Monday Media Day: Kyle Clark puts words in the mouths of R's, but not D's. Yes Virginia media narratives DO exist. CoPo covers Boebert and her husband then covers Pettersen but ....
Kyle Clark puts words in the mouths of Republicans, but not Democrats.
Which carries more weight with you: information relayed through someone or hearing it directly?
If you are like me and probably most of the remainder of humanity, it's the latter. Even assuming the person relating it to you has no agenda (not something you can say reasonably of Kyle Clark--stay with me, more to come), there is nothing like hearing someone's words directly from their own mouth.
If you watch the Next episode below--starting at about the 3:08 mark--you'll get a prime example of what I mean. A common theme on Next is that Clark will relay the position (characterizing it as he does so) of someone while letting the other party speak for themselves.
So, you hear from Clark what House Republicans believe, but you'll hear from Democrat Mayor Johnston and Senator Hickenlooper directly.
Now, to be fair, perhaps Next reached out to Colorado's Republican Representatives (or, say, Republican House Leadership) and none agreed to talk with them. This has been something I've encountered with other reporters before, see today's third post as an example. But if that were the case, I think he would have noted their not being willing to appear as he has with others in the past.
Regardless, he could also have found sound or press conference footage of a Republican stating their position in their own words. The fact that he didn't here is telling.
All the more so because in previous interviews Clark himself has noted how he sees his role as not necessarily trying to be completely neutral on a topic but to treat everyone the same. Here, he fails at his own self-defined standard.**
You will never be able to control what any particular media outlet does. You probably won't even get any particular outlet to ground on what their choices are and why (speaking as someone who has tried more times than he can count to try and get any sort of rationale or etc. from a variety of media outlets). Despite all the ethics policies in the world, despite all the TrustMark certifications, despite their public words, getting reporters and news outlets to come to the table and discuss their work (let alone reflect on it in a way they may not especially enjoy) is like pulling teeth.
What you can control is what you watch. And you should think carefully and consume a balanced media diet.
My preferred strategy is to spread out my media consumption across a variety of outlets, some rabidly progressive (Next), some rabidly conservative (CO Peak Politics), and a bunch somewhere between these poles.
Only by doing this, can you get a fuller picture, because as you can see, it's one way to ensure you hear things straight from the horse's mouth.
**Though, again, to be fair he has upheld it in other areas.
Yes Virginia media narratives DO exist.
Maybe he doesn't use the word narrative, but CU journalism professor Mike McDevitt alludes to (and it's the first time I've seen it said by someone in journalism) the fact that, yes, narratives do run the news you see.
Our brains come into the modern world trailing a series of shortcuts, faults, and mechanisms that have served our ancestors well, but may not serve us well in a more complex modern world.
One such thing is called a heuristic. I included a graphic for you which defines it, but I'll add to that: think of a heuristic as a way of preserving your brain's runtime. You are inundated constantly with information and have to make decisions about it. Having ways to quickly characterize and automatically process some of that information is a great help.
Sometimes.
The problem with heuristics comes in when they replace reality. That is, when you assume your mental shortcut is the way things actually are. For example, how many people worry about terrorists blowing up their office building when they're HUGELY more likely to die from the cheeseburger they ate at lunch coupled with not moving from their chair for 8 hours?*
Our media is not immune. Here I'm going to stretch the formal thinking and definition a bit and say that our media engage in heuristics all the time. You could also say that they spin narratives all the time. You could say they perhaps too (as does Prof McDevitt in the CU Press release below) that they engage in groupthink.
To quote said press release**:
"One area to avoid collaboration, he [McDevitt] said, is the groupthink that emerges when reporters subconsciously frame stories around tropes that perpetuate on the campaign trail, such as the year of the woman, or the election in which democracy recovers, or the year we need younger candidates."
Regardless of the semantic label you put to it, the idea is the same. When the press choose what to cover and how to cover it, I think it's fair to say that a fair bit of mental shortcutting is taking place.
Even assuming no ill intent (and there is room for including ill intent as I think could be fairly said about Prof McDevitt here), how in the world else can you take a messy, complicated world and wrangle it into even a long article?
We deserve better from our media. We deserve articles where the reporter actively tried to falsify his or her own concept of the world. We deserve editors who look at a piece and ask, "but what is there that mitigates against your viewpoint?"
We deserve this in lieu of articles farted out to slot into a preconceived notion of how this or that individual human thinks the world works (or how his or her peers conceive of it).
One last nibble. I've alluded a couple times now to Prof McDevitt's statements here. I'm now ready to come at them straight on. I find it ironic that he bemoans groupthink while falling directly into same. It's the pot calling the kettle black.
After all, what bigger trope is there than that Donald Trump is an authoritarian or harmful to democracy. His statements have certainly not helped him here, but let's back up and talk actions. Let's talk a media that has applied this label to him (and frankly the knuckle-dragging troglodytes that dare vote for him) consistently since his first term. Groupthink anyone?
