Fake news - news that the mainstream media and politicians don't appreciate the public knowing. Life was so much easier when there were three TV channels, no internet, and no Amazon for buying books. Curiosity, logic, and a fondness for asking questions are things very dangerous to those demanding belief in a given narrative.
2
The fourth paragraph of this article does a pretty good job of paraphrasing Robert Jay Lifton's concept of the thought-terminating cliche, which Dr. Lifton defined in his book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. "Fake news," is a classic thought-terminating cliche.
3
Actually the contempt which a large majority of Americans feel for the mainstream media press has been more than earned by their supine acceptance of the official government versions & refusal to investigate everything from the political assassinations of the 1960s to the contemporary railroading of innocent Muslim men entrapped by the FBI as "terrorists." . . .
The wide spread, nation wide alliance, between drug manufacturers, drug dealers and police forces in American cities, they refuse to investigate. . . .
The multiple bloody wars the US is waging are not reported. You can forgive the public for being surprised that the US was withdrawing our Army from Syria. Thanks to the press, most Americans had no idea that thousands of our soldiers were ever there in the first place! . . . In sum, this bizarrely smug & self-congratulatory, praise-filled review by your publication, for a book by lawyer for your publication, is itself a fine example of how very far our narcissistic & elitist media have become removed from reality.
1
For responsible journalism to flourish, the ordinary reader must presume that the reporter is telling the truth about what he/she is reporting. Such presumption is based on trust, which is the real victim of Trump and his supporters' cries of "fake news." You don't have to be a good journalist to understand that the assault on trust is deeply damaging to our democracy.
15
@Charles Michener trust is meaningless to Trump. He relies on lies, manipulation, vindictiveness and transactionally giving Christians conservative judges, the wealthy tax cuts, and corporations less regulation.
4
I'd love to see Judith Miller's access to Scooter Libby detailed by a NYT lawyer who was there at the time. Was Scooter a sort of ventriloquist making her in part his puppet, or was there a more nuanced element to her reporting ?
Similarly, I have seen straight, solid factual NYT stories gradually achieve a higher and higher Headline-Hijacking by Trump-enthused headline writers in recent years. Some of the headlines have been truly absurd, where a straight news story somehow ends up with a headline mentioning Trump, when he had nothing at all to do with the content of the article.
Wouldn't we be better able to see "the truth" if all the media, including this Gray Lady, could stop giving so much space and time -- piling on with the references and the spotlights -- to this one unlovable oaf ?
5
@mitchell : As a former longtime copy editor at two metro dailies (and as one who has acquaintances at the NYT), I urge you to share some of these headlines you bemoan. I have yet to meet a CE who mentions in a hed someone who isn't crucial to the article.
In addition, every hed is OK'd (or nixed) by a supervising CE and then by a section editor. No hed that you're describing would make it into print.
Nice try, tho.
9
In this review Bharara writes: "He concedes, moreover, that The Times’s “Op-Ed columns and contributors are overwhelmingly anti-Trump, every day.” "
No, journalists are not "anti-Trump".
It comes off they way because they are pro-truth.
38
@ Baba As has always been true, the newspapers in the United States promote the interests of the rich people who own them. There never saw a war they would not support. They never saw a Socialist they would not oppose. Their smug claim to represent the "public" are indeed fake.
3
I have a long standing view that a good newspaper should occasionally (if not often) make the reader angry and by doing so make them think. If this exposes them to legal challenges from the small-minded in the public eye then "so it goes." It means that the newspaper is performing its civic duty.
Otherwise I disagree with some of the comments here. Much of the challenge we have with the distribution of the news is related to big data based distribution algorithms. People who rely on newsgathering solutions are being fed only what they like to read not what they should read and much less not what they NEED to read.
This from someone with 4 newspaper subscriptions in two countries spanning both sides of the political chasm.
10
A very persuasive review. I look forward to reading the book--and any book Mr. Bharara about his own cases.
7
When I was a reporter at Star Publications, a newspaper group that covered 50 square miles of Chicago's southwestern suburbs, in the 1980s, our brilliant editor-in-chief Lester Sons required all reporters log onto the computer system every morning with the same password -- truth.
10
I spent my professional life in the news business equally divided between reporting and anchoring and the claim of fake news as applied by President Trump is not surprising since I've heard it in one fashion or another from many subjects whose own alleged wrong doing was featured in my own reports. In some cases it was enough to get my managers to back away from certain stories... not because they weren't true but I think because a business mind set dislikes controversy and wants to avoid it or the loss of revenue it can cause. As a consequence reporters often are required to fight two battles; one to get the facts from the subject of their reports and one with their own management to report it . What is surprising is how quickly the claim of "fake news" has been adopted by a vocal public and the willingness to apply it to the entirety of the news business no matter what. It leads me to think that many Americans have no respect for the first Amendment fundamental freedom.
What purpose can the cry "fake news" have when it is not "fake" other than to first ignore and then discredit legitimate concerns. That is the scariest thing about America today.
25
“It doesn’t really matter how much freedom the press has in a society if the press is not believed. A distrusted press is little different from a shackled press.”
Dictators can force various newspapers or TV channels or radio stations to close shop; this is one way to muzzle the fourth estate.
The other way would be to delegitimize it by constantly calling it FAKE. This is harder to do unless there is a significant sized gullible audience, such as we have today.
