journalism

“Experts are divided”

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged journalism law on by

A Washington Post article header has drawn outrage on Bluesky. Here it is:

How Trump is blasting through norms and testing limits of his power
 
Experts say President Donald Trump’s actions have pushed the country into fraught territory. They are divided on whether he has breached constitutional guardrails.

That implies that a significant number of experts think Trump hasn’t “breached constitutional guardrails.” Who are these experts? The one person they cite is Steven Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern University and co-chair of the Federalist Society. The article says:

He praised Trump’s embrace of a concept called the “unitary executive theory,” which posits that the president has supreme power over the executive branch, including the ability to remove officials.
 

In particular, Calabresi said, he was pleased with Trump’s moves to dismiss members of the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.

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Equating harassment with protest, and denying due process

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged education journalism law on by

The situation with harassment of Jewish students and the Trump administration’s actions is a mess where serious wrongs turn up on all sides. It’s vital, and difficult, to evaluate actions on principles rather than on tribal criteria. On the one hand, there is harassment and intimidation that hides under the innocent name of “protest.” On the other, there’s the improper invocation of laws and denial of due process against people accused of doing that.

Governmental overreach is the bigger concern, especially when the current executive branch is aggressively expanding its power. At the same time, intimidation on campus is a serious concern, and downplaying it as mere “protest” only gives the administration’s actions a facade of credibility. An example is a Washington Post article with the headline “New Trump demand to colleges: Name protesters — and their nationalities.”
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Unraveling DOGE reporting

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged DOGE journalism law liberty on by

A lot of what’s allegedly happening with DOGE doesn’t make sense. Some things just can’t be happening as reported; others need explanations that no one is giving. The news media are doing their usual bad job of delivering facts.

To start with, what is DOGE? The “Department of Governmental Efficiency” isn’t a department of the government, in spite of its name. Officially, it’s a “special commission” created by the president. It has no power over anybody beyond its own employees. Yet we keep hearing of government employees being fired by DOGE. A notice of termination by DOGE to, for example, a Department of Energy employee has no more significance than one from me. Either the terminations are actually coming from somewhere else, or people are complying for no apparent reason.
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Rewriting the news in place

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged fake news journalism on by

This weekend I was informed of a truly outrageous statement by Karoline Leavitt. At least it would have been truly outrageous if it were true, but it now looks like fake news. A response I got on Bluesky pointed at an article on the news aggregator Newsbreak, with the headline “Karoline Leavitt shocks as she tells press ‘Jesus didn’t have electricity either’.” This seemed outrageous even for the Trump team; it wouldn’t fit their line to admit that tariffs could result in privations. I checked for confirmation and found an MSN article with the same claim. This made me think it was reliable. I was wrong.
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The death of objectivity

This entry was posted in Commentary Writer ethics Writing and tagged ethics journalism news writing on by

Try to find a news source that just gives you the facts, instead of trying to sway your opinion in every story. You can find some on the local level, but national news sources that care about objective reporting are rare. You only have a choice between sites with “left-wing” and “right-wing” agendas. The result is that people don’t trust the news they get. They especially notice when people they like are hit with distortion and selective criticism. They’re likely to turn to sources whose biases match theirs, even if they’re less trustworthy than the mainstream ones.

This is a big factor behind Trumpism. A site which bashes him day in and out, pulling quotes out of context and picking on minor things, is less convincing than one which presents the facts and lets people draw their conclusions. When they repeatedly note that Trump has failed to back up a claim with evidence, yet never do the same with Democrats who do the same, people dismiss the stories as hit pieces. I just came across a CNN top headline: “Trump’s wild and lewd rhetoric reaches a new extreme.” I try to keep myself informed, I know Trump is horrible, and I don’t want to read that article. Do they really think anyone inclined even a little favorably to Trump is going to think, “This article may contain important facts. I should read it.”?
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