0075 | June 10, 2019
Donald Trump: Media Responsibility
In a democracy the press serves a vital function–the dissemination of facts. Facts are slippery, but their faithful pursuit strengthens our national character. What has the election of Donald Trump revealed about fact based media in America?
| C.T. WEBB: 00:19 | [music] Good afternoon, good morning or good evening and welcome to The American Age podcast. This is your host C. Travis Webb. I’m editor of The American Age and I’m speaking to my very wonderful friends from South Lake Tahoe today. So I’m out of town. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 00:33 | My name is Steven G. Fullwood and I’m the co-founder of The Nomadic Archivist Project. And I am speaking to you from a very hot Harlem and I recently just got back into town from visiting LA where I was at the Cine Gear conference to look at a film equipment and to do some research at the ONE Archives, the oldest LGBTQ archive in existence. |
| S. RODNEY: 00:58 | Nice, nice. My name is Seph Rodney. I am a senior editor at the Hyperallergic blog. I write about art and related issues. And I’m talking to you from a sunny South Bronx. It’s hot and I kind of wish I had the air conditioning on but that would make too much noise. So I’m just going to– |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:24 | You’re going to suffer for our art. |
| S. RODNEY: 01:27 | Yeah. Oh, and Steven just reminded me that I should plug my own book which just got published on Friday by Routledge Press. It’s called The Personalization of the Museum Visit and is all about how a museum visit, as an experiential activity, has changed over the past generation and I take the reader through all the reasons why that’s happened. So thank you for that reminder, Steven. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 01:55 | Congratulations. |
| S. RODNEY: 01:56 | Thank you. |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:58 | This is to remind our listeners that we practice a form of what we like to call an intellectual intimacy, which is giving each other the space and time to figure out things out loud and together. So we’re going to continue our conversation about Donald Trump. Last week, we talked about Donald Trump as a kind of change agent and sort of the things that might or might not be possible because of his election. And Seph brought up the very meaty topic of accountability in the media, which is, obviously, something that kind of runs across the drain regardless of whether you are in the left or right. You have some probably fairly strong opinions if you’re engaged in culture in that way. So obviously, many people are not but– so Seph, do you want to start us with sort of your thoughts on it or do you want to kick it to someone else? |
| S. RODNEY: 02:54 | Well, I thought the last time we spoke– and that just seems eons away now. I’m not sure why. But I think I had an example that I run into on Twitter and, for the life of me, I just cannot remember what it is now. The problem for me with dealing with these issues that are correlated to Trumps election is that there are so many egregious examples that it feels a bit like cognitive overload. There’s so many examples of people getting it wrong, of people like Chuck Todd giggling through interviews with people like Mick Mulvaney or Mitch McConnell, people who– let me put it this way. Part of the problem– I think someone else I follow on Twitter summed it up this way. That part of the problem is when you have someone who lies as much as he does and his administration does with him and for him. When they lie so consistently and in such bald-faced ways that the media, it isn’t set up to deal with someone like that. It makes– |
| C.T. WEBB: 04:23 | They were quite ashamed. They were quite ashamed. |
| S. RODNEY: 04:26 | No. That’s right. But media is premised on this basic assumption that– basic assumption is of good faith. Is that if you show up for my show, if you’re on here talking to me about this topic, you are actually going to argue rationally and you’re going to present facts, which is not the case with this administration. They won’t argue rationally and they won’t necessarily pay attention to the law and they won’t present evidence to back up their claims. For me, there’s a language– I feel really stymied when it comes to talking about this stuff because I don’t feel like I have a language for it. It is so bad, it’s so awful that I don’t– and when I see Chuck Todd say– when he’s questioned by Mick Mulvaney, ”Well, don’t you think that it’s a bad idea to have a sitting president direct someone in the Military to hide the name or the– someone in the office of a sitting president hide the name of a ship in a carrier group because you’re afraid that it will offend the president’s delicate sensibilities?” And he says, ”No, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for someone to do that.” And you just move on to the next question. That makes no sense to me. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 05:56 | So I was thinking about what you– a couple things that we’ll be thinking about it’s how people consume media and also feeling overwhelmed by it. So the consumption is if we take– if we can theorize that the average person reads– well, I just want to stop there, reads and thinks as well. Smart people, smart, smart. |
