Yearly Archives: 2023

During this Pride month, journalists should be ashamed

What does WaPo call retrograde bullies and bigots spewing the kind of hatred that had been increasingly confined to the dark corners of society before the Trump era? "Emboldended shoppers."

Republicans are hellbent on default because why not

Republicans want chaos because they know the media – and, as a result, the public -- will blame President Biden, both in the short term and in the long.

“When he says something that is bogus, you stop him right there.”

Listen to my discussion of how to -- and how not to -- cover Trump, with Meghna Chakrabarti, the host of WBUR-FM's "On Point" radio show.

Washington Post is furtively sitting on a secret trove of Discord leaks

When a news organization has exclusive access to secrets that are effectively still secret, they have an obligation to publish them judiciously and maintain the secrecy of those that deserve it.

Lessons for Chris Licht’s successor at CNN

What CNN journalists made clear to their boss is that you simply cannot be a legitimate journalist and be neutral about Donald Trump.

Here’s how CNN can reduce the harm of giving Trump the microphone

CNN's obligation is to demand concrete answers to questions that have arisen since he left office, and to confront him with the facts he denies.

Republicans threaten to tank economy. Media blames Biden.

The nation is not “barreling toward default,” nor is it “careening,” or even “drifting” there. It is being pushed there by Republicans.

Stop calling it a leak

There is a huge distinction between a public-spirited leak and a self-serving, nihilistic theft of classified documents. Reporters should be making it.

“Fact-checking” is a feeble, inadequate way to respond to racist, antisemitic incitement

The issue is not whether there is some factual basis in there somewhere, but that Trump and congressional Republicans are raging against Blacks and Jews.

Media coverage of Trump indictment should stick to the (highly incriminating) facts

The false but dominant media narrative is that this is a tough decision for the prosecutor that should be made with a view toward the political implications.

How many U.S. soldiers were wounded in Iraq? No one knows or seems to care

The true number of military personnel injured in Iraq is in the hundreds of thousands -- maybe even more than half a million -- if you just go a bit beyond the Pentagon's narrowly-tailored definition of "wounded in action". But no one ever bothered to keep count.

“Complicit enablers”: 20 years later, the press corps has learned nothing

There were some incredibly obvious lessons to be learned from the media's failure in the run-up to war in Iraq. For the record, here are a few of them.

Fox’s big reveal is a teachable moment about journalism

Now is the time to publicly and definitively explain journalism's core values and how Fox does not share them, and to never again allow anyone – the public, the pollsters, the funders, the political parties – to confuse the two.

The Washington Post opinion section is a sad, toxic wasteland

The Washington Post opinion section is dull, addled, and inconsequential. It doesn’t come in for remotely as much criticism as the New York Times's -- but that’s because nobody cares about it enough to criticize it.

At the New York Times, it’s the comfortable versus the afflicted

The dismissive response to a complaint about negative bias in reporting about transgender people reflects an ongoing newsroom rift.