*An example of the Availability Heuristic in case you're curious to look it up for more detail.
**You'll also notice that McDevitt's thinking is full of concern over a certain authoritarian presidental candidate. Guess who that is? I'll give you two clues: T and Rump. Certainly couldn't be Biden. Nah, I mean it's not like he's had several Executive Branch overreaches struck down or something right? Am I right?
https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/news/2024/01/08/research-journalism-mcdevitt-punditry-democracy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Related:
Kyle Clarks thoughts to be put next to the thoughts of Prof McDevitt in the post above. You'll notice a similar theme.
My question when I read things like this is the usual one: who decides?
Who gets to choose what is a threat and what isn't? You see, a choice has to be made by someone somewhere. We live in a finite world and it's clear to anyone who reads/watches nearly any media that different political persuasions have different ideas as to threats to Democracy. If you don't believe me watch Next and contrast that with Fox.
That makes the words of those like Clark or McDevitt ring hollow in my view, but you now have seen some of what Clark's thoughts on the matter are.
CoPo covers Boebert and her husband then covers Peterson but ....
Let's round out the day with a look at what Colorado Politics is covering. And what they're not.
I won't give you links but instead will show you what I mean here with a picture. If you look at my little homemade graphic, you'll see a side by side comparison--coverage of Lauren Boebert and her husband, including hints that there was some swampiness with regard to her husband, put next to coverage of Brittany Petttersen including hints that there was some swampiness with regard to her husb ...
Oh wait! That was not coverage in Colorado Politics. That was coverage in CompleteColorado.
Disparities like this can really turn a guy's head, well, at least they turn mine and I wanted to give the editor and reporter (Luning) a chance to give their side of the story so I sent the following via email:**
Good morning,
My name is Cory Gaines. Mr. Puerto, we have corresponded before. Mr. Luning, I am not sure if you've ever answered any of my queries.
I write for my own little substack and FB page (Colorado Accountability Project) as well as doing op eds here and there.
I'm working on something now and wanted to double-double check before opening my mouth and "removing all doubt" so to speak (I did look on Google, but couldn't find anything).
Mr. Luning recently did a profile on Rep Peterson (see the link below).
I am curious to know if your paper did a profile on Boebert in a similar fashion? I tried looking, of course, but didn't see any. Perhaps it's because she's such a lightning rod that it's crowded to the nether regions of Google's 2nd or 3rd page, but I can't find one and want to cross my t's dot my i's.
Along a similar vein, I look at coverage about Boebert's family (see links 2 and 3). I am wondering if there is similar about Peterson's. In particular, is there any plan to look into what Complete was reporting yesterday? That would be link number 4.
If you think of anything else germain to the topic and want to include it, please do.
Also, if phone is faster or easier, please feel free.
I received no answer from Mr. Del Puerto, but got the following from Mr. Luning (link in the original):
Mr. Gaines, I don't think any of your previous emails made it past our aggressive spam filters, not finding anything else from you in my inbox. Glad this one made it through!
Colorado's congressional delegation has 10 members. As the new year approached, I reached out to all of them requesting an in-depth interview to discuss the past year and the year ahead, and, while several expressed interest in doing something like that, only Rep. Pettersen's and Rep. Lamborn's offices followed through and scheduled interviews. (You might have missed our column featuring Rep. Lamborn — https://www.coloradopolitics.com/columnists/colorados-doug-lamborn-celebrates-defense-bill-pans-lawmakers-for-tilting-at-windmills-trail-mix/article_1dccc718-9b0f-11ee-8a25-0fb19dd43c87.html.)
Before moving on, let me acknowledge that Mr. Luning makes a valid point here (this, besides basic fairness, is why I often write to ask). They did offer the chance for everyone to participate. If Boebert or other Republicans besides Lamborn (or other Dems) chose not to participate, that's on them.
I want you to also notice that there was no answer on Pettersen's husband's swampy activity. In my reply to Mr. Luning, I said if he chose not to answer the second question I put, that's his option but I wanted him to be aware that he didn't answer my second question in case he forgot it. I got no more responses.
The final point to make in the final post on this day of media?
The summary here is that the media are not perfect. Sometimes they shade their coverage on purpose, sometimes they do it inadvertently.
Nothing you do will change this. The good news, however, is that you needn't bemoan that because you have the ultimate power here. You control (and are responsible for) the choices you make in media.
Make them good ones by following the basics: understand that all coverage is biased in one form or another, no single news source is sufficient to give you full understanding of your world, and that everything (EVERYTHING) you see in media is the result of a choice made by a human- thus liable to all the fallacies and bad thinking any human is capable of.
**Here I need to apologize to Mr. Del Puerto. In a hurry I simply put his last name as "Puerto" (as you can see in the quote) without the "Del" preceding it. I messed up.
Related:
Excellent take on a "pro-state" bias by journalists includidng (yet another) opinion piece masquerading as news from the Sun.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/01/23/armstrong-colorado-journalists-cheerlead-nanny-state/