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.

Students, pro writers going through a bad spell

Photo by Steve Buissinne

The past three winning words in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, which begins today for the 100th time, were “abseil,” “psammophile,” and “moorhen.” Did I mention that it’s for ages eight to 14?

I’m still working on “embarrassed.”

As impressive as these kids will be, they don’t represent what’s happening out there among writers of any age. It’s dismal. I say this based on grading journalism assignments from hundreds of college students from high schools all over the U.S., as well as on just reading a lot of stuff written by older adults in the real world. I couldn’t find any stats that tested spelling skills apart from writing proficiency, but others agree bad spelling is a problem.

Why? A 2021 academic article reported: “In the early 21st century, skepticism as to the importance of spelling has grown, some schools have deemphasized or abandoned spelling instruction altogether, and there has been a proliferation of non-traditional approaches to teaching spelling.”

The anything-goes format of social media and the shortcut of using AI are also to blame for writers not learning how to spell. Spell checking programs that identify errors and require manual correction are fine; those that employ auto correct are not.

Then there’s this: The English language is loaded with snakes and traps.

Here, as I see it, are some categories of words that make spelling hard. Some of this is borderline unfair.

• Words that require knowing whether to use one or two of a letter – in two places. “Vacuum” is one “c” and two u’s. “Occasion” is two c’s and one “s.” It took me years to learn “harass.” And just to save myself time, I refuse to be friends with anyone from Cincinnati.

• Words that sound the same but are spelled differently depending on meaning. “Complimentary” and “complementary,” “reign” and “rein,” “mantle” and “mantel,” to name just three of many. “Everyday” and “every day” belong here, too. These don’t sound exactly the same but I consider “affect” and “effect” the kings of this category. To make matters worse, there are two definitions of “affect” and two of “effect.” That’s just plain mean.

• Words with silent letters, such as “subtle” and “receipt.” Thank you for nothing, “b” and “p.”

• Words that don’t conform to normal rules. So where’s the vowel in “rhythm,” eh?

• Words with too many vowels. There is no one on earth who can spell “acquiesce” or “hors d’oeuvres” without looking them up.

• Words you spell wrong because you’ve heard them wrong so many times. Listening to people talk, it’s hard to blame anyone who writes “sophmore.” Or “seperate.” Or “seprate.” Or who writes a term paper on the “Klu Klux Klan.” (OK, if it’s a term paper, you really ought to catch that one.)

• Illogical traps. It makes 100% sense for the word to be “miniscule.” Because it’s something small, right? But nooo. Someone had to make it “minuscule” just to torture us. Why isn’t a fake name a “pseudoname”? Maybe it was a New York Mets fan who made it “pseudonym.” One who writes plays is a “playwright.” That shouldn’t be right. One who owns a restaurant is a “restaurateur,” not a “restauranteur.” That annoys me to the nth degree.

If you know of any particular words or kinds of words that give you or others trouble, I invite you to share them in the comments below or on social media. You’d be doing a public service.

I have now written this whole post and commendably resisted the temptation to use the tired gimmick of intentionally misspelling a word for humor. I just didn’t think it was neccesary.

Would you run through a wall for AL.com?

In my mind there were only two mysteries of the world: How was Stonehenge built and why doesn’t AL.com have a website paywall?

We’re down to one now.

The popular site – AL.com, not Stonehenge! – has added a “soft” paywall, meaning a number of free clicks but eventually blocked access to anything more without buying a subscription.

As the journalism business struggles to find reliable ways to make money, paywalls are becoming more common. There is still plenty of free stuff out there, mostly from nonprofit news sites and TV/radio news sites, but more than 75% of sites belonging to newspapers or news magazines have a paywall of some kind. CNN.com added a soft paywall in October. AL.com added its in late February.

The business drawback of paywalls is that a lot of people, spoiled by the many years that newsrooms put their work online for free, don’t want to pay for news, or they can’t afford it. Subscription access almost inevitably leads to fewer page views, which is a crusher for digital advertising revenue.

But ad revenue has been a bust for most online news publishers, giving rise to the spread of digital subscriptions.

AL.COM’S POPUP PAYWALL MESSAGE. (THIS IS A SCREENSHOT; YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY CLICK IT TO SUBSCRIBE.)

AL.com has sought direct reader revenue before. It sold “memberships” that offered perks such as interactivity with AL.com staff (and a water bottle!). Then Alabama Media Group, which no longer prints newspapers, created paid digital editions for Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile that are delivered by email or available by app. But while other sites owned by Advance Local around the country began requiring payments for access to some site and app stories, AL.com did not, until now.

