Journalism

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s caricature of journalists as dishonest is hypocritical, and it insults the courage and professionalism of my colleagues who sometimes risk their lives trying to get a story. I’ve lost reporter and photographer friends in war zones all over the world, and have had other friends kidnapped and tortured. When Trump galvanizes crowds against reporters in the room, I worry that we may lose journalists in the line of duty not only in places like Syria but also right here at home. Trump will get people hurt.

This is an extraordinary moment in our nation’s history, for we are enduring an epic struggle over the principles on which our country was founded. These include the idea that a flawed free press is an essential institutional check on flawed leaders. So may I humbly suggest that when a megalomaniacal leader howls and shrieks at critics, that is when institutional checks on that leader become a bulwark of democracy.

President Donald Trump’s war on the media is succeeding in convincing people that press coverage of the president is unfair, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University, but the net impact on public perceptions of Trump still seems to be negative. The good news for the White House is that by a 55-40 margin, respondents say they disapprove of the way the media covers the president. Some of that, of course, is probably people who think the media is too soft on Trump. But by and large it seems like Trump is basically convincing people of his core thesis about the media: They should be nicer to him. On the other hand, the very same poll says that by a 62-35 margin, respondents disapprove of how Trump talks about the media. And by a 54-36 margin, people say they trust the media over Trump “to tell you the truth about important issues.” In short, it seems that Trump’s media bashing has been a negative-sum game that’s eroded confidence in the press while also eroding confidence in Trump.

President Donald Trump’s angry condemnation of the news media during a campaign-style rally heightened the fear among journalists that verbal attacks on the profession could lead to physical attacks. While criticizing media coverage has long been a surefire tactic to rile up crowds, the depth of the president’s most recent jabs took even seasoned journalists by surprise. He called journalists “sick people,” accused the news media of “trying to take away our history and our heritage” and questioned their patriotism.

“I really think they don’t like our country,” he said. “To see this sort of attack coming yet again from the president is deeply disturbing,” said Courtney C. Radsch, the advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “It creates an environment in which attacks on the press, both verbal and potentially physical, could become common.”

Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Donald Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verve. Some staff members expressed similar concerns on Aug 23 after Baker, in a series of blunt late-night e-mails, criticized his staff over their coverage of President Trump’s rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.

“Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Baker wrote at 12:01 a.m. on Aug 23 to a group of Journal reporters and editors, in response to a draft of the rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition. He added in a follow-up, “Could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?” Several phrases about President Trump that appeared in the draft of the article reviewed by Baker were not included in the final version published on The Journal’s website.

The Radio-Television Digital News Association is warning broadcasters to be careful out there following arguably President Donald Trump’s most extended attack on the news media to date.

“Throughout his campaign, and throughout his first seven months in office, the president has consistently tried to make responsible journalists the villains in his effort to fire up his political base. We know that this kind of rhetoric has emboldened some people who don’t like, or don’t understand, the news media to act out against reporters and photojournalists at the national and local levels,” said Dan Shelley, RTDNA incoming executive director. “As long as the person with the most powerful bully pulpit in the world continues to attack verbally the news media, journalists are at risk. We urge reporters and photojournalists to be vigilant, and to take whatever steps they feel necessary to protect their personal safety while fulfilling their Constitutionally-guaranteed duty to seek and report the truth.”

[Commentary] As with so much about President Donald Trump, his Phoenix rally was two contradictory things: both shocking and completely predictable. Shocking because it was the most sustained attack any president has made on the news media. (“It’s time to expose the crooked-media deceptions and challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions,” Trump ranted, as he charged that reporters invent sources and make up stories. “They are trying to take away our history and our heritage.”) And predictable because this is exactly what Trump does when he’s in trouble. He finds an enemy and punches as hard as he can.

President Donald Trump, stung by days of criticism that he sowed racial division in the United States after deadly clashes in Charlottesville (VA), accused the news media on Aug 22 of misrepresenting what he insisted was his prompt, unequivocal condemnation of bigotry and hatred. Removing his earlier statements about the Charlottesville violence from his jacket pocket, President Trump glibly ticked off a list of racist groups that he had been urged to explicitly denounce, and ultimately did two days after the clashes. But he said the news media quoted him selectively, accused him of responding too late and ignored his message of unity. “I hit ’em with neo-Nazi. I hit them with everything. I got the white supremacists, the neo-Nazi. I got them all in there. Let’s see. KKK, we have KKK,” President Trump said sardonically of his rebuke to Charlottesville racists, after being faulted for failing to condemn those groups in his initial response on the day of the clashes.

In an angry, unbridled and unscripted performance that rivaled the most sulfurous rallies of his presidential campaign, President Trump sought to deflect the anger toward him against the news media, suggesting that they, not he, were responsible for deepening divisions in the country. “It’s time to expose the crooked media deceptions,” President Trump said. He added, “They’re very dishonest people.” “The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself and the fake news,” he said. President Trump also derided the media for focusing on his tweets, which are his preferred form of communication. Pointing repeatedly to the cameras in the middle of a cavernous convention center, President Trump whipped the crowd into fevered chants of “CNN Sucks.” Members of the audience shouted epithets at reporters, some demanding that the news media stop tormenting the president with questions about his ties to Russia.

President Donald Trump stepped on stage in Phoenix (AZ) on Aug 22 with something clearly eating at him. Minutes into his style rally, we learned what: It wasn't the white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis who threw the nation into chaos and allegedly killed a woman in Virginia. Or the intractable 16-year war in Afghanistan that he just announced he's revving up. It's the media.

President Trump spent nearly a third — if not more— of his 90-minute rally rehashing his public remarks in the wake of Charlottesville and complaining that he was widely criticized for them. In fact, about the only time he mentioned the racial tensions and violence stirred up last week was in the context of defending himself. The president was so frustrated with media coverage of him that he printed out copies of some of the remarks he gave in the wake of the violence. He read them aloud to the crowd, pausing to express total disbelief that the tone of the coverage wasn't more positive.

Saturday, Aug 26, Free Press’ News Voices: North Carolina project will host The News Charlotte Needs: A Public Forum on the Role of Journalism in Tackling Inequity. We’ll bring together local residents, media makers, activists, artists and others to sit down with reporters and discuss the stories they think the city needs to move from talk to action. News Voices forums use structured, small-group conversations to give everyone who attends an opportunity to speak.

A division of Univision Communications has sought to quickly defeat a defamation lawsuit brought over an article published on the sports website Deadspin, saying the complaint is intended to intimidate journalists. Gizmodo Media Group, the Univision unit that runs Deadspin and other blogs the company acquired in 2016 from Gawker Media, filed court papers Aug 21 in New York that seek to dispose of a lawsuit brought by Las Vegas oddsmaker RJ Bell who alleges a story critical of him and his website, Pregame, includes false and libelous statements. Bell is seeking at least $10 million. The article, “How America’s Favorite Sports Betting Expert Turned a Sucker’s Game Into an Industry”, was published in June 2016, months before Univision purchased Gawker Media blogs in a bankruptcy auction.

Lawyers for Gizmodo Media Group argue the sale and Gawker Media’s chapter 11 liquidation plan shield the company and the author of the story, freelance reporter Ryan Goldberg, who has been sued individually. “This meritless lawsuit should not have been brought in the first place and it is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate journalists,” said Gizmodo Media Group spokesman David Ford. Goldberg said in a statement that his article was the result of a monthslong investigation and that allowing the lawsuit to proceed “will chill my work and threaten investigative reporting by freelance journalists across the country.”