchet it up.”

Yes, calm writing can still convey truth. But when government at any level goes over the top, it may take over-the-top rhetoric to get some people to wake up to it.

The Alaska and Memphis cases point to a secondary but still unfortunate consequence of too many news organizations bending to the will of the current president or any political faction orchestrating angry posts and letters. It’s mistrust within newsrooms. Was that a reasonable edit? A responsible killing of a column? Or was appeasement the secret motive? I don’t doubt that some reporters and opinion writers overreact and see cowardice in their managers where there is none. But it's not all imagined. It isn’t good for journalism or the public that the current climate has so elevated the tension in newsrooms large and small.

Fooling journalists is funny … if you like dark humor

this man was not who he claimed to be. But cnn figured that out too late.

THE PALACE SAYS NO ONE NAMED ANNE SIMMONS EVER WORKED THERE.

Oh what must thousands of Royal Family fans around the world have thought when they realized – gasp – that Kate Middleton’s morning beauty routine actually isn’t five easy steps.

Multiple outlets in the UK and the US published the princess’s hair and makeup secrets, as revealed by Buckingham Palace staff member Anne Simmons in press releases sent to those outlets. Two weeks ago, those stories got retracted. Anne Simmons doesn’t exist.

Hoaxes like this aren’t new but the danger may be worse these days because there no longer are limits on lying, grifting and hating the news media. The Simmons case is exceptionally flabbergasting because outlets lazily accepted press releases (including a photo!) from a PR firm and never interviewed the supposed royal cleaner.

Here are some other high-profile cases from the past few years of intentional misrepresentation of identity that succeeded. And the duped reporters were in direct communication with the imposter. You’re welcomed to chuckle as you go. They’re funny in a schadenfreude sort of way.

• Fortune magazine published an online story in January that said Elon Musk planned to charge a fee to sign up for X and would remove timestamps from posts. Fortune deleted the story and apologized after learning that its anonymous source was not a fired X engineer as he had claimed but instead was a malicious prankster making the whole thing up.

• CNN showed an unplanned video of its reporter discovering a man still in a Damascus prison cell after the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad last year. The man, who seemed shocked by the news of his sudden freedom, said he was a civilian imprisoned for three months by the Assad regime. Turns out, he gave a false identity and actually was an intelligence officer for the Assad government who had gotten himself into prison over a dispute with a superior officer. CNN corrected its report.

• For his channel on X, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson video recorded a hot exclusive with the digital content creator for Kensington Palace, who said he was fired for doing a poor job of discreetly manipulating the infamous Kate Middleton Mother’s Day photo last year. Exactly none of that was true. The man was a well-known YouTube prankster. He even fabricated an employment contract that fooled the Tucker Carlson Network, which failed to notice a clause about the palace’s right to amputate a limb if the man failed his probationary period. The imposter did fess up before the interview was shown. (OK, full-blown laughter is allowed on this one. It’s Tucker Carlson, after all.)

• As part of a 2023 expose on U.S. companies illegally employing migrant child labor, NBC News and Telemundo broadcast an interview with a Kansas slaughterhouse worker. They gave him a pseudonym, disguised his voice and put his face in shadow. They also took his word that he was 16. Documents in Guatemala – sought out only after the broadcast – showed him to be 21. The outlets retracted.

• CNBC and multiple other national and local news outlets reported that Musk had begun employee layoffs on his first day as owner of Twitter in 2022. They interviewed two men – holding boxes of office supplies outside the building – who said they’d just been let go from their data engineer jobs. Twitter employees began contacting the outlets to say they’d never seen those guys before. The reporters failed to become dubious even when one of the men identified himself as “Rahul Ligma.”

• In 2020, The Washington Post took down a posted story about an FBI raid at a local residence. It was actually actors hired by two right-wing political activists with a history of media pranks.

• The New York Times retracted the essence of its 2019 Pulitzer finalist podcast “Caliphate,” which centered on tales told by a radicalized Canadian who joined ISIS and participated in terrorist executions in Syria. Except he didn’t kill anyone, never joined ISIS and hadn’t even been to Syria.

• A Boston Herald columnist was suspended in 2018 after reporting that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady might hold out because of a salary dispute. The columnist’s source turned out to be a fan impersonating Brady’s agent.

