Today, we’re talking about bad journalism, so to start we’ll provide two examples of great journalism, exemplars of everything reporting can and should be. The first went relatively unnoticed as Trump distracted everyone with cabinet picks and meetings about “life” with Kanye: Kurt Eichenwald’s in-depth report on How Donald Trump's Business Ties Are Already Jeopardizing U.S. Interests.
The second is an absolute must-read from Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose essay My President Was Black in The Atlantic explains so much, so beautifully. Based on a series of conversations with President Obama, the piece can’t be oversold. It’s perfect. Take the time to read it.
Having established what good journalism is, let’s turn to the deniersphere. For a couple years now we’ve been pointing out how the Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch thinks reporting is just repackaging other people’s blog posts, analyses or releases. This lack of journalistic integrity is understandable since he’s arguably more a political operative than actual journalist.
Knowing this is the quality of their work, it’s deliciously ironic that the Daily Caller called out Breitbart for publishing what was basically a Trump press release of reactions to the Rex Tillerson pick.
Has the Daily Caller suddenly found journalistic ethics and responsibility? Probably not. Because the same day it chastised Breitbart, Bastasch turned a press release from Anthony Watts into a story. It’s about the poster Watts is presenting at AGU (pdf here), but surprisingly features additional quotes from the study authors and what appears to be original reporting. (Though perhaps he just ripped off a post from somewhere else, again.)
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For another example, see the Bastasch piece on the recent claim from Team Trump that we should doubt the consensus on climate science because at one point there was consensus that the Earth is flat, and because “people have gotten things wrong throughout the 5,500-year history of our planet.” The post is just quotes from other coverage, with a few links to past instances of the term tacked on at the end. While this sort of aggregation is, sadly, increasingly common even among legitimate news sources, it bears mention here as yet another instance of low-quality reporting.
Really, though, we just want an excuse to point out that the idea that we once all bought into the Flat Earth theory is itself actually a myth. Yes, you read that right. The idea that scientists once thought the Earth to be flat is a myth that was propagated by those who opposed to catholic schooling. They (falsely) claimed that religious scholars used to believe the Earth was flat, so now we shouldn’t trust them.
This means the current comment by Trump’s advisor who buys into young Earth creationism was an attempt to turn the public against science by using a myth popularized as an attack against religious scholars, the sort who now propagate young Earth creationism.
Anyway, back to the main point- an outlet frequently guilty of churnalism is calling out a competitor for churnalism. Why? Well, perhaps this will shed some light on the rivalry between the two outlets. While largely ideologically aligned, the Kochs are the big money behind the Daily Caller, while the Mercer family has a 40 to 50 percent stake in Breitbart. The Kochs were standoffish towards Trump, while the Mercers supported him during the campaign and have emerged as key players in his transition.
So with the Daily Caller scolding Breitbart on journalistic ethics, the blind are leading the blind in the dog-eat-dog world of conservative media.
Welcome to the blind-dog-eat-blind-dog world of fake news.