Stop the Scare: On Media Tactics and Not Freaking Out
Margaret Sullivan, free speech, bagels
I was talking the other day with Matt Welch, about how, when I first knew I wanted to be a journalist, I would write articles and fax (!) them cold to various Los Angeles publications. I never received a response but once, from Cathy Seipp.
"Of course it was Cathy," Matt said, of our late dear friend, as barbed as she was courteous. Cathy wrote for many places, most acidly a column for Buzz magazine (where I would later wind up a columnist) under the byline Margo Magee, in which each month she would skewer pieces from the LA Times.
I have several times thought of writing such a column, not to comment on the perceived partisanship or inanities of a particular publication, but to call out one opinion writer, whose most recent column Matt forwarded to me yesterday, to which I responded, "Why do you torture me?"
I could point to phrasing that drives me batty in Margaret Sullivan's latest: "That American democracy is teetering is unquestionable. Jan. 6 is every day now"; that the media must "shout it from the rooftops. Before it’s too late" (emphasis mine).
The headline on this latest piece - "If American democracy is going to survive, the media must make this crucial shift" - should not be confused with a Sullivan column from July: "Our democracy is under attack. Washington journalists must stop covering it like politics as usual."
It is the case that I rarely find Sullivan trenchant, that it baffles me why she is given such prime real estate at WaPo. "It's because she's telling people what they want to hear," Matt once told me. Yes, I guess that's right.
Which I guess is my larger problem with it. Is it the job of media to tell people what they want to hear, coupled with hair-on-fire warnings and the use of the word "chilling" to characterize a recent story in the Atlantic? To editorially wrench people's heads in one direction and say, "Look, by God, and tremble!"
I don't think it is. I think it's our job to gather what information we can, lay the pieces on the ground, and put them together in a way that gives the reader the story with as much calm and clarity as possible, in order that they can make good decisions for themselves, their families and communities.
Think about it: You're on a mountain, there may be a storm rolling in. Who do you want nominally in charge of predicting what's to come, the person on the edge of hysteria, or the one giving you information in an orderly fashion, trusting that you can and will make smart use of the tools provided?
Encouraging a sense of emergency in people is a terrible thing. We make notoriously bad decisions when we're afraid, opportunists move in, we are more easily taken advantage of, and may unknowingly work against our own best interests. Who would foster such an environment, and toward what end? And how is inciting fear in your supporters fundamentally different from your perceived enemies inciting fear in theirs?
"My initial read is that Professional Journalism is getting ready to interpret most/all of 2022's political signals---which should include the normal pendulum-swing toward Republicans in Congress, plus a lot of city crime/schools pushing parents away from both cities & the Democratic Party---as nothing short of a Crisis in Democracy Because Jan. 6," Matt emailed, when I told him, I'd had it with Sullivan et al playing scaremonger.
At 6am on January 4, and as I typed this, my inbox was already filling with articles like, "The Insurrection: One Year Later" and "Jan. 6: Dual Reality." January 6, 2021 was a horror for many reasons; the perpetrators should be and are being pursued. And I welcome examinations of why people acted as they did that day, notably Kerry Howley's, "Gina. Roseanne. Guy: What January 6 Insurrectionists Wanted - And What They Lost." Howley's piece is thoughtful and even-handed and teaches us something about our fellow citizens. This is valuable work. Sullivan insisting it is our job instead to get on the rooftops and start shouting is the opposite of thoughtful, and strikes me as a further retrenching of the sides that got us here in the first place.
After our friend Cathy died, I wrote a piece about how, even in her weakening state, she did not allow us -- the group of friends Matt dubbed "the unlike-minded weirdoes" -- to use her situation as an excuse for falling down.
"Her friends who knew about the cancer reacted with varying degrees of emotional spasticity: To ask or not to ask about the new chemo? Is bringing over more food annoying or nice? How much crying is not okay? But whether in person or psychically, one sensed Cathy clapping her hands, and saying, 'None of this. We are not going to freak out; we are not going to lie on the floor and throw a tantrum. We are going to do this dance this way.'"
As a journalist, I do not consider it my job to issue dire warnings. I assume readers are smart and curious and want information, not dictates. My exasperation with Sullivan is not so much with her repeatedly sounding the alarm that the media must report from her vantage point – some will, some won’t – but with the nervousness this can sow in readers; that if they don’t dance to this beat, all is lost. She might trust that, with information delivered with cool head and hand, they can figure out the moves for themselves.
Matt, too, had something to say about the general freak-outs the media has performed in the days leading to and and on and after January 6, which he wrote about in The Strategic yet Self-Defeating Hyperbole of 'Democracy in Peril' Journalism (Reason, Jan. 6, 2022). The lede:
It's hard enough on a normal day to avoid the phrase "January 6" when watching CNN or listening to NPR for more than about 30 seconds, but now that we've reached the one-year anniversary of that harrowing riot at the Capitol, the media air is thick to the point of suffocation with claims that the nation "now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss," driven there by a major political party whose "unofficial litmus test" is believing falsely that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Both Matt and I got into the studio at Paloma Media and recorded these pieces. Have a listen - it’s free!
Before I take my leave on a snowed-in Saturday - I am currently out on Long Island and the place is a winter wonderland, including just walking past a family of prancing deer - here is a teaser to a video series that drops on Monday, “Reporting on Antifa with Nancy Rommelmann.”
With all the love and, oh, one more video because it’s baking if not pie-related, and at which location I plan on stopping on my drive back to the city tomorrow xx