Authorities say it will be some time before we know exactly what happened in a fatal one-car accident on Wednesday at the Rainbow Bridge connecting the U.S. and Canada at Niagara Falls. But it’s certainly not too soon to call out Fox News’ characteristically loathsome behavior.
First, here’s what we know. Aaron Besecker of The Buffalo News reported on Thursday that there were no explosives and no signs of terrorist activity. A couple was heading across the bridge after stopping at a casino. They had tickets to a concert in Toronto that night. Suddenly the car started moving at a high rate of speed, flew over an eight-foot bridge, and burst into flames, killing both occupants. By all credible accounts, it appears to be a personal tragedy, not an attack of any kind.
But that’s not what Fox News told its viewers. Throughout Wednesday, the right-wing network’s hosts told viewers that the car was packed with explosives and may have been occupied by Islamist terrorists. As CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his daily newsletter, “Fox News recklessly smashed the panic button and stoked fear from coast-to-coast.” Darcy added:
Fox News had made a massive error. The type of error that should have given network brass and the reporters involved a giant pit in their stomach. But unlike respected news organizations that acknowledge when mistakes are made, Fox News has refused to issue a correction. Instead, the network stealth edited its online story, with no editors’ note of any sort.
Earlier this year, Fox paid $787.5 million to settle a libel suit brought by the Dominion voting machine company after Fox’s hosts had repeatedly promoted the lies of Trump associates that the machines were programmed to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump and hand it to Joe Biden. It’s clear that Fox executives have learned their lesson — that is, if you’re going to make things up, make sure there are no identifiable plaintiffs who can sue you.
Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes has sent a message to her staff that speaks to the strains of covering the war between Israel and Hamas. The Globe doesn’t have any journalists who are actually reporting on the conflict from the Middle East, but it regularly publishes news from wire services, and that leads to complaints from readers about tone and emphasis. Her message, provided by a trusted source, follows.
Dear all,
The war between Israel and Hamas has had far-reaching consequences, with strong sentiments and emotions rippling throughout communities around the world. It is being felt by every major institution in the country, the media writ large, our own newsroom, and our colleagues.
Questions have been raised by readers, subscribers and staffers about how we are framing the conflict, the choice of photos we make, the headlines we write, and the adjectives we use to describe these awful events. Every decision is scrutinized.
We want you to know that we take these questions very seriously as we grapple with how to tell this important story carefully and fairly, knowing that our choices will not make everyone happy,
We are discussing this as a leadership group. We have reached out to other newsrooms and standards and practices editors around the country to hear how they are weighing these issues. We have been listening to concerns staff members have raised with us, and we appreciate your willingness to bring those to us. Based on that input, [managing editor] Jen Peter and [senior assistant managing editor for production] Mary Creane have convened a small group to debate on an ongoing basis whether we need to issue any new style guidance. We generally follow the Associated Press stylebook, but not always.
None of this is easy, and we know it’s especially hard on those of you whose personal and family histories are enmeshed in this conflict. My door is open, and I will make myself available to anyone who has thoughts they want to share.
Always fun to be a guest of Jon Keller’s on WBZ-TV (Channel 4). Today we talked about coverage of presidential politics, the lack of transparency among some local government officials, and the ongoing rise of independent community journalism. Please have a look here and here.
As social-media sharing continues to deteriorate, I am posting more links here for the benefit of Media Nation regulars. Here are three must-reads for your Friday morning:
“Behind CNN Turmoil, a Series of Shattered Friendships” (free link), by James B. Stewart and Benjamin Mullin, The New York Times, Nov. 15. An in-depth look at the mess created following Warner Bros. Discovery’s acquisition of the network, which led to the firing of two successive chief executives of CNN, Jeff Zucker and Chris Licht, at the hands of the new boss, David Zaslav.
