#pbs news

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

“A conspiracy theorist is a person who tacitly admits that they have insufficient data to prove their points. A conspiracy is a battle cry of a person with insufficient data.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson

"In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, far-right extremist groups and politicians are spreading false claims and conspiracy theories about the disaster and the government's response." #PBSNews

[uboat53]

Okay, this one's been building for a while. It's going to be long even for my usual standards. Strap in for a really LONG RANT (TM).

INTRODUCTION

Over the last 4 years, the news media has substantially degraded in their ability to do any significant analysis of political events. Maybe it's the drop in viewership after the Trump presidency, but something's off. People calling themselves political journalists are falling for the stupidest nonsense and failing even the most basic understanding of politics.

MY FIRST INKLING

Over the last few decades, I've put together a list of journalists who are consistently interesting and insightful. I look for their pieces when they come out and note when they change publications.

Over the last 4 years, however, nearly all of them have disappeared from major publications. David Weigel left the Washington Post and Jordan Weissman left Slate, both ended up at Semafor. William Saletan left Slate and Charlie Sykes no longer writes for The New York Times, both are now at The Bulwark. Matthew Yglesias left Vox and ended up writing on SlowBoring (although he occasionally also writes for Bloomberg News these days).

What do all of these have in common? All of them left fairly large, well-read publications and ended up at smaller, more niche publications. And they're not alone, a huge amount of competent, capable, and insightful journalists have quietly led an exodus from major publications since the end of the Trump presidency leaving behind journalists who don't seem to be nearly at the same level.

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS

Take, for example, that we've all known for the last 4 years that Trump was going to run for president again. It wasn't a mystery. So why haven't we seen any coverage of him? Yes, he's not on Twitter anymore, but he still rants and raves on Truth Social. Yes, he's not president anymore, but he still does rallies all the time. Who's covering any of that? Do you know what he's said? Do you know if anything has changed about him since 2020?

Seriously, did you see any coverage of the insane things Trump has said or done over the last four years? Have you seen coverage of the Heritage Foundations Project 2025 plan? It's been four years, has the media actually vetted the presidential candidate of one of the two major parties? I mean, sure, he was president before, but it's been four years. Is there anything new we should know about? I already know a bunch of new things about him, but not because I read about it in major publications of the US news media.

The same lack of knowledge was clear when the media was covering the legislative battles in the first half of Biden's term. You had enough reporters shouting questions at Biden about why he didn't comment more about negotiations on his bipartisan infrastructure bill that he had to remind them all that it was a stupid question. Negotiations rely on trust and the easiest way to destroy that trust is to blab about everything you've discussed. Any reasonably competent journalist would know that, but apparently not the White House Press Corps.

You see the same thing happen again and again and again if you look for it. Coverage of Manchin and Sinema's antics during the legislative battles was nothing more than surface level commentary and did nothing to dig into their tactics and strategies or their goals and objectives. Coverage of Mitch McConnell's freeze-ups basically added no new information after the first hour. Heck, if you even wanted to know what Congressional negotiators were negotiating about in the various bills that they worked on, you'd have to look it up yourself.

TRUMP COVERAGE

What's brought this to a head for me is noticing the coverage of Trump over the last year. I've read tons and tons of detailed and nuanced articles from numerous major publications about his legal travails, but how many have there been about his politics and political fortunes? I'm sure you've read in detail how his New York City trial went, but how many articles have you read about how most of his stories at his rallies devolve into unintelligible nonsense? You've no doubt read about how the Supreme Court granted him a level of immunity from prosecution, but have you read any stories about the likely results of his economic plans?

What you're seeing is an example of how barren the political news landscape has become. Trump's trials are covered by the legal news team, a team that, at most publications and outlets still has a high degree of expertise and experience in their subject, and it shows! The comparison of the legal coverage of Trump to the political coverage of Trump is particularly damning, it's a team at the top of its game standing next to a team that clearly hasn't ever played before.

Tell me, have you seen any analysis of Trump's tax plans? Have you seen anyone discuss the likely effects of his deportation and immigration plans? Has anyone even looked at Project 2025, the plan that a large group of likely Trump staffers have come up with to guide his hoped for second term? And, once you start looking around, you'll realize this isn't even just a Trump problem! What do you know about Biden's proposed policies? Is he proposing any new ones or is he just running on the same things as last time?

THE DEBATE AND POST-DEBATE COVERAGE

Watching the coverage of the 2024 campaign is what really started crystalizing this in my head, but what pushed it over the edge and made me write this all out is the coverage of the debate. Look, we can all agree that Biden had a bad night, but is that literally the only thing a reputable journalist could write about?

Do you know how many falsehoods each candidate uttered that night? How about policies, did they mostly confirm their proposed policies or were there some surprises? We know that Biden seemed confused, but what about Trump? Was he in touch with reality? After all, it's much easier to seem confident and clear in something that you're making up on the spot than something that you have to remember; was he confidently spouting nonsense?

