One of Big Journalism's saddest traits is choosing to be helpless in the face of challenges with ready solutions. Two examples:
1) Political coverage still obsesses on falsely balanced issues and horse races, and continues to normalize extremism, even when our democracy is at stake.
2) Journalists stay on Twitter, or X or whatever, even though the person controlling it uses the site to amplify extremists, including enemies of democracy (and journalism).
The (few) exceptions prove the rule.
@dangillmor
⬆️
💯
No. 1 is a complete breakdown of mission.
No. 2 would be sad if it were not so freaking dangerous.
Thank you as always, Dan, for your clarity.
@dangillmor I haven't been on social media much this year due to health reasons, but the news that Twitter is now funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue to the kinds of extremists you mention was a deal breaker for me.
I justified it before because there are still important folks (like the disability community) that are kind of stuck there or haven't found another platform yet. But I'm not going to be a party to financially supporting bigots.
“Treating truth and lies as worthy of equal consideration makes the media complicit in MAGA deception."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/05/media-coverage-2024-republican-election-lies/
See Mastodon thread of article: https://newsie.social/@ZhiZhu/110498505332327306
Michael Crichton had a few words to say about news media:
>My topic for today is the prevalence of speculation in media. What does it mean? Why has it become so ubiquitous? Should we do something about it? If so, what? And why? Should we care at all? Isn't speculation valuable? Isn't it natural? And so on.
https://blog.teledyn.com/2022/07/why-speculate-talk-by-michael-crichton.html
Official and often neglected blog home for Gary Lawrence Murphy aka Teledyn and @[email protected]
On the danger of covering politics like a horse race:
“A horse race confers an equivalence upon all candidates. The only detail that matters is who is going to win — not all that might be lost.
To view America through that lens today is an exercise in the absurd, a practice stuck in the insular logic of the past.”
~Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
https://steady.substack.com/p/the-danger-of-horse-race-politics
Too many news orgs feel the need to present “both sides” equally, even when “both sides” are not at all equal.
Using the concept of “balanced coverage” as an excuse to create FALSE equivalence is not good journalism.
Scales are meant to measure the weight of facts, not to be kept in an artificial state of perfect balance.
Neutral is NOT the same as factual.
Journalism should NOT strive to be neutral, it should strive to be factual.
Jon Potter
Dan Gillmor
Bob Davidson
Tengrain
Reselsnark
Nick Martin
@other95
Nihl L'Amas
Zhi Zhu 🕸️
Blinxeto
Pablo Martini
teledyn 𓂀
skilo
oceaniceternity