Citizen Cartwright

It’s the 30th World Press Freedom Day

Since it was established by the U.N. General Assembly, "we have seen substantial progress towards achieving a free press and freedom of expression around the world,” says the United Nations. "The proliferation of independent media in many countries and the rise of digital technologies have enabled the free flow of information.”

 

"However, media freedom, safety of journalists and freedom of expression are increasingly under attack, which impacts the fulfillment of other human rights,” the U.N. says.

 

Reporters Without Borders says its World Press Freedom Index, issued annually on the May 3 anniversary, "spotlights the rapid effects that the digital ecosystem’s fake content industry has had on press freedom.”

 

Of the 180 countries ranked for 2023, Norway is first for the seventh year in a row. “Unusually – a non-Nordic country is ranked second, namely Ireland,” which pushes Denmark down to third, Reporters Without Borders says.

 

The United States is 45th (ouch), down three places from last year, because of the "environment for journalists (especially the legal framework at the local level, and widespread violence) despite the Biden administration’s efforts. The murders of two journalists (the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Jeff German in September 2022, and Spectrum News 13’s Dylan Lyons in February  2023) had a negative impact on the country’s ranking.”

 

The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide has reached a 30-year high as of the end of last year, says The Wall Street Journal, citing data from the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

 

World Press Freedom Day coincides with WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich’s fifth week of detention in Russia, the paper says.

 

Let’s take a minute to honor the reporters who risk their lives to report the facts. For a number of years I was an active volunteer for Amnesty International, to help people like this, who have the kind of courage I do not. 

Lack of trust in the news

My thanks to the reader who alerted me to a study of the way misrepresentation and underrepresentation of disadvantaged communities undermines their trust in news. The study was conducted by the Reuters Institute Trust in News Project.

The study’s report uses data from 41 focus groups in Brazil, India, Britain and the United States. 

The report looks at "how differences along lines of race, caste, religion, class, and place may point towards distinct needs and expectations around news and how this intersects with people’s sense of trust in important ways,” the institute says. 

In Brazil, the study focused on black and mixed-race audiences; in India, on audiences from marginalized castes or tribes and Muslim audiences; in Britain on working-class audiences, and in the United States on African American and rural audiences.

Although there were differences in the way study participants saw the world and criticized news media for their coverage of people like them, there were many commonalities in frustrations about news across these groups, the institute says. Most saw news media as not only out of touch but at times as an especially harmful force that did damage to their communities, either through neglecting them entirely or exploiting them, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, or sensationalizing in divisive and polarizing ways.

News media as an institution, especially in Britain, the United States and India, often were seen as an extension of systems aligned to serve those in power — systems many felt excluded from, the institute says.

It is "worth underscoring how similar issues have been raised by study after study after study for a very long time,” the institute says. In 1968, the report notes, the Kerner Commission critiqued similar distortions and inaccuracies in U.S news media.

An article on the report by Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab says the report’s authors are clear that "though trust is thorny and multifaceted, there are opportunities for newsrooms to improve their standing in underserved communities. Those opportunities include relentlessly rooting out bias and inaccuracies, telling a 'more complete story' through news coverage that’s more positive and relevant, diversifying newsroom staffs, and being more engaged and present where people live and work.”

 

The take-home message of Reuters' report, to me, is the fundamental, systemic, long-time nature of this problem in countries with very different histories and economics.

 

I ran out of time working on this item yesterday because I was searching online for an update on solutions journalism — a U.S. media effort in recent years to focus not just on identifying problems, but on solutions to them. For example, The New York Times ran for several years a Fixes section, on "solutions to social problems and why they work.” 

 

An example of a Fixes article is titled “India’s barefoot lawyers,” from 2017. The Times’ summary of the article says: “In India's rural villages, few people seek the protection of law because lawyers are distant and expensive. Now paralegals are coming to help.”

 

The Times closed down its Fixes section in 2021. A list of the Fixes articles is here.

 

If you come across information on ways media are trying to address the problems Reuters points out, please let me know.

The Fox, Dominion settlement

As a packed courtroom was waiting for opening statements to begin on Tuesday, "gasps filled the air" when Judge Eric Davis told the jury shortly before 4 p.m. that the two parties had resolved the matter, says The New York Times. 

 

Fox News and its parent company Fox Corp. had agreed to settle the case for $787.5 million.

 

The settlement, one of the biggest ever in a defamation case, came with this admission from Fox News:

 

"We acknowledge the Court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

 

Dominion Voting Systems had alleged that Fox stars, executives, journalists and guests defamed the election tech company for segments in which conspiracies held it had switched votes for then-President Trump to Democratic challenger Biden.

