How do journalists cover elections & Trump this time around?

Posted on November 16, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

I’ve been writing lately about how journalists covered the 2022 election. Is it too early to start thinking about the 2024 election? Even if it is, lots of journalists have started doing so. Let’s take a look:

Center right WaPo columnist and blogger Jennifer Rubin writes that reporters need to reconsider who they talk to and represent as typical voters, and what their approach should be to covering elections.

She writes:

“The media need to recognize that “Latino” is almost meaningless because it encompasses people with vastly different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Treating an American born in Puerto Rico like a third-generation businessman with a Spanish surname but no Spanish fluency makes little sense….

“A shift away from horserace coverage, which is often wrong and utterly irrelevant, would allow the media to focus on candidates’ experience and character, major policy issues and voters’ attitudes and demographic changes. Journalism should not be a Magic Eight Ball; it is about understanding and analyzing the recent past and present….

“Find gurus in each state who really understand the ins and outs of voting trends (e.g., Jon Ralston in Nevada), expand use of focus groups, track coverage in local media and watch where candidates are spending money…

“Journalism can improve its image by leaving the prognostication to betting markets and tarot card readers. That should free up resources to focus on the threats still facing democracy.”

During the 2016 and 2020 campaign, journalists and news media gave former president Donald Trump lots and lots of coverage compared to other candidates because he was constantly doing things that would attract audiences. It’s not that he was doing politically important things – he was just being clickable.

Now that he has officially declared himself as a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, journalists are going to have to figure out how they are going to report on a candidate who thrives on attention and who has a willingness to say anything, regardless of it’s truth value.

Not surprisingly, this has drawn a lot of attention from journalists and media critics on Twitter over the last day or two.

NYU journalism professor Dr. Jay Rosen has long been critical of how most journalists cover politicians and candidates. To me, his most important critique has been how reporters simply parrot back what politicians say without putting it in any context, especially when the politician is clearly lying. I really like how he explains that reporters need to be putting forward a “truth sandwich.”

Rosen explains the “truth sandwich” this way:

  1. State what is true.
  2. Report that a false or dubious claim has been made. (But only if it’s newsworthy, meaning important for the public to know it happened. Otherwise use silence.)
  3. Repeat what the actual truth is.

We saw the truth sandwich being applied (and not applied) by a number of prominent news outlets.

NPR on Twitter went all in on the truth sandwich with their story announcing Trump’s candidacy:

That 100% accurate headline nevertheless managed to draw huge howling charges of bias.

Law Dork Chris Geidner had praise for how the Washington Post presented the story in a news alert but was not as impressed with the aggressively neutral approach of the NY Times.

Washinton Post headline: Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says his is running again in 2024. NY Times headline: Donald Trump announced a 2024 fun for president, ignoring GOP warnings that his influence is harming the party.

Oddly enough, the news outlet that gave Trump the hardest burn the conservative Rupert Murdoch tabloid the New York Post who put the story at the bottom of their cover and left out the former president’s name.

NY Post cover: Florida Man Makes Announcement, Page 26

The page 26 story was equally dismissive:

Though to be fair the online version of the story was much more complete, but still nasty in tone.

I look forward to seeing how news outlets and journalists cover Trump’s campaign going forward.

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Improving election coverage – Reflections on Election Day 2022 – Part 2

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

I’m not one to hammer on “THE MEDIA,” whatever that may be, but I do think there are things that journalists can do to improve their coverage of elections.:

I agree with Jerry here. This is so important. Journalists have got to get away from “who-is-winning-and-losing-horse-race” coverage and get down with the hard work of reporting on who these candidates are and what they stand for. And, yes, we will have to deal with being charged with “being biased” when we write about issues.

Journalists have to just get over their fear of being called “biased.” Journalists – critics / politicians / voters are never going to love you.  They will always be pushing that anything that does not match their desires is biased.

(There is also concern among reporters that audiences, based on social media clicks, really prefer horse race coverage over complex issue oriented reporting — tl:dr.)

One of the big problems with horse race journalism is that it is getting harder and harder to know who is ahead, especially in close races.

It seems like every election cycle we go through, there continues to be more and more concern about the accuracy of the polls. There are at least a couple of reasons for this.

  • We are having closer and closer elections. The polls can be accurate within their margin of error and still not give us very useful specific details.
  • It’s getting harder and harder to reach an accurate sample of the population as a whole.

There is also evidence that there is actually nothing wrong with the polls this election cycle. Perhaps there is just too much bad reporting based on polls:

 

Smart post from one of my commentary students:

You may or may not know that I’m located in central Nebraska, a state viewed as reliably Republican. Except we split our electoral votes by district and gave one vote to Biden in 2020.  Journalists have been surprised by how states like Kansas have been voting. It might be worthwhile to pay more attention to what “flyover” states are thinking. Other than talking old folks in diners…

Another thing that journalists have got to do is stop treating Hispanic voters as a uniform block. Folks whose families came from Cuba are different from those who came from Central America are different from those who came from South America. Those who are wealthy business people are different from those who work for hourly wages. There are lots of differences within this population. Don’t imagine one ethic group is uniform in their political values.