| C.T. WEBB: 06:21 | Right. I love books. I love books. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 06:23 | I’m a good person and I read books. And so I was thinking about how people consume media and how. So whether it’s broadcast or on the internet in terms of being broadcast. But so how does one become overwhelmed by it and how do people sit through it? And so I wanted to ask you guys, less of a comment and more of a question– and we talked about this a long time ago. It was like, ”Where do you get your news media? How do you do it?” And we talked a little bit about your feelings about it, Seph. I wanted to ask you guys to really kind of delve into how do you test what you read. Do you read several articles? Right now, I’m, for example, following the piece on a woman named Pamela Turner who was shot in Texas. A mentally ill woman who was shot by a police officer who they said really just kind of went after her. They lived in the same neighborhood. He knew that she was mentally ill but that he accosted her and then he tases her, she gets the taser away from him, he tases her, she tases him, and then he shoots her pointblank. And I kept thinking about this idea of de-escalate, de-escalate. Why did you have to shoot to kill her rather than simply to stop her or not shoot her at all? She’s a woman, you’re this man. So I’m following the story and there’s so little information about it. It’s mainly the police department versus the family who continues to do press releases or bringing the press together to talk about what needs to be done in terms of accountability. The officer has been– he was suspended but now he’s back on desk duty. He’s not in the field. And I’m trying to figure out where can I get more information about this, and this is national media and local media. So I wanted to know how you guys verify what you read. |
| C.T. WEBB: 08:10 | So for me, let me answer your question and I’ll also add a response to what Seph had said. As far as media and accountability, my opinion has moved quite a bit on sort of where I’m at with our own responsibilities, as progressives and intellectuals, around the Trump presidency and around sort of the narratives that are shaping the United States and a large part of the Western world right now. And I really do think that we share a lot of the responsibility for it because I don’t– I think when you yell that the sky is falling– to go back to the children’s tale, right? The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Eventually, the sky falls. For 30 years of people that had conservative economic policies, if we had called them racist and waging a cultural war, you eventually will summon someone who does that. And I’ve gone back and tried to educate myself a little bit more about some of our previous conservative presidents – Reagan, Bush, etc – and I don’t know that as men of character, which they clearly were men of character wherever you land on their politics, I don’t know that the kind of invectives we launched against them for that many years were A, very effective, and B, even accurate. |
| C.T. WEBB: 10:05 | So I think the media has a lot to do with creating someone like Donald Trump and making him possible in a longer historical ark and certainly in the shorter historical ark at the amount of attention that he got during his presidency, the number of rallies that were broadcast, the snickering the Seph brought up, etc. Now, let me segue inelegantly to your question, Steven, which is to say that because of that, I actually read very broadly now. I actually read Fox News every day. I do. I could stand and argue very strongly against what they do because I’ve now read what they do and I see their above the fold technic. The way Fox News works is they’ll use a salacious headline or an opening paragraph that is unbelievably biased and clearly meant to rile people up. And then buried in the rest of the story, once you get ”below the fold”, it’s basically news reporting. And they rely a lot on Washington Post and The New York Times reporting. They very rarely do their own original reporting. So my media diet is I read Fox News every day. I don’t really watch a lot of television. I don’t mean that in a snooty way, I mean that just in that’s not how I engage with media. So I read CNN, I read The New York Times, I read the Washington Post, I read Politico, I read the BBC America as much as possible, I read NPR. And I feel like– and then what I add to that is my own understanding of human beings and how human beings act and interact and my underline believe in sort of the basic, essential goodness of most people. So anyway, that’s kind of a long, long answer. |
| S. RODNEY: 12:09 | Actually, I really want to respond to that if I may, Steven. So thank you for saying that, Travis. It sounds honest and it sounds searching. And I really appreciate that because what it’s done, it’s made me look at my own sort of assumptions of how people act or my convictions about how people act. I think what I’m getting at is that the Trump administration has shown me, in really visceral way, that I fundamentally don’t like this aspect of most people. That most people would rather go along and get along than speak the truth in the moment because what most people do, and I think this is precisely the problem with people like Morning Joe and Chuck Todd and Stephanopoulos and Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, is that rather than stop and say to the person, ”I’ve just asked you a question. You’re deflecting. You’re not answering my question. You’re reading some other script. I need you to answer my question. Is birtherism racist or not? I just need a yes or no. And if you can’t give me what I need, you don’t understand that I’m not going to move off this question until you do.” Now, what most people will do, 98% of the population will say, ”Well, okay. All right. You don’t want to answer that. So how about this way? So how about this oblique angle? How about we go in from this aspect? How about we try this? How about we change our entire language to suit your obduracy?” |
