Here’s the link to Jay Rosen’s website PressThink.org.
I got the idea for this article while reading Hunter’s latest lament over the false reporting about Trump’s lies in the media at the same time as I was listening to “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell. He was interviewing NYU journalism Professor Jay Rosen about his latest article (above).
Professor Rosen is one of those professors who has to be outraged the reporting of reporters that dare to claim they are journalists.
Here’s part of Rosen’s Wikipedia profile:
Jay Rosen (born May 5, 1956) is a media critic, writer, and a professor of journalism at New York University.
Rosen has been on the journalism faculty at New York University since 1986; from 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department.
He has been one of the earliest advocates and supporters of citizen journalism, encouraging the press to take a more active interest in citizenship, improving public debate, and enhancing life. His book about the subject, What Are Journalists For? was published in 1999. Rosen is often described in the media as an intellectual leader of the movement of public journalism.[
Rosen writes frequently about issues in journalism and developments in the media. Media criticism and other articles by Rosen have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Harper's Magazine, and The Nation.
Rosen writes with great understatement and I assume irony when he says that things are merely “pretty bad” when he says this is the darkest time in U.S. history for censorship and suppression of dessent since World War I.
How bad is it? Pretty bad.
For a free press as a check on power this is the darkest time in American history since World War I, when there was massive censorship and suppression of dissent. I say this because so many things are happening at once to disarm and disable serious journalism, or to push it out of the frame. Most of these are well known, but it helps to put them all together. pressthink.org
He then goes on to describe 17 reasons he titled his article “Winter in Coming.”
“ All those things 1-17 are happening at once, and strengthening one another. The combined effect is chilling.”
He then goes on to ask
Are there any bright signs? Yes, a few.
When you ask about specific news brands (as against The Media) the trust picture looks better and explains six of them.
Rosen goes on to note that there are indications that more people are starting to trust publications like The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and others like Mother Jones, The Guardian, NPR and ProPublica. Their subscriber lists are growing, and some are adding many more journalists. Significantly, he says “As the scope of the emergency dawns, it is possible that journalists in the U.S. will be inspired to do a better job and change what needs changing. Talent (and tips) could flood in as a slumbering public for serious news awakens.” He adds “ There’s already an global movement for fact-checking in journalism. Maybe another one will emerge around the realization that fact-checking is not enough.”
Finally he reminds us that “In the U.S., the Constitution remains firmly in place, hard to alter. First Amendment protections are real and among the strongest in the world.”
Then most importantly he issues warnings about what not to do.
To summarize (you really ought to read his entire warnings):
Don’t recruit Trump loyalists into the news and opinion space as a gaudy show of balance.
Don’t settle for accusation-driven over evidence-based reporting, just to avoid drawing flak from Trump’s press-hating supporters or demonstrate how even-handed you are.
(Because Trump operates on a propaganda model)— Don’t make it all about access to the President and his aides, or preserving the routines of White House reporting, as the press corps is currently doing— mostly out of habit.
Coming hopefully tomorrow he will describe:
“measures worth taking,” given what I have said in part one. I have several small ideas, and one larger one. It involves listening better than the political system does to what’s troubling Americans, and fashioning a proper news agenda out of that. This is not a new notion, but it is newly relevant now that winter is here for the public service press.