Execute journalists? Don't think it hasn't happened

THE OAKLAND TRIBUNE, AUG. 3, 2007

President Trump’s reported statement that journalists who publish leaked information should be “executed” is a more explicit and heinous extension of his repeated “enemy of the people” trope. It’s so far beyond the pale that the only necessary reaction is ridicule, then dismissal as nothing more than Trump venting berserkly in private*.

Except for the fact that it has happened.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that in the past 18 months, 14 journalists around the world have been murdered because they were journalists. UNESCO reports some that CPJ does not, including one as recently as this month. Some of the assassinations have suspected ties to governments officials, others to political or criminal groups. The highest-profile execution tied to government orders in recent years was that of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018. Journalist killings are especially frequent in Mexico and Russia.

But this does not happen in the United States. Except for the fact that it does. Just some of the cases worth remembering:

In June 2018, a man angry over stories published about him entered the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, and shot five newsroom employees to death. 

In June 1984, white supremacists used automatic weapons to kill Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg in the driveway of his home. Berg’s liberal views had incensed the group.

Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles died after a man detonated dynamite planted under Bolles’ car in June 1976. Court testimony connected the man to a prominent Arizona businessman who had been the subject of several investigative articles by Bolles. At the time of the car bomb, Bolles was working on a story about prominent people with ties to organized crime. After the killing, Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) and other journalists from around the country formed a team to successfully finish the reporting that Bolles had started. IRE, which now gives an annual investigative award named for Bolles, explained the point of the collaboration: “Even if you kill a reporter, you can’t kill the story.” 

In August 2007, an assailant shot and killed Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland, California, Post, as he walked to his office. The hit man worked for a fringe Black Muslim group that Bailey was investigating. My friend and former colleague Mike Oliver knew Bailey from their time together at the Oakland Tribune. Oliver served as regional editor for the Tribune and other Bay Area publications. Bailey moved from the Tribune to the Post just months before he was killed.

“Reporters went out to have justice brought forth.”

— Mike Oliver

“It was shocking,” said Oliver, now a senior managing producer and columnist for the Alabama Media Group. “One of the worst things you can think of as a journalist is being confronted by an angry source with a shotgun.” The suspect group made death threats to other journalists. The Tribune hired police officers as constant security. “It was a little bit scary,” Oliver recalled. “It was a reminder that people (were) out to hurt us.”

The journalistic response from Bay Area journalists was much like that which followed the Bolles killing: More coverage, not less. Staff from different organizations created The Chauncey Bailey Project, which uncovered details about the assassination and the criminal activities of the Black Muslim group. “Reporters went out to have justice brought forth,” Oliver said.

Look, outrageous statements by Donald Trump are not going to cause a spate of journalist killings. What’s troublesome, though, is that such sentiments from the president create a climate hostile to the news media – not like those in some countries where journalists are assassination targets, but a climate in which journalists are more frequently physically assaulted, or verbally abused, or threatened with harm, or arrested, or sued in court, or denied access to information. Indeed, that’s where we are now.

* Trump is not alone. In a private, taped conversation in 1971 about obstacles to winning the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon suggested to “kill all the reporters.” In 1972, his aides actually discussed possibly killing a particularly troublesome investigative reporter.

Coverage of protests brings out internal newsroom anger

The homicide of George Floyd and the subsequent street protests have illuminated failings not only among law enforcement agencies but also among many mainstream news organizations. Along with other issues, the well-documented lack of racial diversity on newsroom staffs has shown itself in harmful and embarrassing ways.

Philadelphia Inquirer headline june 2 that triggered avalanche of criticism

Perhaps a black journalist in The New York Times’ chain of editing*, or simply a heightened awareness created by a more diverse department, would have anticipated the valid internal and external criticism that U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton’s published idea to send the military to “restore order” in American cities posed a safety threat to protesters and journalists, especially black ones. “This puts our Black staff members in danger,” the newsroom union wrote.

Perhaps the same would have avoided the Philadelphia Inquirer’s headline “Buildings Matter, Too,” an insensitive variation of Black Lives Matter. That touched off a litany of complaints and a “sick day” by most of the Inquirer’s journalists of color. “We’re tired of shouldering the burden of dragging this 200-year-old institution kicking and screaming into a more equitable age,” they wrote in a letter to management. “We’re tired of being told of the progress the company has made and being served platitudes about ‘diversity and inclusion’ when we raise our concerns.”

