Later On

In Press Watch, Dan Froomkin calls out journalistic malpractice in the coverage of the current administration:

Let’s say the president is mentally unfit for duty.

Let’s say that has been pretty clear for a while now, what with his delusion that he won an election he lost, his chaotic imposition of illegal and irrational tariffs, his self-evident lies about how well everything is going, his frequent lapses into incoherence, and so on.

And then let’s say he unilaterally starts a major war of aggression with no clear rationale. He keeps changing his mind about what the goal is, and whether it is being achieved. He boasts about it like a schoolyard bully and makes apocalyptic threats. He says everything is under control when it is not.

Now bombs are dropping and people are dying and tens of millions of people are living in fear.

And it’s all because he’s a profoundly deranged man.

At what point should a news organization devoted to impartiality start stating the obvious conclusion, even if it’s offensive to a small minority of people, most of whom don’t consume their news anyway?

I realize this is not the first time that Trump has cost people their lives – several hundred thousand people have died because of the closure of USAID early in Trump’s second term.

But this is a war.

With that madman as commander in chief.

Who makes his decisions based on “feelings.”

So I have to ask the leaders of our major news organizations: Doesn’t that cross the line?

Doesn’t the fact that he is bombing the hell out of a country for no particular reason, endangering the region, and destabilizing the world make it incumbent upon you to be blunt about the problem, rather than dancing around it? Isn’t it time for clarity instead of euphemism? Isn’t it time to put aside your aloofness, your concerns about appearing partisan, and your fears of offending your corporate masters? Isn’t it time to tell the whole truth, in the best interests of the country and the world?

I sincerely hope that the leaders of our top news organizations are doing some serious introspection right now.

Maybe they’re searching for the right language – they just can’t bring themselves to use words like deranged or dangerous.

Well here are some things they can say – in the institution’s own voice — that don’t sound so extreme, all of which are backed up by extensive evidence.

He is volatile. He is unreliable. He lacks credibility. Sometimes he is incoherent. He is asserting dictator-like powers. He operates in a bubble of enablers. When he utters a falsehood, it is because he is lying or because he has lost touch with reality – or both. He is being misled by his aides. He believes the lies he sees on Fox News.

And if news executives aren’t willing to be blunt in their institutional voice, they should at least include informed speculation about why he says and does things that are so irrational and disconnected from reality.

They can attribute it to experts or critics if they must, but they should fully describe the critique that provides the essential context for virtually every news article coming out of Washington these days.

Something like: “Critics say Trump is deranged and unfit, that his aides are venal, that his cabinet is inept, and that his supporters are cultists. They say nothing he says can be trusted and that he should be removed from office.”

A Case Study: The Bombing of a School for Girls in Iran

In the first massive barrage of the war on Feb. 28, . . .

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