Not to excuse these sources’ bad behavior, but fault always belongs to the journalists because of the automatic responsibility that comes with the decision to publish. And in almost all cases, there are ways for journalists to discover the deceit if they make the effort. In a high-profile case in Alabama in 2017, for instance, a Washington Post reporter was not suckered into believing a woman’s false story that U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore had gotten her pregnant when she was a teenager.

Journalists need to be skeptical about almost everything these days. Because yeah, there are people out to get you. And you need to be wary of the potential deadly blindness that can come from falling in love with your seemingly sensational story that actually isn’t.

Amid grief over Charlie Kirk, two networks play politics

In the early moments after Charlie Kirk’s death, MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd cautioned against premature conclusions by suggesting the shooting could have been a supporter’s gun going off in celebration.

That was a stupid remark. But it’s not what got him fired.

Here’s what did: Asked by the show’s host to discuss the political environment that could lead to such violence, Dowd called Kirk “divisive” and said: “…Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.”

Some right-wing media, such as The Daily Caller, interpreted that as “Charlie Kirk deserved to die.” That sentiment is a fireable offense, but that’s not what I took from those words. It’s also a fireable offense to suggest that assassination would be a rational response by an angry but otherwise rational person to Kirk’s politics. But that wasn’t the takeaway, either. I read Dowd’s words as saying that hatred spewed toward political opponents or selected demographic groups increases the likelihood that a crazy person would wrongly decide violence is justified, and I don’t see any inaccuracies there. Dowd may have been talking only about the potential reaction to views as extremely rightward as Kirk’s, but I think it applies on both ends of the ideological spectrum.

Yes, it’s hard to argue for my interpretation when both MSNBC and Dowd himself publicly apologized. But I suspect MSNBC, whose president called the comments “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable,” didn’t want to open itself up to charges of coldheartedness (or worse) while so many people were deep in grief. Or to accusations that the network helped to create the climate in which such a tragedy could occur. (Dowd on Friday ripped the network for caving in to a “right-wing media mob.”)

Meanwhile, over in the detestable Fox News opinion division, primetime talk show host Jesse Watters recklessly fired off cannons. “They are at war with us!” he declared before Kirk’s killer was even known. The “us vs. them” narrative is the go-to move for many right-wing talking heads, although they rarely bother to say who “they” is. Apparently all the political progressives in the U.S. got together in Bryant-Denny Stadium and voted to begin executing political enemies.

Certainly, strident liberal voices in the news media have labeled MAGA leaders as fascist and dangerous and have dialed up the thermostat. But the fear-generating language emanating from Fox opinion programs about “leftist radicals” is more routine, more alarming and has less basis in reality. And you know management is all on board*.

Neither Fox News nor MSNBC alone is going radicalize a viewer to the point of murder. It takes dark corners of social media and fringe, extremist publications, too. But hostility on TV isn’t good for the deteriorating civic conversation in the country today.

*On Wednesday, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade suggested fixing the problem of homeless people by “involuntary lethal injection.” Earlier today, four days later, he publicly apologized. He still has his job.

Student sports writers should call them as they see them

photo illustration created with chatgpt

Another college football coach publicly chastised another sports writer after a game Saturday, but this one was bizarre.

Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz took offense that a student beat reporter for the Columbia Missourian had picked Kansas to win the “Border War,” which it didn’t. A Mizzou senior player took him to task, too. “Stop cheering for KU,” the player said to the reporter at the post-game press conference. “You’re a Missouri Tiger.”

No, guys, that’s not how it works.

Student journalists are not cheerleaders for the home team. (Neither are the pros, though I’ve always found it amusing that, in years Alabama and Auburn have both been at least somewhat competitive, Tide beat writers usually pick UA and Tiger beat writers usually pick AU in the Iron Bowl. I attribute this to familiarity bias, but it could be something else.)

Sam Prestipino, the Crimson White sports editor who writes the weekly “Prestipino’s Picks,” told me by email: “I think there's definitely a little bit of pressure to pick UA as a student here. It feels like picking Alabama to win every week is somewhat expected just because I am supposed to be a ‘fan’ of the team because I go to school at UA.”

But he doesn’t always pick Alabama. Last fall he went with Tennessee over Alabama (he was right) and Georgia over Alabama (he was wrong). He did not get much pushback on campus for either prediction, he said.

