“Mr. Trump needed to paint Ms. Harris as responsible for the pain that voters have described feeling" is a sentence that has no place in a news story. None. The Times has invented this "Analysis" category so they can allow their reporters to indulge in pure editorializing, and always -- always -- for the benefit of Trump and the Republicans.
It has not escaped my -- nor, I hope, anyone's -- attention that Haberman did not, and never does, respond to any of the ACTUAL criticisms of her and the Times from the left. Just like their counterparts at Fox News, she responds to a self-serving, self-pitying caricature of the criticism from the left that she and they invent. It's extremely important that they not let anyone actually hear what's being said about them. But Trump can call her Maggot and she grants him the unearned assumption that he deserves to be heard out.
"Trump lies successfully because the people in the truth business are doing a lousy job."
A big part of the problem is because too many journalists and/or their editors do not see themselves as being in the "truth business." And that's been a problem for a long time. I once worked for a national news TV show (over 35 years ago) where the editor-in-chief insisted that we were not a "truth squad", ridiculing the very notion. Of course, the consequences become far worse when one of the major parties and their entire ecosystem does nothing but lie (I was going to write "has total disregard for the truth" but that sounds too mealy-mouthed). If the press won't be a truth squad in these circumstances, they've abdicated their special role that the 1st Amendment granted them.
I wonder what that editor thought the reason our Founders gave the press special constitutional protection was. Jefferson explicitly wrote about the importance of well-informed citizens for a democracy. Journalists take our constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press but cavalierly dismiss their obligation to ensure our country has a well-informed citizenry who make judgements based on substantive facts — ie the truth.
"Haberman said she and other journalists were being picked on by a left-wing “industry that literally exists to attack the press broadly.” And she declared: “I think that the media does a very good job covering Trump.” "
I read that interview. The thing that stuck me about that comment - ' left wing industry to attack the press" is being echoed in many MSM quarters from people such as Tapper, Tur, Mitchell, as well as writers for the NYTs, WaPo etc, in my view because they KNOW they are failing at their roles as journalists. They clearly feel the pressure of corporate who view the 'news' as infotainment and not to inform the public.
They need clicks and ad dollars and not legitimate journalism. They know this and so they lash out at those that are pointing it out as well as discovering that the Harris campaign sees this as well.
They can sense their looming irrelevance on the horizon.
Haberman's "left wing 'industry'" comment struck me as delusional, but I didn't realize that versions of it were circulating elsewhere. Bashing "the left" and using it as a catch-all label for anything remotely critical of capitalism has a long, long history in the U.S. It goes back to the late 19th century at least. Red-baiting still works, though it's (somewhat) subtler than it was during the heyday of McCarthyism. There's a reason why most of the labor movement in the U.S. is so conservative compared to their European counterparts, and why the U.S. has no Labor Party or even an identifiable labor wing within the Democratic Party.
It used to be, where I hung out in the left of center, that if you called your opponent a fascist you admitted you'd lost the argument. These days, since genuine fascism (or its nearly identical twin) has risen to prominence in the GOP, that is no longer true. But the equivalent continues to apply to "leftist" and "the left": those who fall back on them to discredit their opponents have indeed lost the argument.
The mainstream media has been so intimidated by decades of criticism from the right they don’t even realize how they automatically soften/distort their coverage to fend off accusations of being liberal. I can’t think of anyone on the left who said the kinds of nasty things about the media that VP Spiro Agnew regularly did. Has everyone forgotten his “nattering nabobs of negativism” accusation?
I have been a strong critic of the media since the NY Times fell hook, line and sinker for the Arkansas Project’s lies about the Clintons. When the Times gave its imprimatur to claims like Whitewater the rest of the media followed its lead like a pack of lemmings. As a result we taxpayers wound up wasting close to $100 million on bogus scandals like Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate and the vicious, cruel claim that the Clintons had murdered their close friend Vince Foster. Having learned nothing from that epic fail the media then played along with the Bush administration’s WMD claims.
