tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/washington-post-6619/articlesWashington Post – The Conversation2024-01-04T13:48:10Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2183332024-01-04T13:48:10Z2024-01-04T13:48:10ZPundits: Central to democracy, or partisan spewers of opinion who destroy trust<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565215/original/file-20231212-27-v6t3dn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C5%2C3508%2C2047&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two pundits – Jonah Goldberg, left, and Paul Begala, second from right – discuss politics with journalists Kristen Holmes and Jake Tapper.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Walter Lippmann, who lived from 1889 to 1974, was an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10457090109600716">early and prime example of the public intellectual as pundit</a> commenting on news of the day. </p>
<p>Lippmann, a Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote a syndicated column on national and international affairs. He advocated a philosophy in which honest reflection on common experiences would lift citizens out of their parochial worldviews. </p>
<p>A pundit is someone who offers commentary in the media on a particular subject area. A gallery of legacy newspaper pundits would include a more raucous wing. Turn a corner and the cranky “Sage of Baltimore,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/13/hl-mencken-predicted-a-moron-in-the-white-house">H. L. Mencken</a>, appears. The satirist and cultural critic, who was born in 1880 and died in 1956, lived for most of his life in a neighborhood of old West Baltimore. </p>
<p>He was suspicious of representative democracy and predicted in 1920: “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” </p>
<p>The syndicated humorist <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/R/M/au5427740.html">Mike Royko</a> would bring a more working-class sensibility to his targets. He began writing columns for a U.S. Air Force newspaper in 1955 and would eventually produce more than 7,500 daily columns for Chicago newspapers. Among his targets was Frank Sinatra, whom the columnist once accused of commandeering Chicago police for personal security. </p>
<p>Molly Ivins appears next, promising in 2003 “even more bushwhacking.” She co-wrote <a href="https://knopfdoubleday.com/?s=molly+ivins">“Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America”</a> in conjunction with newspaper columns that were frequently critical of the president, a fellow Texan. </p>
<p>Holding politicians and institutions accountable often requires combative voices. What kind of commentary is needed now, though, when so much political talk is degrading and divisive? I ask this question as a former editorial writer who studies <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2022.2045401">how journalism operates as a political institution</a>. I want to suggest that pundits support democracy when their combat is driven by ideas rather than tribal identities.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman working in a home office at her desk with a cat on her shoulder, seen from her back." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564524/original/file-20231208-17-wllymv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rear view of newspaper columnist Molly Ivins working at a computer as her pet Siamese cat hangs over one shoulder in her office.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rear-view-of-newspaper-columnist-molly-ivins-working-at-news-photo/50469187?adppopup=true">Mark Perlstein/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Pundit proliferation</h2>
<p>Punditry became a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Sound_and_Fury.html?id=u5JZAAAAMAAJ">more central feature of democracy</a> with the expansion of mass media in the 20th century. While Lippmann emphasized the civic value of commentary, punditry would prove its commercial value, too. </p>
<p>Mass media in the 1950s featured <a href="https://web-p-ebscohost-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=13&sid=f8bbd7ef-5211-4413-b69b-825d6c454075%40redis">radio hosts who delighted in browbeating callers</a>. Those hosts were rewarded with increased ratings. Radio and television punditry also helped stations to fill air time with relatively modest production costs. </p>
<p>The New York Times is not representative of mainstream newspapers, but <a href="https://voegelinview.com/the-public-intellectual-between-philosophy-and-politics/">its expansion of opinion journalism</a> over the last few decades is illustrative. The paper published just two columnists in the early 1950s. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/107769901008700204">By 1994, the Times featured eight</a>. A similar expansion occurred at The Washington Post and many regional newspapers across the country. </p>
<p>The rise of a television pundit class in the 1960s established a <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/2003052">new type of celebrity</a>, thanks largely to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/nyregion/29buckley.html">William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line,” which ran from 1966 to 1999</a>. Leaning back in a chair, clipboard in hand, eyes darting, the conservative author typically treated guests politely on the public affairs show. </p>
<p>Lippmann’s vision of the pundit as public intellectual sought to preserve “the traditions of civility” during the advent of broadcast media. The aspiration was hardly a source of inspiration for “The McLaughlin Group” and other <a href="https://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=3356">shout shows</a> launched in the 1980s. Shout shows are televised, short-form debates. Conversations quickly turn into confrontations. </p>
<h2>Incentives to punch up</h2>