More importantly than helping to fix internal blind spots, a newsroom that demographically reflects its community is better able to establish connections within that community and to report important stories. This is especially so with minority and marginalized groups. Karen Attiah, global opinions editor of The Washington Post and who is African American, said Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources media show, “We are still fighting for integration in our newsrooms so that the communities we cover and that we are a part of actually trust us.”

In many large cities where street protests over police brutality are taking place, it is more likely that black protesters view the media as an uncaring part of the white establishment than as a familiar and empathetic forum for expression of concerns. And fairly or unfairly, the perception is partly affected by who’s holding the camera or the notebook. There’s no question that a good journalist of any race can effectively tell this story, but I think it’s also true that a journalist of color can bring a deeper understanding of issues, born from life experiences. “(The media) are uniquely unprepared overall to cover this moment,” Attiah said. 

The numbers aren’t good. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, a November 2018 report in the Columbia Journalism Review titled “Decades of Failure” reported that racial and ethnic minorities made up 17 percent of all staff in print/online newsrooms in the U.S., 25 percent of TV newsrooms and 12 percent of radio newsrooms. That’s despite comprising 40 percent of the American population. Newsrooms look even worse when focusing on leadership positions: for print/online outlets, the number was 13 percent. The American Society of News Editors quit doing its annual diversity survey in 2019 due to low response from organizations. The coroner labeled the cause of death as embarrassment.

tweet by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter may 31 that prompted management to ban her from protests coverage

Hand in hand with the question of adequate representation is the matter of how to take advantage of the perspectives that minority journalists bring. They shouldn’t be (and aren’t) hired solely for coverage that relates to their own demographics. But they are the best option for certain stories and certain beats. Minority journalists outside the opinion staff shouldn’t be allowed a greater license for political advocacy than other staff members. But it’s important not to neutralize their insights.

In other words, don’t do what the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did this week. Management deemed a black reporter’s protest-related tweet as indicative of bias that would compromise the integrity of coverage and so banned her from further protest reporting. Then it did the same for at least one other black journalist who publicly showed support for her. Bad pro/con analysis by Post-Gazette editors.

Editors who hire would likely say they’re not seeing as many applications from minority candidates as they’d like. I see considerable talent among black students in my classes every semester. But many of them are not interested in journalism as a career. That’s another indictment of the industry.

*A black photo editor who was asked to provide a companion photo raised concerns, but to no avail.

“How can you cover this moment when your own newsroom doesn’t reflect the community or the country that you cover?”

— Jemele Hill, writer for The Atlantic, on CNN's Reliable Sources, June 7

In the middle of protests, reporters find news -- and danger -- on the streets

Hey students: Are you interested in a career in journalism? This exciting field offers not only low pay, long hours and no job security, but also the chance to go to dangerous places where everyone hates you. Sound good?

Recent street protests in Minneapolis and other cities have illuminated the risks that journalists face when they report from the scene of civic unrest. At least six reporters have suffered physical harm in Minneapolis, primarily from getting hit with crowd control ammunition, according to reports on the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker website. One photographer was permanently blinded in one eye from a rubber bullet. In an especially alarming case – because a clearly identified journalist was singled out – a police officer used a baton to strike a cameraman.

In Denver, police hit a Denver Post photojournalist with pepper balls. The photographer reported that, despite his having visible press credentials, a police officer intentionally shot at him twice. A representative of the Colorado Press Association told The Post, “There seems to be a frightening trend of restraining and targeting reporters during public protests and other civil unrest even when clearly displaying press credentials.”

That assessment was supported by yet more reports of authorities knowingly targeting journalists in multiple cities on Saturday night.

Protesters pose threats, too. They attacked at least three local journalists in Pittsburgh, according to a Saturday night tweet from Pittsburgh Public Safety. Similar reports came from other communities Saturday night. Previously they damaged the CNN Center in Atlanta and angrily chased away a Fox News reporter in Washington, D.C. (an episode that was probably more predictable than most). (REGRETTABLE UPDATE 6/1: On Sunday night, a few protesters assaulted at least two local journalists in downtown Birmingham. One was punched in the face and another was hit in the head with a cup of ice.)

TV journalists face particularly taut circumstances because cameras and lights are dead giveaways of location. You’d think that protesters would welcome TV as the best way to impactfully make their statements, but in some cases they see this most visible of media as part of their problem. The real and perceived partisanship of channels such as Fox, CNN and MSNBC helps to fuel the fire.

The overall situation is so worrisome that on Friday the Poynter Institute, a journalism education program, posted recommended safety tips for journalists. Among them: Consider hiring a bodyguard; maybe don’t take the assignment if you’re not physically fit enough to run from trouble; and don’t wear a credential lanyard around your neck because someone might use it to strangle you.