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Reflections on Election Day 2022 News Coverage – Part 1

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Election Day 2022 went remarkably smoothly. There are still a number of uncalled contests, most notably three US senate races as of this writing mid-afternoon on Thursday, Nov. 10.

But so far it appears that people were able to reliably vote, the votes were tabulated without controversy, and the candidates who lost conceded with more or less dignity.  (Though a couple of high profile races involving 2020 election deniers have yet to be called.  We may yet have STOP THE STEAL screaming to come.)

Here are a few reflections about this election cycle now that it’s a couple days after the battle. I hope to have a few more that deal with how journalists cover elections in the next day or two.

MSNBC is not the Fox News of the left

There is no question that MSNBC is a progressive, left-leaning network. But that does not make it the mirror image of the right-wing commentary network Fox News.

Fox News is primarily a talk show network (not a criticism, just look at their programming), and their talk programming bears little concern about anything other than conservative talking points.

MSNBC takes a left-leaning stand in what is good or bad, but is absolutely willing to be critical of progressives.

But when Fox News gets into their polling operation and election results analysis, they actually are a good news outlet.

In fact, the Fox News opinion hosts and guests often get quite irate with the Decision Desk on election nights. Their polling and election calling departments do good work based on the best information.

Tired Journalists Dept.

It’s easy to make fun of dumb things journalists say after a long night on TV or radio, and we should cut them some slack. But I really did love this one…

“I Was Wrong…”

It seems like the rarest thing in news and commentary is to hear an opinion writer admit that they were wrong after completely screwing up a prediction. There were lots of bad predictions about Tuesday’s elections where commentators had been solemnly predicting a large-scale GOP victory that never materialized.

Props to WaPo columnist Henry Olsen for admitting he was wrong and explaining why.

On an entirely separate issue, WaPo media critic Erik Wemple (already cited earlier in this commentary) also apologized for his ill-founded criticism of former NY Times opinion editor James Bennet.

And finally, in the realm of really tacky (but funny) media criticism…

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Journalism movies and my students

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Every year in my JMC 406 – Commentary and Blogging class I have my students watch a prominent journalism movie. Usually, All The President’s Men would be at the top of my list, but given that several students watched it while in Washington, DC after hearing Woodstein speak at a conference, I left that one off.

Here were their choices, along with my explanations:

The Post

The Post (2017) initially appears to be a movie about the Pentagon Papers case. But as one friend asked me, “Why is the Pentagon Papers movie about The Washington Post instead of The New York Times? Wasn’t it really their story?”

The answer is of course that the Pentagon Papers was first and foremost the Times’ story, though the Post had a big part to play. But that misses the point here.

The Post is really about Katherine Graham’s coming of age as one of the first woman publishers/CEOs of a major contemporary newspaper following the suicide death of her husband, who had been the publisher. Like all of the movies on this list, The Post deals not only with the heroic actions of journalists but also their flaws and shortcomings. Come to The Post for an exciting journalism thriller, stick around for a powerful story of Graham’s rise to become a major force in American journalism.

Spotlight

Spotlight (2015)  is the Best Picture Oscar-winning film that chronicles the Pulitzer Prize winning reporting by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative team diving into the Roman Catholic priest abuse scandal. It is in my mind one of Mark Ruffalo’s best performances, along with Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy, portraying the Spotlight team. Liev Schreiber got a lot of attention for his spot-on portrayal of editor Marty Baron (who went on the be the Washington Post’s editor).

But for me, it is Michael Keaton’s performance as Spotlight team leader Walter “Robby” Robinson that makes the movie what it is. He is both heroic in his bravery in leading this team and reflective on his own failings with the story. This film is currently available on HBO.

The Year of Living Dangerously

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) tells the fictional story of green Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporter Guy Hamilton (played by a very young Mel Gibson) showing up in Indonesia on the brink of a government coup.

Linda Hunt got the Oscar for best supporting actress for playing Billy Kwan, a Chinese-Australian man who is a long-time local photographer. It also stars Sigourney Weaver as a British Embassy attache who gets involved with Gibson’s character. It was directed by famed Australian filmmaker Peter Weir.

Like our other films, it deals with journalists behaving both heroically and very badly. It’s also a controversial film for having Hunt, a white woman, playing an Asian male dwarf, something that likely wouldn’t happen today. Nevertheless, Hunt’s portrayal of Kwan is brilliant, and Year of Living Dangerously tells a powerful story of how journalists can get too engaged with their stories and forget about how these stories will affect the people around them.

