Im-Politic: Why The New York Times Shouldn’t be Writing the History of Slavery – or Anything Else

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1619 Project, Dean Baquet, history, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media bias, race, race relations, racism, Russia, slavery, The New York Times, Trump, Trump-Russia

It’s bad enough that The New York Times all but admitted last week that its news operations lately have been driven by over-arching missions and “visions” centering on specific issues. In the words of Executive Editor Dean Baquet at an internal “town hall” meeting of Times staff, the paper is now shifting from investigating “Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice?” to focusing on “what it means to be an American in 2019” and more specifically writing “about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years” because “America [has] become so divided by Donald Trump.”

Possibly worse is how The Times has also decided that this mission includes throwing much of its still considerable resources behind what Baquet called “the most ambitious examination of the legacy of slavery ever undertaken in [inaudible] newspaper….”

For although it’s disturbing that a news organization would in effect bet the house on probing an issue – and thereby create overwhelming incentives for its staff to assume continually that any and all appearances of smoke, even from clearly conflicted sources, add to the case of underlying fire – this Times decision at least dovetails generally with commonly used definitions of journalism that have long served the country and its democratic system well.

Not that the press should get into the habit of proactively designating issues as existential priorities well before the outcomes and implications are reasonably clear. But Baquet deserves some slack here given the charges that the President was a Manchurian candidate beholden to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin – unmistakably an earth-shattering story at least potentially. Therefore, it’s hard to blame him for in effect establishing a major priority and allocating his resources accordingly, and it’s nitpicking to insist that he still might have gone somewhat too far.

Two possible and related qualifications to these conclusions, though, should be kept in mind. First, it’s painfully obvious from the meeting transcript linked above (and not disavowed by any participants) that any number of Times staffers are virulently anti-Trump – which logically raises suspicions about whether any of the paper’s reporters or editors cooperated with the equally virulent Trump opponents in the Obama Justice Department and intelligence agencies to keep the story artificially alive through publishing obviously selected leaks selectively, and even through knowingly trafficking in sheer rumor and innuendo.

Second, as I’ve written, given the abundance of Never Trump-ers in the federal bureaucracy and in the D.C. Swamp generally speaking, and given how commonplace leaks of even the most sensitive material had become, long before the release of Special Counsel Mueller’s report, it was becoming increasingly apparent that if no smoking guns had yet been found, chances are they didn’t exist. But there’s no reason to believe that the paucity of genuinely damning evidence ever gave Baquet any second thoughts about his initial decision – which indicates troubling stubbornness at best and even more troubling bias at worst.

But I can’t prove either of the these two points. Moreover, just as I can’t legitimately fault Baquet for per se focusing, at least for a serious period of time, tightly on the Trump-Russia story, I can’t fault him per se for deciding subsequently to devote much of the paper’s attention to race relations. For times change, and news coverage priorities need to change with them – although Baquet’s link of the decision to a Trump record that he plainly views as uniquely and dangerously divisive strongly indicates that he’s prejudging the results awfully early in the game.

The examining slavery thing, however – that’s fundamentally different. It’s the kind of endeavor, after all, that can’t be squared with any longstanding tradition of American journalism. Instead, the “1619 Project” at its heart is nothing less than an effort to change the way Americans view their history, and how it’s been impacted down to the present by slave-holding. (1619 was the year in which the first enslaved African blacks arrived in North America – specifically, near British-held Jamestown, Virginia.  Just FYI, African slaves didn’t arrive in French-held North America until a decade later.) If you’re skeptical about this 1619 project claim, check out how it’s described by The Times:

“The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400^th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

For good measure, the paper tells us that “it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”

Any thinking person understands the need for continual reassessments of history – and all fields of knowledge – if only because new information is constantly coming to light. In addition, you don’t need to fall prey to “present-ism” (judging or merely viewing past events and works through the prism of contemporary standards) to recognize that standards do change; that they can change for legitimate and considered, as well as for faddish and/or partisan, reasons; and that whenever such circumstances warrant, reassessments are needed. Indeed, these exercises are especially important when engaged in the always hazardous but ultimately needed effort to identify the past’s lessons.

And what thinking, informed person doubts that the nation’s professional historians fully understand this imperative, and that in fact their discipline isn’t in a constant state of reassessment?

But even if these scholars were failing their country and academe’s best traditions and practices, why would any thinking person consider The Times institutionally qualified to fill the gap competently? What evidence has the paper presented that it can carry out satisfactorily a project that even it describes as “unprecedentedly ambitious” and that’s surely more accurately described as “unprecedented” period? And as a result, from where does The Times draw its confidence in declaring that it’s able to “finally…tell our story truthfully.”

My answers to all these questions: “Beats me.”