Anger toward media in such settings isn’t limited to big metro cities. My friend and former colleague Carol Robinson, the Birmingham public safety reporter for AL.com and about whom I’ve written previously, kindly interrupted her one-week furlough to recall covering a protest over the fatal police shooting of an African-American man, E.J. Bradford Jr., in Hoover in 2018. Demonstrators surrounded her car and called her a racist, she said, but she was able to drive away. 

Protests are not the only events that pose risks. These days, so do certain political rallies for causes or candidates. Rallies for President Trump – the purveyor of “enemy of the people” sentiment – have been the most notorious, prompting media to bring security personnel with them. In mid-May, a reporter for a Long Island TV station recorded a video of non-stop harassment and insults directed at him by demonstrators at a rally to end COVID-19 shutdown measures. 

Even if conduct does not go beyond verbal threats and harassment, it produces a climate in which worse can and sometimes does happen. U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported 34 physical attacks on journalists in 2019. But even if that is rare, that is no consolation to a reporter on the receiving end of a vehement verbal assault.

An ethical news organization would not send a reporter to an assignment if he or she believed it was too dangerous. So why, in light of alarming incidents, would a journalist go willing? That’s a stupid question, actually. Because the conviction of good news journalists to deliver firsthand information that the public needs to know runs very, very deep, and always will.

Beat writer reflects on Michael Jordan’s brief dance with baseball

Apparently a lot of sports fans around the country discovered Sunday night that Michael Jordan’s manager during his 13-month minor-league baseball career was Terry Francona.  Birmingham sports fans – at least those of a certain age – have known that forever.

PHOTO FROM NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

Francona, the manager who ended the infamous World Series drought of the Boston Red Sox, began trending on social media after the most recent installment of ESPN’s 10-part documentary “The Last Dance,” which chronicles the 1990s dynasty of the Chicago Bulls and its superstar. Sunday’s segment included an interview with Francona as it explored Jordan’s stunning decision to leave the NBA and try his hand at playing baseball for the Double-A Birmingham Barons in 1994.

I remember it well. I had been the sports editor of The Birmingham News for maybe one month (translation: clueless) when our Barons beat writer, Wayne Martin, informed me that the world’s most famous person was coming to Birmingham. Oh gosh. What do I do with this?

Some national media at the time dubbed Jordan’s decision as a public relations stunt that was embarrassing the sport. In fact, the 31-year-old Jordan had every intention of legitimately earning his way to the major leagues.

“The Last Dance” has prompted a number of interesting reflections on Jordan’s flight of adventure. I wanted some from one of the reporters who was there for every home game, Martin.

Martin, who covered the Barons for 20 years, agrees with Francona that were it not for the 1994 players’ strike that cut the season short in August and delayed the start of the next season, Jordan would have made it to the majors with the Chicago White Sox. Considering he hadn’t played baseball since high school and was learning the game at the Double-A level, some of his stats were remarkable, Martin said. That included 51 runs batted in and 30 stolen bases. Even a .202 average in Year One was impressive, in Martin’s view. Jordan began the season with a 13-game hitting streak. “Then they started throwing him curveballs,” Martin said. But Jordan was undaunted, constantly taking extra batting practice.

Wayne Martin, RETIRED FROM THE Birmingham News

The White Sox assigned Jordan to Double-A, rather than the easier Single-A, partly because the Hoover Met provided less public access and greater security than other minor-league stadiums in the Sox organization, Martin said.

Still, Jordan didn’t act as if he were special. Same locker setup, same hotels, same bus (albeit a new, luxury bus). Knowing he put his teammates through the “hardship” of unprecedented media attention – “(Reporters) were almost going with him into the shower,” Martin said – he occasionally bought meals on the road for them. He spent considerable time in the manager’s office playing Yahtzee with Francona, and true to the player’s well-known competitive streak, they kept score all season.

Martin met Jordan for the first time in an empty locker room in Sarasota, Florida, during spring training. One of the world’s greatest athletes was eating a McDonald’s Big Mac. “McDonald’s pays me a lot of money,” he told Martin. “People who pay me, I use their products.”

Despite tense relations with the Chicago media, including questions about Jordan’s gambling-related activities, that wasn’t the case with Martin and the other local beat reporter, Rubin Grant of The Birmingham Post-Herald. “He said, ‘You are the local media. You have access to me when nobody else does,’” Martin recalled. “And he stuck by it all year.”

