Category: Media

The Twitter logjam may be starting to break as NPR says: See ya, Elon

Elon Musk. Photo (cc) 2019 by Daniel Oberhaus.

Despite Elon Musk’s best efforts, Twitter is still alive, more or less. From sending poop emojis in response to media requests to putting his dog in charge of the company (what company?), Musk has demonstrated massive contempt for his customers. He’s also allowed the site to be flooded with trolls and hate speech — not that those weren’t a problem even before he bought the company.

But now there’s a chance that the logjam will finally break. After Musk labeled NPR’s Twitter feed as “state-controlled media” and then, upon reflection, changed it to “government-funded media” (it is neither, though NPR does get a tiny percentage of its revenues from government sources), NPR’s leadership finally decided it had had enough. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes:

NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.

Unfortunately, NPR is going to allow its journalists to make their own decision. That’s a mistake. What’s needed is to push news organizations to leave Twitter behind in order to encourage the use of alternatives, the most prominent of which (so far) is Mastodon.

From November through February, I went cold turkey, taking to Twitter only to let my followers know where else they could find me. Twitter’s weird resilience, though, led me to come back on a limited basis. I continue to do most of my social media posting on Mastodon, and I hope you’ll follow me there.

Catching up with Lesley Stahl’s semi-tough profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene

Happy Easter, everyone! We attended the vigil service at our church early this morning, so I’m only now getting my bearings. We’ll have a family dinner later today, but otherwise things will be pretty quiet.

Right now I’d like to catch up in a piece of overdue media-critic business. Last week “60 Minutes” profiled Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist congresswoman from Georgia who was stripped of her committee assignments under the previous Democratic leadership after urging that the then-speaker, Nancy Pelosi, be executed for “treason,” and who is now a confidant of Pelosi’s successor, the loathsome, spineless Kevin McCarthy.

“60 Minutes” took a lot of criticism for providing someone like Greene with a platform. I did not watch it at the time but decided instead to watch it with my graduate ethics students on Wednesday evening. I want to see if their reactions and mine were the same.

I think most of us came away with the view that interviewer Lesley Stahl did an OK job of holding Greene to account. Stahl wasn’t as bad as some of her critics had claimed, although she wasn’t great. I’d give her a “B.” Stahl took a lot of heat for rolling her eyes and responding “Wow. OK.” when Greene doubled down on her horrific libel that Democrats promote pedophilia, but I thought her understated contempt was fairly effective. I also liked the use of Greene’s tweets to show that she was lying when she denied having said things that Stahl cited. Naturally, Greene threw her staff under the bus by claiming someone else wrote the tweets.

On the other hand, Stahl let Greene deny that she’s a QAnon adherent, even though the Democrats-are-pedophiles lie is a key part of QAnon ideology. Stahl also betrayed her establishment bias by asking Greene why she wouldn’t agree to some sort of compromise over the debt ceiling. “The two sides have to come together and hammer it out,” Stahl said. No. What she should have said was that the debt ceiling is a phony issue, and that Greene and other Republicans are refusing to approve borrowing to cover spending that was approved by Congress and has already taken place. What Greene and her ilk are engaged in is hostage-taking, and Stahl should have pointed that out.

Stahl also failed to challenge Greene when she whined that she has been falsely described as a racist and an antisemite. She is, in fact, both, and let’s not forget that she once went so far as to blame the California wildfires on Jewish space lasers.

The real problem with the piece, though, was the framing. Some of my students were put off by scenes of Greene mingling with enthusiastic supporters back in her district, where she’s very popular. I didn’t like the friendly stroll around Greene’s estate.

Greene has emerged as a powerful and influential government official as well as a malignant force in American society. She was eminently worthy of a story by “60 Minutes,” but she shouldn’t have been treated to a profile, even one as semi-tough as the one presided over by Stahl. Instead, it should have been a no-holds-barred look at a dangerous figure in U.S. politics. Greene would have been invited for an interview, but her participation would not have been necessary.

What “60 Minutes” and Stahl gave us wasn’t terrible, but they blew an opportunity to give us something much better.

Following a journalist’s arrest by Putin’s thugs, Nick Daniloff offers his hard-earned wisdom

Nick Daniloff, at right in gray suit, meets with President Ronald Reagan at the White House after his release from a Soviet prison in 1986. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

My friend and colleague Nick Daniloff has an important op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal about his time in a Soviet prison in 1986, comparing his ordeal to that of Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was recently arrested by Vladimir Putin’s thugs. At the time of his own arrest, Daniloff was a reporter for U.S. News & World Report. Later he joined Northeastern University’s School of Journalism as a faculty member and director, which is how I got to know him. He writes (free link):

Reporting in Russia has always been risky. The authorities there have never been comfortable with the open flow of information, and they have recently imposed new restrictions on public protests. Several Western news organizations pulled their correspondents to protest recently passed laws that essentially ban independent reporting about the Ukraine invasion. Much of Russia’s independent media have been forced to shut down or to persevere outside the country.

We need to protect and honor the bravery of foreign correspondents, photographers and stringers all over the world, reporting in difficult and dangerous circumstances. And to my fellow Russian correspondent Evan Gershkovich: Courage.

Nick’s memoir, “Of Spies and Spokesmen: My Life as a Cold War Correspondent,” is a terrific look back told by a journalist who made a difference.

A remarkable set of front pages mark Trump’s day in a New York courtroom

Tuesday was, as we keep being told, historic. We don’t know what will happen to Donald Trump next, and he may be faced with more serious charges in Georgia and Washington. These front pages, though, tell quite a story about the former president’s arraignment on felony charges in New York. (From the Freedom Forum’s indispensable Today’s Front Pages website.)