| S. RODNEY: 14:03 | My position is most people will do that. Most people, when they’re faced with someone else’s reticence and resistance, they will back down and they will say, ”Okay. Okay. We’ll try it some other way.” I don’t want to be like that. I absolutely refuse to be like that. And I know that it makes me– and I know at least in the classroom, given the way that some students respond to me, it makes me come off as draconian, it makes me come off as rigid, it makes me come off as a bit of a fascist. But my position is integrity in that moment of asking that question is not negotiable and most people will not take that position. So I don’t like most people for that reason and I’m not saying I blankly don’t like– for the audience, I’m not blankly saying I don’t like people, I’m saying I don’t like that aspect of being a human being. And here’s the thing, it’s such a fundamental part of us because we’re pro-social primates, as Travis has liked to say in the past. And I think it’s a really great encapsulation of who we are. We live in a culture, we live among other people. A great part of our being is getting along with those people but I don’t feel like getting along when I’m compromising my principles. |
| C.T. WEBB: 15:33 | Steven, super 10 second response to Seph because I really appreciate that he said that. And I’m entirely with you and– so not but, but and I know I’ve said this on the podcast before, borrowing from a friend, that truth is a bitter– it’s an acquired taste and it tastes very bitter and it takes a very long time to acquire it. One of the reasons I think you and I are as close as we are is we share– we are very honest with one another and I also seek that out in my interpersonal relationships. But when I’m interacting with strangers, I feel like I understand why they don’t like the taste of it and I want to add some sugar to induce a taste, cook it a little bit, in order to entice or to train– that sounds really aristocratic. Yeah. And aristocratic. But that is how I feel about it. So anyway, sorry, Steven. Please, go– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 16:47 | No, that’s perfect. That’s perfect. And so to you both, this idea– so Seph, I’ve noticed that when people have done exactly what you would like them to do, these journalists, I imagine that there is an editorial board who would tell them, ”Can you ease up a bit? Because this isn’t really working.” We’ve noticed that people– and I noticed that people who say– I’ve watched reporters to this, where people have– and not for the drama of it necessarily. It’s like, ”If you’re not going to answer any questions, this interview is over then.” I’ve seen people take that stance or that, ”We’re not going to move off this point until you answer my question.” And I think reporters, anchors have been pushed off of that– pushed back a bit because, early on, I saw a lot of that in 2016, with Trump folks part of his campaign but also a part of his administration and they’re as obstinate as they can be. If you just want to frustrate yourself and pull out all your hair everywhere on your body, just listen to Sarah Sanders. Just listen to her on any show. |
| S. RODNEY: 18:02 | Oh, yeah. She’s awful. She’s horrific. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:05 | She’s horrible. And Ben Carson recently and the whole Oreo conflama. |
| S. RODNEY: 18:11 | Oh, that man is an idiot. Jesus Christ. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:15 | I think he’s trolling us because he talks so much slower. If you notice, it’s almost like– I’m like, ”This man is some kind of theoretical physicist where he’s, ‘If I can slow this down, I’m going to make them so angry and frustrated, it’ll keep my name in the news.”’ I don’t think he has a reason, I just think he doesn’t know anything. And he’s clearly ignorant, he’s clearly– what do you call it? He’s just– |
| S. RODNEY: 18:50 | Out of his depth? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:52 | He’s out of his depth but he’s an evil person because he does not care about people. He does not care. He’s in charge of people’s housing. The life-blood of where you need to go to prepare yourself to take care of yourself and then go back out into the world. This man has none of this. He’s demonstrated nothing since he’s been in office or even before then. He’s just a person who talked, who just said whatever came out of his mouth. So I think journalists– back to my original point. But I think journalists have been pushed back. Don’t be so confrontational. So you get your Morning Joe’s where people sit around and basically agree with each other. And there you have it. |
| C.T. WEBB: 19:31 | So you said evil. So I– |
| S. RODNEY: 19:35 | I was going to push back on this too, actually, but go ahead, Travis. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:38 | Push on. |
| C.T. WEBB: 19:40 | That’s a hard word for me. Not that I don’t think that there are people in the world that embody that principle more or less but I think we can invent a Ben Carson that looks and moves and acts just the way that this Ben Carson does without attributing evil to him just by giving him a view of the world that none of us would agree with. |
| S. RODNEY: 20:09 | Oh, you mean motivation. Giving him a motivation. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 20:12 | Yeah. A perspective. I get that. I get that. |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:14 | Again, all we have to add to the recipe is the bootstrap idea. That’s all you need to add. You just have to add that he– I think we are probably in broad agreement that that is far too great a simplification of the complexity of what goes on in human lives and what ends up– what causes someone to lose their home or what causes someone to need to use HUD in order to take care of their family. So clearly, it’s more complicated than that. But there is definitely a significant portion of the American population– it’s very much of an American idea and it’s something you won’t see– it’s not as common in European countries, the pull yourself up by your bootstraps idea. And so that’s all you need to make sense of someone like that. Now, again, to go back to something in the sort of Arjuna, Bhagavad Gita sense, that still makes him my enemy. I still want to defeat him, I still want him to lose in the court of public opinion. I want that idea to be cast out and smote upon the ground. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:29 | Smote him until there’s no smoting to be found. Not Oreo, not anything. |