He’d sometimes get annoyed, though. Martin’s editor (that would be me) required at least a short Jordan-focused story after every home game. So Martin routinely approached him. “He would say ‘Don’t come to me. I didn’t do anything tonight. Go talk to (a teammate).’”

Martin recalled Jordan getting angry only once. The News published a story by sports writer Doug Segrest on how Jordan spent his free time in Birmingham, including occasional visits to a pool hall and Sammy’s Gentlemen’s Club. Grant wrote a commentary that Jordan should spend less time in places like those and more time interacting with people in Birmingham’s inner neighborhoods. Jordan didn’t like that criticism and summoned for Grant before that night’s game. “He chewed him out a little bit,” Martin said.

Jordan could be kindhearted too. During a pre-game “Field of Dreams” promotion, Jordan stood next to a young special-needs player in a wheelchair in right field during the National Anthem.  The boy’s mother later asked the Barons organization if she could send an enlarged print for Jordan to sign, but was told no because all such requests had to go to Jordan’s agent. So, at the team’s suggestion, she came to a later game and stood along the right-field wall, holding up the enlarged photo while Jordan shagged pre-game flyballs. He returned to the dugout, with the mother thinking he hadn’t noticed her. But soon, at Jordan’s request, a clubhouse attendant found her in the stands and took the photo for Jordan to autograph.   

“It’s things like that that made me pull for him,” Martin said. “If he wanted to be a major leaguer, I pulled for him to do it.”

Amid downturn from COVID-19, Alabama Media Group tries a new tactic

First came one wave of devastation. Then swiftly came another.

That’s not the precise story of the coronavirus, though in the end it may turn out to be. But it is the story of newsrooms getting piled on by adverse conditions.

Lost advertising put the journalism industry into a decade-long spiral of closures, layoffs and diminished products that was still happening at the time of the virus outbreak. COVID-19 halted events, shut down businesses, and savaged advertising even further. News companies around the nation responded as they always had, with yet more slashing of expenses in the forms of  permanent layoffs, temporary furloughs, and pay cuts that they present as temporary but which are likely to become permanent. 

Some sad examples from around Alabama, all within the past few weeks:

• The Tuscaloosa News (owned by Gannett) laid off its executive editor and sports editor.

• The Gadsden Times (also Gannett) laid off three people, according to poynter.org.

• The Anniston Star lost three journalists, including its immensely respected executive editor (and a former colleague of mine) Anthony Cook, who volunteered to leave because he said the community needed reporters on the street more than it did managers in an office.

• The North Jefferson News (owned by CNHI) essentially folded by merging with the Cullman Times.

• Alabama Media Group (owned by Advance Local) implemented one-week furloughs and temporary pay cuts from 2% to 20%, with higher salaried personnel taking the higher percentage reductions. Other Advance Local properties took similar steps.

In mid-April Advance Local took another step that I found remarkable. The company that has resisted the industry trend of requiring a paid subscription to access online content launched a campaign asking readers to voluntarily buy a digital subscription for $10 per month. No extra content comes with that. In Alabama, all the content on AL.com remains free to everyone. The company is in essence asking willing individuals to help sponsor the cost of its journalism. It’s a wise time to ask, as the need for pandemic news has spiked online readership around the country.

Alabama Media Group (full disclosure: I used to work there) believes its content, especially during the pandemic, offers value that’s worth paying for. That’s a reader by reader judgment, of course. I bought a voluntary subscription for multiple reasons, only one of which is that they do some good work. I’m also highly empathetic to the idea of, in essence, donating money to sustain a vital civic purpose, especially knowing that some people who need news would never be able to afford it if it became for paying subscribers only.

On the other hand, there’s a legitimate, more hard-ass view that any seller of anything just needs to make its product so indispensable that people will pay without any element of civic charity thrown in. AMG’s ask of its audience, I think, is a tough one, partly because money is tight for some people right now. It also still matters that corporate HQ did a disservice to its local communities (Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville) in 2012 by changing daily newspaper publication to three days a week. Further, at least in Birmingham, a substantial decline in neighborhood coverage and some other kinds of grassroots coverage sacrificed a measure of community good will that might have translated into voluntary subscriptions today. Social media reaction following AMG’s subscription launch in mid-April was generally unkind, for reasons both fair and unfair.

Kelly Scott, Vice President of content, alabama media group

Kelly Scott, AMG vice president of content, told me in an email that she couldn’t discuss the number of subscriptions purchased so far (Advance Local is a private company) but “we are grateful for the response.”