The Texas Observer resuscitates itself with a $300,000 infusion

The Texas Observer, a progressive publication that has been covering politics in the Lone Star State since 1954, has survived its near-death experience — at least for now. The Texas Tribune reports that the one-time home of the late, legendary Molly Ivins has raised $300,000, most of it through a GoFundMe, since announcing it would close and is now plotting a path forward.

This is good news, of course. Still, telling your readers that you’re going to shut down unless they respond to an emergency appeal does not constitute a business model. The reality is that the Tribune, a large, well-funded nonprofit that is grounded in reporting rather than ideology, has established itself as the one essential outlet for coverage of politics and public policy in Texas.

I hope the Observer can survive — but if it does, it will be in the shadow of the Tribune.

Earlier:

In 1983, The Boston Phoenix endorsed Mel King in his historic run for mayor

Mel King was a giant. I remember his 1983 Boston mayoral campaign against Ray Flynn as though it were yesterday. Flynn defeated King. But King, the first Black candidate ever to make a serious bid for the office, remained a force until his death this week at the age of 94. GBH News has the story.

On the eve of the 1983 election, The Boston Phoenix endorsed King. You can read the entire piece here courtesy of the Phoenix archives at Northeastern University.

And here is how it closes:

On matters of human decency, of character, or of integrity, who could choose between Ray Flynn and Mel King? It is only in the consideration of other qualities — the strength of commitment over time, the wisdom that comes with experience, the consistency of values — that the dramatic differences between the candidates emerge. Given these differences, we’d anticipate the inauguration of Ray Flynn as Boston’s next mayor with hope. But we’d anticipate the inauguration of Mel King with enthusiasm.

Boston has still not elected its first Black mayor. The city now has its first person of color as mayor, Michelle Wu, who’s Asian American. But it is disheartening to contemplate that in a place with such a lamentably racist past, not a single African American has ever held the top elected position. Mel King came close — and inspired a generation of Bostonians.

Marty Baron takes on objectivity — and gets the nuances exactly right

Marty Baron. Photo (cc) 2017 by the Knight Foundation.

On Friday I was walking to the subway station and thinking through an essay that I want to write about objectivity and journalism. After I got to work, I learned that Marty Baron had just written a long piece about the topic (free link) for The Washington Post, where he’s the former executive editor. (He’s also a former editor of The Boston Globe.) It’s actually a speech he recently gave at Brandeis University.

I’ve heard Baron speak about objectivity before, so I wasn’t surprised that he got the nuances exactly right. The issue isn’t whether objectivity is good or bad — rather, it’s how you define it. Here’s the heart of what he had to say:

Objectivity is not neutrality. It is not on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism. It is not false balance or both-sidesism. It is not giving equal weight to opposing arguments when the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction. It does not suggest that we as journalists should engage in meticulous, thorough research only to surrender to cowardice by failing to report the facts we’ve worked so hard to discover….

The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible. It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know.

We don’t start with the answers. We go seeking them, first with the already formidable challenge of asking the right questions and finally with the arduous task of verification.

I still plan to write my own essay about objectivity. Baron’s speech will be an important part of it.

The Globe’s long-awaited New Hampshire initiative finally goes live

How many times can you announce a launch? In the case of The Boston Globe’s New Hampshire edition, the answer appears to be: twice.

Several months after the news leaked out, the Globe today is formally unveiling its digital initiative in the Granite State, emulating its current efforts in Rhode Island. The two will even share an editor — the estimable Lylah Alphonse, my former colleague on GBH-TV’s “Beat the Press.”

It is remarkable that the Globe keeps expanding at a time when much of the newspaper business is imploding. Alphonse unveils the initiative and introduces the new team here.

In the end, the Texas Observer couldn’t survive the rise of digital media

Molly Ivins. Photo via Wikipedia.

The Texas Observer, a highly regarded publication that was once the home of the late, great Molly Ivins, is shutting down and laying off its 17-person staff, which includes 13 journalists. The Texas Tribune has the story and notes:

The closing of the Observer raises questions about whether small progressive publications can survive the digital and demographic transformation of journalism and the information ecosystem during a time of rapid social and technological change.

Indeed, the Tribune, a nonprofit digital startup with more than 50 journalists, would be foremost among the new wave of publications that led to the Observer’s demise.

The Observer had been in turmoil for quite some time. My “What Works” partner, Ellen Clegg, talked about it on our podcast a year ago this week. Click here and go to 29:00.

Money-losing New England Public Media, a partner of GBH, lays off 17 employees

This bears watching. New England Public Media, which serves Western Massachusetts through WFCR Radio and WGBY-TV, is laying off 17 employees, or about 20% of its staff, according to Jim Kinney of MassLive. It looks like the cutting is mainly on the television side, with a Thursday evening magazine program called “Connecting Point” being canceled.

There’s also a relationship between the GBH Educational Foundation and New England Public Media: GBH holds the broadcast license for WGBY. In 2019, when WFCR and WGBY were merged, GBH said it would invest $6 million in the television station over the next six years, Adam Reilly reported at GBH News. Reilly wrote that the combined operation employed 78 people at that time.

Kinney reported that New England Public Media lost $4.6 million during the fiscal year that ended June 20, 2022, and that it “transferred $3.4 million from the WGBH Educational Foundation to its own balance sheet” during that same year. The operation is also in the midst of a $9 million renovation to its Springfield headquarters, again with GBH’s involvement.

I was a paid contributor at GBH News from 1998 until about a year ago, and I still have friends over there. I hope that New England Public Media can right its ship — and that its problems don’t spill over to GBH’s own local and regional news operations.