Greenberg’s Comic: Government Shutdown

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Why Did the Media Botch Covington? Lack of Diversity

By now, it is widely accepted that the mainstream media botched the Covington Catholic School story. The real question is, Why? How could they screw it up so badly?

It’s not enough to blame social media. Twitter is a tool, not a person. Journalists are human beings who make choices; they can’t help but be influenced by their worldviews. We should stop pretending that journalists seek only facts, balance and fairness. There are certainly journalists who aim for those high standards, but the majority are fallible human beings attached to their worldviews. In the age of Trump, this attachment has been especially difficult to hide, both from the right and the left.

As Frank Bruni courageously wrote in The New York Times:

“We react to news by trying to fit it into the argument that we routinely make, the grievance that we usually raise, the fury or angst or sorrow that we typically peddle. We have our narrative, and we’re on the lookout for comments and developments that back it up. The response to the initial footage of the Covington boys — and, in particular, to the one who wore a red MAGA cap as he stood before and stared at the drumming veteran — adhered to this dynamic.”

In a blistering takedown in The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan asks:

“How could the elite media—The New York Times, let’s say—have protected themselves from this event, which has served to reinforce millions of Americans’ belief that traditional journalistic outlets are purveyors of ‘fake news’? They might have hewed to a concept that once went by the quaint term ‘journalistic ethics.’ Among other things, journalistic ethics held that if you didn’t have the reporting to support a story, and if that story had the potential to hurt its subjects, and if those subjects were private citizens, and if they were moreover minors, you didn’t run the story. You kept reporting it; you let yourself get scooped; and you accepted that speed is not the highest value. Otherwise, you were the trash press.”

Does anyone believe that all this soul searching will prevent another Covington debacle? Not when you consider the built-in incentives to maintain the status quo, as Bruni writes:

“With everything from Twitter followers to television bookings, we’re rewarded for fierce conviction, for utter certainty, for emphatically taking sides and staying unconditionally faithful to what we’ve pushed for and against in the past. We each have our brand, and the narrower and more unyielding it is, the more currency it has and the more loyal our consumers. Instead of bucking the political tribalism in America, we ride it.”

Each media outlet, from Fox to MSNBC, from Breitbart to The Washington Post, has its own lucrative “brand.” These brands are very much based on ideological consistency. If you introduce too much ideological diversity, you risk diluting your brand, as if we’re selling cake mix that promises consistency.

As David French writes in National Review Online, “So long as our nation’s newsrooms are ideological monocultures, not even the best of intentions can block the formation of a partisan press.”

An ideal newsroom should include liberal, conservative and centrist reporters. An ideal editor-in-chief should ensure that a broad ideological perspective is brought to its reporting. Of course, that’s hard to do when the great majority of your reporters see things the same way.

You can argue that ideological diversity is probably more important than any other. I would rather be defined by how I think and write and act than by my Jewish-Sephardic ethnic heritage. That ought to be true of every reporter or commentator.

As French writes, modern newsrooms “diligently seek to hire reporters from historically marginalized communities. They do not, however, apply the same diligence to hiring people who come from the intellectual and religious communities on the other side of the great American divide. This creates yawning gaps of ignorance.”

Academia has led the way in this narrow definition of diversity. As Heather MacDonald writes in her book, “The Diversity Delusion”:

“The roots lie in a charged set of ideas that now dominate higher education: that human beings are defined by their skin color, sex, and sexual preference; that discrimination based on those characteristics has been the driving force in Western civilization.”

News media organizations have an obligation to buck this trend and bring ideological diversity into their newsrooms. It may dilute their brand, but journalism should not be marketing. We’re selling truth and fairness and credibility, not Doritos.

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Greenberg’s Comic: Passing the Torch

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Political Cartoon: Preliminary Price Tag

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Anger and Euphoria: Two Sides of the Same Coin

In his regular column in the Detroit Free Press, the eminent author Mitch Albom wrote that his New Year’s resolution this year is to “stay away from angry politics.”

However, after hearing the newly minted Rep. Rashida Tlaib  (D-MI) announce, referring to President Donald Trump, that “We’re going to impeach the mother***er,” Albom quickly gave up on his resolution. “So long, New Year’s,” he wrote.

Albom called Tlaib’s vulgarity “a new low in a cesspool of human relations we call politics,” adding that “to not acknowledge that is to indirectly condone it, especially since Tlaib is from our backyard, Detroit.”

Albom was certainly right to castigate Tlaib for using a word considered “one of the worst profanities in our language,” and for doubling down on her action instead of apologizing.

