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Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

Oct 8, 2018

There used to be in president-press relations something called a gaffe. The gaffe doesn't exist any more because it's become the whole presidency. This method is surprisingly effective. It's worked for fact-checking too. How can you fact check a hurricane of lies? Thread. 1/

I call it a 'method' because we have a statement explaining it that way. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit," said Steve Bannon to author Michael Lewis. 2/

Flooding the system with too much news, much of it misleading or simply false, not only reduces the weight of any individual story; it has the further effect of keeping opponents in a pop-eyed state of outrage, which in turns shows supporters a hateful image of the other side. 3/

Read 8 tweets

Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

Sep 9, 2018

A common element in Woodward's book, Fire, and the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times is the manner in which they ask to be trusted. In both cases, the trust system summed up in the word transparency is declined in favor of an older system: reputation, or "stored" trust. 1/

Woodward has hundreds of hours of tapes, but we cannot hear them. He has voluminous notes, but we cannot see them. He also has documents, a few of which are apparently reproduced in the book (it isn't published yet) so that part would be an exception to this observation. 2/

On the whole, trust must attach itself to Woodward's reputation as the greatest investigative reporter of his time, and to his record of "getting it right" through exhaustive research and the triangulation of sources. Very rarely has he had to be corrected on a factual matter. 3/

Read 11 tweets

Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

Sep 3, 2018

On the New Yorker having Steve Bannon at its festival, I disagree with friends and people I normally align with. We ought to debate it— and even fight about the wisdom of such invites. But I am cautiously in favor of this one. I will try to explain why. nytimes.com/2018/09/03/art… 1/

That Bannon is a dangerous operative with a racist agenda, an avatar of illiberal democracy, I do not doubt. I am just back from three months in Germany, where I had a lot of conversations with journalists about "giving platform" and media coverage to people like him. 2/

This experience made me think harder about when you invite, when you don't, and why you would. A thing I came to believe: setting matters a lot. Add a racist demagogue whose party depends on media stunts to a panel of four and you will lose. In that setting, you never invite. 3/

Read 9 tweets

Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

Aug 26, 2018

Ask the journalists who loved him why they did, they will say: McCain loved to talk to them, he was FUN to talk to, you could ask him anything, he didn't observe his own party's PC or anyone else's, he was unpredictable, he had depth, he was larger than life, and no one ever...1

...ran a campaign like his in 2000 with the sort of openness, candor, patience and good humor they found on the "Straight Talk Express," as it was called. And all that is probably true. He was kind of a dream politician to cover. But there's another "fit" we should mention... 2

Reporters in the era when McCain flourished saw themselves as sitting between parties, creatures of neither, equal opportunity cynics, un-ideological, in possession of the most awesome crap-detectors in politics. They also loved him because he reflected this image back to them. 3

Read 4 tweets

Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

Aug 14, 2018

I watched the briefing today. Not as a journalist, but as an academic. A thing I kept asking myself as I listened to Sarah Sanders reply: what kind of speech is this? Who — or what — does she represent? Not for you, maybe, but for me, it is extremely difficult to answer that. 1/

By convention she is supposed to, but in reality she knows she does not speak for the president. He will contradict her on a whim, without realizing that this is a problem. But she does not speak for — or as — herself either. For the world has no interest in what she "thinks." 2/

I finally decided that hers is the voice of an intention. And the intention is Trump's, so that in that sense she is representative. What she represents is the fulfillment of a campaign promise. "We will put these people down for you. We will spit at them the way you want to." 3/

Read 4 tweets

Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

Aug 9, 2018

1/ Here I share some thoughts about what has become a famous phrase. It originates with Marty Baron, editor of the Washington Post, whom I regard as the unofficial leader of the American press, the tribal chieftain. His famous phrase is this: “We’re not at war; we’re at work."

2/ Baron is referring, of course, to Trump's "war" on the press. And he's reacting to statements like Steve Bannon's: “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

@PostBaron

3/ I am a doubter as well, but I have a lot of respect for @PostBaron's phrase. “We’re not at war; we’re at work" is a formidable adversary. It's great word smithing, a little gem of English composition. It has compression, rhythm, insight, alliteration. And it is memorable.

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