“A former sideline reporter stunningly admitted that she made things up,” by Tom Jones, Poynter Online, Nov. 17. Jones writes: “In what was a jaw-dropping admission, Amazon Prime Video and Fox Sports anchor Charissa Thompson said on a podcast this week that when she was a TV sideline reporter on football games, she sometimes fabricated a report for the broadcast.” Will Thompson keep her job. Should she? (No.)
Does Fox News lead or follow its audience? I’ve long thought it was both.
During the 2015-’16 presidential campaign, Fox tried to take out Donald Trump, as when then-Fox host Megyn Kelly confronted Trump with his misogynistic remarks at the first Republican debate. It didn’t work, and eventually Fox got with the program. Then, after Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020, Fox tried to play it straight, more or less. Famously, it was the first media outlet to call Arizona for Biden, a state that ensured his victory. But when Fox’s audience started stampeding to farther-right cable channels like Newsmax and OAN, Fox reversed itself and embraced Trump’s lies so tightly that it cost them $787 million in a libel settlement.
Brian Stelter makes that argument in an interview with Tom Jones of Poynter. Stelter, who’s written a new book about Fox called “Network of Lies,” tells Jones that most Fox employees don’t much care about politics. Instead, they are motivated by the usual: making a living. Here’s an excerpt:
For most, it’s just a job, not a calling. Some producer and director types truly believe in the Trump agenda and will stop at nothing to see him reelected. But most are just trying to make good TV. They definitely aren’t losing sleep about Fox’s coarsening of the culture or Trump’s brainwashing of the base.
I write in the book that rank-and-file staffers like to gossip about hookups between hosts and ratings rivalries between shows. On the occasions when I steered my source chats in a more serious direction, toward the impact of Fox-fueled disinformation on society and democracy, staffers turned cagey or dismissive. I heard some predictable whataboutism and rants about the flaws of other networks.
Bottom line: I think introspection and accountability are in short supply at Fox, a tone that’s set at the top, by Rupert, who advised Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott years ago to “ignore the noise.”
You should read the whole thing. And by the way, although Stelter probably isn’t interested, I wonder if it might be possible for new CNN head Mark Thompson to lure Stelter back now that the brief, unlamented Chris Licht era is over. Stelter appeared on CNN last week to plug his book, so who knows? I wouldn’t expect to see Stelter return to his old job, which is being ably filled by Oliver Darcy. But Stelter is among the very best media reporters in the business, and it would be great to see him return in some capacity.
CommonWealth Beacon has just published a story by its editor, Bruce Mohl, shedding some light on an exceedingly strange episode from earlier this year: The Boston Globe’s decision to fire veteran investigative reporter Andrea Estes after the paper published a story reporting that three top MBTA managers were living far from Greater Boston when in fact they made their homes in the local area. The story, on which Estes had the lead byline, reported that nine T officials had such an arrangement; in fact, it was six. The Globe had to run several corrections as a result.
Mohl reports that the errors in the story came about because the managers themselves were not allowed as a matter of policy to speak with the press without permission, and that they thought the MBTA public relations office was going to respond on their behalf — but the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) ordered the T to stay silent. Mohl writes:
At the MBTA, workers are advised not to talk to reporters, leaving that job to public relations officials. But in this instance the MBTA public relations officials, on orders from higher-ups at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, ignored calls from Estes seeking to verify the information she had gathered. The result was a story that unfairly tarred at least three employees at the MBTA and caused the firing of Estes.
Disclosure: I’m a member of CommonWealth’s board of advisers.
This entire saga has been weird, and though Mohl’s story answers some of the outstanding questions, it doesn’t answer all of them. Why would MassDOT not allow the T to defend its own employees? Why was Estes fired if she wasn’t entirely at fault? In addition, editor Nancy Barnes said there would be some public accountability after Estes left the Globe, but Mohl suggests that may have been derailed by a pending arbitration hearing sought by Estes.
