The evidence has been building for weeks – no, for months – but in the past few days it has struck me with a thrilling clarity: The New York Times is giving us news – good and bad, soft and hard — about a richly representative array of Americans. That hoary presumption that all the news that’s fit to print is male (and white) seems at long last to be under serious challenge.
Last Friday’s Weekend Arts II section, and yesterday’s Sunday Business section ( I read the paper online AND in print, and I sense that this shift may be more evident in print) provided delicious examples. Arts (April 20, 2018) had a lead story on the artist Adrian Piper and her new show at the Museum of Modern Art. Also on the cover was a conversation with the U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith and Jacqueline Woodson, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Inside, the riches continued: a wonderful gathering of faces (and topics) from all over the American spectrum. Continue reading Our most important news organization is quietly pulling off a revolution
Similarly, yesterday’s (April 22, 2018) Business section had as its lead a piece on Campbell Brown, with a photo teasing an inside look at what Marissa Mayer is up to post-Yahoo.
Women in (and out of) journalism have been ardently (and mostly fruitlessly) seeking this change for years.
I remember well, back in 1990, when Max Frankel (then executive editor of The New York Times, a former boss of mine and a man I like and respect) was frustrated by a survey that showed that his paper had even fewer front-page stories about women than other prominent papers. He told the Washington Post: “If you are covering local teas, you’ve got more women [on the front page] than the Wall Street Journal.”
The next day, the vast majority of Timeswomen came to work with teabags pinned to their lapels, and Max lamented his choice of wording. Yet there was truth in his words, however maladroit. If women weren’t allowed to DO things, they couldn’t be portrayed in the paper as having done them.
But the issue was much larger, as shown indelibly by the Times’ recent work bringing to light prominent women who never got their own obituaries. One mind-boggling discovery: The paper made no mention of Charlotte Bronte’s death, but gave her husband an obit.
Gloria Steinem, who long led the charge to make news inclusive, put it this way: “It’s hard to think of anything except air, food and water that is more important than the media. Literally, I’ve spent most of my life working in the media. That has made me hyper aware of how it creates for us the idea of normal, whether or not the normal is accurate. Especially for groups that have been on the periphery for whatever reason: If we can’t see it, we can’t be it.”
Well, now we can see it, at least in the Times: Women in all their glory and all their quirks, their talent and their shortcomings – women as full human beings, playing multiple roles, making countless contributions.
Why now? Part of the change of course affirms Max’s point, however distasteful it seemed. Women ARE now in more of the positions that journalists have deemed newsworthy. They couldn’t have done a piece on Marissa Mayer post-Yahoo if she hadn’t led Yahoo in the first place. Another part of it is the evolving enlightenment of people in other positions of power: If the artist Adrian Piper hadn’t been seen as worthy by MoMA, she’d wouldn’t have been seen in the Times, either.
Surely, too, this increased and more varied visibility has been given a head of steam by women’s activism in the past year: the women’s march and related events, and the #MeToo movement specifically.
Finally, we can’t ignore the internal workings of the Times. The paper’s culture has changed so substantially over recent decades that I can’t help believing it stems back to (now former publisher) Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., who from early in his leadership called diversity and inclusion the “single most important” issue at the paper. And surely the man at the top of the news operation, Executive Editor Dean Baquet, has led the transformation, from the hiring decisions that build in their impact over time to the choices about where to place resources. Just look at photos of the Times’ recent Pulitzer winners for affirmation.
Now the effects are evidenced throughout the paper, and I expect they’re here to stay. Inclusion of women and of people of color (equally essential, and another arena in which I think the progress at the Times has been impressive, though I’ll leave that to keener eyes to assess) will be self-sustaining because it forms a virtuous circle. The Times is a better paper because it is bringing us a much more interesting report – a report both more complicated and more promising because it more accurately reflects the world around it.
It’s worth noting that all of this is happening even as the Times does some of its most important, digging, substantive investigative and entrepreneurial work. This is to be expected. Excellence and inclusion are natural partners, however obstinately the blindfolded have cast them as mutually exclusive.
Including more viewpoints and bringing in a broader array of talents were always going to make for better journalism. It just took a (very long) while to figure that out.
Boy, is this ever a moment: Sexual harassment has come out of the dark. That’s a great thing. But it’s worrisome. too. The conversations – and the events – are raging like wildfire on terrain that is utterly unfamiliar. Could we think about some guidelines to keep things as fair and truthful as possible? Some considerations to help us generate more light and less heat?
Here are four possibilities:
Continue reading Can we have a better sexual-harassment conversation?
