The NYT is reckoning with their Very Bad Headline. Reporters weigh in.

[sharedvalues]

This is a fair @gabrielsnyder piece about our Very Bad Headline — knowledgeable about the subject, plainly written, deliberate — and I’m rethinking my views on Public Editors.

Link to tweet

Yay! The NYT needs a public editor. Yesterday.


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Cites an CJR article (CJR has employed a 'public editor' for the Times since the Times refuses to hire their own).

https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/nyt-headline-trump-mass-shootings.php

DEAN BAQUET, THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR of The New York Times, was at home on Monday night—as was the rest of the paper’s senior leadership (referred to internally as “the masthead”)—when the next day’s front page was being composed. Soon, it would turn into a public disaster.

At 9:13pm, Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, the statistical news site once published by the Times, sparked a social media furor with a tweet of the front page. A banner headline appeared over a pair of stories on President Trump’s White House speech addressing the weekend’s two mass shootings; Silver commented, “Not sure ‘TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM’ is how I would have framed the story.” Not long after, Joan Walsh, of The Nation and CNN, tweeted that she had canceled her Times subscription and urged others to do the same. “I know a lot of folks will tell me I’m wrong. I will miss it. But I can’t keep rewarding such awful news judgment,” she wrote. “‘Trump Urges Unity Against Racism’ is almost as bad as their full-page Comey letter coverage just before 2016 election. Nobody learns.” (A spokesperson for the Times declined to say how many cancellations the newspaper has seen, but acknowledges, “We have seen a higher volume of cancellations today than is typical.”)

[sharedvalues]

1. But here is the TRUE problem: exec editor Dean Baquet.

He acknowledges that people may have a different view of what the Times is, but he doesn’t blame the marketing. “It’s not because of the ads; it’s because Donald Trump has stirred up very powerful feelings among Americans. It’s made Americans, depending on your point of view, very angry and very mistrustful of institutions. And some may think newsrooms like the New York Times and the Washington Post are supposed to be Donald Trump’s adversaries or the leaders of the adversarial movement to take down Donald Trump.” The loudest proponent of that theory is, of course, Trump—which, oddly, aligns the president with some of the people who are most opposed to him.

This, of course, is just total bullcrap. Baquet is deliberately obfuscating. Those that hate the Times headline do NOT WANT the Times to be any sort of 'resistance'. But we do expect truth. We expect the Times to convey the truth of what is going on. And, in that, they have failed us. That is why we are upset.

So how does the Times negotiate the disconnect? “It is difficult,” Baquet says. “I think the way you do it is you just keep working, you keep trying to break stories, you try to do analysis that explains the moment we’re in, you try to diversify your staff to include different viewpoints. You just try to work very hard.”

If that sounds unsatisfying, it’s because Baquet, the first African-American executive editor of the Times, doesn’t see this moment in American history as particularly aberrant.

So foolish. I get his argument. But there has not been an open racist president of the US before, and not a party that is using racism to destroy our government to cut taxes on the rich. 2019 is a different moment than 1992. Baquet appears to not know much about history. The party realignment in the 1960s - so that Republicans are now the party of billionaires and racists - is what makes this moment difficult. And dangerous.

[sharedvalues]

2. Update: journalist Will Bunch calls for Baquet's resignation

From Jay Rosen and Will bunch

Link to tweet

[RandySF]

3. Maggie Habermann's been whining about it all night.

[sharedvalues]

4. I actually think Haberman isn't really the problem

It's the editors who write the headlines that are the problem - apparently Tom Jolly has that job according to article above.

And Dean Baquet, the executive editor, is really the biggest problem. I strongly hope he resigns- the country will be better off.


http://pressthink.org/2019/08/a-current-list-of-my-top-problems-in-pressthink-august-2019/

[yonder]

5. "Dean Baquet,...was at home on Monday night"

More like out to lunch.

[sharedvalues]

6. More important discussion about the Times' response

Link to tweet

I agree with both of these comments from Joan Walsh and Jay Rosen (as mentioned above).

Mr. Baquet and the Times are strawmanning their critics' arguments. We don't think they are really trying to help Trump or mollify him. In actual fact, we realize they are pushed to bothsidesism because of (1) a fear of the rightwing media and (2) a strange committment to both sides coverage at the expense of truth.

We don't want them to write headlines attacking Trump unfairly. We just want THE TRUTH.

As Beto said, "Members of the press, what the F?! You KNOW the answers to those questions (that you're asking me)."