Natalie Pruitt, president of AMG*, wrote in an email: “Ad revenue alone isn’t enough in an all-digital world. … We all aim to find sustainable revenue models that allow us to continue to serve our readers.”

The mechanics of the new paywall matter. AL.com producers can choose certain high-profile stories to place behind the wall to entice site visitors, who can still see the headlines, to pay for a subscription. But based on my experiences and those of friends, AL.com has chosen not to wall off very many news stories so far. While signed out of my account, I tested what I think is some of AL.com’s best work – John Archibald’s columns, Ivana Hrynkiw’s state parole board stories and Rebecca Griesbach’s education stories. I had free access to all. “Most stories remain available on AL.com,” Pruitt said.

That’s commendable. I’ll never knock news companies for trying to make the money they need to survive, but the more journalism they can offer for free, the greater the number of informed citizens.

There’s a second dimension to the AL.com paywall. After access to a certain number of free articles, the paywall kicks in for everything else. No editor selection involved. What’s interesting is, the number of free articles varies depending on your behavior. Web analytics programs these days know how many times you visited previously (and what you clicked on). Frequent visitors hit the paywall sooner because the high frequency suggests they like what they’re reading and they’re the most likely kind of visitor to be willing to pay.

THE KEY QUESTION IS, HOW GOOD ARE THOSE FREE ALTERNATIVES? AND DO READERS CARE?

This is known as a “dynamic” paywall and it’s common in the digital journalism industry, even if it’s new at AL.com. “We are excited to be testing software to help us find the people who value local news, who want to support journalism,” Pruitt said. The paywall software seems nicely lenient. A friend of mine eventually hit the wall, but despite trying, I have yet to do so. A subscription costs $10 per month for unlimited access to all content on AL.com. There’s also a 24-hour pass for $5.

Raise your hand if paywalls on news websites annoy you. That’s what I thought. But they can produce revenue that news companies will – maybe – reinvest in their journalism. Selling subscriptions when a lot of free stuff is out there — some of it good, some of it awful — ratchets up the need to publish work that is relevant, distinctive and valuable. Because companies want to drive you through the wall, not up one.

*Disclosure: My former employer

Student journalists find success, peril at the same time

One group of journalists faces an obstacle that no others do.

Homework.

Those journalists are college student journalists, and in between all those classes and assigned readings, they’ve been kicking butt lately. They are deftly chronicling the major national issues playing out on college campuses across the nation: The government assaults on academic freedom and DEI, and especially the turmoil spawned by the war in Gaza. They’re also doing impactful investigations – at Stanford University and the University of Florida, for examples – and sometimes they scoop the professionals.

The Crimson White just did that. On March 26 it broke the story of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting a UA doctoral student at his off-campus home the previous morning and sending him to a detention facility. Local and national professional media, including The New York Times, gave credit to the CW in their stories.

The reporter on that story, CW editor in chief Maven Navarro, said she got an email tip about the arrest and was able to confirm it and publish her story within an hour. The tip, she said, went to multiple media outlets in the state, but she had an advantage. “We know our campus better than any other journalism outlet. … Being on campus, I did have the advantage of being able to more quickly verify things.”

Navarro sees another edge in getting stories. “As a student, when you’re approached by another student, it makes it a lot less intimidating than being approached by a professional journalist who you don’t know.”

Of course, there are disadvantages too. “I can’t wait to not have to go to class and do classwork and (instead) just get to do this all day,” she said.

Because of their familiarity with the nature of the field, her journalism professors (of which I’m one) are more understanding than some of her other professors when breaking news interferes with schoolwork, she said. The ICE story caused her to miss a test in a journalism class. The professor (who is not me) let her make it up the next day.

There are much more difficult – and frightening – challenges to being a student journalist than the burden of juggling commitments. I wrote previously about the problem of harassment. There’s also a problem with student press rights and university censorship. Inside Higher Ed wrote in September: “Across the country, universities have quietly shut down speech about the Israel-Hamas war, including student newspapers. According to Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, more student journalists have been chastised or punished for coverage of pro-Palestinian protests than for any other single issue in his 30 years at SPLC.”

Now the second Trump administration has created another alarm: Fear of punishment for expressing views that offend the government, or even for merely reporting on events that do.

