The [Redacted]-Era Overcorrection

[TygrBright]

The evolving coverage of a confrontation on the National Mall offers a case study in how media outlets zigzag wildly in their efforts to please their readers.

Adam Serwer, The Atlantic

As the Covington students ascend to right-wing martyrdom, some perspective is in order. The disproportionate reaction to their behavior does not, as some conservative commentators have suggested, represent a new kind of oppression comparable to that experienced by historically disfavored groups. While all children deserve forgiveness and understanding, in America, children who are not white are often simply not seen as children at all.

The Covington students are not likely to have their summary executions by police officers justified; they will not be separated from their parents for the crime of seeking asylum; they are not disproportionately more likely to be charged as adults for crimes they committed as children; they are not likely to be stalked in the night and murdered by grown men who become folk heroes for acting out the violent, racist fantasies of others. The president’s campaign merchandise remains a favorite of white-supremacist groups, and his name remains a racist taunt for those seeking to antagonize people of color of any age. None of this has changed, and the disgraceful overreaction of some liberals does not change it. If the right extended the sympathy the Covington students are now receiving to children who don’t remind them of their own, this would be a more just society.

... (discussion of Buzzfeed/Mueller story)

Over the weekend, the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, allowed that Trump might have told Cohen to lie to Congress or tacitly approved of his intention to do so. Giuliani said that Trump was negotiating a real-estate project in Moscow right up until the moment ballots were being cast in the 2016 election, even as he deflected responsibility from Russia for the very hacking and disinformation campaign that Mueller is investigating. He said that Cohen and Trump might have discussed Cohen’s testimony, but insisted that there was no proof the president told him to lie—a suggestion that the president may have committed an impeachable offense but that there may not be as much proof as BuzzFeed News had reported there was. The story may turn out to be incorrect, but the special counsel’s statement doesn’t, on its own, prove it was, and there is not yet enough public evidence to adjudicate its claims.

In both instances, the initial reaction would have benefited from additional context. But once that context was revealed, much of the media overcorrected by assuming the exact opposite of the original story was true, when that overcorrection was just as mistaken. The overcorrections are a symptom of the mainstream media’s ongoing preoccupation with winning the affection of the president’s most enthusiastic supporters—an impossible task, because those supporters believe what the president wants them to believe. If you write something they don’t like, you’re fake news. If you correct something you got wrong, you’re also fake news. The only way not to be fake news is to say what they want you to say, the way they want you to say it. News outlets should neither ignore legitimate criticism based on the source nor go out of their way to assuage critics in the hopes of improving their brand.

The way Serwer has identified the specific media problem (lurching from one inflammatory POV in covering a story to the opposite, equally or even more inflammatory POV, as the narrative unfolds over time) is shrewd and apposite.

It's a good analysis, and here on a well-moderated (by comparison!) discussion website that focuses on political issues which are often divisive by their very nature, we see it a lot. That's okay for us here, because we are a discussion site and changing viewpoints, emerging narratives, accumulating facts, and disputed analyses are the metaphorical bricks and mortar of DU.

But while DU posts, links to, discusses, analyses and argues about news, we are not a news site or a news source, and it's not our responsibility to regard the basic principles of journalism in doing what we do. Instead, our rules focus on maintaining the commons and preventing damage to the community and what we focus on. As it should be.

I actually have a great deal of respect for almost ALL of the "mainstream" legitimate news outlets in the era of [Redacted], the editors, reporters, etc. doing the actual work of journalism are swimming against riptides of public fury from all points on the ideological compass. They're trying to encompass the outflow of a veritable firehose, with a woefully inadequate set of tools and for an audience that's often more interested in seeing who and what are blown away by the high-pressure news stream, than wanting to understand any component(s) thereof.

The "overcorrection" response to rapidly-emerging narratives and accumulating facts shines a glaring light on several problems with our "fifth estate":

One is the inadequate resources most news organizations have to actually process news according to appropriate journalistic principles: not enough editors, not enough fact-checkers, not enough bureau chiefs in enough locations, not enough experienced reporters on specific beats, not enough tools to collaborate or combine reportage with other organizations.

Another is the market reality that dictates inadequate revenues and the constant triangulation and pressure to build viability, clicks, eyes-on, etc. Eliding time and effort, applying inflammatory framing, too much emphasis on "breaking!" and first past the post becomes all too attractive for news organizations fighting to survive in a fast-changing environment.

And a third is the shattering of shared social assumptions about the very nature and function of news. This is the 'untrained audience' phenomenon, the reality that all too many consumers of information cannot distinguish the difference between news and opinion, analysis and entertainment, and have pitifully inadequate tools for screening out the signals from the noise.

I don't have answers. But this article provides some useful questions for both news providers and news consumers.

interestedly,
Bright

[underpants]

1. Second really great article on the media I've seen tonight

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11716645