Despite these obvious failures only recently has media criticism from the left reached a level that gets under their skin.
In my early 20s I had a button that said "Hi! I'm an effete impudent intellectual snob" -- another Agnew quote that got around. This is exactly right and so important. When Haberman et al. try to rebut their critics by calling them "leftist", they are treading a depressingly deep path in U.S. history.
Mark, excellent post. Re: Maggie Haberman, I would love to hear what you say when you're talking to a journalist friend over beer. Please share that someday! You're so much more restrained than I am about her role as a stenographer to not just normalize Trump but to actively promote him and tear down anyone who wants to hold him accountable or defeat him at the ballot box. No one can know her motivations, but in reading about all her connections and the things she has written it's sickening that she has the platform she does as a member of the fourth estate.
I canceled my NYT subscription because of this horrible both sides crap. If you can’t simply be truthful go into another line of work. And stop interpreting what Trump says. Report exactly what he said so everyone can see how far into dementia he is. He can’t even campaign he is so exhausted. Biden is older but he is still actively campaigning for Harris/Walz and actually running the country for 12 hours a day. Trump as president golfed more than he worked. Trump didn’t go to the Oval Office until 11AM and did nothing but stroke his ego. The NYT’s had headline after headline about Biden being unfit for office when he is working nonstop and actually accomplishing things for the good of America. Trump killed over a million people and embarrassed Americans every damned day. The newspaper business will be obsolete PDQ if they don’t understand Americans want the truth and will get it elsewhere if they won’t do it. Have some dignity for God’s sake and America’s.
Excellent work, Mark. I appreciate that you included the Press Code for journalists: “Journalists should avoid and disclose conflicts of interest.” I’m just a retired nurse, but I still honor the oath I took. “ . . . I will practice my profession with consciousness and dignity.”
I don’t see much decency, decorum, and dignity in the MSM anymore.
"Haberman said she and other journalists were being picked on by a left-wing 'industry that literally exists to attack the press broadly.'” That a reporter should thoroughly and completely dismiss the barrage of attacks mainstream media receives incessantly from Trump proves where her loyalty lies.
Your neat rewrite of how she should describe the former NY police commissioner somehow applies to Maggie Haberman as well - how many people know her mother works for the Trump Organization (don't know if she still does)? Beyond a conflict, should be revealed publicly, and probably the source of many of her pieces.
Nuzzi is another shameless 'journalist' intent on getting attention. She fits right in with the likes of Trump and RFKJr. - always in need of being the center of attention . Just as unprofessional and childish as they. Imagine she'll go the way of Megyn Kelley - struggling for relevance/attention and never running out of peroxide.
Your last sentence says it all - almost. Just need to add "and you are young and beautiful and you offset the "liberal media bias" with a conservative slant or..."
The most infuriating thing to me is how both the NYT and Washington Post will accept any pathetic "guest editorial" and people who aren't savvy about journalism might see the opinions as some sort of endorsement from the paper itself. Today in the NYT there is a column by a Republican, "How Lying Became Disinformation." They can label it as a guest opinion, but the graphic is clearly meant to indicate that Harris is the main perpetrator on this front. The writer goes on about how the fact checkers didn't take on the "lies" by Harris in the debate while they picked on Trump, because of a double standard. In reality the moderators could have taken apart nearly every sentence Trump uttered, while they really only took on a few of his most persistent and idiotic claims. The writer then mocks people's concerns about what Trump will do to democracy, as if our fears are overblown. The rest of it is an attack on minor, bog-standard spin by the Democrats, while completely ignoring the thousands of lies coming from the GOP on a daily basis. There are valid reasons to criticize Democrats, but there is no context whatsoever in this piece. Gotta share both sides, I guess, even if one side is hell bent on dragging us into a nightmare.
A line comes to mind by Paul Newman to Sally Field in the movie "Absence of Malice," written by Detroit Free Press editor Kurt Luedtke:
"You don't print the truth. You print what people say."
Our screens today are full of click-bait stories on what people say, or supposedly said, whether it's a presidential election or the WNBA.
