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The 'Fake News' media honorably strikes again
Business models are fractured, local newsrooms stripped, infotainment and crap can dominate, page views are an ambiguous god for even some smart executives, the president tears down the press, Republicans deride its watchdog function, and millions of Americans don't get the basic link between democracy and a strong press.
And, as a combo Washington Post-CBS News effort reminds, quality news and analysis matter more than ever.
As succinctly put in The Post's "The Drug Industry's Triumph Over the DEA:"
"Amid a targeted lobbying effort, Congress weakened the DEA’s ability to go after drug distributors, even as opioid-related deaths continue to rise, a Washington Post and ‘60 Minutes’ investigation finds."
The Jeff Bezos-owned daily is nearing 100 million unique views every month, so it's a revived and massive platform of consistently high quality. Then add the Sunday evening institution of "60 Minutes," which also pilloried the role of Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who was Trump's nominee to head the DEA. In rapid fashion, even a willfully self-deluding White House was nervous, with a ritualistic case of capital punishment beckoning for Marino. He took his name out of consideration.
The decision was made by the time Trump spoke early Tuesday with Brian Kilmeade, a co-host of his beloved "Fox & Friends," the early-morning cable news fixture that's so sychophantic, it really should be re-named "Trump & Friends." Consider Trump's own back-handed admission to Kilmeade of the cause and effect of those Sunday stories:
“There was a couple of articles having to do with him and drug companies. I will tell you, he felt compelled — he feels very strong about the opioid problem and the drug problem, which is a worldwide problem. It’s a problem that we have.Tom Marino said, ‘Look, I’ll take a pass. I have no choice. I really will take a pass. I want to do it.’ He was very gracious, I have to say that.”
Get that? Those "couple of articles"? Trump at least reads headlines and then made it about a "gracious" act by Marino, as if he were a victim. He missed the whole reality of genuine press-inspired public chagrin. That point was flicked at by "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker in a CBS online feature. Had he figured that the saga largely inspired by a whistleblower named Joe Rannazzisi (a name right out of "Prince of the City") would have impact?
"What I would hope would happen from this story is that Americans get angry," he says in the video.
Well, some did get angry, thanks to an institution — whether based in a teeming big city or a bucolic village, whether exhibiting its wares in print, online or on air — that is so profoundly and threateningly misunderstood.
A post-Marino bottom line
USA Today editorializes, "In the wake of the news investigation, Marino rightly dropped out of contention Tuesday for drug czar. That job should now go to a public health expert, not a politician."
"Prodded by reporters, the president said he’d make a 'major announcement' about the epidemic — next week. That's about 1,200 overdose deaths from now."
Trump's early-bird special
Trump apparently this morning was not watching SportsCenter reporting on the NFL players union and management talking about their national anthem issue or the Golf Channel's look back at recent Ryder Cups. Or C-Span airing tape of a Senate confirmation hearing for a CIA inspector general. No, he appeared to be watching "Trump & Friends" and its referencing former FBI chief James Comey being interviewed by Robert Mueller in his investigation.
"Wow," he tweeted before 6:30 a.m., "FBI confirms report that James Comey drafted letter exonerating Crooked Hillary Clinton long before investigation was complete. Many … people not interviewed, including Clinton herself. Comey stated under oath that he didn't do this-obviously a fix? Where is Justice Dept?"
Do you doubt this thesis?
So Bloomberg notes how, "Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent. In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade. Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash-related deaths are spiking: People are driving longer distances but not tremendously so; total miles were up just 2.2 percent last year. Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks don’t explain the surge in road deaths."
There are other clues about what's up and one is grotesquely obvious, even if you only take public transit and occasional look out a window at nearby drivers: a big hike in drivers' smartphone use. But it's not necessarily a function of our gabbing while children are in the back seat since there's a big spike in drivers tweeting, texting and using both Facebook and Instagram.
But the difficulty of obtaining data makes all these reasons for rising fatalities merely speculation, at least at the federal regulatory level. But can you doubt it, especially as you discern all the idiots in nearby cars who are so clearly distracted?
Welcome back, Mouth
Charles Barkley, who personifies a society in which being interesting is more important than being right, returned with the TBS pro basketball crew last evening. As usual, he was provocative. As usual, he was good for laughs, such as the conclusion of a halftime report. Host Ernie Johnson sent the broadcast back to the featured Golden State-Houston game and its crew led by Marv Albert.
"How old is Marv Albert?…. Jesus" was the overheard disembodied voice of Barkley.
That would be 76.