<p>Columnists cannot replicate the visceral experience of the shout shows, although <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/news-grazers/book237055">the ability of readers to graze online</a> heightens the incentive to punch up punditry. Deadlines, of course, are another barrier to high-minded commentary. Lippmann explained that a column is produced by a “puzzled man” who draws “sketches in the sand, which the sea will wash away.” </p>
<p>Punditry today carries a negative connotation, as it conjures “talking heads” spewing opinions. Turn on CNN or Fox News any time of day to see examples. The term “pundit,” though, is derived from the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/pundit-2016-02-24">Sanskrit word “pandrita,” meaning “learned</a>.” </p>
<p>Many pundits are not trained in journalism. Instead, they bring expertise from many other realms. However, when they appear in a journalistic setting, they can be evaluated based on the principles that responsible journalists adhere to: <a href="https://newsliteracymatters.com/2019/10/25/q-are-pundits-journalists/">verification, independence and accountability</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The McLaughlin Group’ was one of the first ‘shout shows’ that began on television in the 1980s.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The same historical forces that add to the diversity of candidates during election cycles have put <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/arts/02iht-02pund.11607826.html">pressure on cable channels to diversify</a> the pundits they feature. Punditry has become democratized but also institutionalized. University communications staff offers experts on just about any topic. Think tanks with ideological agendas make their own experts available to provide analyses that appear considered and neutral. </p>
<p>Cable news, online news and the legacy press offer punditry to <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/news-grazers/book237055">distracted and increasingly fragmented audiences</a>. As a <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/people/journalism/michael-mcdevitt">scholar of political communication</a>, I believe punditry is likely to become more specialized in catering to particular interests. This trend works against Lippmann’s principle of commentary that offers reflection on common experiences. </p>
<h2>Pundits and democracy</h2>
<p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-social-and-political-trust-9780190274801?q=oxford%20handbook%20of%20social%20and%20political%20trust&lang=en&cc=us">Trust in politics</a> is preserved when citizens perceive that leaders, institutions and fellow citizens abide by the rules of the game. Commentary that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2022.2045401">oversimplifies policy disagreement</a> erodes the trust that citizens have for each other, especially when opponents are belittled. </p>
<p>Lippmann was prescient about what scholars today describe as “<a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050517-114628">democratic backsliding</a>,” a process marked by the failure of government to solve problems accompanied by decline in the quality of political discourse. </p>
<p>Pundits contribute to democratic backsliding when they cultivate dystopian views of politics. The best example is the relentless negativity that characterized commentary on presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016. As media scholar <a href="https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/">Thomas Patterson</a> wrote, “When everything and everybody is portrayed as deeply flawed, there’s no sense making distinctions on that score, which works to the advantage of those who are more deeply flawed.”</p>
<p>In an influential 2005 study, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/new-videomalaise-effects-of-televised-incivility-on-political-trust/093762E57EF0CFA2E4A0328572DE0009">Diana Mutz and Byron Reeves</a> asked: “Is watching politicians and pundits hurl insults at one another on television merely a harmless pastime, or does it have consequences for how people think about politics and government?” </p>
<p>The authors staged experiments in which professional actors played congressional candidates sitting together in a television studio. Participants in the study watched different versions of the mock talk show. Candidates expressed the same issue positions, using the same words, and in the civil version were always polite. In the uncivil version, raised voices, rolling of the eyes and gratuitous asides demonstrated candidates’ lack of respect for each other. </p>
<p>The authors reported that “political differences of opinion do not, in and of themselves, harm attitudes toward politics and politicians. However, political trust is adversely affected by levels of incivility in these exchanges.” Participants exposed to the uncivil exchanges scored lower for trust in politicians, Congress and the political system. </p>
<h2>Supporting democracy</h2>
<p>What are the alternatives, then, to the polarizing pundit? Many political theorists insist that there is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ct/article-abstract/16/4/411/4098648">democratic value in heated commentary</a> that calls out injustice. </p>
<p>Media scholar <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0093650220921314">Patricia Rossini</a> suggests that in evaluating political expression, people should be concerned not so much about tone as tolerance. </p>
<p>Audiences should also keep in mind the incentives of pundits, especially when commentators use their platforms to nurture relationships with <a href="https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-6765.12502">politicians who undermine democracy</a>. </p>
<p>Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” regularly featured the celebrity candidate Trump in 2015. The Washington Post took notice of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/12/10/the-many-times-donald-trump-and-morning-joe-yukked-it-up/">“many times Donald Trump and ‘Morning Joe’ yukked it up”</a>. Scarborough would later feud with Trump, but at the time, Trump was useful in attracting viewers. </p>
<p>Pundits can play a productive role by focusing on issues rather than identities.
