Why journalists must reclaim the frame
One dog barking: an occasional column by John Dineen
I find myself these days thinking about A. Whitney Brown.
Brown is a comic writer and performer best known for his time years ago with Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. It’s Brown’s segment on an episode of SNL in 1988 that has stayed with me.
In the midst of the 1988 presidential race, Brown, appearing on SNL’s Weekend Update, told us, “This is a great country, my friends, and we deserve a great liar to lead us in the trying times ahead.”
He talked about our first lies, as children:
To them, every lie is a thing of wonder — a brand new opportunity to escape punishment and pin the blame elsewhere.
I remember when my daughter told her first lie. And it’s so exciting to be there and see your child discover something that you know they’re going to use for the rest of their lives.
Of course, Brown was contrasting lies to the truth.
But what if there is no contrast? What happens when we stop distinguishing, when we judge every statement as though falsehood and fact had the same moral standing?
Where the market is the arbiter, where a lie can be judged successful by the number of people who adhere to it?
What if we build information channels around this new market-based approach to truth and lies?
What if our mainstream journalism assumes good faith where there is none?
Most of us, in our personal lives, distinguish between the truth and a lie and try to favor the former over the latter. And we still have some institutions where lying, misleading, or failing to fulfill a binding promise can be judged independently and justice meted out, based on well-considered rules and laws — and good faith.
But at the highest levels of our public conversation, the market — and Babel — rule. Truth has no greater standing than lying.
You throw a rock in any direction and hit a story filled with misinformation — often brazen lies — because the people behind that, well … slop … have established they are entitled to have that slop heard. And slop, some information channels have found, is profitable.
Margaret Sullivan, in her column American Crisis, makes clear she has had enough of the slop:
The Trump regime has kidnapped the Venezuelan leader, killing dozens and illegally claiming dominion over that country, and threatening to move on to other countries.
An ICE agent has killed an unarmed civilian — a mother of three — in Minnesota. And years after the Trump-fueled attack on the U.S. Capitol, the lies about what happened there continue to circulate — including in the mainstream media.
Journalists should be telling these disastrous and consequential stories with clarity, tough reporting and a reliance on verifiable facts.
Thankfully, some of that is happening, and I’ll give a few examples in a moment. But first, I have to draw your attention to — and express my disgust at — the way the Jan. 6, 2021 anniversary was portrayed on CBS Evening News. It was almost kissed off altogether, but the attention it did get was rife with appalling “both sides are equal” commentary.
“President Trump accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack. Hakeem Jeffries accused Trump of whitewashing it,” was the summation by newly installed anchor Tony Dokoupil, as images of the Trump faithful hoisting banners that thanked him for their pardons played in the background.
That’s what this is about? Both sides equal?
“SHAMEFUL,” was the response of Larry Sabato, who runs the nonpartisan Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Sullivan moves on from the train wreck at CBS News to more heartening examples:
I was impressed with the Wall Street Journal’s deep look into the ICE shootings. With the headline “Videos Show How ICE Vehicle Stops Can Escalate to Shootings,” this was a timely investigation that had the guts to draw some conclusions, as they identified “13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles since July, leaving at least eight people shot with two confirmed dead. Only one civilian was armed — with a concealed weapon that was never drawn.”
She adds:
I was also glad to see a quick turnaround by the New York Times analyzing the Minnesota horror by looking at bystander footage from many different angles. And the headline was clear: “Videos Contradict Trump Administration’s Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis.” Here’s a link so you can see for yourself.
Much of the coverage of Renee Good’s murder was admirable, but even in this case journalists were hamstrung by the need to measure what was obvious against Trump officials’ insistence that the killing was justified. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went so far as to call Renee Good “this deranged lunatic woman.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called her a “domestic terrorist.”
The stuffed animals in the car were the giveaway.
This is the conundrum journalists face: If a public official or regime or political party insists that its opponents are always wrong, and despicably so, whatever the question, how do you accept their answer on any given topic? If policies are built on fictions, how do you evaluate them? How do you avoid trafficking in lies?
How do you produce good journalism — journalism that serves democracy — when lies are profitable and good journalism struggles to stay afloat?
As a start, journalists can reclaim the frame. They can build the context of their reporting around the real concerns of citizens, of communities. They can refuse to allow bad-faith public officials to control the news agenda, to crowd out real needs by spewing provocative quotes and visuals.
Note to readers
I’m going to take an additional day off this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend and will be back on Tuesday, Jan. 20.
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