An April 7 article in The Guardian reported that some campus journalists – mostly but not exclusively from other countries – are quitting or asking for removal of their bylines on opinion pieces and news stories that include pro-Palestinian views. College news outlets are also seeing a rise in requests to take down online stories and give anonymity to interviewees, according to the article. The detention of a Tufts University student whose only apparent offense was to criticize Israel in a published piece has reverberated badly.

Examples of fear of retribution seem more frequent at universities with greater demographic diversity and in other regions of the country, but Navarro said she’s come across it, too.

from the new york times

Two weeks ago, a former CW reporter who is still an international student at UA asked her to remove from the CW website two stories that the reporter wrote in 2020: A hard-news story reporting on a Black Lives Matter protest in Tuscaloosa and a feature story about the contributions of international students to the UA community. Navarro granted the request, which she said she wouldn’t have done a year ago because, well, journalists aren’t supposed to alter the archives for any reason. “I have changed my views on that.”

Like any good journalist must, she’s making various decisions based on circumstances. No topics are off limits for CW stories, she said, and she has declined a half dozen requests this semester to take down online photos from Gaza-related rallies on campus, even those showing protester faces. She has seen an increase in potential interviewees, including professors, asking for anonymity in stories related to Gaza, DEI and teaching “divisive concepts” in the classroom. She said she will sometimes grant anonymity if her reporters can’t find a source willing to attach their name.

College campuses are a favored target for the threatening political agendas of the moment. Student journalists – no, let’s call them journalists with a second job – are meeting the moment with both excellent journalism and responsible accommodations. “I always like to emphasize,” Navarro said, “how important student journalism is.”

With a lot at stake, Big Media tries rising to the occasion

Image by Mohamed Hassan

You might think the national news media are courageously exposing the dangers and harms of the Donald Trump administration. Or you might think they’re cowering and groveling in the face of Trump’s likely retribution. Either way, you only have to wait about 20 minutes and you’ll get more evidence for your side.

Media critics have made a cottage industry out of slamming the press, with a special focus on corporate, for-profit owners who have meddled in their newsrooms’ journalism to soften it and protect their other business interests. Certainly, there’s evidence. The billionaire owners of The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, for two instances, have done this and disgraced themselves.

Then again, to choose a few examples to the contrary, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has editorialized repeatedlyy against Trump policies and revealed lapses in national security communications. While the owner of CBS is weakheartedly considering settling Trump’s meritless lawsuit against the network’s 60 Minutes news show, the show has aired segments critical of the government almost every week since Trump regained office. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decreed the Opinions section would limit its range of topics and restrict viewpoints – seemingly to curry Trump’s favor – yet Post columnist Dana Milbank savaged Trump in a commentary a mere two days later. The Post continues to report aggressively, including this exclusive Sunday night. The owner of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a billionaire, but she wavered not at all through the publication’s remarkable Signalgate coverage and the barrage of flak it brought.

Few other kinds of businesses operate this way, but journalism ethics call for owners and business department executives to allow newsroom professionals to produce their work independently and without influence from financial and political considerations. It’s why we see internal protests and resignations when C-suite executives infringe upon that. Opinion pieces that represent the viewpoint of the organization are the only exceptions.

Despite the seemingly regular exceptions, and Fox News, of course, I think major national news organizations deserve more credit than they’re getting for documenting the many disasters of the second Trump administration so far. But I wanted a second, expert opinion.

My department colleague, Dr. Wilson Lowrey, an internationally recognized authority on media organizations, believes major outlets have been “somewhat less aggressive” in covering Trump’s second term than his first. “The first time around,” he wrote in an email, “the political professional class (lawyers, journalists, government officials, military) were so outraged and this was so new — this fueled the perceived imperative to contain it as well as the sense that it was possible to contain it. … This time around, I detect a bit of resignation.”

But he sees good work being done. “I'd stop short of saying U.S. legacy media (New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, etc.) are shirking their professional duty in their news reporting, at least to this point.”

yes, the wall street journal faces less risk of trump retribution than more liberal media but this april 7 editorial is still remarkable for it.

If Big Media disappoints, one reason is that it, like all big companies, is “risk averse,” Lowrey said. He points to Bezos’ decision to restrict the Post’s opinion section. “The political, economic and journalistic times are volatile, unpredictable, so he steered toward the middle, toward what he thinks is a relatively safe political haven where the Post can wait out the storm.”

Then there’s Trump. “Trump’s policies don’t always fall neatly in the left-right or Democrat-GOP dichotomy, and this may be sand in the gears of traditional political journalism. … The routines for covering this kind of presidential politics are not as well developed, perhaps leading to some hesitance, caution, a little confusion.”