And if you believe that the paper is up to this task, you really need to read the full transcript of the town hall meeting. For it makes distressingly clear that many of the paper’s staffers have no use for notions like sticking to the facts and enabling readers to make up their own minds – at least not since the civilization-menacing emergence of the Trump presidency. (Or was it the Trump candidacy?) As for views of race and its proper role in Times journalism, take a look at these remarks from one staffer:

“I’m wondering to what extent you [Baquet] think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country. And I think particularly as we are launching a 1619 Project, I feel like that’s going to open us up to even more criticism from people who are like, ‘OK, well you’re saying this, and you’re producing this big project about this. But are you guys actually considering this in your daily reporting?’”

His boss’ response (in part)?

“I do think that race and understanding of race should be a part of how we cover the American story. Sometimes news organizations sort of forget that in the moment. But of course it should be. I mean, one reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that.”

Translation: “You’re right. And the 1619 Project is aimed at persuading Americans to think ‘a little bit more’ like you.” P.S. The transcript records zero pushback against this wildly distorted, reductionist view. That is, like too much of the rest of the Mainstream Media, The New York Times has drifted dangerously far from the notion that journalism amounts to “writing the first draft of history.” It’s going to start writing that history itself. And it’s firmly convinced that it has a monopoly on wisdom.

And that’s fine in principle – if the paper wants to turn itself into something like an opinion publication, a think tank or a lobby group. For a newspaper, however, it represents a bright and dangerous line crossed, and is certain to further erode the public’s confidence in journalists – thereby adding to a list of dangers facing American democracy that’s already far too long.

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Im-Politic: The Mueller Letter Coverage Shows the Need for a Journalism Hall of Shame

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Attorney General, Im-Politic, journalism, Mainstream Media, media bias, obstruction of justice, Pulitzer Prize, Robert S. Mueller III, Special Counsel, The New York Times, Trump, Trump-Russia, Washington Post, William P. Barr

Here are two suggestions for the folks at Columbia University’s journalism school who each year award the Pulitzer Prizes for that so-called profession: First, in addition to citing reporters and editors whose work supposedly embodies journalistic excellence, they should identify news people whose performance is a complete disgrace. Second, they could easily kick off this practice next year by shaming the Washington Post and New York Times articles this morning revealing that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has complained to Attorney General William P. Barr about Barr’s descriptions of his report on Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election and President Trump’s reactions to the Mueller probe.

Both pieces – and the reporters and editors responsible – completely mis-characterized the Mueller concerns that they eventually went on to portray accurately. And they committed the unforgivable journalistic (and broader ethical) sin of accentuating the negative when the case for focusing on the positive was at least equally strong.

Specifically, the thrust of the two pieces was that Mueller in a letter to Barr expressed objections to Barr’s March 24 letter to Congressional judiciary committee leaders summarizing the “principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation,” and informing them of the status of Barr’s “initial review” of the report.

But any reader who finished the articles would discover that, contrary to the headlines and the opening paragraphs, Mueller was most irked not by any of Barr’s actions or writings, but by the press coverage. According to the Post reporters (who claim to have seen the Mueller letter), the Special Counsel did write to the Attorney General (his Justice Department superior) that the March 24 Barr communique to Congress

“did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

(The letter has since been released.)

But farther into the story, readers are told that the following day, when the two spoke by phone, “Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials.”

Moreover – and this is crucial – “When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.”

So the question needs to be asked: Why wasn’t the emphasis in the Post story Mueller’s statement that Barr had accurately summarized his report, and that he thought the press coverage was awful? And by extension, why wasn’t the headline something on the order of “Mueller praises Barr summary as accurate; slams media interpretations”?

The Times story followed the same pattern and therefore embodied the same fatal flaws. In particular, it wasn’t until the seventh paragraph that readers learn that

“‘The special counsel emphasized that nothing in the attorney general’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading,’ a Justice Department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said in response to a request for comment made on Tuesday afternoon. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.”

As a result, it, too, could have been – and indeed should have been – structured along lines favorable to Barr, not critical of him. Indeed, here the argument for such an approach is even stronger than for the Post piece, since the evidence of Barr’s accuracy comes from a named official spokesperson, not from anonymous sources.

Last week, a major national poll found that American voters’ distrust of “political news” had hit an all-time high of 54 percent. The Post and Times coverage of Mueller’s words all but guarantees that new records on this score will soon be set – and is sending a message to the Pulitzer folks that something like a Hall of Shame is needed to start getting journalism off its current irresponsible track.

Im-Politic: The Washington Post’s Nazi-Baiting on Trump & Immigration

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Adolf Hitler, asylum seekers, border security, Central America, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Im-Politic, Immigration, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Mainstream Media, migrants, Nazism, Open Borders, refugees, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Washington Post

Just when I think that I couldn’t become angrier at the bile spewed by some of President Trump’s critics and too often reported as fact or respectable, newsworthy opinion by the Mainstream Media, Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers keep topping themselves. And this morning I saw a series of such statements so inexcusable that I’ve decided to post about them even though I’ve already expressed my views in a tweet.