Americans are divided not so much by policies as <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo27527354.html">mega-identities</a> that combine the political with race and religion. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that issue polarization is less of a problem as long as opponents see <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15205436.2022.2119870">humanity in the other side</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike McDevitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pundits are everywhere, giving their analyses of current events, politics and the state of the world. You’ll hear a lot more from them this election year. Is their rank opinion good for democracy?Mike McDevitt, Professor of journalism and media studies, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1891242022-08-23T20:05:14Z2022-08-23T20:05:14ZIn Plagued, journalists have traded their independence for access, resulting in a kind of political pornography<p>The publication of <a href="https://www.panterapress.com.au/product/plagued/">Plagued</a>, by Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers, is destined to become a classic study of the perils for journalists in writing books about current political events.</p>
<p>You might have missed it in the tumult swirling around former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s multiplying ministries trick – but Plagued is where the public got its first inkling that Morrison had a yen for job-sharing.</p>
<p>By “inkling”, I mean the book had part of the story, but not the most important part. That should ring alarm bells: the main benefit of journalists writing books is they have the time and space to dig deeper into current events to reveal what is not known, or is rushed past, in daily media coverage.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Plagued: Australia’s two years of hell – the inside story – Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers (Pantera Press)</em></p>
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<h2>Politically significant ‘inside story’</h2>
<p>The book’s revelations are not just politically significant but will surely feature in future historians’ accounts of the 2019-2022 Coalition government.
So, what happened?</p>
<p>Plagued is the work of two experienced journalists: Simon Benson, political editor for The Australian (and before that for The Daily Telegraph) and Geoff Chambers, chief political correspondent for The Australian (previously news editor at The Daily Telegraph).</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480284/original/file-20220822-64723-nyikjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The newspapers’ owner, News Corp Australia, has a large, well-resourced Canberra political bureau and appeared to have a direct line to the former prime minister and his office. News Corp regularly received speeches ahead of other journalists and broke numerous stories. The company’s media outlets strongly supported the former Coalition government, to the point of using its journalism to campaign for it – as academics <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-news-corp-goes-rogue-on-election-coverage-what-price-will-australian-democracy-pay-181599">Denis Muller</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-news-corp-change-its-approach-after-labors-election-win-not-if-the-us-example-is-anything-to-go-by-183650">Rodney Tiffen</a> have written in articles for The Conversation.</p>
<p>The subtitle of Plagued is “Australia’s two years of hell – the inside story”. The back-cover blurb trumpets the two journalists’ “exclusive access to the crucial machinations of government at the country’s highest levels, not just within the corridors of power but also behind doors normally sealed”.</p>
<p>The promise of taking readers into places normally hidden from their view is territory Bob Woodward of The Washington Post has been mining since the 1976 publication of his account, co-authored with Carl Bernstein, of the end of the Nixon presidency, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/The-Final-Days/Bob-Woodward/9781439127650">The Final Days</a>.</p>
<p>Woodward and Bernstein took us into the Lincoln Sitting Room the night before Nixon resigned in 1974, to see Nixon asking his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, to pray with him. Similarly, Benson and Chambers take us into the Lodge in January 2020 after Morrison, “badly bruised by the fierce criticism of his family’s Hawaiian holiday”, has returned to work and is receiving early warnings about <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-response-to-covid-in-the-first-2-years-was-one-of-the-best-in-the-world-why-do-we-rank-so-poorly-now-187606">COVID-19</a>. </p>