He grew up in North Carolina and was raised as a Duke football fan. “This makes it a little bit easier for me to be impartial and helps me pick a team based more on my brain than my heart.”

Prestipino makes his predictions after watching film of both teams, reading the picks of professional sports writers and checking historical trends in the rivalry.

The Missouri reporter, showing some honesty and ethics but also some defensiveness, posted on X that he looks forward to being able to start cheering for Missouri after he graduates. He also offered “my apologies” for his prediction.

Writers and game pickers are fair targets, but I don’t believe any sports writer needs to apologize for a wrong forecast that was based on research and done in good faith (as opposed to just trying to draw attention and controversy.) Prestipino looks at the apology somewhat more favorably.

“I commend the reporter for apologizing. He really didn't need to apologize, but I think he showed a lot of emotional maturity in taking the high road.”

The CW sports editor said he wasn’t surprised by Saturday’s episode in Columbia because Drinkwitz is “somewhat known to say some out-there types of things when addressing the media.” But he’d be “shocked” by a similar occurrence at an Alabama football press conference.

A big underlying factor here, I think, is that many people on a campus – fans, athletes, coaches – can’t imagine that a student would surrender one of the great joys of college life: rooting for their school. That spirit no doubt remains in their hearts, but subordinating it to their work is exactly what students who are sports journalists must do.

Guest post: Three unusual things I did to boost learning in my class

This is a guest post by son Sam, assistant professor of economics at the University of Houston. He explains how he taught his 2025 summer class differently from how his father and most professors teach their classes. That class was some evidence that these ideas work, he says.

photo by nikolay georgiev. (generic photo, not sam’s classroom)

First, ban phones and laptops. I thought a no-screens policy would be met with great resistance and require vigilant enforcement. It was not, and it did not. Here’s a quote from the course evaluations, which are submitted anonymously after the course ends: “Limiting of phones and screen time during class allowed me to stay focused on the lecture during class.” Allowed. Not helped, allowed. As policymakers all over the country are finally admitting, screens are a barrier to learning. Remove the barrier.

Second, keep everything within the confines of class time. That’s 30 hours of instruction. You can get a pilot’s license in 40. It’s a lot of time. In particular, stop giving homework. Group assignments done in class can take its place. They build camaraderie and, with the rise of the homework robots, could even mitigate climate change. Similarly, stop assigning out-of-class readings. If they're really as important as is always insisted, read them together. Even if a lesson or two must be cut, consider that students will be in better spirits for everything that remains when they don’t stay up late, scrubbing traces of robot from their homework and skimming passages they know will be explained.

Third, get rid of the exams. Or rather, write a test, then cut it up and paste the pieces right into the lecture slides, right after the material you’re testing. Use “clickers” and have students ring in during the lecture — for credit. Students will know how they’re doing in real time, and thus so will the professor. It’s the same questions, but less stress and more tailored instruction, and it even leaves the impression that there was no examination. From the evaluations: “I feel like we assume since we’re not going to get tested, we don’t need to properly learn material, but it had the opposite effect on me. It took the pressure off, and I just found myself paying attention and learning simply because I wanted to.”

I didn’t make them do a single homework assignment. I didn’t make them read a single word on their own. I didn’t make them take a single formal exam or even a quiz. And yet, from the evaluations: “He made me learn.”

Photography failures escalate Gaza propaganda

BILD PHOTO OF A PALESTINIAN PHOTOGRAPHER IN GAZA. lack of food is real for many civilians, but here they are BEGGING to THE CAMERA.

The propaganda part of the Gaza war is being fought largely with photos. Rhetoric is a lot of it, too, but photos pack more of a wallop.

A July 24 New York Times story about civilian starvation highlighted a photo of an emaciated 18-month-old Palestinian child. After complaints and more reporting, The Times added an editor’s note several days later saying that the child had pre-existing health conditions that contributed to his appearance. Critics also noted that his healthier older brother was standing nearby but not included in the photo.

The editor’s note sparked even more outrage from people who thought the photo choice was intended to put false blame on Israel. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was (absurdly) considering suing The Times for defamation and declared (also absurdly) that “there is no starvation in Gaza.”

On Tuesday, the right-wing German newspaper Bild reported that a Palestinian professional photographer had, without disclosure, staged powerful photos of a crowd of Gazans holding empty bowls and pleading for food. They were begging at him, not at someone actually distributing food. The argument could be made that he was simply recreating scenes that are happening daily, but it is nonetheless a violation of news photography ethics. After the Bild story, several news outlets around the world stopped using the photographer’s work.