The accusations came in a Washington Post article today titled “’Our country is FULL!’: Trump’s declaration carries far-right echoes that go back to the Nazi era.”

Reporter Isaac Stanley-Becker was referring to the remarks made by Mr. Trump last Friday during his visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, where even champions of what I’ve come to call the Functional Equivalent of Open Borders are now finally admitting that flows of migrants mainly from Central America are overwhelming federal government facilities set up to deal with foreigners seeking to cross into the United States.

Stanley-Becker, who is based in London, wasn’t simply content to observe that the President’s language “fits a pattern of far-right rhetoric reemerging globally. Fear of an immigrant takeover motivates fascist activity in Europe, where, historically, the specter of overcrowding has been used to justify ethnic cleansing.”

With the evident endorsement of his editors, he went on to write that “Adolf Hitler promised ‘living space’ for Germans as the basis of an expansionist project….”

In this vein, he sought to legitimize this analysis by quoting an historian (from the University of California at Berkeley) who contended “The echoes do indeed remind one of the Nazi period, unfortunately. The exact phrasing may be different, but the spirit is very similar. The concern about an ethnic, national people not having proper space — this is something you could definitely describe as parallel to the 1930s.”

In addition, Stanley-Becker reported that “The president’s words became even more freighted when he repeated them on Saturday before the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, saying, ‘Our country is full, can’t come. I’m sorry.’” (Which sounds like an opinion, not the kind of fact that news reporters are supposed to present in their own voice.) And he supposedly documented the follow-on statement that Mr. Trump’s remarks “drew outrage” by citing precisely one tweeter and Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.

The author was clever enough to slip into his story the kind of qualifier meant to convey objectivity but skated over far too quickly to alert most readers to their potential to invalidate the entire exercise. For example, Stanley-Becker briefly noted that “Hitler promised ‘living space’ for Germans as the basis of an expansionist project, which historians said distinguishes the Third Reich from today’s xenophobic governments.”

But in case you’re tempted to conclude “That distinction seems pretty darned important,” the author hastily added, in a classic example of insinuation, “Still, experts found parallels” (by which he meant the aforementioned Berkeley professor).

Moreover, let’s not forget the towering double standard Stanley-Becker and similar Trump haters have created. For if the President’s words and (prospective) actions “echo” and “remind” of Nazism, what should be made of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt – under whose administration refugees from the Third Reich itself were turned away from American shores? Does this record reveal racist, anti-semitic, xenophobic Nazi sympathies? Or “echo” them etc.? In fact, Roosevelt’s name isn’t even mentioned in the article, even though he received cables from the ship on which they traveled begging for admission.

Does Roosevelt deserve such descriptions – and condemnation?  If not, why not?And to return to current circumstances, President Trump has clearly been reacting against the large numbers of U.S.-bound migrants falsely seeking asylum (which is awarded to those fleeing persecution) who are seeking better material lives. Roosevelt was denying entry to individuals and families clearly seeking to escape a regime that was obviously targeting them because of their identity.

Because this is a free country, Stanley-Becker, his editors, and his publisher have every right to accuse President Trump of using coded, pro-Nazi or Nazi-sympathizing dog-whistle attacks to advance his immigration policies. But their profession’s ethics prohibit them from portraying these views as unvarnished facts in news columns. And common decency demands they have the courage to make these charges openly, rather than using the weasel words and phrases and similar ploys so typical of character assassination.

Im-Politic: Why His Adversaries Could be Underestimating Trump Again

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202 election, B.J. Bethel, blue-collar workers, defense manufacturing, General Motors, Im-Politic, Lima, Lordstown, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, manufacturing workers, Midwest, non-college whites, Ohio, public sector unions, tanks, Trump, unions, WDTN TV

Although the Democratic Party often seems to have gone identity politics-crazy, even many in its identity-obsessed progressive wing believe that President Trump won’t be defeated in the 2020 Presidential election unless the party improves its performance with non-college educated white voters, many of whom work in so-called blue collar industries like manufacturing and fossil fuel extraction. Many of these progressives (including the Mainstream Media journalists who often carry their water) have claimed that this constituency is ripe for the retaking thanks to alleged Trump policy failures or blunders on trade, tax reform, and healthcare, and proceed to cite evidence that the President’s backing in this segment of his coalition is fading significantly.

Given the latest Trump healthcare position – which I agree is block-headed – and his penchant for inconsistency on core issues like immigration as well as trade, I’d be the last person to dismiss this analysis as naive. The more so if Democrats nominate a 2020 candidate with at least some credibility on blue collar social and cultural as well as economic concerns.

