Media Nation

The shame of Musk’s takeover is that Twitter was starting to get (a little) better

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

The shame of it is that Twitter was starting to get a little better. Some months back I decided to spend $3 a month for Twitter Blue. You had up to a minute to pull back a tweet if you saw a typo or if a picture didn’t display properly. More recently, they added an actual edit button, good for 30 minutes. Best of all is something called “Top Articles,” which shows stories that are most widely shared by your network and their networks. I almost always find a couple of stories worth reading — including the one from The Verge that I’ve shared below.

Anyway, here we are. Billionaire Elon Musk is now the sole owner of a social media platform that I check in with multiple times during the day and post to way too much. Twitter is much smaller than Facebook and YouTube, and smaller than TikTok and Instagram, too. In fact, it’s smaller than just about everything else. But it punches above its weight because it’s the preferred outlet for media and political people. It’s also a cesspool of sociopathy. We’re all worried that Musk will make it worse, but let’s be honest — it’s already pretty bad.

The smartest take I’ve seen so far is by Nilay Patel in The Verge. Headlined “Welcome to hell, Elon,” the piece argues that Musk isn’t going to be able to change Twitter as much as he might like to because to do so will drive advertisers away — something that’s already playing out in General Motors’ decision to suspend its ads until its executives can get a better handle on what the Chief Twit has in mind. Patel also points out that Musk is going to receive a lot of, er, advice about whom to ban on Twitter from countries where his electric car company, Tesla, does business, including Germany, China and India. Those are three very different cultures, but all of them have more restrictive laws regarding free speech than the United States. Patel writes:

The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff…. The longer you fight it or pretend that you can sell something else, the more Twitter will drag you into the deepest possible muck of defending indefensible speech.

Indeed, Twitter has already reinstated the noted antisemite formerly known as Kanye West, although Musk, weirdly enough, says he had nothing to do with it.

My approach to tweeting in Elon Musk’s private garden will be to do what I’ve always done and see what happens. I use it too much to walk away, but I don’t like it enough to wring my hands.

Erik Wemple — belatedly, he says — comes to James Bennet’s defense

Erik Wemple of The Washington Post comes to the defense (free link) of former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet, and says he should have done so two years ago. In a remarkable mea culpa, Wemple writes:

Although the hollowness of the internal uproar against Bennet was immediately apparent, we responded with an evenhanded critique of the Times’s flip-flop, not the unapologetic defense of journalism that the situation required.

Wemple is someone I hold in extremely high regard. That said, I don’t think he gives sufficient weight to Bennet’s full record, including putting the Times at risk because of his sloppiness in handling an editorial about Sarah Palin and helping columnist Bret Stephens evade accountability for a column in which he more or less endorsed eugenics. I wrote all about that recently.

Absent those factors, I think Bennet would have survived the uproar over an op-ed by U.S. Sen Tom Cotton urging the use of military force against violent Black Lives Matter protesters. For that matter, Bennet might have kept his job despite everything had he not offered a full-throated defense of the Cotton piece and then admitted he hadn’t read it before publication.

Still, Wemple makes some strong arguments on Bennet’s behalf.

Are newspaper endorsements obsolete? Ellen and I kick it around with Jeff Jacoby

On this week’s “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Jeff Jacoby, longtime columnist for The Boston Globe opinion pages. Jeff also writes the weekly “Arguable” newsletter.

Jeff holds degrees from George Washington University and from Boston University Law School, and before entering journalism, he briefly practiced law. He was also an assistant to John Silber, the prickly president of Boston University.

Prompted by a column Jeff wrote in June, and spurred on by the impending midterm elections, the podcast features a free-form discussion of whether newspaper editorial pages should endorse candidates in presidential races. It’s a hot topic these days — this piece by Joshua Benton in Nieman Lab is one of just several to observe that endorsements are on the wane.

I’ve got a Quick Take on a big story out of Woburn. That city has an independent newspaper and is covered by the Globe and other outlets. But this story wasn’t broken by any of the usual suspects. Ellen’s Quick Take is on an opinion column in The Washington Post by Perry Bacon Jr., who calls for $10 billion in government funding to support a news outlet in every congressional district in the country. As you’ll hear, we both have some problems with Bacon’s proposal.

You can listen to our latest podcast here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Are TV stations required to run offensive political ads? The answer is murky.

A decision by WCVB-TV (Channel 5) to run a disclaimer in front of an offensive advertisement by Rayla Campbell, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, illustrates the different regulatory frameworks that exist for broadcast stations and other types of media.

Matt Stout of The Boston Globe reports that Campbell’s 30-second ad consists of an attack on Maia Kobabe’s book “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” and asks viewers if they want children reading what she describes as “child pornography.” “Gender Queer” has become a focus of the right-wing culture war against education, and Campbell has emerged as an outspoken, foul-mouthed warrior.