Time magazine had to defend its similar Aug. 1 cover photo by a different Palestinian photographer. The magazine did not explicitly say the photo wasn’t staged.

“With Hamas controlling nearly all media in Gaza, these photographers aren’t reporting, they’re producing propaganda,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted on X.

Hamas’ release of videos of a skeletal Israeli hostage in a tunnel a week ago was propaganda, too. They staged him digging his own grave, and juxtaposed shots of starving Gaza children, but there was nothing staged about the hostage’s frailty.

SCREENSHOT OF A SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEO POSTED BY THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT.

It goes the other way, as well. In July, for instance, Israel Defense Forces published photos of some members of Hamas eating a bountiful meal in a tunnel. No one has debunked those images. Social media accounts of the Israeli government show healthy Gazans availing themselves of all kinds of food. The scenes may be real, but they are not representative. At all. 

Propaganda obscures truth. Reliable visual journalism reveals truth. But in Gaza, truth has been hard to come by. How many people are starving? Why isn’t food reaching them? Propaganda has helped to produce wildly divergent* views. That’s one reason many global news organizations have intensified their demand that Israel allow foreign news media into Gaza. That wouldn’t be bias-proof, of course. But relying mostly on local Gaza journalists, who themselves face hunger and life-threatening danger, makes it harder to know the realities.

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* I consider the first linked story more credible than the second one.

If interested, here’s a March 2024 blog post on the related issue of digital photo manipulation.

Guess what, sports-talk bros, the rules apply to you too

I’m not sure but I think Pat mcAfee is saying, “I screwed up how?”

Pat McAfee, the loud, annoying, inarticulate and hugely popular sports talk show host on ESPN and YouTube, publicly apologized Wednesday for spreading a false internet rumor about the sex life of an 18-year-old female student at Ole Miss by saying: “I’m very thankful that (the family) gave me the opportunity to tell them how sorry I was.”

Translation: “I’m very thankful that the family didn’t sue me for all I’m worth.”

In his first mention of the hoax in February, he didn’t say the woman’s name. For purposes of libel, though, that doesn’t matter because the name was already widely known. He didn’t declare the story true, only that it was spreading all over social media. Again, doesn’t matter because if you repeat a libel, you’re responsible for it – and McAfee exponentially increased awareness of it.

Legalities aside, why would anyone think it’s OK to do this? The woman, who talked publicly about how the rumor and McAfee’s publicity destroyed her life, had to switch to online classes, moved into emergency housing, and got harassing and threatening phone messages. “You’re ruining my life by talking about it on your show for nothing but attention, but here I am staying up until 5 in the morning, every night, throwing up, not eating because I’m so anxious about what’s going to happen for the rest of my life,” she told The Athletic in April.

Several other sports show hosts with less reach than McAfee – two Barstool commentators on social media and a St. Louis radio host – thought it was fine to have some fun mocking the woman. They apologized, too, and far sooner than the five months it took McAfee. (I presume negotiation to avoid a lawsuit against ESPN was the reason.)

This internet gossip wasn’t even about sports, but some sports commentators will say anything for attention, without thinking it through. And for a few, disrespecting women is part of the act. Barstool employs some like that. McAfee has also had to apologize for comments about Caitlin Clark.

The potential benefits of ex-athletes like McAfee getting a second career in media are the name recognition and the inside knowledge. But it all goes wrong if they decide, like McAfee, that a lightning-rod personality is all that’s required of them. That includes not bothering to learn the basics of the business. And if that personality morphs into the tiresome shtick of hyper bro culture – by an ex-athlete or anyone in sports talk – then it can get really ugly.

Stop the steal (journalism version)

ILLUSTRATION BY HENNING

A University of Alabama football fan went viral when national TV showed him wearing a crimson t-shirt amid a vast Penn State whiteout during the Nittany Lions’ home game against Auburn in September 2021. It was a story begging to be told. So Ryan Phillips did.

The editor of the local news website Patch Tuscaloosa tracked the man down. It wasn’t easy. But he got the story. Less than 24 hours later, a journalist at an Alabama TV station “pretty much stole my entire story without giving credit,” Phillips said.

