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Category: Journalism

How conservative media misinformation may have intensified the severity of the pandemic

How conservative media misinformation may have intensified the severity of the pandemic

Christopher Ingraham writes: Coronavirus infections have surged in a number of states, setting the United States on a markedly different pandemic trajectory than other wealthy nations. There are many reasons our response to the pandemic tied to nearly 120,000 U.S. deaths has faltered, experts say, including the lack of a cohesive federal policy, missteps on testing and tracing, and a national culture emphasizing individualism. In recent weeks, three studies have focused on conservative media’s role in fostering confusion about the…

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In American journalism, objective truth is decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses

In American journalism, objective truth is decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses

Wesley Lowery writes: It was a brief interaction, during the first weeks of my career. There had been a stabbing, and I’d been dispatched to a block in Roxbury, a predominantly black section of Boston, to snag quotes from anyone who might know anything about what had happened. “Who are you with?” inquired the first person I had approached, a black man in his 50s. “The Globe?” he exclaimed after hearing my response. “The Globe doesn’t have black reporters. What…

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What’s a journalist supposed to be now?

What’s a journalist supposed to be now?

Margaret Sullivan writes: With the country in turmoil over racial injustice, a public health crisis and devastating job losses, it should be no surprise that journalists are caught up in the tumult. Still, the extent of that upheaval is remarkable. Consider just a slice of what’s happened in recent days: Numerous New York Times journalists publicly denounced their editorial page management for publishing a commentary article by a U.S. senator — headlined “Send In the Troops” — that advocated deploying…

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Police are deliberately targeting journalists during George Floyd protests

Police are deliberately targeting journalists during George Floyd protests

Bellingcat reports: Bellingcat has identified and collected multiple instances of US law enforcement deliberately targeting journalists during the protests against the killing of George Floyd. The arrest of a CNN crew in Minneapolis while broadcasting live on air on May 29th was a shocking event, especially in a country with such strong protections on freedom of speech. However as of the time of writing we have identified at least 50 separate incidents where journalists have been attacked by law enforcement….

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The media is helping Trump’s bogus ‘Obamagate’ become the 2020 version of Clinton’s emails

The media is helping Trump’s bogus ‘Obamagate’ become the 2020 version of Clinton’s emails

Margaret Sullivan writes: It’s becoming clear that journalists never fully reckoned with the mistakes of 2016 campaign coverage. We know this because they seem poised to repeat them. As you may recall, the news media — from Fox News to the New York Times and plenty of others across the political spectrum — managed to make the relative molehill of Hillary Clinton’s dicey email practices into a daily obsession, roughly equal to the mountain of Donald Trump’s financial and personal…

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The coronavirus is mutating, but that’s not necessarily good or bad

The coronavirus is mutating, but that’s not necessarily good or bad

Jeremy Draghi and C. Brandon Ogbunu write: In early March, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ National Science Review published a peer-reviewed study titled “On the Origin and Continuing Evolution of SARS-CoV-2.” The authors argued that the various strains of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, could be grouped into two clusters: An “L” type, which was predominant during the early weeks of the outbreak in Wuhan, and an “S” type, which could be distinguished from the L type by only…

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The media is serving as Trump’s disinformation enabler

The media is serving as Trump’s disinformation enabler

Charles M Blow writes: Around this time four years ago, the media world was all abuzz over an analysis by mediaQuant, a company that tracks what is known as “earned media” coverage of political candidates. Earned media is free media. The firm computed that Donald Trump had “earned” a whopping $2 billion of coverage, dwarfing the value earned by all other candidates, Republican and Democrat, even as he had only purchased about $10 million of paid advertising. As The New…

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The pro-Trump media’s coronavirus distortion

The pro-Trump media’s coronavirus distortion

The New York Times reports: On Feb. 27, two days after the first reported case of the coronavirus spreading inside a community in the United States, Candace Owens was underwhelmed. “Now we’re all going to die from Coronavirus,” she wrote sarcastically to her two million Twitter followers, blaming a “doomsday cult” of liberal paranoia for the growing anxiety over the outbreak. One month later, on the day the United States reached the grim milestone of having more documented coronavirus cases…

