Fueled by Donald Trump opponents, Rachel Maddow’s popularity rises
Rachel Maddow can trace the mood of her audience by looking at the ratings. Her MSNBC show’s viewership sank like a stone in the weeks following Donald Trump‘s election, as depressed liberals avoided politics, and bottomed out over the holidays. Slowly, they re-emerged, becoming active and interested again. Maddow’s audience has grown to the point where February was her show’s most-watched month since its 2008 launch. Maddow has emerged as the favorite cable news host for presidential resistors in the opening days of the Trump administration, just as Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity is one for supporters or Keith Olbermann was the go-to television host for liberals in George W. Bush‘s second term. Trump fascination has helped cable news programs across the political spectrum defy the traditional post-presidential election slump, few as dramatically as Maddow’s. Her show’s average audience of 2.3 million in February doubled its viewership over February 2016, in the midst of the presidential primaries, the Nielsen company said. “I’m grateful for it,” Maddow said one recent afternoon. “It is nice for me that it is happening at a time when I feel we are doing some of our best work.” Those two things — ratings success and Maddow’s pride in the work — don’t always intersect. “We’re making aggressive editorial decisions in terms of how far we’re willing to get off of everyone else’s news cycle,” she said, “but it’s paying off because the news cycle more often than not is catching up with us after we do something.” Maddow has decided to cover the Trump administration like a silent movie, so the show could pay more attention to what is being done rather than what is being said. The central focus is on connect-the-dots reporting about Trump’s business interests and dealings with Russia. Her show is a news cousin to HBO host John Oliver‘s “Last Week Tonight” in its willingness to dive into complex subjects that don’t seem television-friendly, and follow the stories down different alleys. Maddow sounds long-winded when it doesn’t work. When it does, it’s like an absorbing novel stuffed with characters. “It’s not like I am a teacher who is trying to extend the attention span of the American news viewer,” said Maddow, a Rhodes scholar. “I have no goal of trying to privilege complexity. It just so happens that I tend to think in 17-minute bursts.” Maddow said she and her staff try to break news, like reporting on a Department of Homeland Security report on Trump’s immigration policy, and she was aggressive in bringing the Flint, Michigan, water crisis to a national audience. More often than not, she sees her role as explaining how things work. The program spent considerable time last week on a New Yorker magazine piece about foreign investments by Trump’s real estate company. She’s determined not to get lost in the noise, particularly since she believes Trump is skillful at distracting the media with a new story — even an unflattering one — when he doesn’t like the attention being paid to another. “I pray for the day when the most important thing about the Trump administration is that the president said something inappropriate on Twitter,” she said. “There are bigger and more valuable stories to be chasing than that.” When some news organizations were upset at being barred from an informal press briefing held by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer two weeks ago, Maddow understood why. But the story didn’t really interest her. Since she doesn’t trust much of what the administration says, Maddow wondered what these reporters were really missing by not being there. “Her approach to reality and the president’s couldn’t be further apart,” said Jeff Cohen, an Ithaca University professor and liberal activist. During busy news periods, “certain voices cut through,” said NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack. “And her work is so consistently strong. She doesn’t disappoint, and she’s got a work ethic that is consistently off the charts. … She is a very original and unique voice.” While Maddow delivers opinion pieces instead of straight news, they are well-informed, he said. Lack doesn’t see Maddow as a voice of the resistance. Neither does she. “People want to draft me as an activist all the time, ascribe that role to me,” she said. “I’m not. The reason I know I’m not is that I stopped doing that in order to be the person who explained the news and delivered the news instead. It’s a very clear line to me.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
The new civics course in schools: How to avoid fake news
Teachers from elementary school through college are telling students how to distinguish between factual and fictional news — and why they should care that there’s a difference. As Facebook works with The Associated Press, FactCheck.org and other organizations to curb the spread of fake and misleading news on its influential network, teachers say classroom instruction can play a role in deflating the kind of “Pope endorses Trump” headlines that muddied the waters during the 2016 presidential campaign. “I think only education can solve this problem,” said Pat Winters Lauro, a professor at Kean University in New Jersey who began teaching a course on news literacy this semester. Like others, Lauro has found discussions of fake news can lead to politically sensitive territory. Some critics believe fake stories targeting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton helped Donald Trump overcome a large deficit in public opinion polls, and President Trump himself has attached the label to various media outlets and unfavorable reports and polls in the first weeks of his presidency. “It hasn’t been a difficult topic to teach in terms of material because there’s so much going on out there,” Lauro said, “but it’s difficult in terms of politics because we have such a divided country and the students are divided, too, on their beliefs. I’m afraid sometimes that they think I’m being political when really I’m just talking about journalistic standards for facts and verification, and they look at it like ‘Oh, you’re anti-this or -that.’” Judging what to trust was easier when the sources were clearer — magazines, newspapers or something else, said Kean senior Mike Roche, who is