Absence of Malice

Absence of Malice (1981) tells the story of an over-eager prosecutor dropping a false story to reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) about the son of a deceased gangster (Paul Newman) being a suspect in a murder case.

I don’t want to go deeper into the story to avoid spoilers, but it has numerous excellent performances including the Oscar-nominated Melinda Dillon who plays a friend of Newman’s and a stunning third-act supporting role by Wilford Brimley as a federal assistant attorney general.

This movie, like Year of Living Dangerously, has intensely flawed characters. It also has some badly dated tropes in it. But it is a powerful story of how our justice system and journalists can end up hurting innocent people. (And this was my students’ choice.)

All the President’s Men

Not on the list for my class this year, as I mentioned above, because several of my students just saw it. But give yourself a treat by watching The Post followed by All the President’s Men as a back-to-back double feature. Also, compare the giant neighborhood pull-back scene in Spotlight with the Library of Congress pull-back shot in President’s Men.

 

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Advertising: Revisiting Cutting Through The Clutter

Posted on November 7, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

This is an update of an older blog post on advertising, cutting through the clutter, and creative tastelessnes for a topic I’m talking about in class this morning.

In advertising, a tension often exists between creativity and salesmanship.  An ad may do a great job of grabbing people’s attention and generating talk, but if the ad doesn’t have a solid sales message, consumers will not remember the product or give serious thought to buying it. Advertisers also have to be continually asking themselves, “Does this ad help build the value of our brand?”

There have been a number of ads that have done a great job of grabbing the public’s attention.  But have they done a good job of promoting the product?  Have they build the value of the brand?

Consider Anheuser-Busch back in 2009. Their brand Bud Light (the most popular beer in the United States) was launching its Bud Light Lime beer in cans. (Previously it had only been available in bottles.)  Anheuser-Busch promoted the launch with an online ad that had people talking about “getting it in the can” — as in a suburban housewife confessing, “I never thought I’d enjoy getting it in the can as much as I do.” The crude sex joke attracted a lot of talk and attention from the advertising press. But it’s not clear what the message did to promote the brand or increase sales.

Irish brewer Guinness, on the other hand, has been successful in grabbing attention, generating talk, and building it’s brand image with an ad that features a group of men playing wheelchair basketball in a gym.  As the ad comes to an end, all but one of the men stand up and then join their one wheelchair-bound friend in a bar for a round of Guinness.  The ad has all the standard elements of a beer ad – guys playing sports and then going out to drink beer together afterwards. But it ads the unexpected twist that gives it a huge dose of heart.

Back in 2011, Chrysler ran their Imported From Detroit ad featuring iconic Detroit hip hop artist Eminem. Featuring lots of strong pro-labor images, it promoted a new model car, trying to find a way to be something new and different.

Dr. Lester Spence, a professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University, argues in a blog post (no longer active) that the ad makes effective use a number of types of counterculture, anti-corporate material, including an “urban nationalist manifesto” of “ruin pornography” and a Diego Rivera mural that uses Marxist imagery.  All this rebellious imagery is subverted to promote a mainstream, corporate product.

He concludes his post by saying:

“I suspect that this commercial will ALWAYS move me, as I am and will always be a Detroit patriot. But given my work both on hip-hop and on urban politics, I cannot ignore the narratives this POWERFUL commercial shunts aside.”

 

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Dinners and drinks with my blogging students

Posted on November 3, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

This week, my JMC 406 Blogging and Commentary students had to write an experiential food commentary for their blogs, and I got a fantastic group of stories ranging from eating mac ‘n’ cheese while sick with COVID to dining out in Washington, D.C. Come join us for the culinary fun!

And finally, was so sorry to hear about the death of pioneering food blogger Julie Powell, of Julie and Julia fame. Everyone who writes about food online owes this woman a debt. While I certainly enjoyed the Amy Adams/Meryl Streep movie based on the book, it did not capture the profane complexity of Powell’s online persona.

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Where can I find help online with media research?

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

There’s been a bunch of great advice on Twitter over the last week about finding good resources online for media research. Here’s several examples.

How can I tell how often things are mentioned on cable news?

I have done lots of work looking at frequency of buzz words like “fake news” in print reporting, but I’ve not been sure on how to extend that to cable news. This story on conservative Texas Gov. Greg Abbott does a great job of showing how frequently he gets covered on cable news compared with Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The reporters use the Television Explorer tool to produce reports from the Internet Archive’s Television News Archive. A great resource!

Does it feel like there are a huge number of political ads this election season?

That’s because there are…

What is the fastest growing social media source of news?

Pew Research is always a good place to look for information!

