Columbia Journalism Review

[Commentary] How can media companies do professional journalism that reaches audiences on the major platforms? And how can the giant platforms make that professional journalism worth their while?

I’m glad that the 2016 election has prompted people to buy new subscriptions to paywalled legacy publications. But that, by definition, is a way to stay out of the trenches, to keep clean hands in the new media wars. Instead, legacy outlets and new ones alike could let important coverage that is native to this new space out from behind paywalls. Editors could treat the information ecosystem as a frontline beat. And the platforms need to find a way to support the native journalism that is the only antidote to the poison in their veins.

[Ben Smith is the Editor in Chief of BuzzFeed.]

To say the media missed some seismic shift in American political culture goes too far. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote; President Barack Obama’s approval rating is sky high; and the winning GOP candidate this cycle received fewer votes than his losing predecessor in 2012. National journalists filed so many dispatches from Trump country that the genre coalesced into a recurring joke on Twitter. That reporting came in addition to strong and copious accountability work that exposed Trump as a grifter who jokes about sexual assault and Clinton as a uninspiring politician surrounded by a shady personal network.

This is a column about reviewing campaign journalism, however, so here goes: The performance of “the media” in 2016 was…mixed.

[Commentary] Wide swaths of the country, both geographically and demographically, don’t believe us. They see us as tools of some amorphous establishment, and have turned for their news of the world to alternate channels, to put it politely. To them, “corporate media” is of a piece with government insiders and self-dealers who, to paraphrase the tagline of one of this year’s attack ads, make government work…for them. Journalism is only one part of the problem. But it can and in my view should be part of the solution.

We can help provide the country with a common basis of facts and a common vocabulary to discuss our challenges. We have the power to actually introduce Americans from different backgrounds and points of view to each other. We can, in the popular phrase, be a convener of important conversations. 2016’s presidential campaign has provided a great opportunity to show how important we can be. Independent, fair-minded journalism is desperately needed. We need to find out how to rebuild it everywhere. That’s something we can ask the public to believe in. We did not have that conversation during the election. We need to have it now.

[Michael Oreskes is head of NPR News. He was national political correspondent and Washington bureau chief of The New York Times.]

On Election Nights past, ProPublica staffers were more likely to be found at home watching the results roll in on TV or online than in the newsroom. The nonprofit, public-interest journalism outfit isn’t in the business of tracking the vote. But in 2016, it’s trying something new.

Working out of a temporary newsroom setup at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York, it will be the hub of a country-wide network of journalists, journalism students, and concerned citizens tracking and reporting on problems that prevent people from voting. Amid Donald Trump’s cries of a “rigged” election and a “crooked” news media, more than 300 newsrooms—at least one in every state—have signed on to participate in the Electionland project to ensure voter problems are surfaced, reported, and rectified by the time the polls close on Election Day, when it counts.

[Commentary] Donald Trump is a moral, intellectual and spiritual failure. Trump’s followers forgive his abusiveness, callousness and mendacity because it embodies, to use Isaiah Berlin’s famous phrase, “the crooked timber of humanity.” His failures of character allow them to forgive him his wealth and power. What his followers cannot forgive is the liberal media’s smug enforcement of the straight and narrow path to happiness and success, a smugness and prescriptiveness often born in conditions of prosperity and privilege that are far removed from the way the majority of Americans exist.

Most American define success in terms of their families, their work—if they’re lucky enough to be working, and at a job with dignity—and their attachment to their communities. For most of the media, success is the right school, the right style of parenting, the right cultural products, the right job, the right etiquette in every social situation, the right social attitudes, and the right workout. That difference between how the media defines success and failure and how much of the rest of the country does, is one of the great causes of the divide between the press and the tens of millions of Americans who have rallied behind the exceptionally flawed Republican standard-bearer. It is a reason most of the media never grasped the rise of Trump’s base of support. Unless it’s addressed, one of the legacies of the 2016 election will be a permanent, and deepening, mistrust of and alienation from the mainstream press.

[Lee Siegel is the author of five books and the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism.]

First, could President Trump “open up our libel laws”? No. States create nearly all libel laws, and they’re subject to First Amendment limits. Trump couldn’t require states to change their laws, any more than he could require the Supreme Court to change its First Amendment jurisprudence, or require Congress to rewrite the First Amendment. This is a matter of eighth-grade civics.