Laura Testino knows similar frustration. When she reported for the education website  Chalkbeat Tennessee, she chased down a high-profile scoop in November 2023 about Memphis educators limiting what the authors of a Pulitzer-winning biography on George Floyd could say about systemic racism to students at a predominantly Black local high school. A national media organization later reported on the controversy.

“My story was only credited for the apparent one comment this (national) reporter could not solicit on her own. I (and Chalkbeat) didn’t receive credit for first reporting the story, even though the entire report rehashed all of the sources and information I had originally compiled,” said Testino, now a reporter for the Daily Memphian.

Journalistic larceny is actually legal if it falls within the subjective guidelines of “fair use.” The harder question is what represents ethical vs. unethical use of another news organization’s good work. It’s a relevant question, too, because with today’s smaller newsrooms, the need to constantly post new content online, and yes, some occasional laziness, re-use of the work of others is common.

There are different kinds of re-use. Taking published stuff – even if it’s just pieces – with no credit to the original outlet and no link to the original story is reprehensible. “While legally you may end up in jail for grand theft auto but not for grand theft news story, there’s no difference between the two ethically,” said my UA journalism department colleague Dr. Chris Roberts, who is also director of the Office of Research in Media Integrity. “It’s wrong to take something that you didn’t pay for without permission.”

The examples above, however, are not that. In many cases, Outlet A discovers a story done by Outlet B and decides to do its own reporting, which probably includes talking to some of the same sources that Outlet B used. What’s Outlet A’s obligation in that case?

“This has been a real problem for generations, as we know that most national news stories about local things come from local sources,” Roberts wrote in an email. “If you’re re-reporting a story you first found elsewhere, a ‘this was originally reported by’ sentence seems appropriate.”

from a re-reported washington post story in july. readers might not care, but sentences like the last one, which included a link, fulfill an ethical obligation.

______________________________________________________________________________

That does happen. Roberts pointed out that the Washington Post, for instance, has staff writers who re-report stories published elsewhere, and they do cite the original publication. Based on my reading over the years, I think sports journalists generally have adopted the practice of crediting whoever got a scoop first, even if they’ve confirmed the scoop on their own. “It’s just the classy thing to do,” Roberts said.

Phillips said bigger organizations have taken a story idea from his site without giving credit in their version several times. “They got more traffic, it felt cheap and just left me feeling like my work didn’t matter.”

I see journalists – not just pros but student journalists, too – express similar irritation on social media with some regularity, and it’s really not pointless bellyaching. Credit and linking matter. They are a reward for good, hard-working and usually local writers who don’t get a lot of morale lifts in this business. More significantly, though, wider acknowledgement boosts the reputation of the originating writer and their organization, which in turn means more readership and a greater likelihood that a source with a great story tip down the road is going to pick them to tell it to.

 “It should be obvious to anyone observing journalism right now that we should all be pushing toward credit and collaboration, rather than brute competition,” Testino said. “Our industry is too short on original reporting, compared to aggregation or commentary, to not be doing this.”

Government specialty: Lying about war

EDITED ILLUSTRATION (ORIGINAL BY MOHAMED HASSAN)

Iran was close to having a nuclear bomb. Or not. Either way, U.S. strikes obliterated those facilities. Or not.

War and military actions of other sorts have always been ripe for exaggeration and blatant lying by U.S. governments, whether it’s in manufacturing a justification for a war or in misrepresenting a war’s degree of success.

The deceit goes beyond the customary spinning and slanting we hear from government leaders and spokespeople during discussions of other topics. That’s because wars are so costly and consequential, in multiple ways, that administrations must convince the public that there exists an urgent necessity beyond a self-interested political motivation. And once engaged, success is always more elusive than it seemed in the Situation Room, but a government isn’t going to tell the public that all those sacrifices are being made for a losing cause.

Lying about war has been happening forever. The role of the press is to reveal the lies, if not immediately then with the benefit of time.

For many current journalists and much of the public, the lesson to distrust the government came from the Vietnam War. The Johnson Administration was allowed to escalate the war because it lied to Congress about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Years of deception about U.S. conduct in Vietnam by multiple administrations got famously exposed by The New York Times with its publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

The Washington Post’s remarkable Afghanistan Papers in 2019 showed the U.S. government, despite its public statements, knew of its many mistakes and the unwinnable nature of that war.