 

"Dominion started this case because Fox's defamatory statements had severely damaged its reputation,” says Tom Wienner, a retired Michigan corporate litigator who's been following the case closely at the request of NPR. "By largely trying its case in the court of public opinion, Dominion has gone a long way toward restoring its good name. In the process, of course, Fox's own reputation has been seriously undermined.”

 

It's uncommon for defamation suits to get to trial, in part because the bar for proving “actual malice” — the legal standard that requires plaintiffs to show that defendants knew what they were saying was a lie, or had a reckless disregard for the truth — is so high, says the Times. It's rarer yet for one to feature the volume of evidence that Dominion had amassed against Fox.

 

In the run-up to trial, Dominion publicly released internal communications among Fox executives, hosts and producers that revealed how the country’s most-watched cable news network set in motion a strategy to win back viewers who'd tuned out after Trump’s loss. 

 

Those communications showed how employees at Fox expressed serious doubts about and, at times, were scornful of Trump and his allies as they spread lies about voter fraud.

 

Some Fox hosts privately described their colleagues as “reckless” for endorsing Trump’s false claims, acknowledging that there was “no evidence” to back them up. Yet for weeks, Fox continued to give a platform to election deniers despite the doubts about their credibility. Dominion challenged statements that were made on multiple programs on multiple nights. Typically, defamation cases involve just a single disputed statement, the Times says.

 

The settlement deal is a significant amount of money, even for a company the size of Fox, says The Associated Press. It represents about a quarter of the $2.96 billion the company reported earning last year before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — a figure often used to approximate a company’s cash flow.

 

The settlement is about half of what Dominion was asking for in the trial. But Elie Honig, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, says, “I didn’t think there was any way they would get $1.6 billion — even when they proved their case, even if they proved it overwhelmingly to a jury. Let’s remember, by its own estimation, Dominion valued the entire company at somewhere between $30 and $80 million. This settlement is 10 times the value of Dominion as an entire company. That’s how strong a statement this is with this number.”

 

Fox faces a separate $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic USA, a voting-machine company that’s making claims similar to Dominion's. 

 

I’m not seeing any mention of the settlement on Fox News' main web page this morning. Here is what I found when I searched the site.

Media's take as Trump is first current or former president to be indicted

The indictment is under seal, and the Lawfare blog says "we encourage all commentators to refrain alike from triumphant claims that the rule of law has been vindicated or from clucking about witch hunts. There will be plenty of time for that later.”

Sounds sensible to me.

So here is “background material on the fact pattern that has reportedly given rise to the indictment,” from Lawfare.

And here is a “what to know about Alvin Bragg” — the Harlem-raised, Harvard Law-educated Manhattan district attorney who convened the grand jury that indicted Trump — by The Associated Press.

Here is a “what happens next,” with Trump expected to turn himself in next week, also from AP. “There is no playbook for booking an ex-president with U.S. Secret Service protection,” AP says.

If you’re interested, here is a roundup of reaction to the indictment from Trump — "This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” he says — and others, from Reuters.

And here is reaction from Trump’s 2024 GOP rivals, from Fox News.

Finally, here is what I find interesting possible schadenfreude from our British friends at BBC News:

"In some ways, a former head of state being charged with a crime and possibly even going to prison is not news. It's happened all over the world down the ages: hundreds of presidents, prime ministers and military leaders turfed out of palaces and straight into prisons.

"But America regards itself as exceptional; and Washington, the city on a hill that provides a moral and democratic beacon for the world.

"Historians refer to the 20th Century as The American Century — will they do the same for this one?"

More on journalists’ responsibilities in their financial reporting

“Now that virtually everyone is a member of the media, thanks to social networking, does it even matter how journalists behave if investors can tweet themselves into a panic?” asks Brian Stelter, formerly of CNN and now a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, in The Atlantic.

"The answer is still yes,” he says. "In fact, the ease with which rumors can now spread might make good reporting more valuable than ever.”

Stelter says: "When I asked Bill Grueskin, formerly a deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal, about the factors that newsrooms should consider when reporting on a bank crisis, he said that “the main thing for reporters to do is to report the news — as accurately and quickly as they can — and avoid exaggerating or minimizing risks of the fallout from their stories.”

Let’s look at the article that was at the top of The New York Times website Wednesday night.

The headline: "Bank fears go global, sending a shudder through markets."

The subhead: "Stomach-churning volatility in stocks, bonds and other assets on Wednesday reflected renewed worries about the state of the economy and the risks lurking in the financial system.”

At the top of the article is a chart showing the volatility of the S&P 500 from March 8 to 15.

One way to lower our blood pressure when events are unnerving is to expand our perspective. 

So here is the inflation-adjusted 90-year history of the S&P 500. The trend isn't bad, huh?

