"Neutral" journalism can't fight denial - Dan Froomkin - Press Watch via Salon

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Thursday, November 19, 2020 07:19
VIEWED: 1267
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1KIKI

Thursday, November 19, 2020 2:28 AM

Quote:
"Neutral" journalism can't fight denial
Dan Froomkin - Press Watch / Salon
With Trump defeated, journalists can't just retreat back to "objectivity" — not with America's future at stake

I'm not sure if he wrote his own headline or subhead. So I wonder what he's promoting ... propaganda?

Quote:
The conventional wisdom among the leaders of our major newsrooms is that the best way to reach people who believe crazy, awful things is to remain neutral.

They maintain that taking sides would actually make news organizations even less credible with that particular population.

So, now we know that he thinks 'neutrality' is the problem in the news.

Quote:
"We face an enormous burden of people who think that, if we're from one side or the other, they're just going to tune out and not pay attention to the world's best journalism," Associated Press executive editor Sally Buzbee said in September.

So, are news organizations faced with the most important problem of being - or not being - "for one side or the other"? And is it a choice between only those 2 options - partisanship v 'neutrality'?

Quote:
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet has repeatedly embraced what he calls "sophisticated true objectivity" as a defense against those who would have the Times counter falsehoods more assertively. You don't call it a lie, he has said. "Let somebody else call it a lie." (See "NYT editor Dean Baquet wants his reporters to keep an "open" mind — or maybe an empty one" and "Dean Baquet interview makes clear New York Times still ruled by both-sides-ism.")

And the author of the article seems to think that having an open mind is a problem, what he calls an 'empty mind'.

Quote:
Countering the reformers' view that balanced criticism is naïve at this stage in American politics, National Public Radio public editor Kelly McBride recently described the dominant newsroom view as believing "that our current experience is particular to the Trump presidency, that American politics will eventually regain equilibrium, and that journalism's attachment to neutrality should remain consistent in order to remain effective over the long run."

Now the author returns the the framing of the problem as one of 'neutrality', or 'balanced criticism'.

Quote:
But more than 73 million people voted for Trump in the presidential election, suggesting that the strain of overt fact-rejection nurtured by the right wing is still very much with us — and unlikely to succumb any time soon to more journalistic business-as-usual.

Having made the proposal that the problem is 'journalistic business-as-usual' or 'neutrality', the author does a bait-and-switch by equating 'neutrality' with facts.

Quote:
Several journalism professors — among 151 academics who contributed to a new, wide-ranging collection of essays, "U.S. Election Analysis 2020: Media, Voters and the Campaign" — argue that if journalism is to rise to the challenge of the moment, it has to change.

Having stated that the worst problem facing the news is their insistence on 'neutrality' - which he equates with facts - the author goes forward to promoting the idea that 'neutrality (factualism) should be abandoned, for the simple reason that, as he claims, it doesn't work in convincing people of its rightness.

Quote:
Seth C. Lewis from the University of Oregon, Matt Carlson from the University of Minnesota and Sue Robinson from the University of Wisconsin-Madison write that "traditional journalistic practices remain more-or-less intact" even as "the overall media environment has changed radically" with the advent of a powerful right-wing media machine that massively spreads disinformation.

That's not going to work, they write. Journalists

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SECOND

Thursday, November 19, 2020 2:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Quote:
"Neutral" journalism can't fight denial
Dan Froomkin - Press Watch / Salon
With Trump defeated, journalists can't just retreat back to "objectivity" — not with America's future at stake
I'm not sure if he wrote his own headline or subhead. So I wonder what he's promoting ... propaganda?

You went wrong on the very first line, 1kiki. The title is Faux-neutral journalism is no way to fight the truth-deniers.

Overlooking the word Faux is much like taking a sentence and dropping the word "not" from it. Example: 1) This sentence is not false. 2) This sentence is false.
Sentence 1 makes sense while sentence 2 is nonsense or ridiculous.

www.salon.com/2020/11/18/enough-with-both-sides-faux-neutral-journalis
m-is-no-way-to-fight-the-truth-deniers/
or
https://web.archive.org/web/20201118214323/https://www.salon.com/2020/
11/18/enough-with-both-sides-faux-neutral-journalism-is-no-way-to-fight-the-truth-deniers/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

1KIKI

Thursday, November 19, 2020 3:58 AM

Meh. I copied it as it exactly as it existed on Salon's front page at that moment.

I can't help it if they OOPSED! and corrected it.

ETA: In fact, over the hours they've COMPLETELY revamped the Salon front page, changing the title and dropping the subtitle. They've used at least 3 different versions that I know of - my original, yours, and the current one - going from -

"Neutral" journalism can't fight denial
With Trump defeated, journalists can't just retreat back to "objectivity" — not with America's future at stake

to -

Enough with "both sides"! Faux-neutral journalism is no way to fight the truth-deniers

And btw, changing headlines is extremely common in online publications, but especially CNN (and apparently Salon). I'd be guessing, but I imagine they check how many clicks a title gets and want better click-bait. Having one title on the front page and a different title in the article is another common occurrence, as is putting a different title onto an article that was imported from elsewhere. The online media are ALSO fond of posting titles that have little or nothing to do with the content. Next time I find an example, I'll point it out.

A change in title means diddly. But you're good at diddly, it's your specialty.

I'd be shocked to my core if you addressed the content in any meaningful way.

SECOND

Thursday, November 19, 2020 5:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

I'd be shocked to my core if you addressed the content in any meaningful way.

Are you kidding me? There is nothing here except whining in what you wrote: "Well ... this left(ish) dog-whistle politics (that does seem to call for propaganda) is just as obtuse as its opposite companion, right(ish) dog-whistle politics.

I suspect both exist because the purveyors want to motivate their audience without spelling out EXACTLY what they mean.

And 'neutrality', in terms of being a pointless debate about what some people say v what other people say, is a problem - but facts aren't. The 2 are not the same.

So giving up 'neutrality' in terms of taking sides (propaganda) isn't the answer to the problem. Doing investigative reporting and uncovering and reporting ALL the facts - including the ones we're not 'supposed' to see - is the answer.

But that takes money, and is a negative to the bottom line.

So I have a suggestion for the author and a solution for the problem. Continue to print all the slanted, cheap, opinionated propaganda you want. Just don't call it the news. "

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

1KIKI

Thursday, November 19, 2020 5:13 AM

You have nothing MEANINGFUL to say about the entire article? Even if it's to agree with it?

Of course you don't.

SIGNYM

Thursday, November 19, 2020 7:19 AM

Why are they pretending that they've been neutral and/or objective and/or fact-based and/or honest? (However you want to characterize it.)

They lost 50% of the USA by publishing lie after lie, and they know it, and so does at least half of America.

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