A masterclass in parenthetical takedowns

Media statistic of the week 

The Pew Research Center is digging into its numbers on how 18- to 29-year-olds view media coverage and messaging around several dominant stories, including the demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd and the coronavirus pandemic. The organization highlights five facts about how younger adults differ from older ones in their perceptions of the news. 

Some of the stats that stand out: Fewer than half (43%) of adults under 30 say news organizations have done very or somewhat well in covering the George Floyd protests. While the public’s assessment of media coverage of the pandemic is more positive across all age groups — 71% of all adults say journalists have done very or somewhat well — that percentage is lowest (63%) among 18- to 29-year-olds. And 61% of those younger adults say the media in general only sometimes or hardly ever get their facts right about the coronavirus outbreak. 

Who do they find credible when it comes to COVID-19 information? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health organizations: Two-thirds (67%) of younger adults say those organizations get their facts right almost all or most of the time.

This week in media history

On July 13th, 2013, Oakland, California resident Alicia Garza posted a Facebook message about the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who killed Trayvon Martin in 2012. The post contained the phrase “Black lives matter,” which soon became a rallying cry and movement throughout the United States and around the world. Patrice Cullors, a Los Angeles community organizer and friend of Garza, read her post and replied with the first instance of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

This past week in the media industry 

Nothing to see here (literally)

If you were looking forward to the quadrennial media circus that is political convention coverage in the United States, Michael M. Grynbaum has some news for you: “As GOP insists on a full-bore party in Jacksonville (for now), TV networks are dialing back plans for the Covid conventions. Anchors may not even enter the arena,” he says, linking to his New York Times piece, We Now Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Convention Programming. 

In other words, the new “Conventional wisdom: Nothing to see here (or in Jacksonville or Milwaukee)?” tweets Erik Spanberg. Jonathan Lemire highlights from the story, “The tableau of a presidential candidate trying to rally voters by speechifying to a relatively empty arena runs counter to most modern notions of political TV. Imagine Clint Eastwood and the chair on a grander scale.” A bit creepy?

Brian Lyman’s take: “Kind of hope this is the year we fully and firmly break away from political convention coverage. There hasn’t been any uncertainty about a presidential nominee for over 4 decades and these resources are better used on reporting than informercials.”

Covering Covid

How’s your local media covering the virus? Kristen Hare shares, “Every morning, I wake up and check the @TB_Times’ zip code tracker to see the rate of infection where I live. Local newsrooms around the country are building tools like this to help us understand the reality of what’s happening where we live. Here are 3.” To see those, turn to her piece at Poynter on how local newsrooms are using data to help us understand the pandemic.

At Current, Julie Halpert writes about how public media newsrooms have ramped up audience engagement tactics for coronavirus coverage. In the process they’re finding new ways to connect with their audiences and ensure that their coverage is addressing community needs. Monika Evstatieva, senior producer of NPR’s “The National Conversation,” notes, “Everyone had to step up in this moment, and this was NPR’s way of stepping up and doing something to serve the public.”

Meanwhile, we need to know that The Pandemic Experts Are Not Okay. About his new piece for The Atlantic, Ed Yong explains, “These folks are used by now to sharing expertise w/ journalists; less so to talking about themselves. I wanted to find out what they’re going through. Many told me they’re honored to be able to help. But many are also close to burning out.” 

“It feels like writing ‘Bad things are about to happen’ on a napkin and then setting the napkin on fire,” Colin Carlson, a research professor at Georgetown University who specializes in infectious diseases, told Yong.

Alexandra Phelan says, “This is a beautiful piece by @edyong209 featuring the incredible work being done by @SaskiaPopescu @DrNLouissaint @wormmaps @cmyeaton and echoing the experiences of so many working on this pandemic.” Adds Helen Branswell, “We’re only half a year into this pandemic — closer to the beginning than the end, likely, unfortunately — and public health experts are exhausted. Terrific story from @edyong209.”

Bringing in more voices

WAN-IFRA’s recent World Media Leaders eSummit featured a panel discussion with Emily Ramshaw of The 19th, Pamella Sittoni of the Daily Nation, Kenya, and María Ramírez, of El Diario, Spain, moderated by author and former editor-in-chief of USA Today Joanne Lipman, about how to amplify the voice of women in newsrooms in a post-COVID world. 