At her speech before the Republican State Convention earlier this year, she said that Massachusetts teachers are “telling your 5-year-old that he can go suck another 5-year-old’s dick.” Her ad isn’t nearly that bad, but there’s a context. And no, no euphemisms or brackets here at Media Nation — you deserve to know exactly what a major-party candidate for statewide office said in front of convention delegates.

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Now, if Campbell’s ad had been submitted to a print newspaper, a digital news outlet or, arguably, a cable-only station, the folks in charge would have been free to reject it. Just as she has a First Amendment right to embarrass herself, those media organizations have a First Amendment right not to promote speech they disagree with. But broadcast is different. Since the 1930s, the Federal Communications Commission has regulated the airwaves in the public interest on the grounds that broadcast frequencies are scarce, publicly owned resources. Thus, over-the-air television and radio stations must adhere to certain rules. Many of those rules, such as the fairness doctrine and the equal-time provision, have faded way over time, but some vestiges of the FCC’s regulatory regime still exist.

According to Stout’s article, WCVB’s disclaimer says that Campbell’s ad is “not endorsed” by the station, adding that “under federal law, WCVB is obligated to air the following ad without censorship.” The disclaimer also reads, “Please be advised the ad contains language and/or images that viewers may find offensive.”

Stout quotes a couple of experts, including my friend and former “Beat the Press” colleague John Carroll, who says it’s not entirely clear as to whether WCVB really did have to run the ad, calling it a “complicated issue.” Indeed it is. Joan Stewart, a lawyer who specializes in FCC rules, told Gray TV that those rules “only pertain to federal candidates” — in other words, president, vice president, U.S. Senate and U.S. House.

Campbell told the Globe that stations other than WCVB told her that they were restricting their ad budget to federal or gubernatorial candidates. We can’t know if that’s an accurate assessment of what she was told, but if Stewart is correct, then WCVB may have been under no obligation to run Campbell’s ad since secretary of state is not a federal office.

But wait. The FCC’s own website says that though stations are only required to provide “reasonable access” to federal candidates, they must also provide “equal opportunities” to “legally qualified federal, state, and local candidates.” Campbell definitely does fall under that category.

So it appears that the correct answer is “Who knows?” Someday, of course, broadcast is going to disappear, presumably taking the FCC’s mandates along with it. At that point I hope we can move into a better world in which all media outlets have the same First Amendment rights to accept or reject advertising as they see fit.

The Boston Globe’s new morning newsletter joins an already crowded field

The Boston Globe’s free daily newsletter for college students and young professionals, The B-Side, made its debut this morning. Like similar offerings, it’s light and breezy, with an emphasis on stories aimed at appealing to the demo (“Does your employer pay for your MBTA pass?”) as well as on things to do.

The B-Side is joining a crowded field of similar newsletters from Axios Boston, WBUR, GBH News, the Boston Herald and 6AM City — and that’s not even getting into the political newsletters from Politico, State House News Service and CommonWealth Magazine. (Have I missed any? I hope not.)

What I’m talking about here is a certain type of newsletter. The Globe has multiple newsletters already, and so do the other news organizations I mentioned. It’s a matter of tone and emphasis, heavy on emoticons and bullet points, aimed at engaging an audience that might have never considered buying a digital newspaper subscription or tuning in to a public radio station. My students and I got an early peek last month; my reaction then and now is that it’s interesting, like its competitors, but that I’m not in the target audience.

Here’s a memo passed along by a trusted source from Andrew Grillo, the Globe’s director of new product and general manager of The B-Side:

Hi all,

We are excited to announce the launch of The B-Side, a new email and social-only product geared towards informing and entertaining new audiences. The B-Side’s focus is hyperlocal and will provide curated, authentic and relatable content that reimagines how local news is conveyed to the next generation of Bostonians.

As Boston’s population of university students and young professionals continues to grow, it is essential to evolve our coverage to meet this demographic where they are most engaged. The publication will focus on mobile-first formats, and will accompany its weekday newsletter with vertical video explainers, swipeable stories, and creator content.

The B-Side joins a growing portfolio of products that have launched out of BGMP’s innovation portal — the idea was crowned Innovation Week Champion in the Q4 2021. [BGMP stands for Boston Globe Media Partners.] Since inception, The B-Side has been refined and developed across all departments including marketing, revenue, editorial, and finance. Through this iterative approach, we have created a unique editorial product designed to engage the company’s future readership, and provide new revenue streams for the organization. This project showcases Boston Globe Media’s commitment to evolution and investment in new initiatives, and we are grateful of the internal support this project has received to achieve launch within one year.