<p>The authors describe Morrison stepping out of a dinner at the Lodge with his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, and the Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, to take a phone call from his elder brother. “Morrison could hear the dread in his brother’s voice even before he heard the fateful words, ‘Dad’s gone’.”</p>
<p>What we’re offered is a seat in the room where great ones make crucial decisions affecting all our lives. It can be thrilling to read. Watch Nixon as he beats the carpet in anguish, contemplating his political mortality. Listen as Frydenberg tells Morrison early in the global pandemic that the budget surplus is toast and the wage subsidy package is going to cost $130 billion. My God, replies the PM.</p>
<p>There are a number of problems here. First, positioning the reader at the scene of important events is alluring, but how do we know the events are being accurately recounted? We don’t. We have to trust the authors. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-scott-morrison-was-sworn-in-to-several-portfolios-other-than-prime-minister-during-the-pandemic-how-can-this-be-done-188718">Explainer: Scott Morrison was sworn in to several portfolios other than prime minister during the pandemic. How can this be done?</a>
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<h2>Gaining readers’ trust</h2>
<p>One way journalistic authors can gain trust is by telling readers how they know what they know – and sharing their means for weighing sources’ conflicting accounts of events. This has become increasingly common in recent years, precisely because of earlier <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/159333/bob-woodwards-critics-missing-point">controversies</a> involving Bob Woodward, among others. There was a lot of debate, for example, about whether Nixon did actually thump the carpet.</p>
<p>A recent example of improved practice in book-length journalism is Patrick Radden Keefe’s <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781529063073/">Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty</a>. It has 62 pages of endnotes and a five-page note on sources, outlining the thousands of pages of court documents, law enforcement files and letters Radden Keefe drew on (and how he obtained them), along with the number of interviews he conducted – 200-plus. Where Radden Keefe attributes thoughts or feelings to people, it is because his interviewees have told him what they thought and felt, or he is relying on a characterisation from someone who knew them.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain is an example of improved practice in book-length journalism.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Plagued has endnotes, but they are for secondary sources or transcripts of ministers’ media conferences. This is fine, but it accounts for only a portion of the book’s contents and none of its insider material. For instance, a series of text messages Morrison sent the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews – which range from comradely support (“Hang in there Dan”) to an exchange about the Commonwealth and state governments coordinating responses to the second wave of the virus in mid-2020.</p>
<p>Morrison and Andrews, the authors report, enjoyed good relations in private, even if they sometimes clashed in public. After Andrews <a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-aged-care-crisis-reflects-poor-preparation-and-a-broken-system-143556">sharply criticised</a> aged-care facilities and Health Minister Greg Hunt publicly rebuked him, Morrison sent the premier a text saying, “Am standing up shortly, I assure you my tone will be very supportive […] There is nothing to be gained by personalising the challenges we face”, to which Andrews replied, “Agreed”.</p>
<p>I say “report” because the book says nothing about who was interviewed or when. Occasionally the phrase “Morrison later recalled” is deployed, but that’s primarily when he is quoted commenting on past events. It is the only (oblique) sign that he has been interviewed for the book. Very few others – not Andrews, nor federal ministers – are quoted from interviews with the authors, as far as can be told from the book itself.</p>
<p>Benson and Chambers have not only failed to give readers any idea of the source of their exclusive material, but aggravate matters by rendering numerous passages in the omniscient authorial voice – as quoted above, when Morrison learnt of his father’s death. The omniscient authorial voice is a longstanding device in novels where the author is literally the creator of their fictional universe, but journalists by definition are not omniscient. They deal with verifying the truth of events that are contested or confected or hidden.</p>
<p>Again, it is a common criticism of Woodward’s work. The trend in recent works of long-form journalism is to avoid an omniscient authorial voice and practice some humility, drawing attention to the limits of what can be known – and to the writer’s own position and predisposition towards the subject. Margaret Simons has been doing this for years, first in her 1999 book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1179555.Fit_To_Print">Fit to Print</a>, when she shone a light on the workings of the Canberra press gallery.</p>