“Where you have gender diversity in a newsroom or where you have diversity at the table where you are making such a decision, you are likely to bring in more voices and more diverse content than if you are at a table that is just full of men,” Sittoni pointed out. “When you bring in more voices, more women, you bring stories about other things that matter to women – childcare, health, issues of poverty.”

So much here

About Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ piece in the New Yorker on Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media, Noah Davis says, “This is a masterclass in parenthetical takedowns.”

Hakan Tanriverdi urges, “If you have followed the ‘Slate Star Codex/NYT’-story, you'll want to read this article. just ???????” Also, says Casey Newton, “If you want to understand ‘tech vs. journalism’ AS ‘tech vs. journalism,’ this is the piece to read.” “So much here about tech, the culture wars, and the media,” adds Michael Luo.

But there’s something else about that piece that Julia Wong noticed: “By my count there are 34 named individuals in this article and 32 of them are men. The other two are Hillary Clinton (mentioned by way of the fact that a man voted for her) and Taylor Lorenz (mentioned in the third to last paragraph).” She names all the names in a Twitter thread before wondering, “do women exist?”

Erased her entirely

On that note, in her piece describing how her white male co-founder gaslighted her out of the movement they built together, Nandini Jammi writes, I’m leaving Sleeping Giants, but not because I want to. 

“This is infuriating,” says Karoli Kuns. “And @nandoodles brings receipts. I’ve been in ‘partnerships’ like this in the past but this is worse because he just erased her entirely.” Lainna Fader thinks it’s “Interesting how some men seem to only be able to apologize when they’re forced to because of public scrutiny. Anyway, glad to have the intro to @nandoodles via her masterful lesson on reclaiming your own narrative.”

Renee Graham emphasizes “One takeaway for WOC from @nandoodles story about being excluded from @slpng_giants which she co-founded: Never say ‘Titles don’t matter to me.’ They matter greatly to white men, and they will use them to claim your work and marginalize you.”

Next, Kathleen Newman-Bremang writes at Refinery29 about her experiences with systemic racism in Canadian media and why, For Black Women In Media, A “Dream Job” Is A Myth. As Denise Balkissoon says, “In her beautiful column about racism in her career, @KathleenNB wrote about feeling grateful even for jobs in which she suffered psychically. We’re all so grateful to be given a chance to work, and we see punishment as natural the second we object at all.”

Julia Lipscombe highlights, “‘If there are stray bullets, Black women will get hit every time.’ White media folks, please read this great piece by @KathleenNB about her experiences as a Black woman in Canadian media.”

Keeping it pushing

Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory recently sent a long memo to his staff about steps the Globe will take to respond to issues of race and equity — both in the paper’s coverage and the diversity of its newsroom. The full memo was leaked to Dan Kennedy, who’s published it at Media Nation.

Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times reports on what’s happened at WNYC, the most popular public-radio station, where employees demanded diversity. And then they got another white boss. “Thank you @GiniaNYT for reporting this out so succinctly — and thanks to my Black and POC colleagues at @WNYC for keeping it pushing. I live by Toni Morrison’s words (all of them): ‘If you have some power, your job is to empower someone else,” tweets Rebecca Carroll.

“We cannot report the news nor convene civic conversations without diversity in our newsroom and in our leadership. I signed this letter, which was crafted with frustration and love,” shares Matt Katz.

As Alex Zielinski says “This is huge.” Maria Cramer of The New York Times reports that that crime story staple, the mug shot, is being dropped by some newsrooms and police. Pamela Colloff highlights, “Not publishing mug shot galleries is a ‘collective step,’ says @keribla, that allows people to put their pasts behind them. ‘We say we are a society that believes in rehabilitation and second chances.’ Publishing mug shots ‘was always at odds with that.’”

Although Mónica Rhor wonders, “Why does this story not acknowledge the Black journalists and other journalists of color who have been pushing for this for years?”

Walks like a cover-up, talks like a cover-up

Meanwhile, the Chicago Police Department arrest API shutdown is its own kind of ‘cover up,’ write Asraa Mustufa and David Eads of The Chicago Reporter, who point out that blocking access to key law enforcement data hinders critical accountability efforts by journalists and researchers and ultimately limits discourse on public safety.

Michelle Manafy remarks on the “Interesting timing after a journalist just used this data to prove that the CPD was not being honest about the reasons for BLM arrests.” “The Chicago Police Department has shut down its Arrests API after reporters caught the PD lying about recent arrests. Most arrests were for protest-related crimes, not violent crime. If it walks like a cover-up and talks like a cover-up,” tweets Catalin Cimpanu.