The Times article begins: "Fear about the unseen risks to the financial system rippled across the globe on Wednesday, breaking the brief calm that had settled over markets and deepening worries that a banking crisis could threaten the economy.

"The turmoil was set off by a panic over the health of Credit Suisse, the 166-year-old Swiss bank that has been reeling from years of mismanagement and poor risk control and that warned this week about problems in its accounting practices.”

"Though the Swiss bank’s difficulties differ from the woes of the American banks that have collapsed in recent days, concern about Credit Suisse added to a sense of dread about the economy in general.”

Added to the dread? For whom? 

In paragraph six, the Times says, "The moves [in markets] dumbfounded some investors, who consider the economies in the United States and elsewhere as more solid than the turmoil suggests. They attributed the chaotic trading to the fact that investors were worried that it might be difficult to spot risks lurking after an unusually fast increase in interest rates over the past year. The moves also highlighted the fragility of the financial markets when investors lose their grasp of what could happen next.”

My question: How are we supposed to keep our grasp, with reporting like this?

Here, from The Washington Post’s personal finance columnist, is "Four money rules when financial news is making you nervous.”

How journalists should cover the 2024 election

Thanks also to the reader who sent me this tweet from media critic and New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen:

 

"Not the odds, but the stakes.
That's my shortand for the organizing principle we most need from journalists covering the 2024 election. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.”

On Valentine’s Day, a love letter to the universe

I love understanding what’s what about this human experience, and I particularly love it when the understanding is conveyed by good writing.

 

And a gift I've received on this day of love is a New York Times article by Dennis Overbey, whose bio says he’s “been covering the universe for more than 30 years.”

 

And lyrically, I’ve thought more than once. But never more than today:

 

"In the unfathomable darkness and time that is the universe, every star is an omen of hope, a promise of life and shelter, like the lights of a distant ship on a cold sea,” Overbey writes.

 

"And so, courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope, here is another reminder of the fecundity and generosity of nature: thousands of galaxies, trillions of stars and unnumbered planets, a boundless realm of possibilities stretching back 13 billion years in a small patch of sky in the constellation Hercules.

 

"At lower center is a spiral galaxy known as LEDA 2046648. It looks like a dead ringer for the great galaxy in Andromeda, M31, or its twin, our own Milky Way galaxy — except that the LEDA galaxy is a billion light-years away.

 

"One billion years ago, when the light from this image was emitted, the first multicellular organisms had emerged on Earth and were groping their way up the evolutionary ladder toward plants, fish, dinosaurs, humans and whatever comes next.”

 

"Viewing this snapshot of eternity, it’s hard not to wonder whether microbes or something else were making a similar go of it in LEDA 2046648 or one of the other luminous blobs in the image, and whether we will ever know.”

 

Dennis Overbey, on this day I appreciate your appreciation of the vastness beyond.

 

Here is the Webb's picture of LEDA. 

More on why the midterm election ‘red wave’ didn’t happen

I’ve been meaning to summarize this New York Times article from Dec. 31:

 

Traditional nonpartisan pollsters, after years of trial and error and tweaking of their methodologies, produced polls that largely reflected reality —but they also conducted fewer polls than in the past, according to a Times review.

And “that paucity allowed their accurate findings to be overwhelmed by an onrush of partisan polls in key states that more readily suited the needs of the sprawling and voracious political content machine — one sustained by ratings and clicks, and famished for fresh data and compelling narratives,” says the Times.

 

"The skewed red-wave surveys polluted polling averages, which are relied upon by campaigns, donors, voters and the news media,” the Times says. "It fed the home-team boosterism of an expanding array of right-wing media outlets — from Steve Bannon’s 'War Room' podcast and 'The Charlie Kirk Show' to Fox News and its top-rated prime-time lineup. And it spilled over into coverage by mainstream news organizations, including The Times, that amplified the alarms being sounded about potential Democratic doom."

 

Other pollsters lacked experience, such as two high-school juniors in Pennsylvania who started Patriot Polling and quickly found their surveys included on the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight, the Times says.

 

Fox News' own polling unit, "respected throughout the news industry for its nonpartisanship and transparency," wasn't detecting a Republican wave, says the Times. But in September, Sean Hannity’s prime-time show began showcasing pollsters Robert Cahaly of Trafalgar and Matt Towery of InsiderAdvantage, who predicted that the GOP would win races in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, among other places.

Unmentioned was that the Fox News Poll, covered in the network’s straight-news programming, showed all those races leaning Democratic.

 

“The culture of programming does not take kindly to narratives of ‘we’re behind’ or ‘we’re losing,’” says Jason Damata, founder and chief executive of Fabric Media, a media and advertising consultancy. “Fox has a profound understanding of what’s going to keep audiences coming back and being engaged.”

