Columbia Journalism Review is a good, critical read covering the media and its most pressing debates. While they have partisan and ideological leanings, they are more diligent about leaving that out of their coverage. Correspondingly, it makes for good reading.
This week, CJR published a disappointing piece by Kyle Pope, their editor-in-chief and publisher. The piece, which quips about the morality of censoring Trump, makes Trump the focus and leaves out any media responsibility to the American people.
Out of respect for the work done at CJR that I wrote the following to Pope.
Dear Mr. Pope,
It is with respect for your work and for your publication’s history that I write this letter. Your May 8, 2023 piece “Trump and the TV Time Machine,” (https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trump-cnn-tv-time-machine.php) contains a dichotomy of Trump and the media. It correspondingly misses the idea that journalists may have an obligation to the American public that hear their voice echoed by Trump. They are the more important component of that equation and are left entirely out of your piece.
This is the same mistake I used to make about President Trump — thinking his candidacy was ever about Trump. If that were the case, he would not enjoy such wide support.
Michael Moore gets it right in calling Trump a weapon of the people against the establishment. Your publication is often insightful. This article is tone-deaf around its most important point. The article misses the fundamental nature of Trumpism still in 2023. That is not acceptable. Columbia Journalism Review is special because it does not do that. This sounds like presentday New York Times style writing, which, while more popular than CJR in most circles, unfortunately allows for a lower editorial standards than CJR around deductive reasoning.
This article toys with the disenfranchisement of tens of millions of American voters without actually saying that. It suggests such systemic disenfranchisement by our most trusted institutions is a legitimate option and perhaps even the moral option. This is at the heart of why the term “fake news” is so popular. It is not because Trump is covered by the media that such a term is so popular. It is because of years of the media using a position of trust to argue in favor of disenfranchisement rather than doing the work they are entrusted to do: delivering the news in good faith.
The article’s opening line “Do you give Donald Trump airtime or ignore him?” would hardly sound as humorous or acceptable placed in its proper context: “Do you give 74 million American voters airtime or ignore them?”
The skew of the article misses the kernel. It is a kernel of truth inherent in the topic.
Trump did not appear in the midst of a blank slate electorate that he formed. It was in the midst of an American public that had realized its most trusted institutions were no longer worthy of their trust, nor their tacit acceptance, nor their largess.
It is not about Trump. I used to not care for the man at all. My coverage of him was akin to this article — focussed on him, and I correspondingly missed what was actually taking place. Some people in the United States will accept an imperfect messenger to deliver a much needed message. That does not make the messenger worthy of deplatforming and it certainly does not make the people who choose him as messenger worthy of disenfranchisement.
Journalists around the globe turn to your pages for clarity and guidance. I do not agree with the politics espoused in the CJR pages, but I appreciate the ethical pauses that take place in the CJR pages. This piece, Sir, is out of line with the history of your publication and standards of your publication. I write to you as the piece’s author and as one of the publication’s editors. We writers are all entitled to a bad piece now and then. I do not mean to fault you for not being on top of your game every day. Some topics, however, are so central that any writing on them that misses the point does a great disservice to many.
This particular piece is on such an important topic and so misses a point that has been part of mainstream dialogue since 2015 that it deserves a follow up piece that analyzes what the first piece got wrong.
Respectfully,
Allan Stevo
San Francisco, California
Longtime CJR Reader, Subscriber, & Supporter
P.S. A cogent response to this that shows it was read and understood is requested of Mr. Pope.
There are good and bad publications in the liberal media.
I consider Columbia Journalism Review to be one of the better ones.
CJR writes about what the news gets wrong, and often do a good job of it.
Out of respect for that, I couldn’t let this poorly reasoned article this week from their editor-in-chief go by without writing to him.
Eight years after Trump’s June 2015 presidential announcement, many people who should know better are still missing an important fact — Trump’s candidacy is not about Trump.
Trump’s candidacy is about us.
And sometimes, ideas need to be fought for in venues that you care about.
Ideas don’t just fight for themselves.
Standards don’t maintain themselves.
It is through the efforts of people like you and me that standards are maintained.
We don’t get a free America by sitting back idly.
We get a free America by earning it back.
In the month of June, I’m going to spend an hour a day discussing that with some of my most impressive readers, laying that foundation.
I would like you to join me in that as well.
Join here — https://realstevo.com/liberty.
Allan Stevo
“Some people in the United States will accept an imperfect messenger to deliver a much needed message.” Perfect, thank you.
I'm very much with you on this, Allen