Consider This from NPR - What Lessons Should News Organizations Learn From Trump's Presidency?

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

There's is a reckoning happening across the media. Major news organizations are reconsidering what they cover and how. The Trump presidency is one big reason for the self-examination. But this new scrutiny goes beyond politics — beyond Washington, D.C.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. When pro-Trump rioters went marauding through the halls of Congress a few weeks ago, CNN commentator Keith Boykin tweeted, I warned you. He posted this clip from 2019. He calls for civil war. He divides the country. He didn't repeat it. Well, he encourages civil war. Boykin is black. And in that 2019 segment, he was talking with two white panelists about some of Donald Trump's tweets. Boykin saw them as a threat of civil war,

and the other panelists shook their heads. In the last four years, a lot of Black journalists have had this experience. They rang alarm bells that their white colleagues ignored or dismissed. Holding him to a lower standard. He should not be behaving this way. You know, you can go back and watch them just literally being laughed at by their counterparts at the time. Karen Atiyah is the global opinions editor

for the Washington Post. We're always the canaries in the coal mine in many ways. And she says it often takes something drastic for everyone else to wake up, like that attack on the Capitol. I saw a lot of my white peers just shocked that, you know, such a thing could happen, that these dark forces could then turn upon our very democracy in and of itself. And I think that's what a lot of Black and non-white journalists have been saying all these years.

Do you think those journalists are being heard today? I mean, you tell me. Are you listening now? Consider this. News organizations have learned some painful lessons in the last four years, recognizing that the stories we choose to cover and how we cover them have lasting consequences in people's lives. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Friday, January 29th.

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NPR's Rough Translation might be the podcast for you. Yes, finally, someone else. Give us your accents and your origin stories, your cross-cultural misfits yearning to just be, and listen to Rough Translation on NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. There's a reckoning happening across the media. Major news organizations are reconsidering what we cover and why. And the Trump presidency is one big reason for the self-examination, but this new scrutiny goes beyond politics,

beyond Washington. About 10 years ago, my husband was accused of a felony that he didn't commit. This is a caller named Rachel who contacted the public radio show 1A in 2019. She says her husband was eventually acquitted for that felony.

But there are still pretty misleading, sensationalized news articles available online. For people like Rachel's husband, news stories like this can hurt job prospects, affect your housing, and complicate your personal life for years. We've tried to get these articles taken down, but most places have refused. And we're concerned that this information being available online might jeopardize or might already have jeopardized chances at employment and stuff like that. Some newspapers are now asking, how long should someone have to pay for a mistake? And a growing number are letting people request that their names or mugshots be

removed from old stories. The Boston Globe just announced an initiative like that called Fresh Start. Cleveland's newspaper started a similar program a couple years ago, and the Philadelphia Inquirer is considering doing the same thing. They are generally setting aside a long-standing and almost inviolable journalism ethical principle. John Watson teaches journalism ethics at American University. They will, in some instances, change a reported news story or even eliminate it, depending on the individual circumstances. So traditionally, the ethics of journalism stated that you would never change or erase details of an old story unless they were factually incorrect. And since Watson

calls it a longstanding and inviolable principle, I asked if he thinks this longstanding principle now ought to be violated. It's not a clear-cut case of whether the citadel should be smashed. Because the ethical principle is based on the fact that journalism is indeed the first draft of history. And many historians, when they begin to write about a period in history, they will go to the news accounts. Because those are the day-by-day, highly detailed accounts of what's going on. But of course, as you're aware, there's a big difference between a piece of paper with someone's name in it that you might be able to get out of the library on microfiche years

later and a Google result that pops up when you type somebody's name in a decade later as the first result of their name. Right. And this is why the citadel has to be re-examined. Until maybe three decades ago, that was impossible. You'd have to make a long, concerted effort to find these sorts of things. Now it's literally a matter of seconds. So this is one reason to reconsider it, though not necessarily a justification for tearing down that principle altogether.