taking Lauro’s class. Now “it all comes through the same medium of your cellphone or your computer, so it’s very easy to blur the lines and not have a clear distinction of what’s real and what’s fake,” he said. A California lawmaker last month introduced a bill to require the state to add lessons on how to distinguish between real and fake news to the grade 7-12 curriculum. High school government and politics teacher Lesley Battaglia added fake news to the usual election-season lessons on primaries and presidential debates, discussing credible sites and sources and running stories through fact-checking sites like Snopes. There were also lessons about anonymous sources and satire. (They got a kick out of China’s dissemination of a 2012 satirical story from The Onion naming Kim Jong Un as the sexiest man alive.) “I’m making you guys do the hard stuff that not everybody always does. They see it in a tweet and that’s enough for them,” Battaglia told her students at Williamsville South High School in suburban Buffalo. “It’s kind of crazy,” 17-year-old student Hannah Mercer said, “to think about how much it’s affecting people and swaying their opinions.” Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy pioneered the idea of educating future news consumers, and not just journalists, a decade ago with the rise of online news. About four in 10 Americans often get news online, a 2016 Pew Research Center report found. Stony Brook last month partnered with the University of Hong Kong to launch a free online course. “To me, it’s the new civics course,” said Tom Boll, after wrapping up his own course on real and fake news at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. With everyone now able to post and share, gone are the days of the network news and newspaper editors serving as the primary gatekeepers of information, Boll, an adjunct professor, said. “The gates are wide open,” he said, “and it’s up to us to figure out what to believe.” That’s not easy, said Raleigh, North Carolina-area teacher Bill Ferriter, who encourages students to first use common sense to question whether a story could be true, to look at web addresses and authors for hints, and to be skeptical of articles that seem aimed at riling them up. He pointed to an authentic-looking site reporting that President Barack Obama signed an order in December banning the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. A “.co” at the end of an impostor news site web address should have been a red flag, he said. “The biggest challenge that I have whenever I try to teach kids about questionable content on the web,” said Ferriter, who teaches sixth grade, “is convincing them that there is such a thing as questionable content on the web.” Some of Battaglia’s students fear fake news will chip away at the trust of even credible news sources and give public figures license to dismiss as fake news anything unfavorable. “When people start to distrust all news sources is when people in power are just allowed to do whatever they want, said Katie Peter, “and that’s very scary.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Moderator Lester Holt under scrutiny during debate
Everyone’s aware of the stakes for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the first presidential debate, but there’s a third person in the equation who faces a different pressure: Lester Holt. The NBC News veteran is moderating his first general election debate, making him solely responsible for the questions asked each candidate and for steering the conversation. His performance will be closely watched, particularly in light of a dispute over the extent to which he should call politicians out for making untrue statements. Holt, 57, has kept quiet about his preparations. The NBC “Nightly News” anchor took over his job last year after predecessor Brian Williams was found to have lied about his role in news stories. Like the moderators for all three presidential debates this fall, it’s Holt’s first time in that role for a general election debate. He hosted a Democratic primary forum in January, and has interviewed Clinton and Trump three times each during the campaign. In a reflection of the attention that will be paid to Holt, his voter registration became an issue last week. “Lester is a Democrat,” Trump said in a Fox News Channel interview. “It’s a phony system. They are all Democrats.” Holt, however, is a registered Republican, according to New York state voting records. Asked about the misstatement on Monday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on MSNBC that it wasn’t a lie because Trump didn’t know Holt’s voter registration. Voting records show that Anderson Cooper of CNN, who is moderating the Oct. 5 debate, is registered unaffiliated with a party in New York and Chris Wallace of Fox News, the moderator on Oct. 19, is a registered Democrat in Washington, D.C. Martha Raddatz, who will join Cooper, lives in Virginia, which doesn’t register voters by party, and ABC would not discuss her affiliation. That illustrates on a small scale the issue of to what extent moderators, and journalists covering the debate, should point it out when a candidate says something untrue. It became part of the pre-debate discussion when Holt’s NBC colleague, Matt Lauer, was criticized for not confronting Trump earlier this month when the Republican falsely claimed he had not expressed support for the war in Iraq during a forum between the two candidates. The Clinton campaign says moderators should police false statements. Trump’s campaign says it’s not their role. Among journalists, there’s no consensus. Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, said on CNN Sunday that in past debates moderators have generally believed the candidates should call their opponents out when something false is said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica,” Brown said. Television networks were skittish Monday in discussing their fact-checking plans in advance. None admitted in advance to plans of flashing graphics onscreen to identify a false statement; that hasn’t been done in the past. NBC News said it is teaming with PolitiFact for digital fact-checking. CBS said it will assign fact-checkers that will provide context during the debate on the CBSNews.com website. In past years, some networks have assigned reporters post-debate to examine the accuracy of particular statements. The television industry will be watching to see if Monday’s debate can smash the previous record for the biggest presidential debate audience, the 80.6 million people who watched the only debate of the 1980 campaign between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. The most-watched debate this century was the first between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012, with 67.2 million voters, the Nielsen company said. During his television journalism career, Holt has been known more for hard work than flashiness. He was a news anchor in Chicago for 14 years before coming to NBC in 2000, and logged long hours on MSNBC during the Iraq War. The bass guitar is his off-screen passion. Last week he set aside debate prep to play during a Manhattan rooftop party for “Dateline NBC,” joining some fellow NBC employees running through songs by Alabama Shakes, Billy Squier and Jefferson Starship. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Beat the press: Donald Trump’s contempt for media is calculated
Donald Trump‘s favorite nickname for the news media is the “dishonest press.” He swaps in “disgusting press” from time to time. And sometimes, he puts it all together: “disgusting, dishonest human beings.” The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has a whole menu of takedowns for individual reporters and news organizations. In recent weeks, he’s used his microphone and his tweets to label them “third-rate,” ”not nice,” ”disgraceful,” ”phony,” ”low-life,” ”very unprofessional” and “bad people.” Or, for extra emphasis in a tweet, “BAD.” He’s also been quick to yank or withhold credentials from news organizations whose coverage he doesn’t like — most recently, The Washington Post. Trump seems to be perpetually mad at the press, but there’s a method to his madness. He sees little downside to bashing the media — and plenty of potential benefits. “It’s a truism of American politics that you don’t lose an election by criticizing the media,” said Robert Lichter, president of the private Center for Media and Public Affairs. “It plays well with the public, particularly with Republicans.” While Trump’s language is more incendiary and he lashes out more personally at reporters than typical for past candidates, he’s following a long tradition of modern politicians who shoot barbs at the messenger. Former President Dwight Eisenhower energized the 1964 Republican convention with his complaint about “sensation-seeking columnists and commentators.” Richard Nixon‘s vice president, Spiro Agnew, famously threw shade at “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the press. President George H.W. Bush, who played horseshoes with press photographers and invited reporters to White House picnics and other events, still exhorted voters during his re-election campaign to act on the bumper-sticker slogan: “Annoy the Media: Re-elect Bush.” His wife, Barbara, had some biting advice for Hillary Clinton when the incoming first lady visited the White House in November 1992: “Avoid this crowd like the plague,” Bush told Clinton, sweeping her hand toward the reporters and photographers on the South Lawn. Trump is taking the beat-the-press strategy to a whole new level. In a recent one-month period, he delivered 39 tweets skewering reporters and media organizations, mixed in with a much smaller number of positive and neutral references in his Twitter feed. Just one example: “The media is really on a witch-hunt against me. False reporting, and plenty of it – but we will prevail!” This week, Trump revoked the Post’s credentials, citing what he called the paper’s “incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting.” Other news organizations he’s banned, either short-term or permanently, include Politico, the Des Moines Register, BuzzFeed, the Daily Beast and the Huffington Post. Post editor Martin Baron called Trump’s latest move “nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.” Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of The Associated Press, said his credentialing bans do a disservice to the public. In the race for the most powerful position on the planet, she said, “the public is interested in what the candidates do and say, and having independent coverage is part of what keeps the public informed.” Why is Trump so quick to pick a fight with the press? For one thing, his over-the-top language can be a successful strategy for changing the subject when he wants to divert attention. Last month, when reporters pressed Trump to document what he’d done with millions of dollars raised for veterans, he turned on them, calling one reporter “a sleaze” and sarcastically referring to another as “a real beauty.” That language itself became a big part of the story, shifting some of the attention away from questions about his handling of the money for veterans. Trump’s constant criticism of the press also helps to inoculate him against future negative news stories. Conservatives, in particular, already are wary of the mainstream media, and Trump’s rhetoric reinforces the message that nothing from the media is to be believed. “Part of what he’s probably decided is that he wants to be very aggressive, to make sure that his supporters routinely discount any kind of news media attack,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter, said in a recent interview with Fox News. With the Republican Party in turmoil over Trump’s candidacy, the billionaire’s broadsides also serve as a unifying theme within the party. GOP faithful may have big differences with Trump on the issues, but they’re at one with him on contempt for the mainstream media. While Trump’s very public display of disdain is strategic, says Lichter, it’s also just “part of his daily dose of pugnacity.” At the same time, though, Trump can be charming in one-on-one interviews, flattering reporters and complimenting their questions. He calls many of them by their first names. He takes questions and offers considerable access, seeming to understand that for all his complaints about the press, he can’t live without them. “You know the press is the most dishonest people ever created by God,” he said at a March press conference. “So I would love to take a few questions from these dishonest people. Go ahead, press.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