And that supposed barrier between news decisions and business decisions? In Lowrey’s view, if it’s getting weaker that’s less because of owners decreeing violations and more because of an internal change in journalism culture. “Newsroom leaders are urged to ‘get real’ and get familiar with their organization's and the industry's alarming financial problems, and ‘pitch in’ and help” by taking steps to attract page views, subscribers, and social media followers.

The new culture does not necessarily mean pulling punches in coverage. “The legacy media are doing their job and doing it pretty well,” Lowrey said, “but in a ‘normal’ day to day way, waiting to see how Trump's seemingly self-destructive policies play out.”

Many critics, of course, think that media normalcy is not what’s needed right now.

How guilty people attack the news media

EDITED ILLUSTRATION (ORIGINAL BY MOHAMED HASSAN)

(AMUSING ANECDOTE: WHEN I FIRST TRIED TO CREATE AN ILLUSTRATION USING AN AI IMAGE GENERATOR, I USED KEYWORDS “LYING POLITICIAN” AND GOT FOUR AI IMAGES OF DONALD TRUMP.)

Having been caught using an unauthorized messaging service to discuss details of a military bombing operation with a journalist inadvertently invited into the chat, members of the Trump administration have offered the finest selection of reasons from which gullible people can choose and convince themselves that this highly troubling story is actually no big deal at all.

In fact, the “flood the zone” responses to The Atlantic’s scoop cover pretty much all the different possibilities for propagandist responses when a news organization publishes a negative story about a powerful person or group. Here’s a list of the customary options, all of which we’ve heard or seen from one or more administration officials since the Signal story went public on Monday:

• Attack the accuracy of the story. Even claim fabrication. (In the Signal case, fittingly, one administration official made this claim even after another one had already confirmed authenticity. “Hoax” was a talking point all week but it was never clear which part was the hoax.)

• Engage in a game of meaningless semantics. (The White House points, for instance, to a contrast between “war plans” and “attack plans,” a distinction without a difference.)

• Accuse the reporter of political bias or a personal grudge against the subject. Smear the reporter’s character. Make him part of a conspiracy. (The journalist in the group chat, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, was deemed “highly discredited” by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Donald Trump called him a “sleazebag.” Another administration official also called him a bag, except that official said the bag contained scum, not sleaze. And he was working with Democrats, of course.)

• Allege illegal or unethical behavior in how the reporter obtained the story. (National Security Adviser Mike Waltz suggested, wrongly, that Goldberg got himself into the meeting by some kind of nefarious plot.)

• Engage in “whataboutism,” meaning to deflect from the issue at hand to talk about a supposedly parallel case that the media supposedly ignored. (White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered world-record non sequiturs by bringing up Hillary Clinton’s private email server and Hunter Biden’s laptop.)

• Argue that the story isn’t newsworthy. (The White House points to the success of the bombing mission, claims the text messages included no classified information, and argues that use of Signal was perfectly reasonable. And come on, people, haven’t we all texted the wrong person by mistake?)

• Threaten some kind of legal action. (OK, this is one I haven’t come across regarding The Atlantic – yet.)

Journalists expect responses like these when they do critical stories. The Atlantic offered a dagger of a comeback by publishing a more complete text chain. News outlets ought to push back. Defend the reputation. And because they need to try to build back their diminishing trust among the public, outlets need to share more of their editorial thinking behind controversial reports. That does not mean, however, getting into back-and-forth shouting matches with the subjects of those reports. Stand behind the journalism, explain it, but let the work itself do most of the talking.

The lesson for the public is this: When you see a wrongdoer respond with one or more (or all!) of the tactics listed here, that’s a pretty good sign that the journalist nailed the story.

Trump’s fight with the Associated Press is about more than one word

from google maps

UPDATE (April 8): A Trump-appointed judge ruled that the White House ban on access for The Associated Press was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. The ban lasted two months. No one in White House media ever boycotted anything.

The worst part about President Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America is that John Mellencamp has to re-record “Pink Houses” and it isn’t going to rhyme anymore.

That, and the Trump administration trying to bully The Associated Press into conforming.

Many news media are refusing to conform. Some others, such as Axios, have pathetically caved. Some, such as Gannett, will write the world’s longest sentence and acknowledge both names.