But if you’re looking for reasons for deep skepticism, look no farther than a recent account of a Trump Ohio factory visit from B.J. Bethel, of Dayton, Ohio’s WDTN TV. Bethel, (who in the interest of full disclosure, is also a personal friend), covered the President’s March 20 appearance at a Lima, Ohio tank factory.

Mr. Trump’s prospects in Lima seemed mixed. On the one hand, his defense budget proposals have kept the factory open following talk during the Obama administration of closing it. On the other, his trip came two weeks after General Motors completed (for now) the shutdown of a big auto assembly plant in Lordstown in northeastern Ohio – despite Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to keep the facility open. Moreover, since the Lima factory makes weaponry, its non-supervisory workers belong to government employee unions, which have been especially critical of the President at least partly since their members haven’t been directly affected by the kinds of offshoring-friendly trade policies and Open Borders immigration policies of his predecessors.

Nonetheless, as Bethel wrote for WDTN’s website, “Trump received a rousing ovation when he entered the floor where the speech was held.” His speech was “loved” by the attendees he interviewed. And the President seems to have received his biggest cheers when he “hit hard at union leaders while praising union workers, stating the leaders often say one thing and do another.”

According to Bethel, “‘They’re [the union leaders] good guys, but they’re Democrats,’ Trump said.

“He mentioned ‘high union dues’ paid by workers and the shifting of blue collar allegiances from Democrats to Republicans.

“This was the only instance of his speech where the crowd chanted ‘Trump, Trump.'”

In some subsequent Twitter direct messages, Bethel elaborated:

“Trump goes off on Lordstown, and blames the union leadership for some of the issues GM had at the plant, which I think is debatable, but Trump is savy, he knows what he’s doing.

“He talks about union leadership, and he’s so casual in this speech, and he says, ‘I’ve invited union leaders into the White House, I asked them what can we do, they’re extremely nice people, THEY AREN’T LIKE US, THEY’RE DEMOCRATS THOUGH and they’re always going to be democrats, so you know, they go with Hillary while I’m trying to save jobs.’

“Then he pivots to this and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve heard a politician do.

“He starts hammering union leadership on the basis of how they treat the rank and file in the union. Basically they aren’t doing what’s necessary to back up the money they make and aren’t doing everything they need to do to. And look at the dues you pay, how much do you pay in dues a week or year and how much do you get out of it?

“So how does the crowd react?

“It roars, ‘TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP’ – only time during the entire speech he had his name cheered.

“This is a huge union plant. It’s public union, as solid as it gets, their own committeeman are sitting around with them, and they’re cheering Trump as he bashes the leadership.”

As Bethel concludes, “so the GOP is working the unions hard, even the public unions. Trump beats up the leadership, while the rest go in soft. it’s a strategy to completely usurp union workers and complete taking over the working class.”

What’s especially interesting is that this Trump event was extensively covered by the Mainstream Media – as is almost all presidential travel. But the overwhelming focus of the coverage was the President’s attacks on his longtime political adversary, the late Republican Senator John McCain. (See, e.g., here and here.) 

I can’t possibly fault the journalists attending the speech from zeroing in on the McCain remarks. But revealingly, none of the coverage I’ve read (produced mostly by White House correspondents who tend to be politics-oriented, especially as national political campaigns heat up), mentioned the crowd’s reactions to the union-leader bashing by Trump.

The President has been erratic enough to render hazardous any predictions about the 2020 election. But the same Mainstream Media correspondents who overlooked the union rank-and-file response to the President in Lima belong to the same journalistic complex that was taken completely by surprise by Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory – and especially by his strength in the industrial Midwest. Their Lima coverage raises the question of whether they’re about to miss the mark again.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! A Mixed Media Message on U.S. Farm Labor Shortages

Tags

agriculture, automation, farm workers, Glad I Didn't Say That!, illegal aliens, Immigration, Jobs, labor shortages, Mainstream Media, robots

“With fewer undocumented workers to hire, U.S. farmers are fueling a surge in the number of legal guest workers”

– The Washington Post, February 21, 2019

 

“One February afternoon, they work about an acre apart on a farm the size of 454 football fields: dozens of pickers collecting produce the way people have for centuries — and a robot that engineers say could replace most of them as soon as next year.”

– The Washington Post, February 17, 2019

 

(Sources: “With fewer undocumented workers to hire, U.S. farmers are fueling a surve in the number of legal guest workers,” by Kevin Sieff and Annie Gowen, The Washington Post, February 21, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/with-fewer-undocumented-workers-to-hire-us-farmers-are-fueling-a-surge-in-the-number-of-legal-guest-workers/2019/02/21/2b066876-1e5f-11e9-a759-2b8541bbbe20_story.html?utm_term=.225cc2cc55fe; and “Farmworker vs Robot,” by Danielle Paquette, The Washington Post, February 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/02/17/feature/inside-the-race-to-replace-farmworkers-with-robots/?utm_term=.24166019b5dc)

Im-Politic: Trump Immigration Policy Caught Red-Handed – Working

Tags

asylum seekers, border security, border wall, ICE, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mainstream Media, Michael Miller, MS-13, refugees, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Washington Post

Mirroring the broader, hysterical Never Trump-ism that’s overcome so much of America’s bipartisan political establishment and its grassroots supporters (along with their foreign counterparts), the Mainstream Media just keeps killing it in the Trump Derangement Syndrome Department. And hot on the heels of that Financial Times editorial I posted on yesterday that faulting a Trump nominee for lacking the leadership and intellectual “heft” of someone who should have been tried as a Vietnam War-related criminal comes a Washington Post article handling the President’s immigration policy record with equally clueless – and equally jaw-dropping – incompetence.