Honestly, the lack of journalistic professionalism didn't start with the coverage after the debate, it was on the stage as well. CNN had two journalists reading the questions, but why? They didn't do any follow-up, they didn't do any fact checking; why did we need journalists on the stage at all? They could have found a random guy off the street or a fourth grader if all they needed the moderater to do was ask questions. Heck, why not advertise your new AI? AI doesn't actually understand what it's reading, but clearly that isn't necessary anyways!

And the post-debate calls for Biden to resign from major outlets have been similarly devoid of actual journalism, resembling celebrity "news" coverage more than they do real investigation. What would it take for Democrats to replace Biden on the ticket? Who would/should be the replacement? If it's not Kamela Harris, what challenges would come up from bypassing the first black woman vice-president for a (likely) white guy? If it is Kamela Harris, what challenges and baggage does she bring to the race? Do any of the proposed candidates do better than Biden in general polling at this point?

If you don't know the answers to any of these questions, that's okay! Apparently real journalists don't even know enough to be asking the questions!

THE CLINTON AFFAIR

Haunting all of this is that the American news media royally screwed up in exactly the same way not that long ago. Eight years ago, the news media descended on the Clinton e-mail story like a pack of rabid piranhas, completely ignoring just about any other story. Every major news outlet (except for those in the right-wing news ecosystem which have no shame at all) has admitted that their coverage of the 2016 election was poor and that they focused on the e-mail story to the exclusion of actually vetting the two candidates, and yet here we are again.

And, for the record, there was literally nothing to the Clinton e-mail scandal. Clinton used a personal e-mail server much as Secretary Powell had done before her with permission from the State Department. Every classified e-mail on her server was found to have come from others inappropriately sending it to her rather than her sending it out. And yet, coverage dominated the 2016 election, driving a drip-drip-drip cycle that damaged Clinton immensely and distracted from any coverage of Trump's very real issues.

Coming out of that election, most news outlets committed to higher journalistic standards. They committed to more aggressive fact-checking, more investigation, and less hysterical coverage of single issues to the detriment of broader coverage, and, during the four years of Trump's term, they largely did that to varying degrees of success. That, more than anything, is what makes their recent decline that much more eggregious. They know how to do this correctly and are actively choosing not to.

WHERE TO FIND GOOD JOURNALISM

And now the answer to the question I've posed obliquely this whole rant: if so much of political journalism is bad, where can I find good journalism?

Honestly, there's not a lot of it out there, but it does exist. NPR, as usual, is a bastion of great journalism. They are sometimes prey to the same instincts that lead the broader media astray, but they've done a great job keeping in place the structures they built as a response to the 2016 election and Trump in general such as active fact-checking and analysis immediately after each interview rather than letting it wait until a lie or piece of misinformation has solidified. PBS is similarly effective in this way; public media, as always, remains pretty much the best large outlet for information in this country.

The Daily Show is also a great source for journalism which is a sad commentary on journalism because, as should be obvious, these people are comedians and not journalists. Still, they do great work, better than most actual journalists because they take seriously the charge to dig deeper for the real story and speak truth to power.

Outside of that, there aren't really any large media outlets that I would strongly recommend. There are, however, smaller news organizations that are doing good work.

Semafor, for example, has a lot of great analysis of politics and actually asks the kinds of questions I noted above and sometimes even finds answers to them. The Bulwark is another one, though it tends to do broader political analysis rather than up-to-the-minute reporting. There are also individual journalists and writers who put forth very insightful analysis in larger publications such as Fred Kaplan at Slate, Joshua Keating at Vox, and Tyler Cowen at Bloomberg, but these are generally the exception to the broader coverage at those outlets. There are also writers at smaller publications like Julia Ioffe who now writes for Puck, though I can't recommend the whole publication.

Honestly, though, it's pretty barren out there. I'd love to have more sources of information that can check each other and make sure I'm not being pulled off into a lane of misinformation, but I'm not finding much out there. Please, if you find any, let me know, I'd love to have more good sources.

SUMMARY/CONCLUSION

The American political news media, which improved significantly as a response to Trump, seems to have lost most of its institutional capacity since his defeat in 2020 to the point where they are now reduced to covering only a single story for days on end without adding any meaningful information or insightful analysis. Even a dedicated news hound like me is left frustrated with the difficulty of finding meaningful coverage and the drumbeat of nonsense is preventing this country from having a real discussion about the real issues in the upcoming presidential election which may be one of the most consequential of our lifetimes.

Don't get me wrong, Biden had a bad debate, but is that really the ONLY THING going on in politics right now? It isn't, but you certainly wouldn't know it from the sheer volume of "think pieces" and "breaking news" articles dominating the headlines these days.

