The Washington Post profiled a woman who lost her job to Project 2025 after voting for Trump because he promised free fertility treatments. The real failure here belongs to the press.
I have zero sympathy for Ryleigh Cooper or any other person who thought it would be a great idea for a business fraud and adjudicated rapist-pussy-grabber to be POTUS. You would have to have been comatose since 2015 to not have known he was a very bad man and proven liar. Yes, the media is filled with snakes who've clearly abandoned all principles and ethics, but they can't stop you from seeing things with your own two eyes.
I agree. Democracy demands more attention than the writer attributes to Cooper. She apparently had no idea of Harris' views on IVF and health care generally, and ignored everything she knew about that repulsive liar Trump.
I think the media does understand how many people only read the headline, because most people read news online now. When you read a headline in print, the article is right there, and you can at least skim part of the article as you read the headline. Online, mostly you have to click on the headline to see any of the article. As a result, clickbait headlines have spread across media, where you have to click on the headline to even see what the headline means.
So they do know how often people click on the headline, and still they produce misleading headlines, which leads me to believe it’s either intent or indifference.
Agree with your piece totally. Time for the Press, ALL PRESS/MEDIA....at least those that are honest, to call out LIES or FALSEHOODS....or ever reflect on past behavior. Without that, we will continue to make huge mistakes likes this, e.g. electing a FRAUD. Please keep up the good work....
The Media's credulity in reporting this stuff is definitely a primary driver for a lot of this, but at the same time, Trump has been the main character in America for almost a decade now. This woman was a college graduate who had done work towards her masters. After all this, its a choice to believe what you believe, and she made one, acted on it, and it hasn't gone well. It's impossible to muster any empathy for her plight.
Major news media is utterly compromised, you're 100% correct, but I'm not sure how you fix it when people are also making a conscious choice to believe lies.
They tend to say that they provide the necessary context in the bodies of the articles and tend to dismiss me when I say "but the majority of people only see the headlines."
Yes, mainstream media stubbornly sticks to a past model, where people did read most of the story and not just the headline. It is a disturbing abdication of their journalistic responsibility.
Was this ever true? The more recent surveys Parker cites say most people just read headlines, did anyone do surveys like that in the past? What did they find?
I should clarify that the past model is a mainstream media “belief” hot necessarily a reality. People often just scanned headlines when they relied solely on physical media.
I wonder if they don't have the same defensive reaction that teachers (like me) can have when we come under criticism: "How can the problem be me and my lesson plans when the student never came to class?" If you want to escape responsibility by pointing to people who don't put in the effort, you can certainly do that. That's where professionalism and having some pride in your work should kick in: You make the effort to improve, to hear criticism and learn from it, even though some people aren't putting in the effort.
I REALLY struggle with stories like this. On the one hand, I want to have empathy for people who are subjected to so much mis- and disinformation. That's real. On the other hand, I am struck by how some people have the luxury of not paying too much (or any) attention to politics. I've been terrified ever since Trump first ran because I knew it wasn't just about it him; it was about the white supremacy at the heart of this country, and understanding clearly what Trump would unleash. As a queer black woman who's also an immigrant, I do not have the luxury of just reading headlines.
I do agree that, if we want to build viable coalitions that can fight against this madness, we can't just mock people like this woman. But these folks will also have to own the harm they did by voting for Trump and not just when that harm affects them.
I guess I've given up on these people ever getting it right, I have to step back and at least control what I see. Never click on a headline that's "Trump says..." or "Musk says..." Lately I'm only reading news about things that are actually happening, mostly stories of the victims, I think we owe them that much, at least.
And sure, there do need to be people who read every word he says, right when he says it. Because words can turn into policies. If you're a lawyer at a government union or the ACLU, you've got to be ready with that legal brief the minute the policy goes out, some advance warning is needed.
But I'm not on the rapid-response team. It doesn't help anyone for me to be consuming his every word, especially if that attention comes at the expense of attention directed towards the people he's hurting.
Solution: put whatever Trump and his henchmen say in a box on a page titled Trump Speaks. Don't explain. Don't sanewash. Don't put anything in the box except their actual words.
Articles should be headlined as Parker Malloy suggests or as What are the consequences if Trump actually wasn't lying again? Don't ask Rs for comment. They just lie. It's enough to say Press Secretary X amplified Trump's speech. Or Senator Goober refused to fully support what he thinks Trump meant. Get actual experts to discuss.
Those of us who actually read the articles know this already. Why are they lying to us and to actual voters?
Relatedly, there's a central problem with journalists constantly wanting to get "news" out fast. A presidential candidate or president saying X is inherently "news" to them.
Even with copious evidence that Trump is not a reliable source of information, they often will lead with "Trump says X" rather than appearing "biased" by independently verifying anything he says or always including the context that he cannot be trusted as a source of information.
Musk is constantly exploiting this weakness, the desire to rush to print. Put the big lie out "Musk cuts $65 billion in two weeks" and then later quietly remove the supporting lies from your webpage. The people he's talking to wouldn't read a correction anyway.
Some people should just get a 24 hour time-out before anything they say is published. Give the truth a chance to get its boots on before you send the lie racing around the world.