How can I use Wikipedia for research in a way that won’t get me an “F” on my paper?

Don’t use the text and analysis on Wikipedia; instead, take a look at the source list. There’s often something really good there to get started with. (But pay close attention to what the actual source is. There can be some stinkers.) But never, ever use Wikipedia itself as your source!

 

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Everyone’s Gone to the Movies: Silent Films – Media Literacy Clips Day 1

Posted on September 30, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

My original version of this post dates back to 2012.  Here’s a refreshed version with working links.

Animations of Muybridge people-in-motion images:
Note: Many of these contain some nudity.

Man riding a horse in Muybridge animationClick on image for video. Will need to authenticate for age.

Edison Kinetoscopes:

Edison’s Boxing Cats – Yes there were cat videos as early as 1893!

Sandow the Strong Man

 

Serpentine Dances

Other Silents:

Lumiere Brothers – Babies Quarrel
An early film from the French Lumiere Brothers. Edison got a lot of his ideas for his movie camera and projector from the work these two brothers did.

Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery

Often considered to be the first multi-scene movie shot on location to tell a complete story. This 1903 silent really set the stage for all modern action movies with special effects (well, not so special…), a dance sequence, and a fairly significant body count. 

Singin’ In The Rain – 1952
Although a fictional musical comedy, 1952’s Singin’ In The Rain gives a pretty good portrayal of what it was like working during the initial conversion from silent films to talking films.

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Paper Books v. Audiobooks: Are you a book sniffer?

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

There have been a number of Twitter threads lately asking for contrasting opinions on audiobooks v. paper books (and to a lesser degree, e-books). I find this a little strange, as they are clearly different media. But if you ask for opinions on Twitter, you will get them.

So, for example, we had this:

Not a bad question. Here are some selected replies…

And there are, of course, people defending audiobooks

There are also folks who prefer one over the other for cognitive/physical  reasons – which I would never argue with – printed books give them headaches, audiobooks are hard to focus on.

For me, I get very different benefits from printed books than audiobooks.

I listen to audio books the way lots of people watch television. I have them playing through my bluetooth headset whenever I’m doing things around the house, out walking, or traveling. I don’t think of audiobooks as an alternative form of reading; they are just great entertainment.

I got started on audiobooks, then known as Books on Tape, back in the late 1980s when I was commuting from Flagstaff, Arizona to Arizona State University in Tempe to earn my doctorate. Roughly 160 miles and one vertical mile each direction.  Put in a lot of hours in the car. So I listened to what I could get from the public library. That was when I started listening to the Dick Francis horse racing world mysteries. And I also discovered the world of Jeeves and Wooster from P.G. Wodehouse. These were all fun entertainments.

But I also got to dive into some more serious things that I never would have considered if I weren’t looking at a limited number of tapes to choose from. The most notable one was British author Margaret Drabble’s The Garrick Year about the young woman Emma spending a year in Garrick where her husband would be acting. It’s a darkly comic novel about the nature of marriage, having an affair, and finding oneself that I would have never picked up under other circumstances, but it led me to read a number of Drabble’s other novels.

I still get audiobooks from the local public library, now downloaded online using the Libby app on my phone. Like many people do with favorite movies or TV shows, I return to favorite books in audio format with a favorite reader. I also buy them using the Audible app.

I recently completed listening to the entire Patrick O’Brian Master and Commander series on audiobooks read by the great Patrick Tull. (These books are set in the Napoleonic Wars era of the British Navy, and a complete reading of the series is known among fans as a “circumnavigation,” as in a “circumnavigation of the world” that happens at least once in the series. BTW, should you start the series, the books are available with two different readers. I strongly recommend Tull. I read the entire series in paper copies back when O’Brian was writing the latter books in the series.)

I also loved hearing the late Rene Auberjonois reading the Agent Pendergast novels from Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. Auberjonois perfectly captures the New Orleans sensibilities of the world’s oddest FBI agent. Most recently, I’ve been listening to actor Andy Serkis reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Serkis played Gollum in the LOTR movies, and he is a splendid voice actor.

So, no, I don’t see audiobooks as an equivalent of print books. When it comes to entertainment throughout the day, I find them vastly superior.

I have plenty of paper books I can sniff if I want to…

There is, of course, a lot of reading I do for work, not entertainment, and for that books with written text are far superior. But as much as I do enjoy collecting physical books, I almost always buy them as e-books if I can. I typically read e-books on my iPad Pro tablet where I can highlight passages and take notes as needed. I also don’t have to worry about where the books are among the myriad of overflowing bookcases in my home.

I did an extended post a few months ago on my feelings about e-books, so I will not repeat that here.

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Who are columnists you might want to read?

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

This list of interesting columnists is not just for JMC 406 Commentary and Blogging students. You might find someone you like to read here, too!

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