| C.T. WEBB: 21:35 | But he’s not evil. He doesn’t need to be evil for all of the rest of that to be true. |
| S. RODNEY: 21:41 | Well, I think the way I would fairly characterize my response to the calumny of Dr. Ben Carson is to say that, at some point in his life, he was useful to people. When he was a newer surgeon, apparently, the man was brilliant. So he did more than just talk. He did do things with his hands that materially affected the circumstances of people’s lives. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 22:07 | Hopefully, yeah. Let’s hope that that is true. Yes. |
| S. RODNEY: 22:11 | Right. My issue, though, is that if we call someone like him evil, then what do we call someone like Trump? Because Trump, for me, is a category beyond. Ben Carson, we can definitely maybe argument that he his ignorant and his ignorance is pernicious, that it actually has a bad effect on people’s lives. We can measure out. We can say, ”Look at how he’s mismanaged HUD. Look at how it’s affected these people in this population.” But Trump, that’s a whole other category of narcissism that is so self-centered that he can look out at the landscape, the political landscape of the US and see all the structures that have been destabilized and/or destroyed. What’s the organization that was started by Elizabeth Warren that was– Consumer Protection Bureau or something like that? You can look at how kids have been put in cages, you can look at the wholesale demonization of Planned Parenthood and– |
| C.T. WEBB: 23:33 | So can I interject for a second just as–? We all get an F today because the topic is supposed to be what’s positive about Trump and we have totally– |
| S. RODNEY: 23:45 | I think it was more about– right. Media scrutiny and how that’s been sort of kind of cast to the winds because of this initiative. |
| C.T. WEBB: 23:56 | Yeah. Thanks to Trump. So of course, clearly, we all were participating in this because I feel– as you were just describing all of the things that he sort of pulled down, but your original point, Seph, and your original topic was around this idea of media culpability and we have to say thank you to the president for showing that the Emperor had no clothes. |
| S. RODNEY: 24:23 | No, actually, you’re absolutely right about– well, absolutely right. I’m going to reel that back in. I think you’re right with an asterisk in that I don’t want to be thankful to him but I am thankful to the circumstance because it has absolutely revealed how poorly our media deals with that bitter but tasty dish of the truth. Clearly, we’ve been fucking up for a generation and it’s just now that we’re trying to– and I see in Twitter and in my Twitter feed, people that I follow, they’re constantly calling out The New York Times and various large-scale publications saying, ”No, I fixed this for you. This headline should not read this way because Hope Hicks doesn’t get to think about it and make up her mind whether she wants to obey a congressional subpoena. It’s the law. She has to or she stands in jeopardy.” It’s so infuriating to me but I am grateful that we’re finally at the place where we’re starting to be serious about this, take this shit seriously. Headlines mean things, right? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 25:38 | Headlines mean things but our folks who are Democrats or not Republicans are so frustrated by Trumps odd tendency and his reign of terror that we can’t see the process working. That they’re moving their way to impeachment or they’re moving their way on other things, things outside of impeachment. Because I’ve been listening to Pelosi and Nadler, these other folks, and Pelosi recently said– and I could tell she practiced this before she got on camera because it was one of those things where she was like, ”No. I don’t feel any pressure but let me say this–” And she went ahead, I was like, ”Here comes the prepared remarks.” And basically, what she said was, ”We’re on path. We got this.” That was essentially what she said and I was like– so there are days when I don’t want to do the Travis, ”I’m going to read all this stuff. Whatever.” And then not just get out of bed because I’m so angry and frustrated. And so when I was in LA, I just cut off all media, for the most part, and I didn’t read anything. And now that I’m catching– |
| C.T. WEBB: 26:41 | And you were happier for it, I bet. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:43 | I was walking around in that smallville town. Hollywood, the Bradbury Building. It’s so great to be here. I felt lighter. But I like what you’re doing, Travis, and I like supplementing my diet, my news diet with things that help me digest this whole human thing, how are people reacting to stuff. And I listen to a lot of things that I don’t agree with as well to try to find out what’s the grain there, what’s our connection as humans. I know we all have to use the bathroom, I know that we all want a nice house, I think. I don’t want to take all your money. Why do you want to take all my money? But so that is helpful to me to kind of remind myself that we are dealing with humans and that different perspectives bring out different– I don’t care if kids are in cages. They shouldn’t come here. Those perspectives. So it’s helpful to try and also to have a group of people that I can run these things by. Run that news story by somebody who’s a compassionate person. What do you think about this? Not because I want to echo chamber but because I’m like, ”Are you seeing what I’m seeing? And then how do we deal with this and how do we not replicate this nastiness in our regular lives?” Because I think that’s– the largest thing that I pull from this whole Trump moment is the meanness, the nastiness. If I’m this person, I need to work on me, the local shit. |