Editorially, the team consists of three talented journalists. The content team is led by Emily Schario, a GBH alum and creative storyteller with expertise unpacking quintessential Boston stories across text and vertical video. Emily is joined by Multimedia Producer Katie Cole, a former BGM Audience Development team member, who runs the project’s social media and audience development strategy. The B-Side is edited and guided by Kaitlyn Johnston, one of the region’s most talented and forward-thinking editors.

We’d like to thank the organization’s support of this initiative, particularly the Senior Leadership Team who has guided this endeavor from inception to launch.

You can sign up here, and follow along at @bostonbside on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.

Onwards,
Andrew

Both-sides-ism creeps into a story that mostly rises above both-sides-ism

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn. Photo (cc) 2017 by Lorie Shaull.

Sometimes it can be hard to avoid both-sides-ism no matter how well-intentioned you are. On Sunday, as part of its “Democracy Challenged” series, The New York Times analyzed the rhetoric (free link) of congressional representatives to see to what extent members of the two major parties are using toxic, polarizing language. Here’s the nut:

The Times found that in the current Congress, representatives who fought certifying the election used polarizing language on Twitter about 55 percent more often than other Republicans, and nearly triple the rate of Democrats. Objectors referred to their opponents as “socialist” in more than 1,800 tweets, more than twice as often as other Republicans. Democrats called the other side “fascist” about 80 times.

The article, by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Steve Eder, is comprehensive and important. But do you see what they’re doing? They’re telling us that even though Republicans use terrible language to demonize their opponents far more often than Democrats, Democrats sometimes do it, too.

There aren’t a half-dozen Democratic members of Congress who are socialists — not even in the mild, Western European sense. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Republicans have embraced election denialism, a number that goes well beyond those who refused to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021. In doing so, they are embracing authoritarianism, which, if it is anything, is surely a form of fascism. Maybe “semi-fascism,” to use President Biden’s apt phrase.

In attempting to show that Democrats do it, too, the Times cites the example of Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, who, on the first anniversary of the failed insurrection, “sent an email to her constituents calling the event an ‘attempted coup’ and asserting that ‘our democracy is in danger.'” She told the Times that she has no regrets, saying, “I intend to defend our democracy, and if that is ‘polarizing,’ so be it.”

Well, yes. Nearly all of the Republican attacks on Democrats are laden with falsehoods or wild exaggerations. The Democratic attacks on Republicans aren’t just far less numerous — they are also, for the most part, an accurate assessment of what we’re up against. The story, good as it is, could have done a better job of showing that.

The Obama portraits

After striking out the day before, we finally got to see the National Portrait Gallery paintings of Barack and Michelle Obama at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was a wonderful experience, and we enjoyed learning more about the artists, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. I regard Obama and Dwight Eisenhower as the two best presidents of my lifetime, and I was too young to remember Ike.

Rep. Cicilline on why he favors extracting revenues for news from Google and Facebook

Congressman David Cicilline. Photo (cc) 2018 by the Brookings Institution.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, who represents the First District of Rhode Island in Congress. Cicilline, who is a Democrat, is part of a bipartisan group of U.S. representatives and senators sponsoring the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. Co-sponsors include Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota; Republican Sen. John Kennedy from Louisiana; Republican Rep. Ken Buck from Colorado; and Senate and House Judiciary Committee chairs Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat.

The JCPA would remove legal obstacles to news organizations’ ability to negotiate collectively and secure fair terms from gatekeeper platforms that proponents say use news content without paying for it. Critics counter that it’s more complicated than that. The legislation also allows news publishers to demand arbitration if they reach an impasse in those negotiations.

Ellen has a Quick Take on new research being done by the Institute for Nonprofit News. The INN just released 2022 fact sheets on three types of nonprofit newsrooms: local news, state and regional news, and national and global news. While each group shares some similarities, INN found that geography matters in terms of revenue models and audience development.

I take a few more whacks at Gannett because newsrooms are being hit with unpaid furloughs, buyouts, a freeze on their pension benefits and more.

You can listen to our latest podcast here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

E&P reminds us of an editor’s protest against the GOP’s ‘fascist’ press restrictions

J.D. Vance. Photo (cc) 2021 by Gage Skidmore.

The news media trade publication Editor & Publisher has republished a letter to readers from Chris Quinn, the editor of Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, about press restrictions imposed by supporters of Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance. Quinn’s letter originally appeared Aug. 20, but with the campaign for the midterm elections down to their final days, it’s well worth pondering what Quinn had to say two months ago. Kudos to E&P for reminding us.

Quinn told his readers that reporters from his news organization did not attend a Vance rally featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis because they could not abide by the rules that were imposed. Quinn wrote:

The worst of the rules was one prohibiting reporters from interviewing attendees not first approved by the organizers of the event for DeSantis and Vance. When we cover events, we talk to anyone we wish. It’s America, after all, the land of free speech. At least that’s America as it exists today. Maybe not the America that would exist under DeSantis and Vance.