But is Albom correct that the profanity was rooted in anger? That is the conventional wisdom: We’ve become so angry at our dysfunctional politics that we violate basic rules of civility. Anger is blinding, as they say.

I’d like to suggest another emotion that also is blinding: Euphoria.

It wasn’t anger, but euphoria that dominated the mood at the public event at which Tlaib let loose with her vulgarity. The crowd was ecstatic that their party would now control the House of Representatives and that Tlaib would represent them. Tlaib and her fans were partying and celebrating. They were yelling in joy, not anger.

Ever since advertising began its domination of American culture, euphoria has become a hugely popular and lucrative emotion. Euphoria is how advertisers seduce us with their over-promises. In sports, the celebration of a great play or victory is the “money shot.” On television, the tears of joy that follow a winning performance on “Dancing with the Stars” is the exclamation point viewers crave. Countless Hollywood movies end with some kind of euphoric resolution.

Euphoria is the ultimate emotion behind the ultimate American value: Winning. As long as winning stays popular, so will euphoria.

The problem, of course, is that it’s hard to think straight when we’re in a state of ecstasy, just as it’s hard to think straight when we’re in a state of rage. Intense emotions, whether positive or negative, blind us to serene values like civility. That is what happened with Rashida Tlaib: She was so euphoric after her victory that she used a profanity that came back to haunt her, putting the focus on her vulgarity rather than on her target.

Maybe Larry David was onto something when he told us to “curb” our enthusiasm. We can all relate to that. Our best decisions come when we think with a calm, measured mind. Our worst decisions, verbal or otherwise, come when our passions dominate our minds. Euphoric Democrats who are itching to stick it to their political rivals would be wise to remember that.

For now, Mitch Albom’s resolution is still holding, by a thread.

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Steve’s Cartoon: A Tribute to Amos Oz

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Five Things I Learned From Amos Oz

I didn’t know Amos Oz, the Israeli literary giant who died of cancer on Dec. 28 at age 79. I only met him once, about 20 years ago, when he spoke at a synagogue in Los Angeles. At the time, I had launched a spiritual magazine that promoted Jewish unity. When the person who introduced us mentioned that I was into Jewish unity, Oz quipped that in the Jewish world, “Unity means if you agree with me, then we’ll have unity.” The man had a sense of humor.

When I reflected more seriously on what he had said, that became the first thing I learned from Oz: Don’t dream the wrong dreams. Jewish unity may sound wonderful, but it is a pipe dream. It’s nebulous and naïve. Oz could dream, but he was a hard-nosed dreamer. He knew how the world worked; he knew that sharp disagreement was built into the human condition.

Oz could dream, but he was a hard-nosed dreamer. He knew how the world worked; he knew that sharp disagreement was built into the human condition.

The second thing I learned from Oz came during the same conversation. “Disagreement is a good thing,” he told me, “until it turns into animosity. That I mind.” Here was a man of words drawing a red line for healthy discourse. He was telling us to disagree, yes, but disagree without anger, without rejection, without resentment. Twenty years later, when one sees the state of our communal discourse today, this red line resonates.

The third thing I learned from Oz is how to talk about the Holocaust. Six million Jews were not killed, he would say, “they were murdered.” When I heard him say that, I remember how he deviated from the theme of his talk to make a point about the difference between killing and murdering. It felt as if he had done so countless times. He was a man of words. He was telling us that you can’t truly honor the victims of the Holocaust without being clear and accurate about the kind of evil they encountered.

Another clear word from Oz helped me better understand the complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was the fourth thing I learned from him. “We need a divorce from the Palestinians,” he would say. It took me years to fully appreciate the essential truth of that idea. Oz had a reputation for being a lefty peacenik, but his concept of divorce had nothing to do with leftism or peace delusions. If anything, it recognized the hard reality of irreconcilable differences. Over the years, more and more Israel supporters have come to appreciate this reality.

Oz was bitterly opposed to many policies of the Israeli government, but he was a deep lover of the country he called home, the place he wrote about with such poignant lyricism.

Oz was bitterly opposed to many policies of the Israeli government, but he was a deep lover of the country he called home, the place he wrote about with such poignant lyricism. How did he reconcile this paradox? This is the fifth thing I learned from Oz — the art of loving something that can drive you nuts. “I love Israel even when I can’t stand it,” he would say. These are the words of a lover. When someone very close to us does something we deeply dislike, we “can’t stand it” precisely because we love them so much.

Oz knew how to love, how to express his love, and how not to let go of that love. Among the many things that will form his legacy, this extraordinary love will be one of them.

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