But the effects of constantly calling it FAKE NEWS will last longer. We may elect a new POTUS in 2020 but the deep rooted effects of muzzling the fourth estate will take much longer to be reversed.
27
The problem with the press today can be traced to one person: Roger Ailes. The man who created Fox News created the template that practically all American news organizations follow today including the Times and especially the Post. He showed how a news organization could take a side and be openly biased politically without technically lying about anything. He also showed that there were big bucks in the venture. Now everybody plays this game. Readers who are liberal believe the Times or MSNBC are the truth. Conservatives think Fox News or the WSJ are the truth. Centrists like me don't trust any of them.
7
@rpe123
This false equivalency is a big part of the problem. It promotes an unjustified cynicism by making all news outlets appear equally culpable.
Fox News is not only openly biased, they technically lie, as you put it. They just make stuff up, and they do it intentionally. While The Times may be biased and make mistakes, they don't create phony "facts" out of whole cloth. But Fox does just that.
46
@rpe123 : You clearly have no idea how reporters and editors operate. I do, having worked in newsrooms for 10+ years, during which time I often looked at successive versions of a reporter's article -- successive versions that ensured balanced coverage.
When comparing, say, Fox vs WaPo or NYT coverage of today's Manafort sentencing, of course you're going to see differences. But that's because Fox omits stuff so that stories fit their spin; seeing more info in the WaPO or the NYT is evidence of thoroughness, not of bias.
I remember a Twitter post that showed varied coverage at the jury stage of the 1st Manfort trial: The hed from every news outlet but Fox noted that he'd been found guilty of 8 charges; Fox's was that a mistrial had been declared for 10 counts -- no mention of "guilty of 8."
See how that works?
23
Trump has done more to destroy this country than any ten people that I can think of. He's a walking disaster, and we will pay for tolerating his antics.
Like the general said: "there are smart officers and dumb officers. There are lazy officers and busy officers...the ones that scare me are the dumb, busy officers."
We're in trouble, and it will get worse.
41
@Al Packer
" .. Trump has done more to destroy this country than any ten people that I can think of .."
Oh, you forget Hillary Clinton?
Bill Clinton?
Elizabeth Warren?
Bernie Sanders?
It was an honor, helping you remember. Have a day.
3
Nice write-up. We need more honest lawyers like Preet Bharara and David E. McCraw to protect us from the liars and conspiracy freaks. Unfortunately, the average person in this country is obsessed with celebrity and loud-mouth phonies.
We can only hope that reason and honesty in the News will prevail. Our founding fathers knew that the only hope for the average man was a free press and the ability to question and challenge the evil ones. Fingers crossed!
43
@doc Thanks for your well-thought out comment, doc. I was going to say that the byline of Preet Bharara on the book review led me to give the book a 10 point bonus at the start. I'm not a First Amendment lawyer or litigator of any kind (my handle says it all), but I deeply admire the press (when it does its job) and the reporters, editors and lawyers, some of whom I have known, who keep our so-far still free press going. That's also why, although I live 1300 miles away, I have been a subscriber to the NYT for around 20 years, as well as a subscriber to the Miami Herald, my hometown paper, for over 45 years. Senior subscribers are a fading market, and the young are apparently not stepping up. Support for professional media, well written and well edited, is crucial.
16
@doc
"The average person," please.
And if you think that change doesn't matter, ask yourself why you didn't write "the average woman" -- and why "man" has for so long been a synonym for "person" (it's because women had no agency in the world for hundreds of years).
Please don't use language to de-person us -- we face enough daily obstacles already. Thanks.
2
Where was Mr. McCraw on the Times' coverage of the Covington kids in the D.C. dust-up, in particular, coverage of Nicholas Sandmann? Sandmann through Lin Wood is suing both WAPO and CNN, and may well sue the Times according to the list of entities told to retain their files pending possible litigation. This situation of alleged media malpractice was discussed at length by Wood and Mark Levin on Levin's TV show last evening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1iUtWmHvuI
5
@Dave Oedel
Those lawsuits are a joke. But, if it makes the family of an ill-behaved adolescent boy happy, hey, why not? This is America, land of the litigious. Everybody sues everybody.
15
Mark Levin.
No wonder it comes as a shock, that Mr. McGraw is a laywer rather than a reporter, and that one suspects he has plenty to do in dealing with actual cases involving the Times.
@Dave Oedel....
Scary comment. It is one thing to have to listen to a dummy like Donald Trump repeat ad nausea his lies and conspiracy theories. It is quite another to promote Mark Levin, who is admittedly a very smart right wing conservative. In Mr. Levin's case, he can make a lie or a conspiracy theory seem logical. To the less intelligent, his arguments seem to make sense. This is very dangerous.
The media, especially social media, can be evil at times. Nicholas Sandmann was definitely mistreated. Lin Wood? An opportunist lawyer of the worst kind.
4
From the very moment Trump was elected, I repeatedly voiced two haunting concerns I had to my family and friends. No, they were not concerns about North Korea or the end of Obamacare. They were and still are: interference with the justice department and suppression of the press. I am grateful every day for the New York Times and the Washington Post. These publications are vital in educating Americans how the current president has sought to denigrate and evilly promote distrust in the justice department and the press. "It Can't Happen Here" (Sinclair Lewis1935) spells it out.
63