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Open Thread: Reading Is Fundamental As Is Journalism

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I want to kill a few birds with one post: publish an open thread, discuss a topic in which most of us have an interest, and address an essential issue critical to our survival over the next several years.

The topic is books — what have you been reading or about to read which is enlightening, edifying, and worth discussing with others? What book(s) do you believe others will find necessary as the SHTF?

The essential issue is journalism — apparently we need to burn it all down and start with the basics, by which I mean crack a book used as journalism curriculum in J-school.

The book I find essential was recommended by journalism instructors I once worked with. At less than 300 pages in paperback, it’s a straightforward and slim read: The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. There have been four editions published to date, any of them are worth reading, and there are +100 copies available now through used book reseller Alibris so you don’t have to go to Bezos’ Amazon.

The frontispiece sets readers off in the right direction. It’s not artwork but text and it’s the outline of the rest of the text:

THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM ARE:
• Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
• Its first loyalty is to citizens.
• Its essence is a discipline of verification.
• Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
• It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
• It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
• It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
• It must keep the news comprehensive and in proportion.
• Its practitioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.
• Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.

Based on this manifesto, it’s difficult to say that the Washington Post is a legitimate journalistic venture. Long-time editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned this past week from WaPo. The spiking of her cartoon which criticized billionaire oligarchs and media businesses for sucking up to as-yet-uninaugurated Trump — including WaPo’s ultimate owner Jeff Bezos — demonstrated yet again WaPo’s inability to fulfill the necessary attributes of authentic journalism.

The public should be demanding the resignation of WaPo’s editor-in-chief, Will Lewis. They should have been doing so for months now, after a string of gross failures not the least of which is WaPo’s elevation of the fucked-up politicized prosecution of Hunter Biden, but the obvious preference for Trump in its coverage in spite of Trump’s manifest unsuitability for the White House.

WaPo’s management doesn’t even have the balls to come out and say it has a preferred ideology on which it frames its published work. Instead it hangs the burden on its staff.

You know damned well if it spiked Telnaes’ cartoon, it’s spiking other content, too, in ways which are much less obvious to the public.

The public bears considerable responsibility for this situation as well. It does not respond as it should to WaPo’s failures. It’s this lack of appropriate response which encouraged me to pick up The Elements of Journalism once again, because we need to get on the same page and have the same understanding about our relationship with the Fourth Estate.

The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There’s no daylight between our freedom of speech and that of the press. We need to stop acting like the press is a wholly separate entity, because it doesn’t exist without us as readers. Only the business of the press is separate so long as our representatives don’t choose to regulate it otherwise. The right of the free press is our right as citizens in this democracy.

Elements explains to its readers:

What do we do as citizens if these rights are not met? What action, for instance, can and should we take if a newspaper reports on a case of business or political fraud but doesn’t follow up on the controversial issues it raises? First, of course, such contact works best if it comes constructively, as advice and information rather than condemnation. Second, if it is ignored it should be offered again, perhaps through more than one means. If, for example, an e-mail is not acknowledged, send it again, and then pick up the phone or write a letter, with a copy to the editor in chief. If you want to make other citizens aware of your complaint, keep a public record of your attempts to contact the organization and their reactions on a blog.

What can we do if as citizens we offer news organizations this feedback and our contributions, ideas, or criticisms are ignored? Rights mean something only if they are viewed as rights. At that point, withhold your business. Drop the subscription. Stop watching. Most important, write a clear explanation of why you have done so and send it to the editor or media critics, or post it on your own site. …

There’s a bit more reminding us that passivity is our failing. We get the media we fail to demand.

We need to learn how to demand better in a big fat hurry.

New WaPo Boss, Will Lewis, Brags about Dick Pic Sniffing that Fails to Correct Past Errors

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In a predictably solicitous interview between Ben Smith and the new publisher of WaPo, Will Lewis, Smith asked Lewis how the WaPo has escaped “becoming the kind of partisan brand that others have.”

Do you think the Post has escaped becoming the kind of partisan brand that others have?

For those that read our brilliant opinion section, if you read our news, if you read our Hunter Biden art sales story yesterday; if you read our balanced and incredibly interesting coverage about Trump-Haley; if you do that, then you will know that we are the most objective news organization in America and we have the most balanced, diverse opinion section where we have opinions from all sorts of people. It’s like an oasis of calm and considered thought.

The very first story that Lewis boasted about was this Matt Viser story, largely simple regurgitation of the publicly-released transcripts of the Georges Bergès and Kevin Morris transcripts.

Viser describes the cost to Bergès’ business of the scandal (while Viser mentions Bergès’ comments about politics, he doesn’t mention that the guy likely being threatened by Trump supporters described financially and electorally supporting Trump).