| C.T. WEBB: 28:13 | And we’re coming up on time but talking about meanness is– and there have been a number of moments of this in the Trump presidency and I know I was saying something positive or whatever but even this, I suppose, you could look at in a positive way is how– with a very sort of 10,000 foot level on it, how mean was the most recent decision to cut out English language classes and some of the other services for migrant children? That’s just mean. That is, ”I have to punish you, to discourage you, and I have to be mean about it.” That is a mean thing to do. And the other one was when he didn’t let Sean Spicer go to the visit with the Pope. This life-long Catholic and had expressed, apparently, to a number of people how excited he was to meet the Pope and he was intentionally left off. That’s just a mean thing to do. These are Trump and the people immediately around him, a certain– I assume, Stephen Miller and probably a couple of other people, they’re mean. These are mean people. I don’t think that’s probably true of everyone in the Trump administration but those are acts of meanness. And the fact that, Seph had pointed, out we are willing– we go along with it. |
| S. RODNEY: 29:48 | So let me give the media example and then maybe we can wrap up. But it just occurred to me and I think it’s important to say. Jim Acosta just came out with a book. I forget what the book is titled but it was a few weeks ago and he was talking about Sarah Sanders or he– there was an excerpt in which he, I think, spoke about Sarah Sanders. And let me just set it up, first of all, by saying Sarah Sanders, for me, is that kind of mean person that is totally around Trump. She’s the kind of person– this is what occurs to me when you talk about that kind of meanness, Travis, is that scene in one of those films like [inaudible] where they’re torturing someone and they have the man tied to a chair and they’re plucking out his fingernails one by one. It’s that kind of meanness where you’re actually twisting the fingernail and yanking it out because you want to discourage this person from doing whatever again or encourage them to spill information. She’s that mean to me. And then Jim Acosta, in his book– remember what they did to Jim Acosta, right? They doctored a video of him resisting having the microphone taken from him so it looks like he was actually trying to hurt an intern, sent this video around and then revoked his press credentials on this bogus claim. Jim Acosta, in this excerpt– and I think it came from him or may have come from his publisher but he said something like, ”Yeah. Sarah Sanders, she hangs out with us and she can toss them back–” I think bourbon or whatever whiskey, ”Toss them back with the best of us.” And I’m like, ”That’s what you do with this person who has tried to professionally destroy you? You talk about how– you humanize her by saying that she drinks with you all? What is the point of doing that?” This is exactly what I don’t want from my media. I want you to tell me that you recognize the evil in front of you, you recognize what she’s tried to do in her– and the administration around Trump has tried to do. Tell me that you recognize that and tell me that you’re not okay with it, please. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 32:08 | And don’t drink with this person. What are you doing? Why are you spending your extra time for press credentials or access? What the fuck is that? I completely am on board with that. I’m like, ”No. No. That’s artistry. No.” |
| C.T. WEBB: 32:23 | No. The integrity of that adversarial relationship needs to be maintained. When you are at that sort of working part of your– later, you retire, they retire. You’re buddies. Whatever. But the nature of that relationship is not sitting back and having bourbon together. That’s not what that relationship should be. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 32:48 | Is at the rules of engagement in terms of you know that we’re adversarial– I mean, we’re adversaries here. So therefore, I’m not drinking with you. We’re not breaking bread. That humanization business, no. Soundly defeat you to tell the truth. You don’t get any of my personal time. No. Not a bit. |
| C.T. WEBB: 33:09 | Because the responsibility is to other people. The responsibility is to the people that do not have the time to sit and read a fucking news sites about this version of the story. I understand that is a place of a men’s privilege, that I can have the time to do something like that. Most people don’t have that kind of time. So you have the responsibility to report faithfully for those people and not sit back and covert and have drinks with people that are shitting on you and the people that you are supposed to represent. Yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 33:49 | And with that– |
| C.T. WEBB: 33:51 | Yeah. On that decidedly not positive note, so we will finish here today. So I guess we’ll continue– we’ll try and comment the positive aspects of Trump’s presidency again next week. I’m sure we’ll come up with something. Steven and Seph, yeah, thanks for the conversation. |
| S. RODNEY: 34:08 | Definitely. Thank you. [music] |
References
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