Press Watch is on hiatus until August, when it will relaunch with new features.
Assaults on freedom of the press aren't inside baseball. These are the front lines. This is a huge story.
RECENTLY
“Dear Trolls”: A fill-in-the-blanks form letter news organizations can use next time a right-wing mob comes for a reporter
Every news organizations should have a “straightforward protocol” for responding to “targeted campaigns that seek to undermine the legitimacy of news organizations and obscure the facts around conflicts.” Just fill in the blanks.
The flailing Washington Post gets a new leader, with no time to lose
Sally Buzbee enters a newsroom in crisis. Her most urgent task is to establish clear, honest, and principled ways of covering a major political party that is increasingly devoted to subverting democracy.
New York Times says goodbye to ‘op-eds’ and hello to ‘guest essays’ — but will it invite in the rest of America?
The key for the Times opinion section going forward should be quality control, not opinion control. There should be a near-zero tolerance for bad-faith arguments. And if Republicans refuse, they haven't been canceled, they've opted out.
News organizations shouldn’t be making secret deals with Facebook
It's one thing for our top news organizations to accept payoffs from Facebook while leaving smaller newsrooms to die. It's another for them to hide it from their readers and viewers.
Political reporters are hurting America, so how about getting rid of most of them?
Jay Rosen says political reporters will never change, so we should just have fewer of them, and have more subject-matter reporters instead. I like the idea, but I think it's the editors who really need to go.
Capitol Police officials who failed to mobilize on Jan. 6 say memo warning that ‘Congress itself is the target’ wasn’t specific enough
A still-secret inspector general report cites a "lack of consensus" among Capitol Police officials about whether there were "specific known threats" -- as if that was why they failed to protect the Capitol from a pro-Trump mob.
THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY
OBJECTIVITY
“Dear Trolls”: A fill-in-the-blanks form letter news organizations can use next time a right-wing...
Every news organizations should have a “straightforward protocol” for responding to “targeted campaigns that seek to undermine the legitimacy of news organizations and obscure the facts around conflicts.” Just fill in the blanks.
Departing Washington Post editor’s comment on listening to staff is everything that’s wrong with...
The Washington Post, like other elite news organizations, has long resisted constructive criticism from within as well as from without. And in his victory lap, Marty Baron unwittingly explained why: Because the leaders don’t listen.
EXPLAINERS
That thing that just happened didn’t just happen in a vacuum
The ultimate antidote to what ails political journalism today is context. And that doesn't necessarily mean doing a lot of extra reporting. It may mean just remembering.
Newsrooms are struggling to cover race
The role of race and racism in American politics has always been significant. These days, it is central to the political divide in our country. Understanding and being able to explain its complexities is essential to cover this moment coherently. And yet the gaze of our elite American newsrooms remains intractably white and male. So they fail.
TIMIDITY
Limbaugh obituaries show the mainstream media still fawning over the people who poisoned politics
Our newsroom leaders still cannot bring themselves to declare that the hysteria and conspiracy theories that once inhabited only the lunatic fringes of our political discourse – until Rush Limbaugh, and then Donald Trump, came along – don’t merit respect, but banishment, rejection, and denial.
Washington Post editor Marty Baron grudgingly admits failure to be ‘forthright about Trump’s mendacity’
To those of us hoping for a journalistic reckoning in the post-Trump era, it's disheartening that the first admission of fault from a senior newsroom leader amounts to little more than a "whatever."
AP, NPR and others suddenly sounding all tough on Trump, but it’s too little and too late
A few weeks of somewhat less mincing coverage of Trump means nothing. It does not mean lessons have been learned. It is no cause for optimism.
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