According to Post reporter Michael Miller (and his editors), Mr. Trump is way off-base targeting the murderous Hispanic criminal gang MS-13, and similar networks of thugs, to muster support for his restrictionist immigration policies. The reason? “[E]ven as [the President] warned again and again about the dangers posed by MS-13 members and the need for a wall to keep them out, killings connected to the gang were plummeting in many of the areas where MS-13 has been most active.”

In other words, what could be dumber? And/or more cynical?

But in the very same article, Miller told readers that “federal law enforcement officials say MS-13 violence fell last year as a result of intensified nationwide investigations.”

More specifically, the author writes, “While Trump’s attacks on the gang have been relentless, current and former immigration officials, law enforcement agencies and gang experts attributed the decline in MS-13 murders to an aggressive response by local and federal authorities.”

For good measure, accompanying the article is a photo with this caption: “Northern Virginia Gang Task Force officers partner with ICE [the federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] officers to arrest an alleged MS-13 gang member in Manassas in 2017.”

Maybe Miller thinks the President has nothing to do with ICE and other federal authorities?

The author did present convincing evidence that President Trump has hardly been the first chief executive to crack down on MS-13. But he also presented evidence just as convincing that none of the success achieved by these campaigns has lasted. And if you think that the President’s insistence on more physical border barriers has been irrelevant to this crisis, consider this point made by the author: Following evidence of a reduction in gang activity, after 2014, “a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America helped revitalize MS-13.”

And as made clear by a 2017 Post article linked in Miller’s piece, many of them made their way into the United States because inadequate border security enabled them to sneak in, or because, thanks to permissive federal policies for dealing with arrivals as a whole, “more than 150,000 such teens and children [to that point, two years ago] have been detained at the border, screened and placed in communities through the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).”

And “Follow-up [for these resettlement efforts] is limited, and many youths fail to show up for immigration proceedings, a recent congressional investigation showed. At the same time, there are gaps in local efforts to reach vulnerable children and teens before the gang does.”

These problems could be greatly reduced by (1) better physical barriers that prevent would-be border crossers from setting foot in U.S. territory in the first place, and thereby automatically becoming eligible for the entire range of due-process protections to which citizens and other residents – legal and illegal – are entitled; and (2) related Trump administration proposals that would require refugee applicants and asylum-seekers to stay outside U.S. territory while their claims are examined.

In other words, Miller and his editors clearly thought they were serving up a classic Trump “gotcha” story. But even a minimally careful reading of the piece catches them red-handed in a disgraceful – as well as inept – example of media bias.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: It’s Still the Same Old Story – No Tariff Damage to U.S. Manufacturing’s in Sight

Tags

China tariffs, Jobs, Labor Department, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, tariffs, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

At this stage, despite what you read in the Mainstream Media, it would be genuinely newsy to report that official U.S. government data were indeed showing any significant damage to domestic manufacturing from the President Trump’s tariffs. Figures showing no significant damage at all from either the levies on steel and aluminum, or on products from China? They’ve become old hat, and this morning’s Labor Department report on the job market for January was no exception.

As of this January data, we now have ten months’ worth of statistics shedding lots of light on whether the metals tariffs have harmed the country’s metals-using industries. As you’ll recall, a main argument against the metals tariffs held that because the metals-using sectors were much larger, even if the levies helped steel and aluminum makers, they’d become an exercise in cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face. For the number of workers and factories hurt by higher costs for a key material would far outnumber those helped by more expensive steel and aluminum.

Nonetheless, the January jobs report shows once again that nothing of the kind is happening. Indeed, as the table below makes clear, most of the country’s main metals-using manufacturing industries keep outperforming the rest of manufacturing. And some are creating jobs at a faster pace than the private sector overall.

And the laggards? Automotive is unmistakably gaining momentum, and household appliances are still experiencing the effects not only of metals tariffs, but of narrower tariffs on household laundry machines, and of a slumping housing sector.

