Warped Front Pages: CJR Researchers examine the self-serving fiction of 'objective' political news

[CousinIT]

I got this in my Thom Hartmann email this morning so sharing it. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/election-politics-front-pages.php

TLDR (my comment):
They haven't changed since 2008, 2016 and before. There has been no self-reflection on their collective journalistic malpractice of consistently failing the voting public and therefore our Democracy.

The "news" media stinks of slant and infotainment and none of them tell the entire story even when they do bother to mention the issues at stake in elections. When they cover actual issues, which issues they cover and how they report on them are anything but "objective", though their snotty nose-in-the-air arrogant owners and operators love to say they are "objective" and "independent". They are SO not any of that. They are galaxies from anything resembling objective or independent.

Thom Hartmann said in the email:

This is the exact same type of “reporting” that led up to the 2016 election and brought us Donald Trump as president. It’s almost a cliche these days to complain about the “infotainment” we see in TV and radio “news” reporting that has come about in the wake of Reagan ending enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine, but to see this same type of horserace coverage passing as news on the front pages of the nation’s largest newspapers is, frankly, a crime against our democracy. For voters to make intelligent decisions about candidates, they must be well-informed. Sadly, that is very much not what is happening today in America, and it bodes ill for the 2024 elections.

_ _ _ _ _ excerpt from the actual article below _ _ _ _ _

. . . Exit polls indicated that Democrats cared most about abortion and gun policy; crime, inflation, and immigration were top of mind for Republicans. In the Times, Republican-favored topics accounted for thirty-seven articles, while Democratic topics accounted for just seven. In the Post, Republican topics were the focus of twenty articles and Democratic topics accounted for fifteen—a much more balanced showing. In the final days before the election, we noticed that the Times, in particular, hit a drumbeat of fear about the economy—the worries of voters, exploitation by companies, and anxieties related to the Federal Reserve—as well as crime. Data buried within articles occasionally refuted the fear-based premise of a piece. Still, by discussing how much people were concerned about inflation and crime—and reporting in those stories that Republicans benefited from a sense of alarm—the Times suggested that inflation and crime were historically bad (they were not) and that Republicans had solutions to offer (they did not).

Stepping back, if the Times and other major news outlets went through any critical self-reflection after the 2016 election, it doesn’t seem to have affected their coverage. Nor did the leadership of the Times publicly acknowledge any failings. Quite to the contrary, in early 2022, Dean Baquet, the outgoing editor at the time, said in an interview that he didn’t have regrets about the paper’s Clinton-email stories. In the same interview, Baquet acknowledged critiques of his paper’s political coverage but pushed back on them aggressively: “My job is to try to convince my newsroom that they should not be overly influenced by criticism from Twitter,” he said. “If Twitter doesn’t like it, Twitter can jump in the lake.” Baquet—and his successors, and peers at other major outlets—seem to view themselves as exhibiting objective (or pure, independent) judgment. Indeed, A.G. Sulzberger, the chairman of the New York Times Company and publisher of the Times, made exactly that argument in a piece for CJR this spring: “I continue to believe that objectivity—or if the word is simply too much of a distraction, open-minded inquiry—remains a value worth striving for,” he wrote, adding that “independence, the word we use inside the Times, better captures the full breadth of this journalistic approach and its promise to the public at large.”

Regardless of what journalists and owners of major papers proclaim, however, news judgments are inherently subjective. Any claims to objectivity are a convenient fiction. On any given day there are many accurate and arguably newsworthy stories that could appear on a front page. (In our study period, the overlap in front-page-story selection at the Times and the Post was only about a third.) Which topics editors choose to emphasize is neither accurate nor inaccurate; they simply reflect subjective opinions. Likewise, the way an article is written also involves a series of choices—which facts are highlighted, whose voices are included, which perspectives are given weight. Words such as “objectivity” and “independence”—even “truth”—make for nice rhetoric but are so easily twisted to suit one’s agenda as to be meaningless. After all, Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson—who, unlike the Times and the Post, don’t operate within the realm of reality—also stake claims to veracity and independence.

What appears in a newspaper is less a reflection of what is happening in the world than what a news organization chooses to tell about what is happening—an indicator of values. Last year, for instance, the Times decided to heavily cover the Russian invasion of Ukraine—understandable, to be sure—but also largely ignored policy implications of the midterm election on the war, as Republicans were threatening to block military aid. Abortion rights were clearly critical to the midterms (with potential impact on laws and judges), whereas crime rates were essentially irrelevant (with no discernible policy hanging in the balance), yet the Times chose to publish twice as many articles on crime (a topic generally favored by Republicans) as on abortion (a topic key to Democrats). The paper also opted to emphasize inflation, rather than job or wage growth, in economic coverage—another choice that catered to Republicans. The Times provided admirably extensive coverage of potential threats to democracy, but in general, midterms coverage didn’t engage much with the dangers posed to the integrity of the election. . . .

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The entire thing is worth a read and worth shoving into the faces of the damn media if you find a chance. And THANK YOU Thom Hartmann! https://www.cjr.org/analysis/election-politics-front-pages.php

If you frequent the 'X' sewer, there is my media list:
@AP @CNN @MSNBC @ABC @CBS @NBC @NPR @NYTimes @bpolitics @USATODAY @Newsweek @Reuters @WashingtonPost @maddow @TheReidOut @Lawrence @ABCPolitics @ABCWorldNews @CBSNews @CBSEveningNews @TheBeatWithAri @NBCNews @NBCPolitics @NewsHour @CNNPolitics @TheLeadCNN @CNNSotu @MeetThePress

[NCIndie]

1. "self-serving fiction". Bit of an ironic twist.

Is this your idea of being objective in reporting?

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

4. So you're calling the Columbia Journalism Review

fiction creators? After they actually bothered to count articles covered in the newspapers and how?

Do show us what research you've done that refutes it.

I'll wait.

[NCIndie]

5. I hope you didn't have to wait too long.

You didn’t make any effort to understand my post, so I will explain it to you. I put “fiction” in quotes to emphasize that word in the title of your OP. Columbia did not suggest that the NYT fabricated stories, only that they were sloppy or intentional in the ratio of left:right pandering stories on their front page.

The fact that you (or Hartmann) put that totally incorrect spin on the interpretation of the Columbia study is a clear case of bias.

And THAT is the irony. A simple perusal of my post made that clear, but your bias is so overwhelming that you opted to attempt a snarky remark. Double irony.

Enjoy your obsession. Have the last word — I have far better things to do with my time.

[Lonestarblue]

2. The Times has not been an objective media platform for many years.

I still remember the days of William Safire, who was allowed to demean the Clintons and spread lies about them with impunity. When his lies were debunked, he was never forced to apologize to readers.

I wish the CJR would do a review of front-page stories or opinions about Biden’s age versus Trump’s age/mental instability. I think the results would be similarly skewed in favor of Republicans.

[Shermann]

3. I have to question the methodology here

I would expect the MSM to have more stories about "crime" than "abortion" merely due to the nature of these subjects. Using that simple metric to prove bias lacks soundness.