But it’s the AP specifically that’s getting punished, with its reporters banned from White House press opportunities for the past week. Trump reiterated the punishment on Tuesday. The AP, which is following Trump’s order to rename Mount Denali as Mount McKinley, says it won’t change its gulf references because Trump can’t dictate the name of a gulf that isn’t completely within the U.S. and because it doesn’t want to confuse its many international readers who still recognize the 400-year-old name “Gulf of Mexico.” The White House seeks to justify its punitive actions by saying the AP is engaging in “misinformation,” which is like a kettle being called black by an oil tank. (And if misinformation is the standard, Fox News should be confined to standing on Pennsylvania Avenue.)

Various media reports say the Trump administration is picking on the AP because it’s annoyed by what it sees as a pattern of progressive language choices in the wire service’s widely followed (but non-binding!) stylebook. The crowd belittling wokeness* remains offended, for instance, about the AP’s decision to begin capitalizing “Black,” but not “white.” Unlike the AP, they see no problem with “illegal immigrants,” for another example. I’ve been using or teaching the AP Stylebook for an entire career and while there’s certainly some silliness, the AP has evolved its recommendations to eliminate language that is understandably offensive to a variety of minority groups. In other cases, the AP made decisions that required wrestling with the often competing considerations of political neutrality and truth.

Word choices are often fraught with politics. Consider “The Civil War” vs. “The War Between the States.” Or “pro-abortion” vs. “pro-choice.” One person’s “militant” is another person’s “terrorist.“ And someone else’s “freedom fighter.”

donald trump called out the ap again on tuesday. community note: his executive order is not a law.

“Gulf of America” is an exercise in ethnocentrism and xenophobia. The White House then chose to use the issue not only to try to bully the AP but also to try to spook all media into obeying on matters of language. In the even bigger picture, Trump’s actions are a dopamine hit for his anti-media voter base, and an attempt to assert power over the press. He hopes that translates into greater reluctance to challenge presidential actions and policies.

News organizations have rightly called out the White House for its treatment of the AP, and they’re quietly pushing the White House behind the scenes, but defense of journalistic independence and free speech demands stronger, collective action. Being ignored is really painful for Trump, as is not having anyone to fight with. So, until the AP’s access gets restored, colleagues should boycott White House press events.** It wouldn’t take everyone to be effective. (Read this for a contrary opinion.)

Media politics and egos would never allow it to happen, but I have long believed that press conferences with presidents and press secretaries, especially the current ones, could be adequately handled by one TV camera and one aggressive pool reporter, while everyone else in the huge White House press corps devotes their time more wisely to finding truth and impactful news stories within the executive branch. What’s funny is, in my imagined scenario, that lone pool reporter was always The Associated Press.

* The AP added “woke” to its stylebook in 2023 but discourages its use.

** In 2009 major TV networks refused to interview a top Treasury Department official because the Obama administration had told Fox News it couldn’t participate. The White House eventually changed its mind.

The Trump storyline that reporters must not fail on

photo illustration by gerd altmann

After being understandably maligned in the aftermath of November’s presidential election, much of the national news media has responded to President Donald Trump’s early grenade throwing exhibition with some excellent journalism.

Media critics and Trump haters rightly still vent about weak word choices. Trump’s Gaza idea, for instance, is worse than “audacious” (New York Times’ first version) and worse than “brazen” (revised version). They also vent about a seeming routineness to story presentations. One respected critic wondered why TV networks aren’t doing wall-to-wall coverage as they do for natural disasters and why they aren’t writing chyrons that say “America in Crisis.” And corporate media bosses who have bowed down to Trump with Mar-a-Lago visits, lawsuit settlements, inauguration donations and squelched candidate endorsements deserve every ounce of the outrage.

But it’s still possible for ethical newsrooms, where publishers and owners aren’t meddling in day-to-day stories and editors aren’t self-censoring, to do good work. Although it’s mentally hard for many people to read or watch the news these days, the good work has been out there since Trump Part II began. Outlets large and small, legacy and digital-only, are uncovering news and placing it in the necessary contexts of political retaliation, crony enrichment and an attack on the rule of law and the Constitution. The non-stop pace of controversial actions from the White House makes it hard for media and citizens to keep up, but the alarms are audible to anyone listening.

This work needs to continue. But it will not be enough.

The most important story facing the press is just now unfolding: Documenting the impact that presidential actions and policies will have on the lives of people, especially (but not exclusively) groups that are targeted and vulnerable. Like this story. And this one. This crucial reporting must not be done with some sort of artificial, 50-50 balance of good and bad because that’s not going to be the reality.

Nor can it be done to maximum effect through statistics, political opponent sound bites and experts expounding. It means, instead, talking to real people who will lay bare the facts and emotions of their lives at the moment. It should be the most powerful storytelling of the next few years.

