Journalism (and related media) 50 years after Watergate

As Ace reported last night, it appears that Stephen Colbert's staffers were arrested for unlawful entry to House office buildings after hours. GREAT COMEDIC TIMING. Clown noses on or off?

Speaking of Watergate, Steven Hayward wrote a piece on the 50th anniversary of the Watergate Break-in yesterday. Interesting if you are looking for some weekend reading.

It would break the hearts of some journalists to find out that the Woodward and Bernstein movie wasn't the whole truth. Such an inspiration!

Today is the 50th anniversary of the infamous Watergate break-in that toppled Richard Nixon and transformed American politics for the worse ever after. The Watergate saga, and especially the media's role in it, remains large a heroic tale for liberalism, though second thoughts about the whole matter are starting to emerge.

The final irony of this Tale of the Tape is that Nixon was appalled when President Johnson explained the Oval Office taping system to him before he took office in 1969. Nixon ordered the taping system removed, but reinstalled another taping system in February 1971, after his concern for leaks and the accuracy of notes of decisions taken in innumerable Oval Office meetings, along with his desire to use the tapes as an aide memoire for his inevitable post-presidency writings, got the better of him. Nixon's taping system differed in one significant way from Johnson's: while Johnson had to turn his taping system on manually (which means he could be selective about what was taped), Nixon's was voice-activated. . .

Interesting evidence about what really happened follows.

More on Watergate and its legacy over the weekend. I've got Week in Pictures to get done!

Week in Pictures, Liberal Exhaustion Edition.

Meanwhile, Reuters, has released its 2022 "digital news report", which includes information on attitudes and consumption of news around the world. The "news business" ain't what it used to be. TicTok for news?

There is a PDF of the whole report, plus breakouts by country. Here's a short summary for the YouTube crowd:

And here are some highlights from the USA, just in case the graphics above zipped by a little too fast:

A new presidential administration in its first full year, and continuing disruption caused by the ongoing pandemic, presented challenges and opportunities for US news organisations. Remote work has become standard, health reporting is increasingly recognised as a vital public service, and many outlets have launched new products - from newsletters to podcasts to video to virtual events - to keep audiences informed.

. . . Early signs suggest that attention to news rose initially with Russia's war in Ukraine - in particular, 24-hour cable news outlets saw viewership surge in March - but longer term trends continue to point to exhaustion from a demanding news cycle.

Trust in the news media also continued to decline. The share of Americans who trust news generally fell 3pp, to 26%, while only 41% now say they trust the news they themselves use. These trends coincide with shrinking confidence even in highly regarded institutions, such as science, medicine, and the military. . .

The numbers are dismal for lots of major institutions.

In this highly charged environment, journalists have struggled to respond to disinformation campaigns related to the COVID-19 vaccine. Coverage of the networks that spread hoaxes and conspiracy theories - sometimes called the 'misinformation beat' - is increasingly common in major print and broadcast newsrooms. Public controversies like the furore over Joe Rogan's immensely popular Spotify podcast, where a succession of guests aired bogus and dangerous medical claims related to COVID, have also focused attention on the issue. However, Tow Center research suggests this truth-telling has uncertain effects in a highly polarised climate.1

"Tow Center research suggests this truth-telling has uncertain effects in a highly polarised climate."

"Truth-telling." They use such excellent, unimpeachable fact-checkers who read stuff off approved sources on the internet. Then they often incorrectly pretend that the stuff they read pertains to whatever they are passing judgment on.

This particular outfit seems to have a special hatred for Joe Rogan.

The resources newsrooms need to counter these trends are significant, yet it is still a minority who pay for online news (19%). Some large brands continue to see growth, such as the New York Times, which had surpassed 8 million digital subscriptions by the end of 2021, mostly to its news products, but helped by non-news products such as cooking content and games (the company also purchased the popular Wordle game in January 2022), as well as the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. Even local newspaper chains have seen gains in digital subscriptions, and Axios continues to expand its local newsletter model into additional cities.

The NYT is supported by its cooking content and games?

There is information on local news outlets. I think maintaining those is a good idea. Maybe not in a form that Reuters would prefer. And comments on the news business, unionization, Google, The Facebook Papers, and more.

Not much about regular old blogging. Maybe it's in the PDF.

Oh, and on that "truth-telling": National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy calls on Big Tech to censor renewable energy critics in the name of "public health".

In the face of widespread public outrage, the Biden Administration last month backed away from a proposal to create a disinformation board at the Department of Homeland Security.

But now it's back with new demands to censor its critics, this time using a tactic that has worked in the recent past: by framing them as a threat to public health.

In a talk with Axios, Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said, "The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation."

After an Axios reporter asked, "Isn't misinformation and disinfo around climate a threat to public health itself?" McCarthy responded, "Oh, absolutely... We are talking, really, about risks that no longer need to be tolerated to our communities."

McCarthy pointed specifically to those who criticized the failure of weather-dependent renewables during the blackouts in Texas in February 2021. But many of those criticisms were factual. Over the last decade in Texas, investors sunk over $53 billion on weather-dependent energy sources, mostly wind turbines, which alongside frozen fossil fuel plants were largely unavailable during the cold snap in February. That was only partly because of the cold and mostly because of low wind speeds.

So, misinformation and disinformation are TRUTHS that conflict with The Regime's narrative, especially if repeated too often. Got it.

Music

Even today, The Country's in the Very Best of Hands

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's Thread, June 11, Why baby formula recipes are often old recipes in the USA Plus Operation Fly Formula and other Biden Administration efforts to "build back better". Judy Garland would have been 100 years old last week.

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 11:24 AM

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