And if it were just that, if it were just this one instance where political journalists were falling down on the job, I would accept it, that kind of thing happens from time to time, but it's not. Time after time on issue after issue for the last four years, political news generally at the nation's largest outlets has shown itself to be incapable of actually covering and analyzing the section of news that it supposedly specializes in with any kind of depth or nuance, instead, descending time and time again into tabloid nonsense.

I know where to find good information, but it takes a lot more digging than I'm used to and people don't follow the news as voraciously as I do shouldn't be expected to do that kind of digging just to have the bare minimum of information necessary to carry out their duties as citizens.

I don't have any solutions here, I just hope that you know that what you're seeing on most TV, radio, and newspapers/online these days is just a shadow of the information you should be getting. Let me know if I'm missing something, because it's getting really depressing.

[lessergoodnow]

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[mebssann]

local old man finally gets new clothes

[nerdiertides]

PBS News examines the rise of anime's popularity in the U.S. in new report

(Featured Image Source: PBS NewsHour / © 2024 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)) There is no denying that anime has quickly taken hold of pop culture around the world, leaving the space of niche media sourced from tape trading and purchasing bootlegs in 1970s and 1980s, to a staple of mainstream entertainment in the past decade. To an outsider, or for those who didn’t grow up during it’s (shout…

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This documentary by PBS shows how the "less-lethal force" officers are often trained to use leads to deaths across the country, highlights the lack of appropriate training, and shows how mental health episodes are escalated into deadly scenarios by officers.

[plumbum-art]

"We did it!" "Well done, Mr. Fell"

1941, West End London. Back in the dressing room after their bullet catch trick

[david1m]

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tage:

[andva-ri]

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[eggplantgifs]

Donovan Carrillo: SexyBack / 4 Minutes » 2024 World Championships

[relaxedstyles]

[unsolicited-opinions]

Some good examples of how Western media downplays attacks ON Israel:

In the opening minute of this NYT podcast, the NYT describes the ~180 bus-sized ballistic missiles launched at Israel by Iran as "...the largest missile attack on Israeli territory in the country's history."

Remove the bias, and it would instead acurrately be described as "the largest ballistic missile attack ever launched."

See the difference? Note how it changes the story?

PBS does the same thing:

Source

No, PBS. This was the largest missile attack ever launched, by any nation, against any nation.

I subscribe to the NYT. I'm a PBS member. This is profoundly disappointing, but no longer surprising.

[drawlody]

Finn, Simon, Marcy, and PB group hug but it just ends up with Finn hugging 3 people at once (tis still enjoyable :3)

A lil bit of lovin for everyone:D

Also Marcy and her face shirt B)

OH LAWD HERE HE COME

I struggled with this pose lmao like i cannot find a ref for this

[mirai-e-jump]

Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger Photo Book: ~King of Kings~ Character Bromides

[npr-stan]

Longform Coverage on Palestine

Disclaimer: These are NPR stories, which are biased via American perspectives. But they might just give you the evidence you need to convince your republican parents they're wrong.

The Historical Context:

Longform content providing key context for how we got here.

From Throughline, NPR's historical podcast, hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtim Arablouei speak with Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian, about the history of Palestine. This episode released May 28, 2021.

From Throughline, a look at how politics have shifted in Israel leading to the rise of right wing extremism. Host Ramtim Arablouei speaks with historians about what led to the deadly state of public sentiment.

From PBS's Frontline, a current events documentary series, this documentary covers the failed peace efforts over the last few decades and the role that the US played in that failure. This documentary released December 19, 2023.

Perspective Pieces:

A variety of longform perspective pieces from a variety of NPR podcasts with some shorter pieces towards the end.

The second part in a series from Embedded, NPR's documentary podcast, covering the crisis in Gaza. Leila Fadel covers two stories - one from a college student living in Gaza and another from an American family that escaped Gaza. This episode released March 6, 2024.

Coming from Code Switch, an NPR podcast about race and identity in America, Gene Demby and Sandhya Dirks interview two Palestinian Americans about their experiences being erased in the American story. This episode released November 15, 2023.

The first part in a series from Embedded, covering the crisis in Gaza. This episode follows Daniel Estrin as he reports on different voices in the region and the difficulties in covering the story. This episode released February 29, 2024.

From Code Switch, a conversation with Leah Donnella about the American Jews speaking out against Israel and the deep rifts that are growing within their communities. This episode released April 24, 2024.

From On the Media, a podcast created by WNYC - an NPR member station in NYC, a conversation talking about the debate surrounding the term genocide. This is a portion of an episode from December 1, 2023 and explains why mainstream media has shied away from the term.

From Consider This, an NPR daily podcast, Ambassador Dennis Ross talks about why Israel's methods are counterproductive. The episode released April 12, 2024.

From Consider This, discussions on how the protests on campuses today reflect those in the 1960s over the Veitnam War. This episode released April 29, 2024.