Tells you all you need to know

Last week, we wrote about the Facebook advertiser boycott. This week, Lucinda Southern of Digiday explains why subscription publishers can’t quit Facebook ads. The choice quote highlighted in the headline: “If your enemy has all the power, you may as well sleep with them.” Simon Owens thinks “There's some irony that publishers are addicted to Facebook advertising right now to drive paid subscriptions.”

For his New York Times column, Behind Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit With Rashad Robinson, Charlie Warzel shares, “i spoke to @rashadrobinson about what it’s like to sit across a table from Mark Zuckerberg and tell him his platform is broken, if Facebook can be reformed, and his nightmare scenario for Election Day.” 

“This @cwarzel interview with @rashadrobinson about Facebook is really worth your time,” says Farhad Manjoo. For starters, Mat Honan points out, “The answer to ‘Like what?’ here is alarming. I really, really hope Facebook and Twitter are on top of this and worry they are not.”

Meanwhile, at OneZero, Chris Gilliard argues that Facebook Cannot Separate Itself from the Hate It Spreads. “Hate is part of Facebook's core product, whether or not it publicly pretends that isn't the case — that the platform is unwilling or unable to remove it tells you all you need to know important diagnosis by @hypervisible,” says Brian Merchant.

That was fast

Last Friday, Amazon asked its employees to delete the Chinese-owned video app TikTok from their cell phones, citing “security risks.” But as Mike Isaac and Karen Weise report at The New York Times, almost five hours later, Amazon reversed course, saying the email to workers was sent in error. As Carolyn Twersky says, “That was fast.”

Before the backtracking by Amazon, Greg Epstein tweeted, “In other news, pot dot com asked its employees to delete Kettle. That said this (plus the fact that I'm terrified of making short videos) is why I'm not on Tik Tok.” 

And with his particular position at The Washington Post, Dave Jorgenson (check him out on TikTok) felt compelled to offer “a gentle to reminder to my timeline that Amazon does not own the Washington Post.” 

A few more

• As David Folkenflik reports at NPR, dozens of foreign nationals working as journalists in the U.S. for Voice of America will not have their visas extended once they expire. “@VOANews reportedly not extending visas for foreign reporters, who have been invaluable to U.S. Agency for Global Media, using their language skills to expose things like rights abuses in China. Just look at work of @RadioFreeAsia,” Frank Langfitt points out. James Palmer thinks, “This is an act of pure evil, putting people who put themselves at risk for the sake of truthtelling in grave danger.”
• AP News reports that the Seattle Police Department has gone to court to gain access to unpublished media images from the May 30 protests as part of an investigation to identify who allegedly helped set police vehicles on fire and stole firearms from them. The Seattle Times and the other media outlets are contesting the action arguing a subpoena would violate the First Amendment and a Washington state journalistic shield law.
• From Nick Statt of The Verge comes the news that Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired. Meira Gebel wonders, “what did they expect ??” But Caroline Delbert assures us, “i like and will defend waterworld, so i had to find my own waterworld, which is quibi.”
• “Now that the list of PPP loans is out, we can see which media companies got them, not just rely on owners publicizing it,” notes CNN media reporter Kerry Flynn, who has a big Twitter thread tracking those media outlets and what they received here.
• Sports Illustrated’s brand owner ABG is going to war with the magazine’s publisher, The Maven. Maxwell Tani, Lachlan Cartwright and Robert Silverman have the scoopy details at The Daily Beast.
• Joanna Partridge of The Guardian reports that Reach, the owner of the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers, will cut 550 jobs, 12% of its workforce, because of falling income amid reduced demand for advertising in its titles. “Grim news. In addition to national titles, Reach is one of Britain’s biggest newspaper publishers with 240 regionals. We have never needed journalism more,” notes Pippa Crerar.

From the Muck Rack Team

PR pros love a peek inside the minds of the journalists they pitch and work with on stories.  Muck Rack recently had the opportunity to chat with Philip Bump from The Washington Post. Head over to the blog and get to know him a bit better with 6 questions with Philip Bump from The Washington Post.

Question of the week

Do you use TikTok, and if so, will you continue to use it after so many have addressed their concerns around its security?