Hello 2021!
This has been a CRAZY year for news so far … and we’re only one week in. So much is happening all at once I almost can’t decide what to cover next in this blog. After some thought, though, the first thing we’re going to tackle in 2021 is something that’s been bothering me for a long time. It’s when “journalists” start using their media positions to bully people they disagree with, or try to destroy their reputations through the use of shocking but unsubstantiated assertions and allegations.
Some people call it cancelling. In her book, Slanted, independent journalist-slash-media whistleblower Sharyl Attkisson calls it a smear campaign.
Whatever you want to call it, this might be one of the most common – and scariest - abuses of power I’ve encountered in the media business, because I think it leads down some pretty dark roads. What I find most disturbing is that this kind of bullying doesn’t just happen in major media outlets anymore; it’s happening increasingly often in a lot of smaller, local outlets, too. Case in point: this strange little political hit piece I stumbled across just yesterday in – of all places - my local business newspaper, the Cincinnati Business Courier. Why on earth would a local business newspaper be bullying people about politics, you ask? Shouldn’t they just be covering corporate news and stocks and business-y things like that? Good questions, all! I’ve been asking myself the very same ones since I read it.
Let’s take a look at this story together. It starts off, no holds barred, with this headline:
Cincinnati councilwoman abstains from vote recognizing peaceful transfer of presidential power
Wow! That’s a pretty powerful statement right off the bat, implying this councilwoman is advocating for a non-peaceful transfer of presidential power! As soon as I read it, I am so shocked, I quickly go on to read more. But - check out the first paragraph of the article; turns out, it tells a pretty different story from the headline (see especially the text I bolded):
Minutes before armed rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes that will elect Joe Biden president, Cincinnati Councilwoman Betsy Sundermann
abstained from a measure to light up City Hall on Jan. 19-20
to mark the peaceful transfer of power from President Donald Trump to Biden.
So… um … yeah … that explosive headline turns out to be not quite so explosive after all when you realize that Councilwoman Sundermann did not abstain from recognizing a peaceful transfer of presidential power at all. She instead abstained from voting on lighting up a building to mark the peaceful transfer of power. This is not splitting hairs, people – lighting a building hundreds of miles away from D.C. and recognizing a peaceful transfer of power are two pretty different things. Don’t let a business reporter from Cincinnati convince you otherwise.
To his credit, this business reporter does allow a bit of both sides reporting to happen here by including the Councilwoman’s justifications for not voting:
Sundermann, a Republican, did not explain her vote before casting it. In response to a text message from the
Business Courier
, she said the abstention was consistent with her other votes pertaining to state or federal issues.
“They’re beyond our jurisdiction,” she said. “I absolutely condemn the rioting taking place in D.C. It needs to stop. Period.”
But of course, readers who only skimmed the headline wouldn’t know any of this. The damage would have been done - a false narrative about this councilwoman would have been permitted to grow.
Let’s go back to that first paragraph of the story again for a minute, though, because there’s something else really important happening here that I want you to see:
Minutes before armed rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes that will elect Joe Biden president
, Cincinnati Councilwoman…
Check out the bolded text. For some reason, this reporter is attempting to tie or connect this councilwoman to the riots at the U.S. Capitol. which, again, were happening hundreds of miles away. Why?
When you read it more closely, it turns out this “news” story is not really a news story at all, but an opinion piece masquerading as a news story. The writer is throwing in some factual information along with his heaping pile of opinion, so it’s a little hard to tell what he’s doing at first, but if you take a big step back, you can see it quite well.
For some reason, this writer is trying to convince you that this councilwoman does not recognize Joe Biden as the duly elected President. I have no idea if this is true or not and honestly I really don’t care (disclaimer: I have written about this woman before; the subject of Federal politics did not come up). Either way, this Business Courier reporter doesn’t appear to have any factual information to support his opinion here. So, how does he try and convince you his opinion is true? By using implication, speculation and unsubstantiated allegations. Here are some examples:
The headline, implying the councilwoman does not support a peaceful transfer of presidential power
That first line of the piece, attempting to connect her to a completely disparate event (the U.S. Capitol riots hundreds of miles away)
The statement: “Sundermann did not answer a question asking whether she believes Biden won the election,” which is meant to imply that she does not believe Biden won.