(I should note here that I do understand that men prey on men, women on women and some women on men. I’m employing language that is too narrow. But I’ll leave that guideline for someone else’s contribution.)
(Note: I wrote this post for LinkedIn, with whom I did a video interview on these topics)
A tangle of questions troubles journalists these days: Why are we so distrusted? Can we survive the loss of the advertising that supports us? How do we stand up against the control that behemoths like Facebook and Google have over our futures? And what do we do about the growing assaults on truth telling from bots and hackers, viral deception and foreign meddling – let alone our own president?
I want to add this to the tangle: How can we bring these questions to you? And how can we bring you into the discussions? I want to do this because I worry that, unless journalism matters to the people it exists to serve, it may not exist at all for long. So, if you think that being able to count on a fundamentally reliable supply of information in the public interest is critical to you and to our democracy, here are four things I’d ask you to think about:
It’s clear that Americans widely distrust institutions generally, and media organizations in particular. And we seem intent on dividing bitterly along partisan lines, putting our faith (such as it is) in different news sources. So maybe an appeal to join in a common effort seems doomed. But I’m talking about something well beyond today’s dissatisfying landscape. What if you truly felt that there was no source of information that you could rely on to sort fact from fiction? No one to turn to, in a disaster, to find out what really happened? No source you trusted to certify a quote, or a death toll, or determine whether your city council had passed a law that will change your life?
Such a situation is far from unimaginable today. Indeed, I think I can see it on the horizon. And the main thing standing between now and that looming possibility is whether the public begins to see it, too.
People will be parsing this election for years to come. Here’s one thing I know: Journalism failed us badly. Since we are going to need good journalism more than ever in the days ahead, I offer some thoughts about what went wrong:
I included this chart from the New York Times in my March 28 blogpost: A tough test for Journalism and the Midterm Grades Aren’t Good.
As the Times story said, “Over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history. It is also twice the estimated $746 million that Hillary Clinton, the next best at earning media, took in.”
Of this development, CBS Chairman Les Moonves famously said: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Here’s what else he said: “Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? The money’s rolling in and this is fun. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
He did. So did they.
Continue reading Journalism failed us badly. Here’s how.
A Harvard study by Tom Patterson, released in late September, looked at 10 major news outlets, including the New York Times. It concluded that “substantive policy issues have received only a small amount of attention so far in the 2016 election coverage.”
Another study, released in late October, looked at the networks’ news coverage to determine how much of it concerned issues:
Total ABC CBS NBC
1988 117 36 40 42
1992 210 112 38 60
1996 98 29 53 17
2000 130 45 39 46
2004 203 40 119 44
2008 220 41 119 66
2012 114 13 70 32
2016 (YTD) 32 8 16 8
(Andrew Tyndall 10/25/16)
“With just two weeks to go, issues coverage this year has been virtually non-existent. Of the 32 minutes total, terrorism (17 mins) and foreign policy (7 mins) towards the Middle East (Israel-ISIS-Syria-Iraq) have attracted some attention. Gay rights, immigration and policing have been mentioned in passing.
“No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates’ terms, not on the networks’ initiative.”
The Times’s Nate Cohn may have no regrets, as per this tweet:
Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn Nov 10 Most of our journalism this year was about how people were ignoring the importance of white working class to Dem chances. I have no regrets
But something surely went wrong, since virtually everyone else in the world was in shock, no matter where they stood politically.
As Nick Bilton put it: “Every big-data, number-crunching Web site, from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight to The New York Times’ Upshot; every poll, from Fox to Bloomberg to Rasmussen, had predictions that were so off that it now seems surreal. And while we now all have to swallow the noxious potion that is President Trump, the chaser is that polling is completely and utterly broken.”
4. False equivalence. And more false equivalence. And more…
As in: They’re both unpopular. They both tell lies — no matter how vastly different the proportions:
Ethan Coen’s sarcasm in his “thank you notes” in the Times rang painfully close to how the stories read:
“You balanced Donald Trump’s proposal that the military execute the innocent families of terrorists, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced pot-stirring racist lies about President Obama’s birth, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced a religious test at our borders, torture by our military, jokes about assassination, unfounded claims of a rigged election, boasts about groping and paradoxical threats to sue anyone who confirmed the boasts, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced endorsement of nuclear proliferation, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced tirelessly, indefatigably; you balanced, you balanced, and then you balanced some more.”
The Times’s columnists tried to tell ‘em so:
“I know some (many) journalists are busy denying responsibility, but this is absurd, and I think they know it,” said Paul Krugman in “The Falsity of False Equivalence.”