 

"Shaping perceptions across the ideological spectrum, the steady flow of data predicting a red wave prompted real-world decision-making that members of both parties now say could have tilted the balance of power in Congress,” the Times says.

“These frothy polls had a substantial, distorting impact on how people spent money — on campaign strategy, and on people’s expectations going into the election,” says Steven Law, chief executive of the Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund, which spent $280 million on the midterms. Its own private polling didn’t show a red wave, the Times says.

 

"There were ample reasons to expect a strong 2022 for Republicans,” says the Times. "A president’s party tends to lose congressional seats in midterms. Soaring inflation and Mr. Biden’s languishing approval ratings only added to GOP hopes. But the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the stolen-election fantasies of right-wing Republican candidates blew unexpected wind in Democrats’ sails.”

Good news, from Future Crunch

You probably recall Future Crunch, the Australia-based group that compiles good-news stories from around the world to balance the ubiquitous negative coverage.

 

Let’s catch up with the positive trends Future Crunch is highlighting.

 

Here are "99 good news stories you probably didn't hear about in 2022," an annual Future Crunch run-down.

 

And here is Future Crunch’s most recent weekly email, including good news on global democracy, teen pregnancy and cancer in the United States, measles in southeast Asia, the healing of the ozone layer, a new way of thinking about urban density, and the restoration of the Jordan River.

'America is on the right track'

So says conservative columnist and commentator David Brooks in The Atlantic.

 

But we don’t know it, he says, because “negativity is by now so deeply ingrained in American media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on reality.”

 

"In large part, this is because since the dawn of the internet age, the surest way to build an audience is to write stories that make people terrified or furious,” he says. 

 

"This permanent cloud of negativity has a powerful effect on how Americans see their country,” Brooks says. "When Gallup recently asked Americans if they were satisfied with their personal life, 85 percent said they were, a number that has remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years. But when Gallup asked Americans in January 2022 if they were satisfied with the direction of the country, only 17 percent said they were, down from 69 percent in 2000. In other words, there was a 68-percentage-point gap between the reality people directly experienced in their daily life and the reality they perceived through the media filter.”

 

"The first problem with all this pessimism is that it is ahistorical,” Brooks says. "Every era in American history has faced its own massive challenges, and in every era, the air has been thick with gloomy jeremiads warning of catastrophe and decline. Pick any decade in the history of this country, and you will find roiling turmoil. But in all of those same decades, you will also find, alongside the chaos and the prophecies of doom, energetic dynamism and leaping progress.

 

"The second problem with the decline narrative is that it distorts reality. My basic take is that life in America today is objectively better than it was before but subjectively worse. We have much higher standards of living and many conveniences, but when it comes to how we relate to one another — whether in the realm of politics, across social divides, or in the intimacies of family and community life — distrust is rife, bonds are fraying, and judgments are harsh.

“But that doesn’t mean the future isn’t going to be brighter than the present, or that America is in decline. The pessimists miss an underlying truth — a society can get a lot wrong as long as it gets the big thing right. And that big thing is this: If a society is good at unlocking creativity, at nurturing the abilities of its people, then its ills can be surmounted.”

 

Brooks presents lots of statistics on ways humanity in general and America in particular continue to unleash human creativity: in improved living standards, education, productivity, equality, life expectancy, innovation infrastructure, technology.

 

"I’ve bludgeoned you with statistics in order to make a point: Pessimism about our future is unwarranted,” Brooks says. "You may think that one major American political party has gone crazy, and I will agree with you. You can point to all of the ways in which life in America is infuriating and unjust, and I will agree with you there too. But the story of America is a story of convulsion and reinvention. We go through moments when the established order stops working. People and movements rise up, and things change. The culture is a collective response to the problems of the moment; as new problems become obvious, the culture shifts. We’ve been in the middle of one of those tumultuous transition periods since, I’d say, 2013. But 2022 evinced hopeful signs that we’re coming out of it.

 

"If there is one lesson from the events of the past year, it is that open societies such as ours have an ability to adapt in a way that closed societies simply do not. Russia has turned violent and malevolent. China has grown more authoritarian and inept. Meanwhile, free democratic societies have united around the Ukrainians as they battle to preserve the liberal world order. And American voters seem to finally be adapting to the threat Donald Trump poses to our democracy, forming a robust anti-Trump coalition that will significantly lessen his chances of ever working in the White House again.

 

"America is a wounded giant, and many of its wounds are self-inflicted. But America has always been a wounded giant. And it has always stumbled forward, driven by an inner turbine of ambition and aspiration that knows no rest."