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<\/p>\nTrying to find something to discuss today besides the latest war news and the latest right-wing conspiracy thinking. Just one linked item today, I think, then some endpiece items.<\/p>\n
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(Graphic by Robert Reich.)
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Here’s a counter-intuitive piece by Robert Reich<\/a>, as liberal or progressive an economist as one could want, and a professor for many years at UC Berkeley. Here is a piece on his Substack site<\/a> called Why I don’t trust the mainstream media<\/a>, subtitled, “And how I keep up with the news nonetheless.” (From December, though I just saw it recently via Fb.)<\/p>\n I say this is counter-intuitive because it’s usually those on the right railing against the MSM. So I read this with interest. It turns out his concerns are about what I would call media literacy — understanding how the press works in general, why their priorities aren’t yours, and how you need to understand them. Not about being duplicitous, like the right-wing sites. I’ll quote a bit:<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also grown a bit wary of the mainstream media \u2013- the New York Times,<\/em> Washington Post<\/em>, CNN, and other dominant outlets \u2014 not because they peddle \u201cfake news\u201d (their reporting is usually first-rate) but because of three more subtle biases.<\/p>\n First, they often favor the status quo. Mainstream journalists wanting to appear serious about public policy rip into progressives for the costs of their proposals, but never ask self-styled \u201cmoderates\u201d how they plan to cope with the costs of doing nothing or doing too little about the same problems.<\/p>\n A Green New Deal might be expensive but doing nothing about the climate crisis will almost certainly cost far more. Medicare for All will cost a lot, but the price of doing nothing about America\u2019s cruel and dysfunctional healthcare system will soon be in the stratosphere.<\/p>\n Second, the mainstream media often fail to report critical public choices. Any day now, the Senate will approve giving $768 billion to the military for this fiscal year. That\u2019s billions more than the Pentagon sought. It\u2019s about\u00a0four times<\/em>\u00a0the size of Biden\u2019s Build Back Better bill, which would come to around $175 billion a year. But where\u2019s the reporting on the effects of this spending on the national debt, or on inflation, or whether it\u2019s even necessary?<\/p>\n Third, the mainstream media indulge in false equivalences \u2014 <\/em>claiming that certain Republican and<\/em> Democratic lawmakers are emerging as \u201ctroublemakers<\/a>\u201d within their parties or that extremists \u201con both sides<\/a>\u201d are \u201cradicalizing each other\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So what media does he read?<\/p>\n I read the Guardian<\/em>, the American Prospect<\/em> (which, full disclosure, I helped found thirty years ago), Mother Jones, <\/em>and The Atlantic<\/em>. I follow several blogs (Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo, for example). I listen to the always thoughtful Democracy Now<\/em>. And I subscribe to a few newsletters (I hope you like this<\/em> one and spread word of it).<\/p>\n But even with news sources I trust, I still ask myself: how are choices being framed? What\u2019s being left out? What big underlying issues are being assumed away or obscured?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I see a major flaw in journalism as being about day to day issues, ignoring large term trends and threats (as in his third paragraph quoted above). But if you talk about those too often, people just tune you out, so there is no good solution.<\/p>\n \\\\\\<\/p>\n