Second, could President Trump change the Freedom of Information Act? Kind of. He alone couldn’t amend the law, but he could affect its implementation. For example, on his first full day in office, President Barack Obama signed one executive order and two presidential memoranda heralding a “new era of openness” that would, among other things, re-establish a presumption of disclosure for records requested under the FOIA—and reverse President George W. Bush’s changes to the Presidential Records Act, to hold his own records “to a new standard of openness.”

Third, could President Trump crack down on public affairs reporting? Yes, most likely in the area of national security—if his Department of Justice prosecuted journalists under, say, the Espionage Act, something that has occurred once before, or if his DOJ tried to obtain an injunction against publication, or prosecuted leakers and subpoenaed journalists to supply information. Another route would be to issue an executive order modifying how classified information must be handled, or allowing information to be classified for longer periods.

Fourth, what if President Trump simply didn’t like the press, as he’s been saying on the campaign trail? What impact could that have? It could mean Trump would be less accessible to journalists or wouldn’t invite them to certain functions or press conferences.

[Commentary] For the first time in history, the Iranian state broadcaster livestreamed the entire 90-minute US presidential debate. This was not meant to be a civics lesson. Rather, it was an effort to highlight the dysfunctionality of the American political system to the Iranian public. That decision shows the ways in which—win or lose—the Trump campaign has eroded US standing around the world, particularly when it comes to such issues as human rights and press freedom. This may seem incidental compared with the enormous threat a Trump presidency poses to US institutions from the political parties, to the Justice Department, and the media itself. But for vulnerable journalists around the world, it’s a game changer.

When it comes to press freedom and the rights of journalists around the world, the US exercises its influence in two ways. The first is by example. But Trump has consistently trampled on America’s First Amendment tradition. The second way in which the US exercises influence is by speaking out when the rights of journalists are violated around the world. Trump has indicated he has no inclination to do so. If Trump were to be elected president, he would likely become America’s first democratator. Though he now appears likely to lose, the Trump campaign has already had a negative influence—as anyone who watched debate night from Tehran already knows.

[Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.]

[Commentary] In June 1954 on national television, Joe Welch, the US Army’s chief counsel, exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s dubious morality with those two legendary questions: “Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Such was the novelty of television back then that having given Sen McCarthy an authoritative forum for his views, TV could now serve as the instrument of his destruction. We all know what followed. The media attained the highest point of its legitimacy and authority during the Vietnam War with the publication of the Pentagon Papers and then the unfolding of the Watergate scandal. That ascendancy ran parallel to the rapid discrediting of politics as a vocation. Journalists were heroes. Politicians were scoundrels.

Thirty years later, with the revelations of the media’s blindness to and sometimes complicity with the lies that led America into the Iraq War, journalists joined politicians in the space of detention into which public opinion puts those figures who betray the people’s trust. From that point on, America, once dubbed the oldest young country in the world by Gertrude Stein, began to experience the historical version of a senior moment. It began to undergo a Weimar moment.

[Lee Siegel is the author of five books and the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism. His forthcoming book, The Draw: A Memoir, will be published in April.]

[Commentary] Donald Trump's Outright Contempt for journalists and press freedom is well known—but in the past month he has outdone himself. In the span of a long weekend in mid-September, Trump threatened to sue The New York Times, his staff had a Vice reporter arrested outside a campaign event, and he blamed the New York terrorist bombings on “freedom of the press.” The weekend of Sept 30, Trump struck again. After the Times’ huge scoop detailing how he took an almost billion-dollar loss on his 1995 taxes, Trump’s lawyer threatened “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action” against the Times once more. By my count, it is at least the 11th time Trump has threatened to sue a news organization or journalist during his campaign for president.

[Trevor Timm is the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation.]

While the war between the presidential candidates and the press rages on, more than 1,000 journalists gathered recently at the 2016 Online News Association conference in Denver (CO) for a conversation on the future of journalism. Here are five takeaways from the conference:

1. Facebook was dominant.
2. Publishers are desperate to connect.
3. Tech companies are lining up to help journalists find that audience.
4. The buzzword is monetization.
5. Trump is still the 10,000-pound gorilla in the room.