                                                         Old thru Dec.    New thru Dec.     Thru Jan.

entire private sector:                       +1.37 percent    +1.36 percent    +1.60 percent

overall manufacturing:                   +1.45 percent    +1.39 percent    +1.49 percent

durable goods:                                +1.67 percent    +1.72 percent   +1.97 percent

fabricated metals products:            +1.75 percent    +1.57 percent   +1.78 percent

non-electrical machinery:              +2.20 percent     +2.33 percent   +2.57 percent

automotive vehicles & parts:         +0.77 percent     +1.07 percent   +1.15 percent

household appliances:                     not available      -2.21 percent    not available

aerospace products & parts:            not available     +5.51 percent     not available

But maybe the story is different for the China tariffs? Here the picture is fuzzier, both because the first tranche has only been in place since early July, and because the jobs data doesn’t match up that well with the categories of products tariff-ed in that first group (except for farm machinery and equipment). In addition, most of these categories are too narrow to show up in the Labor Department interactive data bases without a one-month lag. But the numbers below, which represent major manufacturing sectors that contain the tariff-ed goods, don’t show much tariff-related damage on the employment front since (and including) July.

As has been the case during this period, some industries have outperformed; others have under-performed. The resulting takeaway? Lots of factors other than China tariffs are affecting payrolls in these manufacturing segments.

                                                             July-December                     July-January

overall manufacturing                         +0.80 percent                      +0.91 percent

aircraft engines and engine parts:       +0.58 percent                       not available

industrial heating equipment:             +1.12 percent                       not available

oil and gas drilling platform parts:     +2.71 percent                       not available

farm machinery and equipment:        +0.20 percent                       not available

ball bearings:                                     +1.05 percent                       not available

But although the coverage of the Trump tariffs has stubbornly remained an exercise in gloom-mongering in the face of increasingly overwhelming evidence (here’s just one recent leading example), one reason for hope can be identified. Maybe the gulf between the trade reporting and the trade facts simply results from inherent argumentativeness and contrarianism – the kind that’s often seen in teenagers. If I’m right, the minute the tariff data becomes bad, the Mainstream Media will start serving up anecdotes about plucky exceptions to the rule.

 

Im-Politic: Home Delivery for Chinese Propaganda

Tags

"Democracy Dies in Darkness", BBC, China, China Daily, ChinaWatch, fake news, Im-Politic, journalism, Mainstream Media, propaganda, RT America, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

For all the attention that’s been focused lately on the mainstream media’s objectivity and credibility, there’s no doubt that some major newspapers have for years been foisting unmistakably fake news on their readers, and I just got a reminder when I went out to my front porch this morning to pick up my Washington Post. It comes in the form of the ChinaWatch supplement (see here, e.g.) that arrives stuck inside the print edition periodically.

My main problem with ChinaWatch – which also has deals with other leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal – isn’t that it’s issued by the Chinese government, and therefore is nothing more than Beijing propaganda. Any country valuing free expression should welcome all comers to its media markets and national debates.

Instead, my main problem with ChinaWatch is that there’s no way for anyone lacking considerable knowledge about China and its state-run media to know that ChinaWatch is a Chinese government product.

Near the top of the front page, readers can see that the ChinaWatch supplement is “prepared by China Daily, People’s Republic of China” and “did not involve the news or editorial departments of the Washington Post.” At the very bottom comes the statement, “ChinaWatch materials are distributed by China Daily Distribution Corp., on behalf of China Daily, Beijing, China. Additional information is on file with the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.”

But why should that raise any red flags (no pun intended) with non-specialists? After all, the Post and most other news organizations routinely report that the Chinese economy is full of “private companies.” (See, e.g., here.) Why not simply assume that China Daily Distribution Corp. is simply one of them? It certainly sounds like a typical American-style business. And although the Justice Department reference might look a little odd, how many readers of American newspapers recognize it as a sign that the “company” is required under U.S. law to register as a foreign agent (though not necessarily as a foreign government)?

On page two you’ll find the masthead, with contact information for ChinaWatch‘s offices in China and various foreign locations. But no hint of any Chinese government affiliation appears here, either.

But there’s an easy fix for this problem: Require ChinaWatch to mention prominently on the front page (at least) that it’s a Chinese government publication. And because ChinaWatch is hardly the only foreign government product to appear in American news media outlets, the same should go for the United Kingdom’s BBC, Russia’s RT America, and others. As those two are among the foreign government media organizations that mainly broadcast, their identification could come in the form of text that continually appears in the “crawls” that so many televised news programs run at the bottom of the screen, or, in the case of radio, as periodic announcements (say, every five minutes).

And finally, in the interests of full disclosure, although ChinaWatch specifies that its content has nothing to do with the news and editorial departments of papers like the Washington Post, its appearance has lots to do with the business departments of those newspapers, and their bottom lines. For ChinaWatch is paid advertising. So the Post and the Journal and any others should make clear on a regular basis that they depend in part on the Chinese government for revenue.