A further indication that at least some of Estes’ peers believe she was wronged came when she was hired recently as a staff reporter by the Plymouth Independent, a fledgling nonprofit edited by Mark Pothier, until recently a high-ranking editor at the Globe, and advised by Globe legend Walter Robinson. “Having her on staff sends a strong message about the kind of serious journalism we plan to do,” Pothier said in a press release announcing her hiring.
Thanks to Mohl’s digging, we now know more than we did. I still hope the full story comes out at some point.
Two Boston Globe journalists have signed an open letter that criticizes the Western media for their coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. According to The Washington Post (free link), more than 750 journalists from dozens of media outlets have signed the letter, which begins:
Israel’s devastating bombing campaign and media blockade in Gaza threatens newsgathering in an unprecedented fashion. We are running out of time.
More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s four-week siege. Included in the mounting death toll are at least 35 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in what the group calls the deadliest conflict for journalists since it began tracking deaths in 1992. Scores more have been injured, detained, gone missing or seen their family members killed.
As reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around the world, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families by the Israeli military and government.
We are writing to urge an end to violence against journalists in Gaza and to call on Western newsroom leaders to be clear-eyed in coverage of Israel’s repeated atrocities against Palestinians.
The Globe journalists who signed the letter are Peter Bailey-Wells, a multi-platform editor on the Express Desk, and Sahar Fatima, a digital editor for metro coverage. Another signer, Abdallah Fayyad, recently left the Globe’s opinion section to take a position at Vox. “My hope for this letter is to push back on the culture of fear around this issue, and to make decision-makers and reporters and editors think twice about the language that they use,” Fayyad told the Post.
Although the letter makes reference to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, in which more than 1,400 people were killed and 200 were taken hostage, the emphasis is on the way that Israel has conducted its campaign against Hamas in Gaza. As the Post notes, “Most strikingly, the letter argues that journalists should use words like ‘apartheid,’ ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The letter may also raise issues at news organizations that ban their journalists from taking sides on controversial matters, although this may prove to be less of an issue than it might have at one time. Several years ago news organizations like NPR and the Globe loosened some of their restrictions on political activities, especially those that advocated racial justice.
Frankly, if I worked at the Globe I would not have signed the open letter because I don’t think it sufficiently acknowledges the suffering of Israelis or their right to self-defense. But it doesn’t strike me that Bailey-Wells’ or Fatima’s journalistic fairness will be compromised because they chose to sign.
Downtown Providence, R.I. Photo (cc) 2019 by Kenneth C. Zirkel.
Executives at Rhode Island’s public television and radio operations said today that they intend to merge. Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s Radio will employ a combined staff of nearly 100, which, according to their announcement, will accelerate “their capacity to seamlessly deliver fresh, relevant content to existing and expanded audiences.”
Such a combination is not unusual. In Boston, GBH News — the local operation within public broadcasting behemoth GBH — includes both television and radio, with quite a bit of cross-pollination. In addition, among the projects that Ellen Clegg and I examine in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News,” is NJ Spotlight News, which represents a merger between a digital news outlet covering state politics and policy and the state’s public television station. The daily newscast features journalists from Spotlight, while the website integrates clips from the newscast.
Rhode Island PBS’s partnership with The Boston Globe’s Rhode Island operation will continue, according to the Globe’s Lylah Alphonse.
At one time, the news ecosystem in Rhode Island revolved around The Providence Journal, once a robust, nationally respected paper that has been decimated by Gannett, its corporate owner. Though the folks who remain at the Journal continue to do good work, The Public’s Radio, the Globe and a number of smaller outlets now compete for news and mindshare.
The merger must be approved by the FCC and the Rhode Island attorney general’s office. The full announcement is below.
The Public’s Radio and Rhode Island PBS Announce Plans to Merge
Pending Regulatory Approval, New Public Media Entity to Engage Audiences Across Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts
PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s Radio announced today their plan to merge, creating an innovative and dynamic regional public media organization to best serve and support the communities of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.