Much of it is non-substantive, intemperate opinion uttered by someone simply wanting to be a star. Unfortunately, we have some self-aggrandizing individuals like that seeking public office and others posing as objective journalists. We need to draw a more distinct line between fact and commentary.
And a little less ego and a little more dispassion our pursuit of the truth.
And maybe a little more attention to stuff closer to home like neighborhood rezonings and bond issues to build schools.
It was my understanding that tRump has known both Maggie and her mother for many many years. Her mother was (perhaps continues to) be a fixer for the wealthy. So I think she'll do just fine.
This is what I take the greatest exception to with respect to what Haberman says: That this media criticism "industry" is undermining faith in the media's credibility. Her claim that there's some sort of organized syndicate profiting off attacking the MSM is ludicrous. Blaming the critics for what you yourself have wrought is quite the tell.
I was on Twitter when the NY Post “broke” the Hunter laptop story. Maggie had a fully written article that was published 45 minutes later. (We’ve since learned this was a typical MO for trump, when he was shilling misinformation.) She’s got zero credibility as far as I’m concerned. As for Nuzzi, her recent interview with Trump talked about a rehabilitated person. They’re both what fiction calls unreliable narrators.
New York magazine is what the Observer was under that tRump son-in-law. The NYT is just a sad old lady that I read occasionally to compare with Washington Post.
Nuzzi should do a Ted talk on “ when you fall in love with your source” like Monica Lewinsky, Nuzzi is simply and older version of Lewinsky who seduced her college professor then stalked him. Regarding Haberman, it is not simply that she seduced her way into trump world, she deliberately set out to destroy Hillary Clinton and continued to put Hillary and Clinton into articles long after the 2016 election for no apparent reason other than increasing the google search hits. Haberman, Nuzzi and Lewinsky are cut from the same cloth with the exception that Lewinsky literally wore no panties.
“Mr. Trump needed to paint Ms. Harris as responsible for the pain that voters have described feeling" is a sentence that has no place in a news story. None. The Times has invented this "Analysis" category so they can allow their reporters to indulge in pure editorializing, and always -- always -- for the benefit of Trump and the Republicans.
It has not escaped my -- nor, I hope, anyone's -- attention that Haberman did not, and never does, respond to any of the ACTUAL criticisms of her and the Times from the left. Just like their counterparts at Fox News, she responds to a self-serving, self-pitying caricature of the criticism from the left that she and they invent. It's extremely important that they not let anyone actually hear what's being said about them. But Trump can call her Maggot and she grants him the unearned assumption that he deserves to be heard out.
"Trump lies successfully because the people in the truth business are doing a lousy job."
A big part of the problem is because too many journalists and/or their editors do not see themselves as being in the "truth business." And that's been a problem for a long time. I once worked for a national news TV show (over 35 years ago) where the editor-in-chief insisted that we were not a "truth squad", ridiculing the very notion. Of course, the consequences become far worse when one of the major parties and their entire ecosystem does nothing but lie (I was going to write "has total disregard for the truth" but that sounds too mealy-mouthed). If the press won't be a truth squad in these circumstances, they've abdicated their special role that the 1st Amendment granted them.
I wonder what that editor thought the reason our Founders gave the press special constitutional protection was. Jefferson explicitly wrote about the importance of well-informed citizens for a democracy. Journalists take our constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press but cavalierly dismiss their obligation to ensure our country has a well-informed citizenry who make judgements based on substantive facts — ie the truth.
"Haberman said she and other journalists were being picked on by a left-wing “industry that literally exists to attack the press broadly.” And she declared: “I think that the media does a very good job covering Trump.” "
I read that interview. The thing that stuck me about that comment - ' left wing industry to attack the press" is being echoed in many MSM quarters from people such as Tapper, Tur, Mitchell, as well as writers for the NYTs, WaPo etc, in my view because they KNOW they are failing at their roles as journalists. They clearly feel the pressure of corporate who view the 'news' as infotainment and not to inform the public.
