Politico screwed up, and apologized - but the damage on Twitter was done
It's hard to explain to someone who's not on Twitter just how singularly weird the social platform is compared to say, Facebook or Instagram. This newsletter will attempt to give some examples of how it works.
Politico's story Friday night was a juicy one, that #Resistance Twitter was excited about - a triple-bylined lengthy read titled "Trump owes tens of millions to the Bank of China — and the loan is due soon." It related to a 2012 loan for one of President Trump's NYC buildings. The only problem? The Bank of China sold off the debt to Wells Fargo shortly after the deal. By the weekend, Politico had to change their headline to say "Trump owed tens of millions" - not exactly much of a story any more. Late last night, they issued an editor's note explaining the error, and this morning, an internal memo went out to their staff: "We got a central premise of our original story wrong. President Trump doesn't owe the Bank of China anything... We also committed a basic and inexcusable fault ourselves: We didn't ask Bank of China for comment before we published the article."
This is a major journalistic screw-up, but also, in the Trump Era, a pretty fast and full-throated correction by Politico. They should be praised for owning up to their mistakes.
The problem, however, is Twitter. Because in the time from when the story was published to when it was all but retracted, it was amplified beyond what Politico was able to contain. Perhaps the most shared tweet of the story was from Jen Rubin, Washington Post opinion writer, who wondered if it was time to talk "emoluments clause" - it was RTed 14,000+ times: | | But that's just scratching the surface. Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart and Catherine Rampell shared it, and it was seen by thousands of their followers. Charlie Sykes, of The Bulwark, spread it to his followers. Jane Mayer, of the New Yorker, got 11,000+ RTs for her tweet about it. And not just journalists - Joe Biden's Rapid Response Director Andrew Bates tweeted about it, adding, "Remember how much he echoed Chinese government propaganda about the virus being contained?" All these tweets, and thousands of others, made the claim that Trump owes Bank of China millions, as the original Politico report stated.
Of course, bad journalism amplified on Twitter ends up growing outside the platform - that's one of the core problems with it. In an interview with a local CBS station yesterday, Joe Biden said, "[Trump] owes apparently millions of dollars with the Bank of China," and was not corrected by the interviewer - in fact, ABC's campaign reporter covering Biden simply shared the quote without correcting it also.
This is how bad journalism sticks - and becomes ingrained in the public consciousness before it can be corrected. But it's also a great example of the way Twitter works. While Twitter is populated by a small number of people, the people who populate it have tremendous power to amplify the message - because the media over-indexes on the platform. Twitter ends up programming cable TV, because what's "trending" on Twitter is given outsized weight.
And because of the way Twitter is a real-time window into the news, there is no real correction mechanism for when journalism goes wrong - you either catch it or, most likely, you don't.
I don't have any answers on how to fix this, but it's important to see how this happens, and how it will continue to happen. The only way to possibly combat this is to force ourselves not to overreact, to allow our instinct to pass and to wait before we comment or even make up our minds. This is an impossible ask, I know. | | MSNBC silence on Joe Biden's sexual assault allegations has become absurd I've been covering the media's relative lack of coverage of Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden for weeks now - and the story has continued to gain clarity. With news that Reade's mother called into Larry King Live in 1993 related to the "problems" in that office over the weekend, we had a massive new element to the story yesterday. Rich McHugh, the excellent journalist most recently at NBC, who worked with Ronan Farrow on the Harvey Weinstein reporting, wrote in Business Insider about a neighbor of Reade's who went on the record and said she was told of the assault the year it allegedly happened. Some in the media have begun reporting on the story - the AP picked it up, and HuffPost asked nine potential Biden VPs about the allegations (only Stacey Abrams responded to the inquiry). HuffPost also reported on the documents which could shed light on the allegations, but remain archived at the University of Delaware with Biden refusing to allow it to be unsealed. By any standard of journalism, it is time for the major media outlets to cover the story in a real way, and ask the Democratic candidate about it. But so far, many haven't. Most egregious has been MSNBC, which has not covered the story at all over the weekend or this week. Not asked any Democratic guest, not done a simple aggregation pick-up of Business Insider's excellent reporting. Just...stayed silent. CNN has covered it three times over the past four days. Obviously there's the hypocrisy of the Brett Kavanaugh allegation coverage - but there's even hypocrisy of the way the media covered Biden himself, last year, as Tiana Lowe lays out in a Washington Examiner piece. Another must-read is from Rebecca Traister in The Cut, on the disservice Biden is doing to his potential VP candidate by not directly addressing the story himself. There is such a thing as a bias of omission - and it's time MSNBC and other media outlets ask the former VP himself about what happened in 1993 the next time he's interviewed. | | | YouTube's removal of a local news outlets viral doctors video should concern all journalists
Two principles you will see me stick to throughout any story I cover are 1) the more speech the better - speech should be allowed and not punished unless it is explicitly calling for harm and 2) social platforms have the right to make their own rules, but should be called out when they violate the first principle.
Some stories are "hard" - like when I defended Louis Farrakhan, whose views I think are repugnant, when Twitter banned him. But this story should be an easy one, that all journalists should get behind.
A video of two Bakersfield doctors citing COVID-19 statistics to make a case for easing restrictions in a manner similar to the way Sweden has went viral over the weekend, with 5 million+ views on YouTube. The video originated at a local ABC News affiliate's channel. On Monday, the video was removed. (You can watch it now at the local news station's website.) Why? A vague comment that it "violates our guidelines."