Bergès said that while he and Biden have become friendly, he let the contract lapse last year. “From a business perspective, it hasn’t been the best decision for me,” Bergès said, citing security issues, death threats and assumptions about his political affiliations.

“It was a little bit more than I could chew, that obviously I kind of wanted my life back,” he said.

He also describes that an earlier story of his, which largely created this scandal, came up repeatedly.

Bergès was asked numerous times during his interview about White House involvement in his arrangement with the Georges Bergès Gallery as first described by The Washington Post in July 2021. The Post reported that White House attorneys, concerned about potential ethical issues, urged that any buyers of Hunter’s paintings be kept confidential, a practice that was adopted.

Bergès testified that he never spoke with anyone from the White House, and claimed that he was surprised to read reports about the arrangement. At the time, he did not respond to phone and email messages from The Post, but a person who said she was calling on behalf of Bergès confirmed to The Post that all sales would be kept secret from Hunter Biden.

What Dick Pic Sniffing Matt Viser doesn’t reveal, however, is that Bergès debunked a key premise of Viser’s earlier story: that he was selling Hunter’s art for up to $500,000 a painting. That claim appeared in the lede and — directly attributed to Bergès — several paragraphs into the story. That price tag is the basis of Richard Painter’s concerns about the deal and art critic Marc Straus’ complaints about the prices.

White House officials have helped craft an agreement under which purchases of Hunter Biden’s artwork — which could be listed at prices as high as $500,000 — will be kept confidential from even the artist himself, in an attempt to avoid ethical issues that could arise as a presidential family member tries to sell a product with a highly subjective value.

[snip]

But the arrangement is drawing detractors, including ethics experts as well as art critics who suggest that Hunter Biden’s art would never be priced so high if he had a different last name. Bergès has said that prices for the paintings would range from $75,000 to $500,000.

“The whole thing is a really bad idea,” said Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. “The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. I mean, those are awfully high prices.”

[snip]

Although some art critics have praised Hunter Biden’s art, several contacted by The Post found the asking prices of $75,000 to $500,000 hard to justify.

Marc Straus, who for the past decade has owned a gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said that among high-end art dealers, “nobody would ever start at these prices” for someone who has no professional training and has never sold art on the commercial market.

“There has to be a résumé that reasonably supports when you get that high,” Straus said. “To me, it’s pure ‘how good is it and what’s this artist’s potential, what’s the résumé?’ On that basis, it would be an entirely different price. But you give it a name like Hunter Biden, maybe they’ll get the price.”

[my emphasis]

What Viser didn’t bother to tell readers, though, is that claim — that Bergès was selling these paintings for up to $500,000 — was debunked in the transcript.

Mr. Bishop. The Washington Post article that’s marked as exhibit number 3, have you read that before?

Mr. Bergès. Which one’s that?

Mr. Bishop. Do you have the article?

Ms. Forrest. H, I think.

Mr. Bergès. H? I’ve never read that before.

Mr. Bishop. It says in the one, two, three, four, fifth paragraph, the concluding 10 line says, “Bergès has said that prices for the paintings would range from $75,000 to $500,000.” Is that false?

Mr. Bergès. Yes.

Mr. Bishop. Did you ever say that?

Mr. Bergès. I don’t recall ever saying that.

Mr. Bishop. Okay.

Mr. Bergès. I know that there was an article from the Artnet that came out and said that and I don’t know if it was my publicist who had said that or I don’t know where that number came from. But I do remember having conversations with my publicist and asking how in the heck did they come out with that number because I didn’t have anything for $400,000, $500,000, or $300,000. The price range was pretty realistic. I mean, it’s not — if you looked at a New York Post article that I can recall where they had an art critic say this prices should be around 40 to $85,000 from his professional opinion and it was the Post.

So but there was nothing above 3, 4, 500. So that was inaccurate. [my emphasis]

It was debunked not just in Bergès’ denial. But it was debunked in the prices for the artwork described in the testimony. The prices at which Bergès had sold Hunter’s paintings by the time of that story were $13,000 and $75,000; Kevin Morris testified to spending $40,000 on two paintings before that.

Sure, Viser didn’t totally invent this false claim, as he has some false claims in the past. But he also admits, both in the original and this updated story, that he never spoke to Bergès personally.

His error, however unintentional, mainstreamed the claim that Hunter Biden was getting rich off inflated prices for artwork. It manufactured the idea that people were going to launder money to the Biden family through Bergès.

And Viser didn’t even mention that Bergès refuted that claim. Viser didn’t mention that a key premise of this entire scandal, a premise largely mainstreamed thanks to his own story, was wrong.

This wrong premise did direct harm to Bergès’ business and his life (to say nothing of Hunter Biden’s). And WaPo doesn’t even have the good grace to admit that it was an error.

This was a manufactured ethical scandal, and WaPo won’t even admit to the erroneous premise behind the scandal that they created.