The George W. Bush administration made false claims to Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist group. The start of the Iraq War in 2003 was not a great moment for the press.

Short of full-fledged war, isolated military strikes have caused unintended harm that officials acknowledged belatedly or never.

Figuring out the truth about military actions isn’t easy. Reporters usually can’t witness events because they occur in places that are distant, hostile or dangerous. Leaks are hard to come by.

But cutting through the propaganda is possible. It starts with wanting to. There’s considerable evidence over the years that the national mainstream media – apology for the blanket statement – are pro-war. War certainly brings an audience. But that shouldn’t change the assignment.

Journalists need to use a variety of tools: Contacts in other countries, anonymity for sources, verified social media posts, photo/video forensics, embedding with units, and cautious language. Above all, they need skepticism about what they’re hearing from the podium, especially during the current administration. That means reporting aggressively, ignoring the inevitable slams of insufficient patriotism, and constantly asking the most important question: “What’s your evidence?”

The many problems with media coverage of protests

The organizer of a local protest asked the big newspaper in town if it planned to cover the event. The answer was no. The organizer paused. “Then maybe we won’t do it.”

I heard that anecdote at some point in my journalism career, and though I can’t prove it actually happened, it does make a point. Protesters want publicity.

“Getting media attention is fundamental,” says the website for the “No Kings” protests scheduled for Saturday around the nation, including multiple locations in Alabama.

The second Trump administration has spawned a string of public political protests – against immigration enforcement tactics, against Elon Musk and Tesla, the “Stand Up For Science” rallies in March and the “Hands Off” protests in April. The Gaza war has prompted many, as well.

Some movements – Black Lives Matter, for instance – feel hostility toward Big Media, which they see as part of the establishment they’re fighting against. But more commonly, national news organizations get criticized for insufficient volume and prominence of protest coverage. That was especially the case with Hands Off.

For some disreputable newsrooms, coverage decisions are influenced by their own political bias. In some other cases, coverage is influenced by editors’ desire not to appear manipulated by publicity seekers. But in general, decisions on scope of protest coverage come down to the importance of the cause and how many people show up.

News media have ways to estimate crowds but that vital measurement of newsworthiness inevitably gets distorted (in opposite directions) by both organizers and protest targets. Even accurately assessed turnout can get interpreted differently. It didn’t go over well with some media critics when the public editor of NPR pointed out that the approximate 3 million people who attended Hands Off rallies meant that “statistically, most news consumers are not protesting.” (It takes a lot of logistical commitment and these days even some courage to attend a public protest, so I advise against a strict numerical proportionality test. Absence does not mean indifference.)

Another complaint, usually from only the side of the target, is that reporters fail to disclose the true nature of protesters. This is bogus. Protesters are not Antifa. They are not paid actors.

the NEW YORK TIMES’ PAGE 1A COVERAGE OF APRIL’S hands off rallies CONSISTED OF a bottom-of-the-page photo tease to more coverage inside.

The most substantial problem with protest coverage in general is that the press prefers to emphasize conflicts between protesters and law enforcement as well as acts of protest violence, at the expense of explaining and fact checking the issues that prompted the protest. “Baked-in news practices cover only the worst moments of protests and neglect telling people what protesters are asking for,” according to a June 2024 Scientific American article by Douglas M. McLeod, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The article, which cites numerous research studies of left-wing and right-wing social protests on a variety of issues, also says that in general, media coverage “privileg(es) officialdom’s views of the protests” and “minimizes the effectiveness” of the protests.

News organizations can be forgiven for the focus on the response of government to the current immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles, as the Trump administration’s effort to manufacture authoritarian powers stands hand in hand with the treatment of immigrants as national alarms that the media must cover exhaustively.

To do this fairly requires another task on which news reports often fail: the accurate portrayal of the extent of protest violence. LA is not on fire. “The idea that Trump needed to put soldiers on the streets of the city because riots were spinning out of control is pure fantasy,” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote Monday.

Citing research from a two-week period in 2024, McLeod wrote that 97% of Gaza war protests on U.S. college campuses were peaceful. But “news coverage tends to ignore peaceful protests.” Protest violence against people or property usually arises from uncontrolled anger over an issue or from provocation by law enforcement. Let’s hope that no protester decides to get violent because they thought it was the only way to get media attention.