onfocus

President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff announcements sent stock markets plunging. On this week’s On the Media, how to make sense of the ever-changing news about the economy. Plus, the policy behind the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ rhetoric.

I thought this On the Media was a great tariffs 101 and the interview with Brown economics professor Mark Blyth was especially good.

“TASS was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool,” a White House official told CNN in a statement. “As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary.”

Sure, Jan.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential pool, the small, rotating group of journalists who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public.

Media outlets didn't stand with the AP as they were pushed out. And now they're being pushed out anyway. There's power in numbers and they're coming for you anyway, why not band together and refuse to cover these propaganda events?

I really like this text-only version of the NPR news site. I understand why more sites don't do this, but they should. I normally don't go to any NPR sites, but I do visit this page fairly often to scan the headlines. See also: CNN Lite, CBC Lite

Every article written about Trump’s blitzkrieg against DEI should have at least a short section explaining in the institution’s own voice why these programs were needed and how diversity is valuable. Not doing that is journalistic malpractice. And I haven’t seen anyone do it.

Sorry, that information has been placed in the Memory Hole.

They’re buying magazines we love, closing their print operations, turning them into digital-only, laying off the actual journalists who made us trust in their content in the first place, and hiring third-party companies to run the affiliate arm of their sites.

Trusted media brands are cashing in on search engine affiliate marketing with thin gruel content.

Democrats are missing something that is arguably a prerequisite for ideological messaging to have any effect whatsoever: a media apparatus that can get these messages in front of swing voters. The content of the message doesn’t matter if voters never hear it. An obvious place to start would be to build up straightforward reporting operations in news deserts in critical states, and to stop making traditional election broadcast ads the core focus of campaign spending.

True, but bleak. No easy fixes.

I’ll be looking for ecosystem growth in directions that enable survival independent of the company. In the way that email is independent of any technology provider or network operator. Just like Mastodon and the Fediverse already are.

This is a good take on how to analyze social media. I also don't want to put any energy into a service that has the full ability to alter the connections at any point. Bluesky is yet another service with high switching costs. That's attractive to investors and advertisers, bad for users.

Historians: He’s a fascist. Political scientists: He’s a fascist. His own aides: He’s a fascist. The NYT: He shows a wistful longing for a bygone era of global politics.

That, in essence, is the issue with these headlines.

Breaking my rule about linking to Substack because the NYT coverage of the election has been abysmal. In a just world it would mean the end of the NYT. (It would be ok, we could get our word games somewhere else.) But maybe there are enough fascist-curious consumers and backers to keep it going. They just need one billionaire to weather any storm.

A reality-based article comparing the candidates’ “housing plans” would have gone something like: Harris, who talks about housing all the time on the stump, has a real and reasonably detailed plan that economists say has some good points and bad points; Trump shows no sign of having given even 10 seconds of thought to the housing crisis (on Trump’s 20-point platform, the word isn’t mentioned), and by the way, he spent four years as president, during which time he amassed a thoroughly rotten record on housing and never once showed any interest in ameliorating the affordable housing crisis; how about that?

The media reports "mass deportations" are a housing plan with a straight face without describing the chaos and agony of that "plan". As if inflicting mass violence is just another viable option for you to consider.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over.

Continual normalization across all media is the problem. How can we have an informed electorate if the information isn’t accurate?

It is not a divided America. Patriots are gathering together and putting past differences aside to forestall a next civil war, to support and defend the Constitution. The movement that matters is not Trump’s and the Republicans’ fascist insurrection, which is the one that gets attention in news media. The movement that matters now is this one: the movement for democracy.

The NYT isn’t giving this story any weight. Will any other mainstream press outlets?