And Nick Kristof: “Of course we should cover Clinton’s sins, but when the public believes that a mythomaniac like Trump is the straight shooter, we owe it to ourselves and the country to wrestle with knotty questions of false equivalence.”
The primary response came from the then fairly new public editor, Liz Spayd, in an exceptionally weak column, urging Times journalists not to be intimidated by the false balance charge.
They weren’t.
Does this kind of flawed journalism happen because a news organization wants to avoid driving away the right? Did it make for more interesting stories? Did it seem harmless, because Clinton was sure to win?
The New York Times — this newspaper on which I depend (as is evident in this post), and which leads much of the other news coverage in America — is deeply implicated here. It is perhaps the most important news outlet in the country, one of the most important in the world, and it must be better than this. A statement from its publisher and executive editor, after the election said this:
“As we reflect on the momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you. It is also to hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.”
Rededication? Yes. “Same level?” Please, no.
Organizations like Google and Facebook make decisions that have enormous power over what Americans know and believe. Outrage over the fake stories that proliferated during this campaign is finally being recognized by these reluctant corporations.
It’s a step, albeit a belated and limited one. And one reason it’s belated and limited is this, as one employee told Gizmodo about Facebook: “They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous citing fear of retribution from the company. The source added, “there was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after Trending Topics,” and that “a lot of product decisions got caught up in that.” (Some things, new and old media share.)
After every election, we agonize about journalism’s coverage. But this one feels bigger, the stakes higher. Legacy media still matter. The choices they make will affect our future, just as they affected this election. They are searching for economic survival in a Wild West of media change. My conviction is that, if they distinguish themselves by being trustworthy and fair-minded, dedicated to the truth as close as they can determine it, committed to purveying news that is proportional and comprehensive — well, that will be their best chance of survival.
Ours, too.
Gwen came out to Los Angeles to receive the 2011 National Cronkite Award at USC. The judges (I was honored to be among them) cited her (and her co-winner Judy Woodruff) for election coverage “focusing on the issues, talking with real voters and letting the candidates explain themselves,” adding that “they avoided the horserace component that is so typical in political coverage.”
How powerful those words feel now, at this moment of loss.
Democracy Fund has published a white paper I wrote: “How to Best Serve Communities: Reflections on Civic Journalism.” I conclude that “today’s engaged journalism, civic journalism’s replacement in this digital age, enjoys an utterly different environment from the one that confronted civic journalists — one in which disruption prevails, change is the new constant, and innovation is seen, almost universally, as essential. The contemporary movement is landing on far more fertile terrain.”
DF’s Paul Waters blogged about it here, saying: “Our belief is that this reorientation of local journalism towards engaged journalism is critical to fostering a thriving journalism landscape and a more engaged democracy.”
Last week, I was part of a national conference https://sustainlocal2016.sched.org/ on journalism sustainability convened by Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media. Our panel was asked to begin with an overview of the state of local-news sustainability.
Having no particular expertise regarding the mix of revenue streams everyone is testing these days, I decided to focus on what I think lies at the heart of the question: the public. Whatever happens with advertising and subscriptions, events, membership or repurposing of content, I’m convinced that a key to survival will be a public willingness to support journalism. We must come to see information in the public interest as we do the arts or education – as a civic good, one we are responsible for sustaining.
This is no small challenge, since we’ve trained the public for years to believe that the news comes to them for free — or really cheap. You turned on the TV, or you plunked down your quarter for the paper, and you never really thought about the fact that advertisers were paying the bill. This means that we are going to have to make our work so important, so engaging, that people will feel they can’t do without it.
In other words, we’ve got to make our journalism indispensable. Here are a few thoughts I shared with the journalists at the conference about how to go about it:
— Be IN and OF your community. When I started as a cub reporter at the Colorado Springs SUN, the editor and publisher wrote a column published on the front page. As a newly minted Medill master’s graduate, I found this unorthodox custom disquieting. But it surely worked for the readers, who sensed the editor’s engagement with the community. Later, when I became editor of the Des Moines Register, we kept alive the paper’s historic tradition of running our cartoon on the front page. Register cartoonists had won two Pulitzers over the years; more important, they’d won the hearts of Iowans. In particular, the Sunday cartoons, poking fun at the state and its residents, made it clear that we were all in this together.