The station demanded an appeal hearing, and YouTube stuck to their decision. This was their reasoning: | | "Explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance." (First of all, I think she means "health.")
That reasoning should send a chill down the spine of every journalist who respects the First Amendment, and every citizen who wants to use social platforms that don't insert their own biases into what they deem as ban-worthy.
YouTube can take down this video, of course. But should they? Absolutely not. These doctors weren't calling for people to cough on other citizens. They weren't even questioning whether injecting disinfectant might be a good idea. They were using data to suggest a Sweden model of eased lockdown may be effective. That's not damaging to the public to watch.
The national media - particularly ABC, as it's their affiliate - have an obligation to speak out against this egregious censorship effort on the part of YouTube. | | Soledad O'Brien is teaching the wrong lessons about journalism
The New York Times wrote a profile about Kayleigh McEnany, the new press secretary for the Trump Administration. It was a piece full of interesting tidbits and quotes, like the fact that the excellent liberal commentator Van Jones "mentored" McEnany at CNN, and said "I'm not trying to defend the messaging, but what I hope people can acknowledge is there's very few people in either party who can accomplish what Kayleigh has accomplished in such a short time." (McEnany's relationship with Donna Brazile was particularly interesting and nuanced also.) It is a fair, not glowing, portrayal of a major media figure.
Soledad O'Brien, who used to have a show on CNN, hated it. "The biggest failure of the @nytimes, is in the many ways it normalizes the abnormal," she tweeted. "Ms. Williamson's piece on a press secretary who has no core beliefs, who lies easily and chronically and who's a racist is bad...In an administration full of losers and a revolving door, you need a good source to feed you info. One way to do it is the positive profile. This is a good example."
This particular form of media criticism - blanket dismissal of journalism that isn't properly #Resistance enough - is truly unfortunate, and teaches young potential journalists all the wrong lessons. If the article doesn't call McEnany and anyone associated with the Trump administration a "racist" and provide nuance-free analysis of how terrible they all are, it's about source cultivation and "bad." That's not how journalism works.
But this is O'Brien's M.O. now, and another example of the way Twitter takes everything and turns it into a cesspool of arrogance and condescension. O'Brien once was a journalist who valued professionalism and objectivity on-air. When I worked at TVNewser and Mediaite covering the media industry as a reporter, I interviewed O"Brien several times about her excellent coverage in Haiti, or one of her "In America" documentaries. But off-air, O'Brien thought everyone was beneath her. I saw it when we worked together at CNN for several years, when I ran social media for CNN TV and worked closely with O'Brien on several occasions. I'd watch her own staff forced to wait outside her office door, calling her name until she allowed them to enter and address her.
Now she's away from CNN, but, in this Trump Era, she has embraced both her lack of ability to see people she disagrees with as real people and her self-aggrandizement. Look at this tweet, from this weekend. | | O'Brien's shift is partially due to the nature of Twitter, where the success metrics often reward bluster over reason, insults over nuance. I made the mistake of engaging early this morning, and in the parlance of Twitter, RIP my mentions.
But while, as I discussed above, Twitter can amplify stories, it also can lead to an inflated sense of importance. A few thousand people RTing, a few thousand mentions... these are not insignificant numbers, but they are also not nearly as significant as they feel in the moment, on Twitter, when those alerts keep coming.
Still, I wish those with a platform like O'Brien's considered some introspection to what they put out on Twitter - and how it's positioned. | | QUICK HITS
- My friend and former CNN President Jon Klein, who is one of the smartest media minds in America, is senior executive producer for the massive 24-hour digital streaming event Unite.Us - which starts Friday at 8pm and features a fascinating list of celebrities and spiritual leaders. More to come...
- Fox News has said goodbye to Diamond & Silk, the MAGA-favorites who had their own Fox Nation show, and also have some pretty out-of-the-mainstream views on coronavirus.
- Legendary actor Jeff Goldblum + "RuPaul's Drag Race" + comments on Islam's views of homosexuality and women? Click. | | WATCH IT... I mean, just take a look at Joe Biden talking to that local Florida CBS station about "economic intercourse."
HEAR IT... Joe Rogan's podcast with journalist Tim Pool is a must-listen - particularly the part about the algorithm at YouTube, and the bipartisan media and politician bashing from both interviewer and interviewee.
READ IT... I found this very, uh, fair and balanced piece by The Hollywood Reporter's Jeremy Barr on CNN's COVID-19 coverage a really interesting peek behind the curtain, at the positives, and negatives, of their coverage. | | TWITTER NONSENSE
It's hard to explain how much nonsense there is on Twitter for people who don't frequent the platform, but I've tried to give several examples in this newsletter. One more example for you - two members of the media who I generally think are talented, good people are Bill Simmons and Salena Zito. If you know them, you probably are confused why they are related. Here's how - this week, they both were the focus of Twitter Nonsense. There's a small subset of people who absolutely hate each of them, and both were very active this week. Here are the attacks on Simmons, and here are the attacks on Zito. Nonsense, as you can see. | | | GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM | | | Politico gives new meaning to fawning coverage of a politician. And to be fair - here's some ridiculous fawning coverage from Fox News too. | | Thanks for reading. Stay safe, talk to you later this week...
- Steve Krakauer
@SteveKrak | | | |