There is obviously a racial justice component to this. Explain why this is being talked about in the context of the racial justice movement that has taken off in America recently. Historically, since the early 20th century and probably even beyond that, crime stories about people of color have been a major mainstay of American journalism. And it wasn't necessary that the crimes these people were associated with were major crimes. It was just that the American public had an insatiable appetite for these things, largely because it confirmed some of their prejudices about these people of color. So there's a long-standing list of recriminations against the news media for feeding into this. And the current climate of social justice has virtually necessarily

called for a rethinking of this practice. John Watson, he teaches journalism ethics at American University in Washington, D.C. Whether it's a story about neighborhood crime or an inflammatory tweet from the president, newsroom managers typically make the final decision about what deserves our attention, what should lead a broadcast hour of news or get the top spot on a high-traffic website. And in American newsrooms, those managers making the decisions are often white. When Trump ran for president calling Mexican immigrants rapists and proposing a travel ban on Muslims, Karen Atiyah of The Washington Post says those newsrooms struggled with how to cover him.

I think many of us who were non-white journalists saw that immediately as a huge red flag and a risk. A risk that his rhetoric would embolden white supremacists. Where I saw the media falling short was failing to really confront white supremacy as a force that was dangerous and violent. Atiyah wrote a recent column in the Washington Post with the headline, the media had a role to play in the rise of Trump. It's time to hold ourselves accountable. So I asked her what news organizations learned from covering Trump for four years and what we did not. One thing that the media realized it needed to take a bit of a more proactive stance on was, you know, just dealing with the mistruths and frankly lies that were coming out of the Trump administration. I think, you know, we saw CNN, other media outlets, you know, using chyrons to basically say that the president's statements are not based in fact or go against established knowledge.

That was one. I mean, I would say positive, but I also would say that's our job. Right, like we should have been doing it from the beginning. Yeah, we found it very difficult, right, to use the L word, you know. But I think overall, we found it very difficult to deal with a president and members of an administration that would openly lie to the public. So help us understand how you would like to see news organizations draw the line between, on the one hand, reflecting a complete picture of this country where more than 70 million people voted to give Donald Trump a second term and Trump encouraged white supremacist rioters, without, on the other hand, giving oxygen to insurrectionists

and falling into what you describe in your post piece as coddling. Yeah, and this is where I describe, you know, even when President Biden in his inaugural address speaks about white supremacy and domestic terrorism and political extremism as something we should confront and defeat. And the media largely, I believe, has coddled these forces in the name of both sides-ism. And I think this is where we, particularly as an industry, an industry that is looking to reach out to as many viewers

and as many readers from both sides of the spectrum. I think the problem that we're grappling with is when it comes to the rights or the Republican side of the spectrum, it has under Donald Trump become so extreme that I think this is where we may be struggling to pull the line back. There are obviously some news organizations that do dumb things to be provocative, but there are also news organizations that deeply believe in letting people speak for themselves, even if those people have views that others might find distasteful or reprehensible. What do you say to that approach?

Yeah, you know, I think that in many ways that is what we are here to do, is to provide that spectrum of perspectives and voices. Again, I think that the issue when we're platforming a spectrum of voices and perspectives is how far is too far? Like, for instance, if we're saying, is racism an acceptable perspective? Are we still, in 2021, is there still a both sides to racism? Is there still a both sides to thinking that black people are less deserving of rights and humanity than white people? Right? And I think where we're at, and what basically the implication is of platforming views is the media outlet itself is telling its audience, we think that this viewpoint is something that you should consider, is something that you should listen to. You close out your piece saying that the Trump years are over, but the fourth estate cannot rest in complacency. I know what resting in complacency

looks like. What does the opposite, what you are calling for, look like? Yeah, you know, I'm, again, I'm calling for a specifically, especially last year, after the George Floyd protests, and we did see some media reckoning over diversity, over race. So what I'm calling for is not just, you know, it's not just not being racist, but rather anti-racist coverage. Part of that is, again, empowering those voices who I think we see now in Black journalists, journalists of color, who had this country's number, who called things out for what they were years and years ago. So I think I would hope that this is cause for empowering those inside the newsrooms and those at the top, you know, at the newsrooms to be able to make coverage decisions that more accurately reflect our country as a whole.

Karen Atiyah is the Global Opinions Editor for The Washington Post. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.