"We were going to decide what mattered"

I was led to this from http://ace.mu.nu and rather than post Truth Revolt's editorialization of the original, I decided to go to the source itself, to make sure some context or additional verbiage was not being left out so as to color what the original actual said.  It did not.

This time last year, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, I penned an “Open Letter” to the new president on behalf of the US press corps. Trump, even before he came into office, was amping up his attacks on the press, and I thought it might be helpful (if perhaps a little tongue in cheek) to lay out some ground rules for the relationship between the president and the reporters who cover him. “It is, after all, our airtime and column inches that you are seeking to influence,” I wrote. “We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners, and viewers. So think of what follows as a backgrounder on what to expect from us.”

The idea then was that it was time to take the story back; to not let Trump, and his acolytes, control the conversation. That was going to be our job. We were going to decide what mattered, how our audience spent their time. In the months since, Trump has done his thing, taunting and lying and promising lawsuits and legislation and more threats. We, unfortunately, have failed to hold up our end of the bargain.

The emphasis added is mine.  Let that sink in.  The Editor in Chief and Publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review does not consider it to be the media's job to inform and educate its customers, but to "control the conversation", "decide what mattered", and "how our audience spent their time."  This is both chilling and refreshing in its audacious honesty.  In a moment of "I'm talking with friends here, right?" the mask slips and he reveals what he truly believes.  That the audience for journalists (not mere "editorialists", this isn't the Columbia Editorialism Review after all), is not entitled to the truth, the facts, or objective reporting.  Oh no, we're to be passive recipients of a managed conversation where the journalist decides what matters (Russia probe) and what does not (FusionGPS's collusion with Democrats to gin up the document the probe was based upon).

And it goes on:

I spent an afternoon this week at a Manhattan hotel with a couple of dozen people, mainly artists, who gather regularly for an informal salon. They, too, are struggling with how to respond to Trump; most have not yet figured it out. But these outsiders looking in on journalism had become convinced that what they were reading and watching was no longer helping them make sense of where the country was headed, or how they should think about it. To them, it all seemed like so much white noise, much of which they increasingly were tuning out. 

Of course... when you're in a professional slump, the best way to figure out what to do is to consult with outside experts.  In his case... artists?  Because they'll know the best way to apply all the lessons you were taught in J-school?  What?  Of course, it's clear... they're not there to give him professional advice, they're "outsiders looking in" giving recommendations on how to "restore the narrative" which has nothing to do with the reportage of facts, and everything to do with swaying emotions and evoking imagery (you know... propaganda).  And that's completely within the artists' bailiwick.  But notice that they're apparently convinced it is the job of journalism to tell them how to think about where the country is headed.  Call me old fashioned, but I thought it was to report on the who, what, where, why, and how of important events in the world around us.  Not what to think about it.

And once upon a time, it was.  Oh sure, there's always been yellow journalism (Hearst likely started the Spanish American War with his "journalism"), but the traditional values of journalism were to be objective, and factual to the point of discomfort ("If your mother tells you she loves you, find a corroborating source" is an old journalistic saw).  But apparently not anymore:

We, as a profession, are capable of figuring this out. The answer clearly is not in spending our time responding to Trump, or emoting en masse in response to whatever he has spout off. Nor is the answer in the more traditional, “he said, she said” approach to political journalism. I think the answer likely lies in the seams between more conventional approaches to reporting: I want to see more first-person pieces by reporters on the trail, some oral histories, some theoretical what-ifs. Let’s not leave the most truthful storytelling to fiction writers or dodgy book writers. This is an extraordinary moment, and it requires a new, proactive urgency to tell the story of this presidency as we see it, rather than fall into the swirl of familiar tropes and outrages. 

Yes, why get into the actual facts of a story when you can give "first-person pieces" (i.e. what the reporter feels about the thing upon which she is reporting), "oral histories" (i.e. individuals' recollections of events, not actual history or facts), or "theoretical what-ifs" (i.e. ugh...).  Because why rely on the objective truth about something when you can instead manipulate it and cherry pick elements that tell the story the way you want to (i.e. propagandize)?  In this brave new world of journalism, truth telling is passe, the real goal is deciding what matters.