I don’t know for sure, but my inclination is that Advance Local’s push for voluntary digital subscriptions is a precursor to mandatory subscriptions that will put most content behind a soft paywall. A “soft” paywall means readers get a certain number of free articles but must buy a subscription to get more than that. Advance Local began doing this in one market, Syracuse, New York, in late 2018. The company often tests ideas in one market before deciding whether to expand them elsewhere. In the rollout of its subscription campaign, two words stood out in a Frequently Asked Questions post: “For now, your support of AL.com is voluntary” (italics are mine).

Scott cautioned, however, that Advance Local’s voluntary subscription effort “was a different decision than one day moving to a paywall business model.”

Subscriptions mean more money but they run the danger that a chunk of audience will refuse to pay and instead seek their information from other, free online news sources. Reducing “traffic” to websites and social media channels cuts at the heart of any revenue strategy that relies on advertising. Advertisers insist on eyeballs and they pay according to the numbers.

AMG has done remarkably well with this kind of strategy. Not well enough to avoid sending more than half a newsroom of talent out the door in recent years, but still relatively successful.  An investment in video – and not just news video – has helped, as have other revenue sources such as books, events and marketing consultation. And crucially for advertisers, AL.com is “one of the largest local websites in the country,” Scott pointed out, referring to traffic metrics.

But the bulk of the evidence nationwide has been and will continue to be that any news company leaning too much on advertising is going to topple over. Google and Facebook pose too much competition. Ad rates are too low. Website visitors hate ads (unsurprisingly, AL.com denies access to content if you have an ad blocker). And advertising is too subject to the whims of economic downturns and viruses.

Advance Local may be figuring out that it’s going to need another revenue source in its collection. Then we will see who among us thinks AL.com is worth paying for. 

Students should enjoy pass/fail grading option while they can

On the scale of life disruption caused by COVID-19, the effect upon college students and professors ranks only moderately high. Still, banishment from campus and conversion to online learning represent a difficult and unexpected challenge.

One controversial way that many universities have responded is to offer students a choice of having all or selected courses graded by pass/fail rather than by letter grades. Public arguments ensued over whether this is appropriate and compassionate help for students who may struggle under new conditions or another case of sparing fragile minds the burden of dealing with adversity.

Colleges have implemented different versions. The University of Alabama and UAB give all students an irreversible, course-by-course choice by the last day of classes (but before final exams). A course grade of 60 or higher (a D-minus) qualifies for “pass” and counts as credit hours toward graduation and the requirements of a student’s major. A “P” does not affect grade-point average. An “F” does.

Auburn University does it differently. It lets students decide after professors post final grades and offers three choices: “SP,” which is a passing grade for a C or better; “SS,” which is a passing grade for a D; and “UU,” which is a failing grade. Unlike UA, none of those ratings count in GPA calculations, and also unlike UA, an “SS” does not count toward major requirements if a department already required at least a C.

Some universities – Stanford and MIT, for instance – eliminated letter grades and require students to accept pass/fail. That’s nuts, if you ask me. Some colleges haven’t changed their grading at all. Big University of Georgia didn’t. Little Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa didn’t. “It is the intent that the same learning outcomes will be achieved, thus not requiring a different approach to grading,” says an email from Simpson’s president to students.

Plenty of compelling reasons exist to give students a relief valve this semester. Personal stresses that fade to the background while on campus re-emerge upon a return home: family tensions, the burden of caring for other family members, the need for income. I know one student who had to bail out on a very good letter grade because being at home with two young children and a wife working from home was too chaotic of an environment to keep up with school obligations.

“Students who are split up among time zones, without reliable internet access, saddled with home responsibilities and new expenses, and without in-person office hours are at a severe disadvantage, and going through emotional and physical distress.”

— Online petition seeking pass/fail grading at Samford

Some students face obstacles with resources. Library references and professors are reachable online, but it’s just not the same as on campus. Try doing your best work with an unreliable internet connection or having to wait while someone else uses the only family computer. On-campus education masks a lot of socioeconomic disparities.

Universities that expanded pass/fail grading know that some students just don’t learn well online. Many students need the structure of face-to-face education. On their own, some of them lose track of assignment deadlines and online class times. My Blackboard Grade Center proves that. And I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that some professors – who, me? – are just not as effective teaching online as in a classroom, especially if it’s an emergency conversion.

Many students around the country demanded that universities provide a broader pass/fail option in the wake of campus shutdowns. A Samford University student, for instance, got over 1,400 signatures on an online petition. (Samford did broaden its pass/fail policy for this semester.) Some students elsewhere even argued that all students should pass all classes automatically. Really. Also nuts, in my book.

