Jay Rosen serves as a voice of sanity when it comes to journalism and journalistic practices. He, often at PressThink, delivers knowledge and insight with passion and eloquence. Rosen’s latest piece focuses on Chuck Todd’s Christmas Eve claimed of “naivete” (what Rosen makes clear is an admission of journalistic malfeasance) in not recognizing, as he helped propagate, Republican disinformation in the Age of Trump.
Rosen powerfully and accurately makes clear Rosen’s professional negligence:
It’s not naive of him. It’s malpractice. Chuck Todd’s entire brand is based on the claim that he understands politics. Since 2007 he has been NBC’s political director, which means he has influence over all coverage. He is literally the in-house expert on the subject. You don’t get to claim you are naive about politics when you have these kinds of positions. It would be like a chief risk officer saying, “I didn’t understand the gamble we were taking.” Well, that’s your job
This is only a taste of Rosen’s devastating (and merited) Todd takedown as evidenced by paragraph lead sentences:
It’s not that he was naive. He did not care to listen.
It’s not naiveté. It’s a willful blindness to what the Republican Party had become.
He’s not naive. He’s an insider who thought his read was better.
It’s not naive. It’s a lack of imagination, a failure of insight.
Rosen has been one of the clearest voices (great example) about the damaging nature of ‘both sides’ reporting and a key point is that Todd’s and Meet The Press’ “entire brand” rests on bothsiderism. And, since that is the ‘brand’ and operating motif, Todd and his producers remain clueless about what to do in the face of #Cult45 Republican disinformation (which Tood calls, misleadingly and erroneously, “misinformation”).
A key premise for Meet the Press is symmetry between the two major political parties. The whole show is built on that. But in the information sphere — the subject of Chuck Todd’s confessions — asymmetry has taken command. The right wing ecosystem for news does not operate like the rest of the country’s news system. …
So what will they do now? My answer: they have no earthly idea. This is what I mean by an epistemological crisis. Chuck Todd has essentially said that on the right there is an incentive structure that compels Republican office holders to use their time on Meet the Press for the spread of disinformation. So do you keep inviting them on air to do just that? If so, then you break faith with the audience and create a massive problem in real time fact-checking. If not, then you just broke the show in half.
There is simply nothing in the playbook at Meet the Press that tells the producers what to do in this situation. As I have tried to show, they didn’t arrive here through acts of naiveté, but by willful blindness, malpractice among the experts in charge, an insider’s mentality, a listening breakdown, a failure of imagination, and sheer disbelief that the world could have changed so much upon people paid so well to understand it.
Spot on commentary, but with a significant flaw
As so often, Rosen has provided a searing assessment of a major journalistic situation that would, in a rational world, lead to reflection and, eventually, action to address the challenge.
Rosen’s discussion, however, has a glaring (likely unintended) misdirection. Reading through Rosen’s devastating critique of Todd suggests that Republican disinformation (willingness to show up in venues like Meet The Press, stare into the camera, and lie) and desire to attack (discredit) “the Press” provides an impression that this is somehow newly born, perhaps knowable only by about 2012 or so.
Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein wrote, “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Chuck Todd as NBC’s political director, and Meet the Press as its premiere politics show could have taken seriously what these exemplary members of the Washington establishment were saying back in 2012.
Truth be told, Mann’s and Ornstein’s excellent OPED could have been written much earlier but “establishment” voices fought coming to that conclusion, openly, then just as Todd has resisted coming to it until just recently.
The Republican War on Science was treated, by journalists, writ large with ‘both sides’ reporting. For decades, when it came to Global Warming/climate change reporting, scientists were ‘balanced’ by fossil fuel-funded advocates paid to undermine science and confuse the situation. For decades, (primarily) Republican politicians have parroted this deceit. For decades, the leading lights of the GOP have been willing to look cameras in the eye and lie when it comes to climate change on the (all too often) rare occasion when the subject was raised by the Todds of the media elites. These Republicans would not just parrot the lies but would be ready to attack and seek to discredit (especially within their base) journalists who accurately reported when it came to climate change.
Science denialism could reasonably be seen as the testing and training ground, the core precedent, for the ubiquitous GOP disinformation amid the time of Trump.
Blatant denial of reality, refusal to give credence to authority, willingness to spout nonsense worked. Republican politicians didn’t pay a price for their deceit. Journalists, most frequently, didn’t challenge these politicians’ dishonest and, often, ludicrous misrepresentations about what is arguably the most important issue facing humanity. Media outlets did not make clear the level of ignorance and dishonesty. This deceit strengthened, in all too many cases, their (both individual politician’s and the Party’s) brand and strengthened the base’s allegiance. A key tool of any cult is to get followers to believe the cult over their lying eyes: this is what the GOP has demanded (and secured) from its base for a long, long time when it comes to science, when it comes to climate change and the (every more urgent) need for action.
Success in science denial made clear that falsehoods work and that too many media outlets will help in the effort. Science Denialism laid the groundwork for birtherism, for Benghazi uber alles, for the ubiquitous disinformation that is the Republican brand today.
Rosen would have well served his readership, and overall discussion of media practices, by discussing science denialism and journalistic enabling of it was a leading indicator (element) of Republican “misinformation” that Chuck Todd has admitted being “naive” about.
To continue the Todd chronicles
For last Christmas, as a gift to the reality-based world, Chuck Todd declared an intent to refuse to air climate science denial on Meet The Press (after years of not confronting it) and had an entire Meet The Press dedicated to climate change discussion. (That 46 minutes was about one-third of all major broadcast TV news discussion of climate change for all 2018.) A welcome, albeit incredibly late for so many of us, Todd move into emphasizing reality.
For Christmas 2019, Todd has admitted that it is a problem that Republicans are so willing, so eager to get on Meet The Press to spread “misinformation” even if he clearly has no clue what to do about this.
What will Todd’s 2020 Christmas gift be for highlighting yet another facet of his journalistic malfeasance?
NOTE
Here is an excellent Rosen discussion of the introduction of “reality based community” into (semi)common parlance in 2004 and how it can be considered a precursor of today’s GOP anti-expert, anti-truth discourse. E.g., Rosen is well aware that Todd (and others) should have been well aware and figuring out how to deal with GOP deceit well before the Age of Trump.