After all, as the Post declares ominously in its new, Trump-era advertising slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness.” That’s also the place where reader ignorance and conflicts of interest flourish.

Im-Politic: Why Journalists Should Tweet Even More – & More Recklessly

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Covington Catholic, Farhad Manjoo, Frank Bruni, Im-Politic, Jill Abramson, journalism, Lincoln Memorial, MAGA teens, Mainstream Media, March for Life, media bias, Nathan Phillips, National Mall, Native-Americans, racism, social media, The New York Times, Twitter

New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo has a pretty self-serving explanation for why so many Mainstream Media journalists so prematurely joined the Outrage Mob that was so eager to condemn a group of Kentucky Catholic high school students for an alleged display of smirking racism on the National Mall on Friday: Twitter made them do it.

Sorry, but I ain’t buying it, and neither should you. And as I’ll see, Manjoo’s concluding recommendation – that these reporters and editors (and possibly pundits?) should abandon Twitter – is also completely wrong.

In case you’ve been ignoring the news for a while, these high school students, who were in Washington, D.C. for the “March for Life” last Friday were widely accused of treating a Native-American also in the capital for a (separate) protest with shockingly disgraceful disrespect and displays of outright bigotry. But this initial conclusion – which was based on a short video clip taken at the Lincoln Memorial scene of the confrontation – was quickly debunked by much longer videos that both absolved the students of all the serious allegations, and raised big questions about the role and background of Native-American protester Nathan Phillips and other groups on the scene.

Manjoo is absolutely right in lamenting how many journalists – including news reporters and editors, who are supposed to shunt aside their personal opinions on the job, go the extra mile to describe events as accurately as possible, and weigh information carefully – rushed to judgment about the students’ guilt. But he’s absolutely wrong to blame a social media platform – and in the process, spread the laughable idea that journalists who have been accomplished enough to secure employment at the nation’s most prominent news organizations are as incapable of resisting the temptations created by a new technology as a child is incapable of resisting gorging on candy.

According to the author:

“Instead of curious, intellectually honest chroniclers of human affairs, Twitter regularly turns many in the news — myself included — into knee-jerk outrage-bots reflexively set off by this or that hash-tagged cause, misspelled presidential missive or targeted-influence campaign.”

He adds:

“Twitter isn’t just ruining the media’s image. It’s also skewing our journalism. Everything about Twitter’s interface encourages a mind-set antithetical to journalistic inquiry: It prizes image over substance and cheap dunks over reasoned debate, all the while severely abridging the temporal scope of the press.”

Yet these arguments completely ignore what has to be the real explanation for this behavior: The journalists in question were all fully formed adults by the time they began tweeting recklessly, and have never prioritized telling their stories intellectually honestly. The only possible alternative? These folks weren’t fully formed adults by the time they began such tweeting, and/or by extension when they were hired. That sure doesn’t reflect well on the individuals and news organizations that gave them their weighty responsibilities.

Moreover, two prominent New York Times-related journalists themselves seem to disagree with Manjoo that the news business’ irresponsible tweeters should be let off the hook. Here’s Times columnist Frank Bruni, assessing how (and why) opinion journalists have dealt with the Mall confrontation story, and many other events recently:

“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.

“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.

“Was that a smirk on the teenager’s face? A sneer? His expression was just indefinite enough to become a symbol of entitlement for the pundits who favor that locution, of the white patriarchy for another group, of the wages of Trumpism, of the fraudulence of Catholicism.”

But Bruni also wrote (correctly) that “the rest of the media didn’t behave all that differently” on and off Twitter. (A superb description of The Times own overall record in this incident – and the incident itself – can be found in this article in The Atlantic.)

His views also have been supported by no less than Jill Abramson, the recent (and fired) Times news chief. In a forthcoming book (as reported by Fox News‘ Howard Kurtz, and not denied by Abramson or anyone else at The Times), Abramson

“describes a generational split at the Times, with younger staffers, many of them in digital jobs, favoring an unrestrained assault on the presidency. ‘The more ‘woke’ staff thought that urgent times called for urgent measures; the dangers of Trump’s presidency obviated the old standards,’ she writes.”

And as is clear to anyone following them, most of the most aggressive and biased tweeters from the news profession are well short of middle age.

All of which is why I so strongly disagree with Manjoo’s belief that journalists, and especially straight news reporters, should tweet much less – and try to steer clear of controversy. Nothing would make it easier for them to keep hidden the biases that surely have been shaping their reporting and editing. In fact, I hope they tweet even more – and more candidly.

After all, the great early 20^th century Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis rightly observed that “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” Twitter is proving to be a great source of the kind of light that unmistakably needs to be shined on journalism these days.