A controversial cover
Reports The Guardian: "French music magazine Les Inrockuptibles has been criticised as 'disgusting' for putting Bertrand Cantat, the singer convicted of murdering his girlfriend, on its front cover."
"Cantat was found guilty of murdering actor Marie Trintignant in 2003 and served four years of an eight-year jail sentence. The court was told he hit Trintignant repeatedly in the head and waited for several hours before calling emergency services. She died in the hospital."
The morning Babel
On CNN's "New Day," Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr detailed the awful ambush of U.S. military in Niger by ISIS and lingering questions as to why one of the fatalities was left behind. As for whether Trump contacted the families, "Trump & Friends" derided the media for making it an issue. It then used as a Trump defense his other backtracking or deflecting during his Kilmeade interview the day before, both on his previous claim that Barack Obama didn't contact such families and the general question of whether he routinely calls such families. Former President Ainsley Earhardt — oops, she's a co-host, not former president, though speaking as if from personal West Wing experience — intoned that "a president is not required to call all the families. It's just extra special and nice when they do."
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" went deeper into the Trump relationship with the military, but did raise questions about a Florida family's (and their elected representative's) unflattering claims of the substance of a call from Trump (reportedly telling the soldier's widow, "he knew what he signed up for …"). And it also brought co-host Joe Scarborough's throwing out an anecdote about walking out of a restaurant somewhere (Upper East Side of Manhattan? Along K Street in D.C.?) where "everybody was talking about Trump and nothing of it positive." Perhaps, but it might also show a clear geographical divide. In recent weeks I've dined In Pittsburgh, Aurora, Illinois, and Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Chicago's South Side, Chicago's North Side and Highland Park, Illinois, where I've been attentive to chatter around me — and sensitive to how very little, if anything, being discussed was about Trump.
Best restaurant in the world? Ah, really?
Richard Vines, chief food critic for Bloomberg, just had to see and eat for himself when an algorithm-driven TripAdvisor crunched reader responses and declared a pub in North Yorkshire, about 230 miles from London ("the middle of nowhere," he says) the world's best restaurant.
So he had the only option, namely the $126 testing menu, and conceded it was pretty good. Everything is locally grown and, even if lacking the gastro-scientific creativity of places atop the more professionally esteemed World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking, he found it pretty darn good And, as far as media impact, when the rankings got out, the Black Swan took 1,200 bookings in four hours and is now sold out for the rest of the year.
A painful story in Boston
Nobody in Boston media could have imagined being pressed into service on opening night of the NBA season with this early evening headline concerning the Celtics' star off-season free-agent signing (four years, $128 million), as was found in The Globe: "Gordon Hayward suffers gruesome ankle injury in first game with Celtics."
High up in its quickly assembled initial account were these very explicit cautionary words: "Warning: The following video contains graphic images."
Busy day at Variety
It broke the saga of "Bob Weinstein Accused of Sexual Harassment by TV Showrunner" on a day it also featured tales of a big Amazon executive quitting amid harassment allegations, a primer on the Hollywood history of "casting couch" abuses and Jennifer Lawrence going pubic with the tale of a degrading nude line-up she was put in (by a female producer) for one film.
The legality of fair criticism
"Sorry, You Can't Abuse Copyright Law To Make A Negative Review Disappear"
TechDirt has followed the "the bizarre and convoluted attempt by a lawyer named Richard Goren to remove a negative review on Ripoff Report." Now it appears to have come to a conclusion, with Goren spurned by an appeals court and told to pay the defendants $120,000 in attorney fees.
The Somalia tragedy
The death of more than 300 in the terrorist bombing gets scant coverage in American media but among the good efforts yesterday was The Atlantic wondering, "Can its embattled government restore trust with its citizens?" and USA Today piecing together the event through the eyes of survivors.
Chronicling the alt-right
Columbia Journalism Review profiles Joseph Bernstein, 32, who's done nice work for BuzzFeed on reporting on the alt-right. He's "hardly the first reporter to cover online radicalism and its many manifestations. But he was, according to those who diligently follow such coverage, one of the first to take seriously the growing online reactionary movement known as the alt-right."
"His prescience has paid dividends, particularly as he’s pursued (Milo) Yiannopoulos, one of the most high-profile and inflammatory of alt-right figures, and the mysterious social and financial infrastructures that support Yiannopoulos and his ilk." As his boss, Ben Smith put is, "I think he saw, more clearly than any other reporter on the beat, what an important culture it was." His big, 8,500-word opus is here.
Corrections? Tips? Please email me: jwarren@poynter.org. Would you like to get this roundup emailed to you every morning? Sign up here.
