On The Rachel Maddow Show last night, an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald delivered the most succinct and skillful condemnation of social media I have seen or heard.
Maddow’s guest was Julie K. Brown, who co-reported and co-wrote a three part series — Perversion of Justice — that helped break the Jeffrey Epstein case wide open late last year.
For their series, Brown and fellow reporter Emily Michot won a Polk Award — one of journalism’s highest awards. Surprisingly, the series was not even a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. (Just as former Department of Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta minimized Epstein’s abominable crimes, the Pulitzer board underestimated the Herald’s series.)
Brown’s felicitous skewering of social media came during an interview with Maddow, who had been asking Brown about the Epstein case and where it might go from here.
At the end of the interview, Maddow asked Brown for her reaction to President Donald Trump “promoting this conspiracy theory about Epstein’s death on Twitter.” (Within hours of Epstein’s death, Trump retweeted a post by Terrence Williams, a comedian and Trump supporter, saying that Epstein “had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead.”)
Here’s how Brown answered Maddow’s question…
“I don’t like to talk about conspiracy theories because I don’t like to perpetuate them, and I think it’s just sad that people are getting their news primarily from Twitter and Facebook and not by reading a newspaper or reading a digital website like The New York Times or the Miami Herald.
“I think people need to pay more attention to reading books and reading real news rather than getting their news off Twitter, quite frankly.”
Maddow replied:
“You are a living example for why everybody within shouting distance of the Miami Herald ought to subscribe to that paper.”
**
I tell you, it warmed my heart to hear that exchange, and it should warm the hearts of everyone who is disturbed and concerned about the millions of people who have forsaken reliable, tried-and-true news sources and jumped into bed with information sources that are 99 percent gossip and rubbish.
…In fairness, I should note that the Herald is a leading paper in the McClatchy chain, which I often bash. As troubled as McClatchy is, any of its 29 daily papers is 100 times more reliable than the vast bulk of the stuff being passed off as news on Twitter and Facebook.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
The American public is as ignorant, some stupid, as ever! Social media is an area the size of trillion universes of complete bull*hit. For the most part, national news networks (both sides), with their greed, will not risk any ratings/ad revenue. They tell viewers only what think they want to see and hear. Fear and hatred. The McClatchy newspapers compared with the aforementioned sources is like comparing a Bulgotti to a Gremlin! On rare occasions the national news networks get things accurate. And once in a blue moon social media sheep will verify a source. Sadly not often enough.
Sounds like you’ve turned the corner on the Kansas City Star!
I’m not sure what you mean there, Bill…I still like The Star and can’t foresee the day I don’t subscribe to either the print or online editions. I’m just frustrated at what I see as the continuing downturn of most major metropolitan papers, resulting from corporate ownership and hedge-fund encroachment. Hedge funds already control some of the chains, and that trend is going to accelerate. The hedge-fund philosophy is simple: Bleed papers of as much revenue as possible and reinvest it elsewhere, where the returns are better.
Yeah, I like the Star too. I was particularly impressed by the editorial about how an athlete’s picture on a cereal box is evidence of their outstanding character. And I really like the way they have stopped covering the property tax debacle because 1) there is a “simple solution” and 2) a homeowner can always get in line with the other 33,000 people who are appealing. And given that few Chiefs fans want to read anything unflattering about the players who are taking them to the Super Bowl, I’m glad any coverage of Ty Hill that relates to his pleading guilty to assault or losing custody of his son is now verboten.
(Yes, I will continue to subscribe because the reality is they provide more news coverage than any other single outlet in town.)
Words fail me at this point. The latest from the Star:
https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/for-petes-sake/article233985412.html
Facebook and twitter are the children of media bias. If the establishment media would simply clean up their acts and do journalism instead of advocacy, much of the bullshit on FB and Twitter would die. I would also argue that the vast divide in this country would disappear as Americans united around journalism that acted as honest brokers instead of pimps.
Mark — Pete Grathoff is a lazy reporter. He grabs the lowest-hanging fruit and moves on. He wrote a story at the start of baseball season about how concession prices at Kauffman Stadium were being significantly reduced. When I went to my first game, I found it was baloney — same sky-high prices for the same items. I sent Pete an email telling him what I had found, and he wrote back, saying…”That is interesting. Next time I am at Kauffman Stadium, I will check it out for myself. Thank you for the heads up.”
I never saw another thing about it. He wasn’t the least bit interested in verifying if what he had written in the first place was accurate. It could have been a good follow-up story, but it probably would have entailed criticizing the Royals or their concessionaire, and he wasn’t about to get into something controversial.
Even more than the reporter, I blame his editor for approving it. The Star’s judgement is just getting worse and worse. If they are going to post a story this disgusting, at least make sure it’s handled in a professional manner: use doctors/scientific research (if there are any on something this bizarre) for the basis of your story. Don’t use some kooky ex-football player as your source.
On the same note, The Star was all over Twitter boasting about a story about how the Kansas US Attorneys office had been listening in to the private phone calls between attorneys and their clients from 2011 to 2016 and yet not one word was written mentioning that the US Attorney for Kansas from 2010 to 2016 was Barry Grissom the Democrat candidate for Senate.
That’s the stuff that drives people nuts. It transformed what could have been a powerful story of the abuse of governmental power into a community embarrassment. How do you hold the rich and powerful accountable, how dare you say you’re speaking truth to power when you don’t have the spine to name the person in power who was in charge of the abuse?