Im-Politic: More Mainstream Media MS-13 – and Illegal Alien Crime – Double Standards

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Hannah Dreier, illegal alien crime, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Long Island, Mainstream Media, MS-13, ProPublica, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Trump

Anyone still doubting that the Mainstream Media has turned into a brazen propaganda machine for Open Borders-friendly immigration policies, should ask themselves this: Why did The New York Times recently devoted a humongous article in its Sunday magazine to mistakes made by law enforcement on Long Island and elsewhere in the fight against Hispanic gangs like MS-13 – whose ranks are filled with illegal aliens – yet completely ignore stabbings by such gang members in the same Long Island community shortly after the magazine investigation appeared?`

The magazine article, by Hannah Dreier of “the independent nonprofit investigative-journalism organization” ProPublica was clearly viewed as more than just another freelance piece by the publication’s editors. As they state, it was “a collaboration” between the two organizations. Along with its length, this relationship makes clear that The Times viewed the subject as an unusually high priority.

In the December 27 article, Dreier does a good job – along with whatever assistance the newspaper provided her – of making a case that the intensified anti-MS-13 drive on Long Island and elsewhere in the country has caught up innocents. She also makes a reasonable case that the problem is rooted in the Trump administration’s dissatisfaction with its predecessors’ approach to the problem which, in her words, takes “time and on-the-ground work. Immigration agents spend months mapping out networks and gathering evidence using informants and wiretaps.”

Less convincing is her clear implication that this approach was remotely satisfactory, especially in light of her implicit acknowledgment that, while this more patient, more careful strategy was being pursued, MS-13 thugs on Long Island had

“periodically taken part in brutal killings. In 2003, in Central Islip, members beat and stabbed to death a young man who they thought was a rival and stuffed his body in a drain pipe. Also in Central Islip, the gang shot a toddler and his mother in 2010 and left their bodies in a patch of woods.

“In the last few years, Long Island’s MS-13 members and victims have gotten younger. In 2016, MS-13 gang members murdered five Latino Brentwood High students with bats and machetes. In 2017, the gang killed three more local Latino students and left their macheted bodies in a park in Central Islip. Some two dozen young men from Brentwood and Central Islip were eventually charged with the murders. A few were as young as 16.”

Also interesting: The author writes that “Many [Immigration and Customs Enforcement – ICE] agents wanted to arrest and deport suspected MS-13 members under President Obama. But they were constrained by an Obama-administration policy that required ICE agents to focus on undocumented immigrants who had committed serious crimes.” Meaning that Mr. Obama didn’t consider the above killings “serious crimes”? Just wow.

Indeed, writes Dreier, “President Trump took office at the peak of this local wave of violence” – hence his decision “that he was making the gang a federal law-enforcement priority.” The dragnet created by the Trump Justice Department and local law enforcement on Long Island (and in other communities that participated in such programs) has no doubt erred in instances. But there’s also no doubt that the old methods were failing.

In other words, I wish that Dreier (and her Times collaborators) had presented a much more balanced view of the situation and the results of the two strategies, but let’s grant that in a single article – even one as long as this one – has every right to maintain an overall emphasis.

It’s the follow-up – or, more accurately, its complete absence – that puts The Times in such a bad light. Specifically, on January 9 – only some two weeks after this magazine article’s appearance – two teenagers from one of the Long Island high schools on which Dreier focused were stabbed near a local fast food restaurant. The following day, the Suffolk County (Long Island) District Attorney charged that the three suspects arrested were MS-13 members, and all were illegal aliens. They all attended that same high school. For good measure, two of the accused assailants had been detained by ICE, which hoped to deport them, but were ordered released by federal judges.

Given the lengthy coverage The Times had just devoted to law enforcement mistakes, and given that Long Island is part of the paper’s home base, you’d think that a write-up of this incident would have been judged reasonably big news. Or any kind of news. But as of this morning – a week after the stabbings – not a single word about them had appeared in The Times.

Even stranger: In the weeks before Dreier’s lengthy article was published, the paper’s local coverage had run several articles on local MS-13 crimes. Its national staff has looked into the gang and its atrocities, too, but nothing as detailed as the Dreier “mistakes” piece has appeared. It’s in these national pieces, of course, that policy and policy debates are likeliest to be mentioned, and most such coverage stressed either that MS-13 isn’t such a big deal (e.g., here) or that its presence has little to do with illegal immigration and is being used by the President as a political prop (e.g., here), or that his descriptions of the Democrats’ views of the gang are misleading (e.g., here), that the president’s claims of progress versus its predation are exaggerated (e.g., here). And by now, it should come as no surprise that The Times has never published any item about victims of crime by illegal aliens, or about the failure of the pre-Trump programs in preventing such offenses, that’s been nearly as long as Dreier’s opus.  (Here‘s the only recent example of reporting on the subject.) 

Former Times news chief Jill Abramson is coming out with a book claiming, among other things, that the paper’s news pages have become “unmistakably anti-Trump.” The magazine’s Dreier article, and its other MS-13 coverage – and non-coverage – sure looks like a leading example.