The pass/fail option intends to help students whose ability to achieve has been set back by circumstances. But those are not the only students taking advantage of it. One professor in another department said 65 percent of his students in one of his courses registered for pass/fail. In all of my courses, 12 percent did. A few students who have done “D” level work all semester in a course required for their major will now pass and move on to more advanced courses. Previously, that level of work was insufficient to pass. I worry about how those students will fare.

“We are confident our students will rise to the challenge, and the (University System of Georgia) will do everything in its power to help them do so. We trust our faculty to teach and grade students effectively. In times of adversity, we should reach higher, not lower. ”

— March 30 statement on not offering pass/fail grading

I also know that some students opted for pass/fail to protect a very high GPA. Fourteen students of mine would have scored 80 or higher but chose pass/fail. Can you blame them? Graduate school programs, professional programs, scholarship and award selectors, and hiring managers all make GPA a big deal.

My moments of exasperation aside, I see more benefit than harm to the pass/fail option in our virus-addled educational environment. It’s an empathetic action. (Avoiding a lot of formal grade appeals may have weighed on some administrators’ minds, too.)

But I hope students will remember one thing: The real world isn’t pass/fail. When adversity strikes out there – a business in an economic downturn, or journalists and essential workers in a disaster, or whatever – your future job won’t become pass/fail. Bosses, customers, audience and community will all expect you not just to pass, but also to excel in the face of calamity.

We need pandemic wisdom. Because so much is at steak.

In a pandemic, our gravest danger besides the virus itself comes from the avalanche of politically motivated mis-informers, fact deniers, conspiracy theorists and simple idiots. To find truth and level-headedness, we must seek the wisest, most credible sources. We should all turn to ….

The social media account of a frozen beef product.

In the past two weeks, the social media account of Steak-umm, maker of frozen steak products such as Philly cheesesteaks, has gone viral with a collection of Twitter threads about the dire need for factual accuracy, human compassion and resistance to bad actors in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. Its initial thread on April 6 has surpassed 68,000 likes and 18,000 retweets. Multiple commenters said they found greater intelligence in the thread than in some of the government leaders dealing with the outbreak.

On the importance of accurate information:

On bad actors:

On the need for social harmony in a pandemic:

On appreciation for essential workers:

On how individuals can help:

On the credibility of journalism:

The account even used its spike in fame to help raise money for Feeding America.

Tweeters responded favorably:

• “Who’d of thought frozen meat would be smarter than half of the US population….”

• “Steak-umm offering the sensible, rational defense of truth, repudiation of opportunism, and call to humanity that we all need right now.”

• “Whatever they are paying you, SteakUmm dude, tell them I said to double it.”

That dude is Nathan Allebach. He’s a millennial who works for Allebach Communications, a food marketing company in Souderton, Pennsylvania, that is owned by his father and has Steak-umm as a client. His age and who he works for are relevant because, according to a 2018 profile on melmagazine.com, millennial disaffection and a feeling of isolation lie at the heart of Allebach’s history of unconventional topics for a commercial marketing social media account (with the obvious blessing of Steak-umm corporate HQ). Such accounts inherently involve some degree of embellishment, for no one’s product is completely as good as they say it is. The twist that Steak-umm is now crusading against misinformation isn’t lost on Allebach: “We’re a frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people and generate sales, so this is peak irony,” he tweeted.

It’s a fully formed circle of irony, in fact. Allebach refers to his approach as “anti-marketing,” but social media comments suggest that Steak-umm now has a lot of new customers.

It’s interesting that Allebach chose to make his posts on the brand’s account rather than a personal one. Anticipated benefit to his client was no doubt one reason, but he also made this observation: “For some reason people are more inclined to listen when it’s coming from a brand rather than a person which is pretty unfortunate.”

In a politicized pandemic, social media can do enormous damage to truth and to proper response. But they can also offer an oasis of sanity, even if you have to look in an unexpected place.

COVID-19: The past is the past, but we still need to know everything about it

New York Times, April 11

Never more than Monday have I worried that Donald Trump spends too much time trying to defend his past actions and not enough on forging a plan to eradicate the coronavirus and return the country to normal.

While crucial decisions remain – about massive testing, about massive contact tracing – Trump spent Monday’s press briefing deflecting and lambasting reporters’ questions. He reached a new level of defensiveness with a jaw dropping, tax funded, musically enhanced propaganda video. The whole thing was enough to cause CNN’s chyron writer to go bonkers.