Pending federal and state regulatory approval, the unification of these trusted and respected institutions — with deep histories of informing, educating, entertaining, and engaging the public — will allow their combined teams of nearly 100 to collaborate, including the most talented reporters and storytellers in the region, accelerating their capacity to seamlessly deliver fresh, relevant content to existing and expanded audiences.
“We have believed for quite some time that our amazing organizations will be stronger and achieve even greater impact together,” said Dave Laverty, chair of the Rhode Island PBS Foundation Board. “By combining resources and talent, we can build on our respective traditions of trust and integrity to meet audiences where they are, across platforms, to deliver rich programming that is meaningful, accessible, and inclusive. By working together, we will create an opportunity to bring a more powerful and necessary public media voice to serve our community.”
Between the two organizations, they boast a number of awards and distinctions, including Emmys, Telly Awards, and recognition from the Public Media Journalists Association and Edward R. Murrow Awards.
“This is a tremendously exciting moment for our organizations and for the audiences we serve. Together, with our partners in public television, we will bring the incredible work of our teams into more homes and communities, and in new and different ways,” said Elizabeth Delude-Dix, chair of board of directors of The Public’s Radio, formerly known as Rhode Island Public Radio. “As a unified public media organization, we anticipate building new relationships and fostering deep partnerships while opening our audience’s eyes and ears to new experiences in the arts, sciences, humanities, and politics. A vibrant public media can create a stronger civic life and, together, we can better deliver on our missions.”
The proposed merger, which would join the ranks of a number of public media mergers nationwide, is contingent upon a regulatory process by the Federal Communications Commission and the state Attorney General’s office. In the meantime, viewers and listeners will continue to see and hear all their favorite programs.
“At The Public’s Radio, we want our stories to start conversations. Our thoughtfulness and independence are a core part of our mission and identity. These values are shared by our colleagues at Rhode Island PBS,” said Torey Malatia, president, chief executive officer, and general manager of The Public’s Radio. “Together, we want every listener, viewer, and follower — every supporter and every skeptic — to have access to the best information necessary to be engaged in their communities. That will be our north star as we take these exciting next steps forward to create an innovative and inclusive joint public media venture.”
“I have dedicated the last 25 years to Rhode Island PBS because I am a passionate believer in the value of public television,” said David Piccerelli, president of Rhode Island PBS. “The media landscape and the demands of our viewers have changed significantly in that time, and yet we continue to deliver award-winning programming. I am ecstatic about this merger because it enhances our ability to do just that: tell powerful stories and make an impact on our community.”
Malatia and Piccerelli will continue to serve as CEOs. Once the merger is completed, Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s Radio will launch an inclusive engagement process to help co-create a vision for a new combined public media organization focused on serving our diverse communities with quality journalism through broadcast and digital channels.
These days I do most of my microblogging (now there’s a blast from the past) at Threads, the Meta-owned Twitter alternative that is moving ahead of Bluesky and Mastodon, if not ahead of Twitter itself. Threads is filled with self-congratulatory posts about how nice everyone is along with occasional criticism of people for not walking away completely from Elon Musk, who has transformed X/Twitter from the hellsite it already was into something even worse.
Well, lest we forget, here’s the top to Brian Fung’s CNN story on the latest in a lawsuit brought against Meta by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally and repeatedly thwarted initiatives meant to improve the well-being of teens on Facebook and Instagram, at times directly overruling some of his most senior lieutenants, according to internal communications made public as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the company.
The newly unsealed communications in the lawsuit — filed originally by Massachusetts last month in a state court — allegedly show how Zuckerberg ignored or shut down top executives, including Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had asked Zuckerberg to do more to protect the more than 30 million teens who use Instagram in the United States.
Mosseri, in case you don’t know, is the guy who’s in charge of Threads. As for the great Threads versus Twitter debate, well, pick your favorite evil billionaire. At least Zuckerberg and Mosseri seem to want Threads to be a well-run platform that makes money rather than a plaything for a right-wing sociopath — which is what Twitter has devolved into.