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The media must stop live-broadcasting Trump’s dangerous, destructive coronavirus briefings

The media must stop live-broadcasting Trump’s dangerous, destructive coronavirus briefings

Margaret Sullivan writes: Trump is doing harm and spreading misinformation while working for his own partisan political benefit — a naked attempt to portray himself as a wartime president bravely leading the nation through a tumultuous time, the FDR of the 21st century. The press — if it defines its purpose as getting truthful, useful, non-harmful information to the public, as opposed to merely juicing its own ratings and profits — must recognize what is happening and adjust accordingly. (And…

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Fox News takes an abrupt U-turn after weeks of downplaying the coronavirus pandemic

Fox News takes an abrupt U-turn after weeks of downplaying the coronavirus pandemic

The Guardian reports: Fox News, the rightwing channel that is a favorite of Donald Trump and conservatives across the US, spent the first weeks of the Covid-19 outbreak downplaying the threat of the virus. Hosts often claimed that those warning of the danger were “panic pushers”, or engaged in “mass hysteria”. Some on Fox News even claimed it was all an effort to try to bring down the president. But in recent days Fox News has performed an abrupt U-turn,…

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The media is amplifying Trump’s lies

The media is amplifying Trump’s lies

Margaret Sullivan writes: Some months ago, I wrote about the linguist George Lakoff’s prescription for handling the president’s false statements and lies, an approach that’s become known as the “truth sandwich.” Rather than lead with the falsehood and then try to debunk it, Lakoff — an expert on how propaganda works — suggested flipping that formula: Lead with the truth, air the falsehood, and then follow with the fact-check. Avoid giving prominence to lies, he advises. Don’t put them in…

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The sordid origin story of Max Blumenthal’s cadre of pseudo-journalists

The sordid origin story of Max Blumenthal’s cadre of pseudo-journalists

Joshua Collins writes: Professional liars, conspiracy theorists and old-fashioned fanatics have existed since the dawn of civilization, but in a digital age where clicks are driven by outrage and sensational headlines, these bad actors find themselves in possession of a megaphone with global reach that has never before been seen in human history. But not all grifters and yellow journalists are created equal. That is to say, in media platforms prone to consolidation and driven by outrage, the most extreme…

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Journalism under attack

Journalism under attack

Mathew Ingram writes: The United States is not the only country where journalists work in a toxic political environment, in which the leader of the nation routinely attacks and demonizes them. A recently published report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University in the UK describes how similar patterns can be seen in a number of other countries in central and eastern Europe, including Hungary—where leader Viktor Orbán has centralized control of the press—and Turkey,…

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Brazilian judge declines — ‘for now’ — to move forward with charges against Glenn Greenwald

Brazilian judge declines — ‘for now’ — to move forward with charges against Glenn Greenwald

The Intercept reports: A judge today declined to proceed with cybercrime charges lodged against Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald for his reporting on prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in Brazil. In a decision announced Thursday, Judge Ricardo Augusto Soares Leite ruled that Greenwald’s prosecution would not go forward, but only on account of a previous finding by the Brazilian Supreme Court that The Intercept’s reporting on Operation Car Wash had not transgressed any legal boundaries. In the absence of the injunction issued…

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The conservatives trying to ditch fake news

The conservatives trying to ditch fake news

McKay Coppins writes: Jonah goldberg, the conservative author and longtime fixture at National Review, used to have a go-to metaphor he’d deploy whenever he found himself defending one of his noisier compatriots in the right-wing media. “I had this whole spiel about how the conservative movement is like a symphony,” he told me in a recent interview. “You need the fine woodwinds like Yuval Levin or Irving Kristol, but you also need that guy with the big gong who just…

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Glenn Greenwald charged with cybercrimes in Brazil

Glenn Greenwald charged with cybercrimes in Brazil

The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in the spreading of cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force. In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a “criminal organization” that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year. Mr. Greenwald…

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