Continue reading Making Journalism Indispensable
— We need to be honest about who we are and what we’re attempting to do. The hardest voice I ever had to write in was the editorial voice of The New York Times, when I served on its editorial board. People don’t respond easily to disembodied voices. Amid today’s endless debates about objectivity, I’m struck by the power of the view espoused by the Dutch news organization De Correspondent. They believe that their journalists should be, first and foremost, AUTHENTIC — a quality that is essential if they are to cultivate the rich relationship with readers that the organization seeks.
— Keep in mind that HOPE may be bigger news today than disaster. In this era of cynicism and division, we need a journalism that helps people understand that solutions are possible and government can work. Journalism is supposed to provide an accurate picture of the world around us, but ours has looked pretty lopsided for years. This is not about softball questions or happy-talk stories: Good journalism creates community through a common understanding of accurate information – the good as well as the bad.
— We must remember that we are most effective when we reach people through their hearts as well as their brains. We’ve always known that good writing and powerful photography were key to our success. We have so many more tools today for engaging people and making lasting connections. Elizabeth Alexander closed her poem “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” by asking “…and are we not of interest to each other?” In recent years, journalism has done as much to distance us from one another as it has to connect us. Our future now may rest on our ability to correct that course.
By Geneva Overholser / 2016 August 3rd
“Want to attract more readers? Try listening to them.” That’s the headline on Liz Spayd’s debut as the New York Times’ new public editor. That she devoted her first column to the need to pay attention to readers’ views shows how central the idea of engagement has become for journalists.
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Please see article as published by the Democracy Fund.
The New York Times’s new public editor worried recently that the paper is perceived as liberal; she advised trying to address that problem. Like NPR’s bid to shed the “liberal-media” epithet by shedding Vivian Schiller, like Walter Isaacson’s attempts to cleanse CNN of it by paying a visit to Trent Lott, this is doomed to fail. Thanks in no small part to Roger Ailes.
Ailes, when he set out to create a cable network with a point of view, was clearly filling a market need. But his real brilliance lay in the motto he chose: “Fair and balanced.” The outlet designed to serve conservatives was inoculated at birth from charges of bias by claiming that it alone was free of that taint.
A few years into Fox News’s existence — on the occasion of an award being given to Fox’s leading newsman, Brit Hume — I suggested a public discussion about the merits of this new (for the U.S.) kind of journalism, The Washington media were so dog-whipped by the “liberal-media” lashings that nobody wanted to own up to noticing that Fox was conservative. But the reticence protected no one. The “liberal-media” accusations have only grown, as the public editor’s column reminds us.
Continue reading It’s not just the Fox, it’s the sheep’s clothing
Ailes himself must have been amazed at his success: Not that having a point of view would appeal; not that having that POV be conservative, to serve Americans who felt they didn’t see themselves in media. What distinguished it all was the masquerade of being something other than what it was, until it didn’t need to masquerade any more, and a new kind of journalism was firmly entrenched – including the spawning of other POV media such as MSNBC.
Fox New still does it best, as this research shows: “Fully, 60% of Fox News viewers describe themselves as conservative, compared with 23% who say they are moderate and 10% who are liberal, according to a 2012 survey by the Pew Research Center. By contrast, the ideological makeup of CNN viewers (32% conservative, 30% moderate, 30% liberal) and MSNBC viewers (32% conservative, 23% moderate, 36% liberal) is far more mixed.”
Unsurprisingly, the skill with which Ailes’s inventive cable channel carried out its work (helped along by its self-proclaimed uniqueness as an exemplar of fairness) has had an impact on the nation’s political environment. And it has had another impact too, the one I find most worrisome: Its allegiance to point of view seems to trump its allegiance to facts. According to Politifact, about 60 percent of the Fox claims checked in their study were rated Mostly False or worse. (By comparison, 80 percent of the claims made by CNN were rated Half True or better.) Or see this research on how Fox News viewers do worse on factual questions than those who watch no news at all
Perhaps this is why Megyn Kelly became a hero, during her coverage of presidential election results in 2012, simply by questioning a fiction being clung to by Karl Rove. When a reporter is deemed courageous for pursuing a fact over the view of a favored ideologue, it says something about the network’s normal regard for facts.
Meanwhile, over the years, mistrust in media more broadly has grown ever higher. Interestingly, this plays out differently across the political spectrum.
Obviously, your (and my) own point of view determines what we think about the impact of Ailes’s achievement on politics and on media. But if you think, as I do, that our future relies on a significant number of Americans’ believing that they want the closest thing they can get to the truth, this is clear: From the moment Ailes’s new creation sailed forth under that cunning motto, he has been leading us ever farther away from that target.