Other beyond-the-pale rules were that any news video shot at the event would have to be shared with the organizers for promotional use; that the organizers had the right to know how any footage would be used; and that reporters could not enter the hotel rooms of anyone at the event, even if invited in for an interview. Quinn also had this to say:

Think about what they were doing here. They were staging an event to rally people to vote for Vance while instituting the kinds of policies you’d see in a fascist regime. A wannabe U.S. Senator, and maybe a wannabe president.

Wow.

The event was organized by Turning Point Action, a nonprofit associated with Donald Trump. But as Quinn rightly observed, it was essentially a Vance rally, and if he had any problems with the restrictions placed on journalists, he was notably silent about it.

Quinn concluded: “I should note that I’m writing this before the event occurred, so if something changed at the last minute, this piece would omit it.” But Turning Point did not back down, according to a piece that Jon Allsop wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review several days later. As Allsop put it:

The Turning Point rules may have been eye-catchingly baroque, but they form part of a much broader pattern of restrictions on mainstream-media access to candidates and events — a long-standing bane of political journalism that has significantly intensified on the GOP side of the aisle in the Trump era.

So here we are, on the brink of one and possibly both branches of Congress flipping back to Republican rule. There’s really no way for journalists to fight it except to refuse, and f that means giving Republican candidates less coverage, so be it. Meanwhile, the dividing of America into two camps, one small-“d” democratic and the other authoritarian — or fascist, as Quinn put it — continues apace.

No, James Bennet was not a victim of the woke mob

Black Lives Matter rally in Washington, June 2020. Photo (cc) 2020 by Geoff Livingston.

The ossification of James Bennet’s departure from The New York Times into a simple morality tale of wokeness run amok is now complete.

In an interview with Ben Smith for the debut of Smith’s new project, Semafor, Bennet is overflowing with self-pity over the way his tenure as the Times’ editorial page editor came to an end. You may recall that Bennet was forced out in June 2020 after running an op-ed piece by Sen. Tom Cotton in which Cotton wrote that Black Lives Matter protests should be met with military force. Bennet tells Smith that his only regret was running an editor’s note after the fact.

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“My mistake there was trying to mollify people,” Bennet said. He added that publisher A.G. Sulzberger showed no regard for Bennet’s 19-year career at the Times, which included putting himself in harm’s way while reporting from the West Bank and Gaza. “None of that mattered, and none of it mattered to A.G.,” Bennet said. “When push came to shove at the end, he set me on fire and threw me in the garbage and used my reverence for the institution against me. This is why I was so bewildered for so long after I had what felt like all my colleagues treating me like an incompetent fascist.”

Then, in a post-interview text to Smith, Bennet added: “One more thing that sometimes gets misreported: I never apologized for publishing the piece and still don’t.”

This is pretty entertaining stuff, but Bennet — and Smith — leave out a lot. Let’s start with the Cotton op-ed, an ugly little screed that he defended vociferously and then later admitted he hadn’t even read it before publication. This is sheer dereliction of duty. I don’t doubt that he couldn’t read everything that was published in the Times opinion section, but this was an incendiary piece about a fraught topic. And he knew it was coming, since it was a piece he had solicited.

But let’s get right to the heart of the matter. It was only a few months ago that the Times won a libel suit brought by Sarah Palin over a 2017 editorial tying her violent rhetoric to the 2011 shooting of then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords — a crime that also claimed the lives of six people. Bennet had inserted that falsehood while editing the editorial, and Palin’s lawsuit was factually correct. The Times won not because Palin was wrong but because, as public figure, she had to prove that Bennet’s actions were deliberate rather than negligent, and Bennet had little trouble proving his negligence during a cringe-worthy turn on the witness stand. It should be noted that at the time of the Cotton affair, Palin had already filed her lawsuit — something that had to enter into Sulzberger’s thinking.

Then there’s the matter of Times columnist Bret Stephens, who, in 2019, wrote a column saying that maybe Ashkenazi Jews really are genetically more intelligent and backed up his assertion by linking to an article co-authored by a white supremacist. Stephens was let off with a fairly mild editor’s note and a re-edit that toned down his toxic views. But it remains a source of astonishment that a Jewish columnist could write something that has been used to persecute Jews throughout history and that no one — least of all Bennet — caught it beforehand.

It’s no surprise that Bennet landed on his feet; he’s currently a columnist for The Economist. Of course, it suits his agenda to make his demise at the Times sound like a simple matter of being hounded out by the woke mob. That’s not what happened, or at least that’s not all that happened. Smith, who was the Times media columnist when Bennet finally slipped on his last banana peel, knows that as well as anyone.