They need clicks and ad dollars and not legitimate journalism. They know this and so they lash out at those that are pointing it out as well as discovering that the Harris campaign sees this as well.
They can sense their looming irrelevance on the horizon.
Haberman's "left wing 'industry'" comment struck me as delusional, but I didn't realize that versions of it were circulating elsewhere. Bashing "the left" and using it as a catch-all label for anything remotely critical of capitalism has a long, long history in the U.S. It goes back to the late 19th century at least. Red-baiting still works, though it's (somewhat) subtler than it was during the heyday of McCarthyism. There's a reason why most of the labor movement in the U.S. is so conservative compared to their European counterparts, and why the U.S. has no Labor Party or even an identifiable labor wing within the Democratic Party.
It used to be, where I hung out in the left of center, that if you called your opponent a fascist you admitted you'd lost the argument. These days, since genuine fascism (or its nearly identical twin) has risen to prominence in the GOP, that is no longer true. But the equivalent continues to apply to "leftist" and "the left": those who fall back on them to discredit their opponents have indeed lost the argument.
The mainstream media has been so intimidated by decades of criticism from the right they don’t even realize how they automatically soften/distort their coverage to fend off accusations of being liberal. I can’t think of anyone on the left who said the kinds of nasty things about the media that VP Spiro Agnew regularly did. Has everyone forgotten his “nattering nabobs of negativism” accusation?
I have been a strong critic of the media since the NY Times fell hook, line and sinker for the Arkansas Project’s lies about the Clintons. When the Times gave its imprimatur to claims like Whitewater the rest of the media followed its lead like a pack of lemmings. As a result we taxpayers wound up wasting close to $100 million on bogus scandals like Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate and the vicious, cruel claim that the Clintons had murdered their close friend Vince Foster. Having learned nothing from that epic fail the media then played along with the Bush administration’s WMD claims.
Despite these obvious failures only recently has media criticism from the left reached a level that gets under their skin.
In my early 20s I had a button that said "Hi! I'm an effete impudent intellectual snob" -- another Agnew quote that got around. This is exactly right and so important. When Haberman et al. try to rebut their critics by calling them "leftist", they are treading a depressingly deep path in U.S. history.
Mark, excellent post. Re: Maggie Haberman, I would love to hear what you say when you're talking to a journalist friend over beer. Please share that someday! You're so much more restrained than I am about her role as a stenographer to not just normalize Trump but to actively promote him and tear down anyone who wants to hold him accountable or defeat him at the ballot box. No one can know her motivations, but in reading about all her connections and the things she has written it's sickening that she has the platform she does as a member of the fourth estate.
I canceled my NYT subscription because of this horrible both sides crap. If you can’t simply be truthful go into another line of work. And stop interpreting what Trump says. Report exactly what he said so everyone can see how far into dementia he is. He can’t even campaign he is so exhausted. Biden is older but he is still actively campaigning for Harris/Walz and actually running the country for 12 hours a day. Trump as president golfed more than he worked. Trump didn’t go to the Oval Office until 11AM and did nothing but stroke his ego. The NYT’s had headline after headline about Biden being unfit for office when he is working nonstop and actually accomplishing things for the good of America. Trump killed over a million people and embarrassed Americans every damned day. The newspaper business will be obsolete PDQ if they don’t understand Americans want the truth and will get it elsewhere if they won’t do it. Have some dignity for God’s sake and America’s.
Such a great post! Thank you!
Excellent work, Mark. I appreciate that you included the Press Code for journalists: “Journalists should avoid and disclose conflicts of interest.” I’m just a retired nurse, but I still honor the oath I took. “ . . . I will practice my profession with consciousness and dignity.”
I don’t see much decency, decorum, and dignity in the MSM anymore.
"Haberman said she and other journalists were being picked on by a left-wing 'industry that literally exists to attack the press broadly.'” That a reporter should thoroughly and completely dismiss the barrage of attacks mainstream media receives incessantly from Trump proves where her loyalty lies.
