Attention to the Unseen

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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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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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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Margaret Sullivan writes: A sense of proportion — what’s significant and what’s trivial — seems strangely missing. What truly deserves our all-out attention and outrage? What’s the small stuff? Numbed by the barrage of news, dazzled by distraction, many citizens don’t seem to know anymore. And news sources, particularly TV and social media, show little ability or desire to help. (As Pew Research in late 2018 revealed, TV is still the main way that all Americans get their news; and…

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NPR reports: News organizations and journalists’ advocates are battling restrictive new ground rules for reporters assigned to cover the Senate impeachment trial. Correspondents who submit to an official credentialing process are granted broad access throughout the Capitol complex and usually encounter few restrictions in talking with members of Congress or others. But now Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger has imposed new requirements for the impeachment trial, negotiated in part with Republican leadership: Reporters are being confined to small cordoned-off sections of…

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Chris Wallace: “I believe that President Trump is engaged in the most direct sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history.” Also, “He has done everything he can to undercut the media, to try to de-legitimize us.”  

Margaret Sullivan writes: The diplomats have been inspiring, the legal scholars knowledgeable, the politicians predictable. After endless on-air analysis and written reporting, pundit panels and emergency podcasts, not much has changed. If anything, weeks into the House of Representatives’ public impeachment hearings, Americans’ positions seem to have hardened on whether President Trump should be impeached and removed from office. So, is the media coverage pointless? Are journalists merely shouting into the void? Columnist Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times…

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Politico reports: CNN’s Jake Tapper thinks fact-checking Donald Trump is no longer enough — and he’s created an hourlong special exploring the effects on foreign policy, business and the national culture of the president’s compulsive lying. While news organizations including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have openly weighed when and whether to call Trump’s misstatements “lies” — a term that implies malice and forethought — Tapper thinks the media is well past the point of giving Trump…

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Margaret Sullivan writes: A lot of Americans don’t know much and won’t exert themselves beyond their echo chambers to find out. This is the way a democracy self-destructs. And what’s more, it’s not that difficult for American citizens to do much, much better. Granted, the flow of news is unending — exhausting, even. And granted, there’s a lot of disinformation out there. But apathy — or giving in to confusion — is dangerous. “I’m terrified that the idea that it…

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The New York Times reports: In upstate New York, Travis Trudell got an alert on his phone Wednesday morning telling him the impeachment hearings had started. He turned on Disney Plus instead. In Wisconsin, Jerre Corrigan never considered watching. She spent the day giving a math lesson to third graders. In Idaho, Russell Memory worked a busy day as a computer programmer and figured he’d catch up in a few weeks when the hearings were over. The Democrats in Congress…

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