Norm Ornstein to Chris Cillizza, September 16, 2016 on media pathology.
Chris, I hate to say it, but I find your response incredibly weak. . .
The [Media’s] need to go on the Web immediately, the new world of traditional print journalism, has its own pathologies built into it. . . .
I see increasing and troubling evidence, less in The Post than in others, of a rush to get stories out there because of the demand for eyeballs and clicks, fewer safeguards at the managing editor and below, less tolerance of criticism.
I. Who is Norm Ornstein?
Norm Ornstein is a respected political scientist and contributing writer for the Atlantic. He is the only non-conservative fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which includes Jonah Goldberg, Ramesh Ponnaru and Charles Murray.
He is also a hero — a prominent voice pushing back against the worst of false equivalence — but more importantly — a voice so respected that people at the Times and the Wapo listen and respond. Most left voices are often preaching to the choir and don’t reach them. But Norm Ornstein knows these people. They care what he thinks.
In 2012 and to a large extent, continuing today, Norm was blacklisted from Sunday shows and most other mainstream media. (see below). Norm took to Twitter and primarily in that capacity is proving to be a hero, not just for the remnants of respectable journalists, but for sane, anti-Trump people (but I repeat myself).
II. The blacklisting of Norm
Until 2012 he was a frequent guest on Sunday and other talk shows — a “go-to” guy for smart analysis, regarded as a centrist. But after spending years observing the nihilist tactics of Republicans, he and Thomas Mann wrote It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. At about the same time as the book’s release, they wrote an article in the WaPo called, Let's Just Say it, Republicans are the Problem. The book and the article “told it like it is” by setting forth a scathing indictment of the capture of the GOP by far-right extremists and lunatics. The article begins:
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
Immediately after that article and book, Norm was able to sleep late every Sunday because he was blacklisted on the Sunday shows. The networks just could not have the centrist, credible, respected Ornstein telling the truth about Republicans.
III. Norm’s Twitter Offensive
Norm is now a “must-retweet” on Twitter. Here are some recent examples:
9/13/16 I don't know if I have seen a more embarrassing piece this campaign than @spaydl on false balance.See @jonathanchait nymag.com/…
Today: This is an embarrassment for @FaceTheNation twitter.com/…
Today: It is striking how [KellyAnne Conway] manages to get away with serial lies. The perfect campaign manager.
Today: Reince: If you don’t support a racist xenophone unfit to be Commander-in-Chief, you will pay a heavy price.
Yesterday: This headline is shameful: “Bill Clinton aides used tax dollars to subsidize foundation, private email support.” (Politico)
Yesterday: Cable news — get rid of campaign apologists, spinners, 9 person panels, coverage of empty podium
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Is he having an effect? Well, on Saturday, the Times had a banner headline saying Trump lied about Birtherism and reported that he continued to lie about its HRC origins. Some thought today’s talk shows (with notable exceptions like Christie lying in Tapper’s face without consequence) were a little better. I think Norm’s contributed to that.
Still, calcified, corrupt media is a tough nut to crack, and maybe there’s nothing that can be done if the “suits” are just ratings whores who are willing to risk sacrificing the country to their bottom line.
But Norm is trying, and some are listening. Whether they change at all — that’s to be seen.
IV. Norm engages with the Times and WaPo — Will it make a difference?
Chris Cillizza agreed to publish an email dialogue they had:
Fix (Cillizza) I fundamentally disagree with the idea that Trump has received a different sort — and a better sort— of coverage. I actually think some elements of the media have been overly critical of Trump because they cannot believe that someone with Trump’s views — and approach — has become one of the two party nominees. There is a disdain and a dismissiveness bordering on elitism in some parts of the media directed toward Trump.
And, again, when it comes to your references to Bannon and others: We wrote all about Bannon’s background and his controversial statements. That it didn’t change people’s minds about Trump isn’t really the media’s responsibility. We just don’t have that power.
Ornstein: Chris, I hate to say it, but I find your response incredibly weak.* Yes, her performance as secretary of state is a good, perhaps the best, indicator of how she would govern. And somehow, you and your colleagues in the media have decided that the emails and the Clinton Foundation are the be-all and end-all of her judgment and the indication of how she would govern. Not how she ran the State Department, how she structured and dealt with the team of people around her, how she interacted with the president, the secretar(ies) of defense, the national security advisers, the DNI, etc. Not what she accomplished and did not accomplish. Not her judgments on policy or other leaders. I should add, not all of those stories would be flattering or laudatory. I don't have the time or resources to count up the column inches since the nominations were decided that have been devoted to email and the Foundation, compared to the other issues above, but I would wager the ratio is, as they say, huge. The Post has been better than its competitors, but as I recall, even you, for example, bit on the ridiculous AP story making something sinister out of the meeting with Mohammed Yunus. The need to go on the Web immediately, the new world of traditional print journalism, has its own pathologies built into it.
And he and Roger Cohen, a Times op-ed writer, had a Twitter dialogue on September 4, 2016.(Storified here.) A sample:
Cohen: Whatever we may thing of Trump and I think I’ve made clear what I think. Hillary’s got big issues.
Ornstein: Roger: This is not about ignoring these issues. It is about obsessing on them to the exclusion over everything else.
I’m not sure Roger got the message. In an article after the dialogue about “economically anxious” Kentucky Trump voters, Cohen wrote Trump may win “in part because of the liberal intellectual arrogance that dismisses the economic, social and cultural problems his rise has underscored.” A letter writer nailed him:
To the Editor:
. . . .
As a liberal, I consider this remark offensive and totally disconnected from reality. It is the Obama administration that has been pushing for infrastructure spending for years against Republican resistance in Congress. It is the Obama administration that rescued the auto industry and saved millions of jobs, also against Republican opposition.
It is Republicans who have undercut and threaten to destroy Obamacare, the program that low-income and unemployed people, like Kentucky coal miners, can turn to when employer-sponsored health care disappears. It is what is known as the political left that is pushing for alternate energy industries that could provide new jobs to replace lost coal jobs. And so on, and on.
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* Or “Chris, you filthy slut.”