Your neat rewrite of how she should describe the former NY police commissioner somehow applies to Maggie Haberman as well - how many people know her mother works for the Trump Organization (don't know if she still does)? Beyond a conflict, should be revealed publicly, and probably the source of many of her pieces.
Nuzzi is another shameless 'journalist' intent on getting attention. She fits right in with the likes of Trump and RFKJr. - always in need of being the center of attention . Just as unprofessional and childish as they. Imagine she'll go the way of Megyn Kelley - struggling for relevance/attention and never running out of peroxide.
Great piece Mark! I echo the praise for this line: “Trump lies successfully because the people in the truth business are doing a lousy job.”
Your last sentence says it all - almost. Just need to add "and you are young and beautiful and you offset the "liberal media bias" with a conservative slant or..."
The most infuriating thing to me is how both the NYT and Washington Post will accept any pathetic "guest editorial" and people who aren't savvy about journalism might see the opinions as some sort of endorsement from the paper itself. Today in the NYT there is a column by a Republican, "How Lying Became Disinformation." They can label it as a guest opinion, but the graphic is clearly meant to indicate that Harris is the main perpetrator on this front. The writer goes on about how the fact checkers didn't take on the "lies" by Harris in the debate while they picked on Trump, because of a double standard. In reality the moderators could have taken apart nearly every sentence Trump uttered, while they really only took on a few of his most persistent and idiotic claims. The writer then mocks people's concerns about what Trump will do to democracy, as if our fears are overblown. The rest of it is an attack on minor, bog-standard spin by the Democrats, while completely ignoring the thousands of lies coming from the GOP on a daily basis. There are valid reasons to criticize Democrats, but there is no context whatsoever in this piece. Gotta share both sides, I guess, even if one side is hell bent on dragging us into a nightmare.
You’re reminding me why I don’t miss my NYT subscription.
A line comes to mind by Paul Newman to Sally Field in the movie "Absence of Malice," written by Detroit Free Press editor Kurt Luedtke:
"You don't print the truth. You print what people say."
Our screens today are full of click-bait stories on what people say, or supposedly said, whether it's a presidential election or the WNBA.
Much of it is non-substantive, intemperate opinion uttered by someone simply wanting to be a star. Unfortunately, we have some self-aggrandizing individuals like that seeking public office and others posing as objective journalists. We need to draw a more distinct line between fact and commentary.
And a little less ego and a little more dispassion our pursuit of the truth.
And maybe a little more attention to stuff closer to home like neighborhood rezonings and bond issues to build schools.
It was my understanding that tRump has known both Maggie and her mother for many many years. Her mother was (perhaps continues to) be a fixer for the wealthy. So I think she'll do just fine.
This is what I take the greatest exception to with respect to what Haberman says: That this media criticism "industry" is undermining faith in the media's credibility. Her claim that there's some sort of organized syndicate profiting off attacking the MSM is ludicrous. Blaming the critics for what you yourself have wrought is quite the tell.
I was on Twitter when the NY Post “broke” the Hunter laptop story. Maggie had a fully written article that was published 45 minutes later. (We’ve since learned this was a typical MO for trump, when he was shilling misinformation.) She’s got zero credibility as far as I’m concerned. As for Nuzzi, her recent interview with Trump talked about a rehabilitated person. They’re both what fiction calls unreliable narrators.
New York magazine is what the Observer was under that tRump son-in-law. The NYT is just a sad old lady that I read occasionally to compare with Washington Post.
Nuzzi should do a Ted talk on “ when you fall in love with your source” like Monica Lewinsky, Nuzzi is simply and older version of Lewinsky who seduced her college professor then stalked him. Regarding Haberman, it is not simply that she seduced her way into trump world, she deliberately set out to destroy Hillary Clinton and continued to put Hillary and Clinton into articles long after the 2016 election for no apparent reason other than increasing the google search hits. Haberman, Nuzzi and Lewinsky are cut from the same cloth with the exception that Lewinsky literally wore no panties.