But really, can we blame Trump for this? He is responding to two recent, eviscerating pieces of in-depth reporting on how Trump ignored multiple warnings about the dangers posed by the virus, one on April 4 by The Washington Post and the other on Saturday by The New York Times. So, where’s the logic in criticizing Trump for too much looking backward when the press is looking in that direction, too? CNN’s Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent and host of the excellent Reliable Sources show, tweeted Monday night: “Every minute Trump spends talking about the past, he's not talking about the present or future. He's not talking about the pathway out of this.” That correct sentiment was met with some support but mostly with pot-and-kettle accusations from thread commenters.

 But looking backward is exactly what the news media need to do. For many reasons:

Washington Post, April 4

• This pandemic is the top story of a generation. It is essential to know as much about how it happened as possible, and as soon as possible.

• Today’s reporting is the foundation of the vital historical analysis to come.

• The president is trying to permanently rewrite events. That can’t happen.

• Stories such as these can bring pressure to bear – from the public, from other elected leaders, from administrative advisers – to address failings and respond differently going forward.

• The idea that such retrospection can wait for resolution is wrong. The insiders who can tell the story have clear recollections now. They may have motive to get the story out now -- if not to bring change then to clear their names. Plus, telltale documents and emails are available now, rather than hidden as they someday will be. 

• There’s an election in November. Voters need to know everything possible about the performance and fitness of their president in a catastrophe, because this one isn’t the last one.

The media can walk and chew gum at the same time. They can, and must, dissect the past, paint the present, and explore all paths for the future. It remains to be seen whether anyone can make the president do the same.

As virus swirls, President Trump is too dangerous for live TV

Bringing change to ingrained practices of the news media is slow and difficult, especially if it’s the fundamental premise that journalists should report all the news and let the audience do with it as they wish. But occasionally, when evidence of significant public harm begins to pile up, change can happen.

• Example: National TV networks eventually came to agree that on presidential election nights, immediate, sample-based declarations of state winners before polls closed could affect subsequent voter turnout. Now, they wait.

• Example: A growing number of editors have concluded that repeated and high-profile attention to the names and viewpoints of mass shooters may contribute to the motives of copycats. Now, more organizations practice restraint.

It’s time for another change.  TV networks should no longer show live broadcasts of presidential press conferences about the coronavirus. I am not alone in concluding this. 

No kind of misinformation from any government official is acceptable. But the news media can blunt some of it with aggressive follow-up questions, prominent fact checking and pointed criticism by designated commentators. With the coronavirus, though, the danger of distortion and inaccuracy is so great that normal journalistic counterbalances are not fast enough or effective enough. President Donald Trump puts some people’s health and even lives at risk when he downplays the spread of the disease, offers premature hope for drugs whose effectiveness and side effects are unproved, and overstates the availability of tests. This nationally broadcast behavior is why some people do not participate in social distancing. Why a doctor had to take to Twitter to warn of the potential danger of using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin together without a doctor’s consent. Why lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients who need hydroxychloroquine are having more trouble getting it. Why, in part, health officials in hard-hit areas have to ward off non-symptomatic test seekers in order to conserve tests and protective equipment.

Trump also suggested in a March 4 phone interview with Fox News that people with the coronavirus are able to go to work, demonstrating that he’s reckless in any live forum, not just press briefings.

That much of the nation is at home and watching increases the urgency for TV media to think about their ethical obligations and respond. They have other options:

• Show excerpts, even misleading ones, later, with introductions and elaborations that counter the bad information.

• Post full video online, with visitors having to click through a fact-laden disclaimer to access it.

• Consider emerging artificial intelligence technology that allows live or brief tape-delayed broadcast with instant fact checking in an on-screen side panel.

Offering any amplification whatsoever to Trump’s most mortifying statements is increasingly controversial among media professionals and independent commentators. But journalists should not deprive citizens of evidence they need – such as conduct in a crisis – to evaluate the fitness of this or any president.

I hold little hope, alas, that all major national TV networks will change. This is especially the case with Fox News, which uses multiple shows to advocate, seemingly conscience free, for Trump, including its journalistic malpractice during the first two months of the virus crisis. And that’s especially alarming, for those viewers are the ones most likely to believe Trump’s words and suffer the harm that may come from them.

Web comments: You know it’s bad when even Advance has had enough

Thursday’s action by Advance Local news websites, including AL.com, to eliminate readers’ ability to post comments beneath site stories was so jaw dropping that it reminded me of Playboy magazine’s decision to eliminate fully nude photos of women. Take what was once a cornerstone of your brand and business model and throw it away.