The obligation to show consequences, which will demand a commitment over time, belongs not just to national news organizations. Local ones that know their communities and citizens are better positioned to pound the pavement and find the impacts.

All big stories like this have endless angles, of course. Here’s another one the media should not shy away from: the voter remorse angle. It may seem pointless and even antagonistic to ask for self-reflection from Trump voters who don’t like what they’ve seen this time around or, more significantly, discover that their lives got worse. Not easy to admit you got snookered. And they might not even believe that they were.

But remorse, or lack of it, remains a legitimate news angle going forward, with big implications for the election process, for how the news media should play their role, and for understanding the way many Americans think.

How Trump might cripple the news media. Good luck, everyone.

photo illustration by Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke

After Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, news organizations benefitted from a “Trump bump” in ratings and page views. The aftermath since November, however, has been the opposite. Metrics for media in the non-sycophant category have showed a Trump slump.

That trend might continue, because if the returning president accomplishes even some of the anti-media measures he has talked about, there could be a whole lot less journalism worth paying attention to.

Below are many of the ways that Trump might make it harder for the press to do its job during his second administration. All of these either have precedent from the first administration or represent more recent public statements made by Trump, cabinet nominees or advisers. Some are part of Project 2025. It’s a non-innovative list from the authoritarian handbook used throughout time and the world.

It would be a mistake to dismiss any of these potential actions as mere annoyances. They would translate into obstacles to effective journalism. Let’s also acknowledge that many groups have more to fear during the next four years than the news media. But the victimization of those groups will be made easier by a hampered press.

Anyone who believes the mainstream media as a group deserves retribution for failures and bias should remember, as they read this list, that the best ways to accomplish that are audience protests and denial of patronage, not government interference.

• Reduce government funding for public media (NPR, PBS and radio and TV stations affiliated with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting). The independence of Voice of America broadcasts stands at risk, too.

• Threaten the broadcast licenses of affiliates of over-air TV networks.

• Arrange for wealthy political supporters to buy media properties.

• Meddle with mergers and acquisitions involving news companies he doesn’t like. MSNBC and CNN might get sold or merged during the term, for examples.

• Change the tax status of nonprofit news organizations that report on terrorism (or on any topic that displeases the administration).

• Order executive branch departments to manipulate or refuse to disclose government data. And to stonewall Freedom of Information requests.

• Appoint judges who will re-interpret decades of libel law.

• Instruct the Justice Department to seize reporter phone and email records in an attempt to identify confidential sources and discourage government employees from becoming such sources. Also, pressure Congress not to pass a federal shield law that protects news sources and journalist records.

• Prosecute journalists on completely bogus grounds.

• Launch similarly bogus lawsuits intended to harass or intimidate news organizations, requiring them at minimum to waste time and money. Expect like-minded public figures to copycat.

• Allocate or revoke White House press credentials based on favorable/unfavorable coverage.

• Equally insidious as these tangible actions, Trump will certainly continue his tiresome tropes that the news media report “fake news” and are “the enemy of the people.” At its worst, this rhetoric subjects journalists to verbal and physical threatss as they do their jobs in public. At minimum, this is alarmingly effective propaganda that he and supporters peddle so that when a negative story gets published, fewer people will believe it. Trump has admitted as much.

This is quite the frightening list. But the news media have ways to resist, and the reputable ones will want to. That’ll be easier if news consumers help.

If you can afford it, buy a subscription or donate to any local, regional or national outlet that you think is doing a good job. It need not be a big, well-known organization. Even a small amount helps, because proof of grassroots support is often a prerequisite for big grants from national foundations.

Beyond money, there’s value in publicly expressing objections to anti-media actions, preferably before they happen. Do it on social media or, better yet, contact elected representatives. Let them know you’re paying attention and it matters to you.

Finally, we need some better media literacy. While not dismissing journalism’s flaws and the need to do better, it’s crucial that readers and viewers figure out the good news sources from the bad ones, and when faced with critical but credibly reported stories, believe them. And persuade the neighbors to believe them, too.

I’d advocate for this whether the government was in the hands of a crazed authoritarian or a left-wing extremist. Believe those stories. Remember them. Make them part of the democratic process of government accountability. The news media are positioned to help that happen – that is, if they aren’t getting throttled by the heavy hand of an administration that knows it needs to corrupt the process.

“My main concern is that local politicians will take their cue from Trump and harass us.”

— Norine Dworkin, editor of VoxPopuli in Orange County, Florida, to the New York Times, Jan. 13, 2025