I have zero sympathy for Ryleigh Cooper or any other person who thought it would be a great idea for a business fraud and adjudicated rapist-pussy-grabber to be POTUS. You would have to have been comatose since 2015 to not have known he was a very bad man and proven liar. Yes, the media is filled with snakes who've clearly abandoned all principles and ethics, but they can't stop you from seeing things with your own two eyes.
Two things can be true at the same time, the media does a shitty job reporting proven liars like Trump and some people don't pay enough attention.
I agree. Democracy demands more attention than the writer attributes to Cooper. She apparently had no idea of Harris' views on IVF and health care generally, and ignored everything she knew about that repulsive liar Trump.
I think the media does understand how many people only read the headline, because most people read news online now. When you read a headline in print, the article is right there, and you can at least skim part of the article as you read the headline. Online, mostly you have to click on the headline to see any of the article. As a result, clickbait headlines have spread across media, where you have to click on the headline to even see what the headline means.
So they do know how often people click on the headline, and still they produce misleading headlines, which leads me to believe it’s either intent or indifference.
Agree with your piece totally. Time for the Press, ALL PRESS/MEDIA....at least those that are honest, to call out LIES or FALSEHOODS....or ever reflect on past behavior. Without that, we will continue to make huge mistakes likes this, e.g. electing a FRAUD. Please keep up the good work....
The Media's credulity in reporting this stuff is definitely a primary driver for a lot of this, but at the same time, Trump has been the main character in America for almost a decade now. This woman was a college graduate who had done work towards her masters. After all this, its a choice to believe what you believe, and she made one, acted on it, and it hasn't gone well. It's impossible to muster any empathy for her plight.
Major news media is utterly compromised, you're 100% correct, but I'm not sure how you fix it when people are also making a conscious choice to believe lies.
Based on your interactions in the field how do journalists react to suggestions like this?
They tend to say that they provide the necessary context in the bodies of the articles and tend to dismiss me when I say "but the majority of people only see the headlines."
That sounds incredibly short-sighted of them and frustrating!
Yes, mainstream media stubbornly sticks to a past model, where people did read most of the story and not just the headline. It is a disturbing abdication of their journalistic responsibility.
Was this ever true? The more recent surveys Parker cites say most people just read headlines, did anyone do surveys like that in the past? What did they find?
I should clarify that the past model is a mainstream media “belief” hot necessarily a reality. People often just scanned headlines when they relied solely on physical media.
Even with a print paper, you can't read every single article. You have to pick them based on the headline.
I wonder if they don't have the same defensive reaction that teachers (like me) can have when we come under criticism: "How can the problem be me and my lesson plans when the student never came to class?" If you want to escape responsibility by pointing to people who don't put in the effort, you can certainly do that. That's where professionalism and having some pride in your work should kick in: You make the effort to improve, to hear criticism and learn from it, even though some people aren't putting in the effort.
I REALLY struggle with stories like this. On the one hand, I want to have empathy for people who are subjected to so much mis- and disinformation. That's real. On the other hand, I am struck by how some people have the luxury of not paying too much (or any) attention to politics. I've been terrified ever since Trump first ran because I knew it wasn't just about it him; it was about the white supremacy at the heart of this country, and understanding clearly what Trump would unleash. As a queer black woman who's also an immigrant, I do not have the luxury of just reading headlines.
I do agree that, if we want to build viable coalitions that can fight against this madness, we can't just mock people like this woman. But these folks will also have to own the harm they did by voting for Trump and not just when that harm affects them.
I guess I've given up on these people ever getting it right, I have to step back and at least control what I see. Never click on a headline that's "Trump says..." or "Musk says..." Lately I'm only reading news about things that are actually happening, mostly stories of the victims, I think we owe them that much, at least.
And sure, there do need to be people who read every word he says, right when he says it. Because words can turn into policies. If you're a lawyer at a government union or the ACLU, you've got to be ready with that legal brief the minute the policy goes out, some advance warning is needed.
But I'm not on the rapid-response team. It doesn't help anyone for me to be consuming his every word, especially if that attention comes at the expense of attention directed towards the people he's hurting.
Ten to one she is a white woman.
Solution: put whatever Trump and his henchmen say in a box on a page titled Trump Speaks. Don't explain. Don't sanewash. Don't put anything in the box except their actual words.
Articles should be headlined as Parker Malloy suggests or as What are the consequences if Trump actually wasn't lying again? Don't ask Rs for comment. They just lie. It's enough to say Press Secretary X amplified Trump's speech. Or Senator Goober refused to fully support what he thinks Trump meant. Get actual experts to discuss.
Those of us who actually read the articles know this already. Why are they lying to us and to actual voters?
Relatedly, there's a central problem with journalists constantly wanting to get "news" out fast. A presidential candidate or president saying X is inherently "news" to them.
Even with copious evidence that Trump is not a reliable source of information, they often will lead with "Trump says X" rather than appearing "biased" by independently verifying anything he says or always including the context that he cannot be trusted as a source of information.
Musk is constantly exploiting this weakness, the desire to rush to print. Put the big lie out "Musk cuts $65 billion in two weeks" and then later quietly remove the supporting lies from your webpage. The people he's talking to wouldn't read a correction anyway.
Some people should just get a 24 hour time-out before anything they say is published. Give the truth a chance to get its boots on before you send the lie racing around the world.