How well I remember, when I worked at AL.com in the 2000s, the emphasis on posting stories that would generate comments and other forms of reader “engagement.” Reporters were required to engage in a certain number of daily interactions with posters. This really wasn’t a bad thing, as it offered new and valuable chances for direct public feedback, a wider diversity of voices engaged in civic conversation, and even an occasional story tip. But then the lofty ideals got rained on by reality and washed away into a heap of mud and muck.

Website commentary deteriorated into a cesspool of misinformation, viciousness, physical threats, racism, misogyny and other forms of harm and ugliness that made me think some humans should not be allowed to reproduce. Efforts to moderate – meaning to remove comments that violated user agreements – were too inadequate to keep up with the volume of problems. Some Advance employees complained, but engagement was the priority of the corporate office.

Remarkably, Advance finally decided it had had enough. It cited multiple reasons:

• Some commenters have created a “toxic atmosphere” by engaging in “personal attacks and other undesirable behavior.” The influence of this factor is seen in Advance’s decision to also remove all comments from previously published stories.

• Only a “tiny fraction” of website visitors actually post comments. NJ.com reported its fraction as 0.03 percent. Cleveland.com reported 0.0005 percent, and so did AL.com -- during football season.

• Few registered users read the comments, which Advance attributed partly to the negativity of comment threads. NJ.com estimated 2 percent of its audience does so.

• More and more commenters prefer social media as the best forum, especially Facebook.

• The time and money spent on website moderation could be better used for news gathering. Advance used a combination of human moderators and algorithms. It employed an outside moderating company and I suspect Advance paid a lot of money for that company to serve an ever-dwindling piece of the chain’s websites. It likely didn’t make any financial sense anymore.

Advance is not alone in facing these issues or in trying to fight the problem with different moderation tactics such as algorithms, muting, flagging and up/down voting. And it’s not alone in making the ultimate decision that it did. A few notable others include the Buffalo News (2010), the Miami Herald (2013), Reuters (2014), the Chicago Sun-Times (2014), CNN (2014), NPR (2016) and the Atlantic (2018). All of these sought to steer reader comments to social media channels or required a social media channel log-in for site access.

The crucial difference with this new approach: the loss of poster anonymity. Anonymity allows a user with vital but sensitive information to share it without repercussions. More likely, though, anonymity brings out a poster’s inner troll. One 2019 study ($) showed that anonymous commenters not only were more likely to post uncivil statements than named commenters were, but also were less likely to show any of the defined traits of quality dialogue.

The negativity allowed by anonymity and encouraged by an inflammatory culture has consequences. Research published in 2015 ($) concluded that readers’ exposure to prejudiced comments caused them to post more prejudiced comments of their own and increased their negative attitudes toward the targeted group. A 2017 study ($) co-authored by my UA department colleague Chris Roberts, as well as a study in 2019, showed that uncivil comment streams tainted reader perceptions of the credibility of the news organization itself.

Online negativity also affects the journalists who create the original stories. It is common for them (and for the subjects of stories) to vow, “I don’t read the comments.” It’s a matter of self-well-being. Sometimes the impact of the most extreme online anger is highly alarming. Read, for instance, this powerful 2018 personal commentary by Alecia Archibald, wife of AL.com columnist John Archibald. Social media in the wake of Advance’s announcement made it clear that many of Advance’s journalists welcomed the end of site comments. They are not alone in the industry in their disdain.

Still, for all the horrors, news organizations carry an ethical obligation to provide avenues for citizens to talk to journalists. That’s why Advance and other outlets point to other options, such as email. Cleveland.com’s editor communicates with registered users by text message. But ethical practices and the community service mission demand places for public discussion as well, and news outlets’ social media platforms are increasingly becoming those forums. The funny thing is, though, these days some social media commenters, even with names attached, can act just as vilely as those anonymous posters in their basements.

By the way, about a year later Playboy changed its mind. I don’t think Advance Local will.

“At their best, the NJ.com comments were a place to learn more about a story, add or correct information that we missed and engage in a meaningful, respectful debate. At their worst, our comments were a place none of us would want to spend time. They were a place for racism, misogyny and hatred — a place to perpetuate the worst stereotypes about our state, our neighborhoods and our people. It was never our intent, but we ultimately gave a small number of people a license to say things they would never say in their workplace or at their dinner table without the cloak of anonymity.”

— Kevin Whitmer, senior vice president of NJ Advance Media