The story goes on to try and discredit this same councilwoman in various other ways (most notably pointing out that she herself was appointed to council by a “suspended Councilman”), but because the writer has no factual evidence to back up his opinions, he digs himself into an even deeper hole by tossing in a few more unsubstantiated (and, at times, amusingly self-righteous) allegations. My two favorites?
“Sundermann, a Republican, did not explain her vote before casting it.” (So… I’ll have to check the city hall rules but I’m pretty sure there’s no mandate that a councilwoman has to explain herself before casting, or abstaining from, a vote…), AND
“Sundermann did not answer a question asking whether she believes Biden won the election. Polling has shown that many Republicans believe President Trump’s lies that the election was rigged and stolen from him.” (I love this second one! The combination of two 100% unrelated statements makes me laugh. Unfortunately, it is not journalism, for two reasons: #1 – a real journalist would not use the word “lies” to describe what Trump believes. A real journalist would call them allegations. AND #2 – By putting the unrelated polling and “lies” statement after Sundermann’s refusal to comment, this writer is attempting to SPECULATE about what the councilwoman is thinking. Alas, I can say with some confidence that the writer of this Business Courier piece is likely NOT an actual mind-reader, so we’re going to have to call this statement opinion as well)
Right now the doubters among us are probably sitting in their armchairs saying: So what, Navigating News lady? Who cares if this one guy is passing off his opinion as fact in dinky little Cincinnati? What difference does it make?
I used to agree with people like that – it’s why I never spoke up about all the horrible things I saw happening in media for 20-some years. But … let’s take a minute here and step back to see the forest for the trees. Given the sad, sorry state of our media today, I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you that we have no choice BUT to care about what’s happening in dinky Cincinnati or Topeka or Turkeyfoot or Greenville or any other town in America … because this is how it starts!
This is how local and national news media people alike subtly work to craft misleading or false narratives.
This is how they work to try and pass off their own personal opinions as actual fact.
This is how they begin very quietly, to destroy people’s lives.
This is how they get readers used to their methods and thinking that this stuff they do – in this case, bullying and passing opinion off as fact - is actually “journalism” or “news.”
This, my friends, is how the sausage is made.
Taking this story one step further, this writer is doing something else I find more than a little bit scary, too, which is appearing to attack this particular councilwoman because she chose to abstain from a vote. In other words, he is trying to tell you, in his own, not-so-subtle way, that it is not OK for people to have differing opinions – about Presidents, about lights – about anything he seems to think is “right” or “true.” Call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty un-American thing to try and do. Last I checked, we are all still free to believe whatever the heck we want, councilperson or not.
Whatever you want to call what this writer is doing in this story – pushing propaganda, using his media position as a bully pulpit or trying to cram his own thoughts about one woman’s motives into a story with no evidence – I think we can all agree it’s not journalism.
He’s making it LOOK like journalism, by getting quotes from the councilwoman and publishing his story in a publication that normally only publishes journalism. But this, alas, is nothing more than an opinion piece, meant to cause harm.
Next time you read a story and find yourself feeling disgusted or angry or judgmental about the person featured in the story, go back and read it again, and see if you can identify any of these elements in it – most especially speculation, unsubstantiated allegations or opinion passed off as fact. Chances are high that whenever you find yourself reacting in a negatively emotional way to a person in a story, you are actually being manipulated by a very talented writer into believing that his or her opinion is somehow fact.
IDK guess I’ll play Devil’s advocate. I thought the headline was good for “click bait” & isn’t that a writers intent? To get all viewers to read? If you support the attempted coup on DC, you will read thinking she is an ally. If you believe Trump encouraged what some of his cult were referring to as Civil War 2 then you would also read to see who she is. Win-win no?? Just want to add that while I lean conservative, that attack on our nations capital made me embarrassed to be a citizen. I thought I was watching a coup in a 3rd world country. And for the record the only major news outlet I have not heard calling out Trump as a liar is Fox News which after Wallace & Baier are just opinionated shows.
Shared on all my platforms. Excellent.