<p>More recently, when Katharine Murphy, political editor of Guardian Australia, wrote about the global pandemic for <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2020/09/the-end-of-certainty">a Quarterly Essay</a> (published in late 2020), she foregrounded how she was not part of the “Yes mate” club of male broadcast interviewers chosen by Morrison to reach his preferred public – and neither was her publication, Guardian Australia.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/parliament-must-act-to-ensure-australia-never-has-secret-ministers-again-188884">Parliament must act to ensure Australia never has 'secret ministers' again</a>
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<h2>Morrison’s perspective</h2>
<p>With humility and transparency not in the offing, what becomes clear by the end of Plagued is that it recounts the past three years primarily from the perspective of Scott Morrison.</p>
<p>The reader is given his version of every event; it is the authors’ preferred version. Morrison, according to Plagued, works harder than anyone, is across his brief better than anyone, cares more about the Australian people, knows better than anyone what is needed, sees geopolitical trends more clearly. He wants to rise above daily politics and yearns to bring people together – a quality he admired in former Australian prime ministers <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-larrikin-as-leader-how-bob-hawke-came-to-be-one-of-the-best-and-luckiest-prime-ministers-91152">Bob Hawke</a> and Joe Lyons.</p>
<p>Problems that arise are always the fault of others, from the “sclerotic”, “folder-bearing bureaucrats” who fail to brief him quickly enough about the crisis in aged-care homes, to overly cautious officials on the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, and everyone in between. </p>
<p>The result of the 2022 federal election comes as something of a jolt to this relentlessly Morrison-marinated narrative. The change of government is dispensed with in four short paragraphs on the book’s final page. A brief explanation is proffered a few pages earlier: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Politically, the prime minister had fallen victim to the longevity of the plague, the elevation of hostile Labor premiers to a national platform, the inevitable mistakes that would be made the longer it persisted, and an impatient and cranky public.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Morrison’s own reflection is: “The only thing I can observe is that our critics are seeking absolute perfection and anything less than that is a failure, and that means the whole world failed.”</p>
<p>If that straw-man-seeking language sounds familiar, it is. Morrison sounded a similar note <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFSB7cMfqTk">in his hour-long media conference</a> on 17 August, when he said as prime minister he was “responsible pretty much for every single thing that was going on, every drop of rain, every strain of the virus”. </p>
<p>It was at that media conference, too, that Morrison pitchforked his obedient chroniclers into the briar patch. He revealed he had given Benson and Chambers “contemporaneous interviews” where he told them he’d been sworn in as health minister alongside Greg Hunt in March 2020.</p>
<p>As they report, Morrison and Hunt agreed that checks and balances were needed on the powers of <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/04/foi-request-2268-release-documents-advice-to-the-governor-general-foi-2268-explanatory-memorandum.pdf">section 475</a> of the Biosecurity Act. Passed in 2015 under the previous Coalition government, it gave a health minister sweeping powers that overrode other laws and were not disallowable by parliament. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Morrison then hatched a radical and until now secret plan with [then Attorney-General, Christian Porter’s] approval. He would swear himself in as health minister alongside Hunt" who “not only accepted the measure but welcomed it”. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the next paragraph, they quietly report Morrison also swore himself in as finance minister alongside Matthias Cormann, but don’t say whether Cormann knew.</p>
<p>Excerpts of Plagued, including reference to Morrison’s hidden new powers, were published in The Weekend Australian on 13 August. But nobody seemed to notice until nearly 48 hours later, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/aug/19/australians-buried-lede-on-morrison-begs-the-question-who-knew-what-when">according to a chronology</a> pieced together by Amanda Meade, media writer for Guardian Australia.</p>
<p>Then, thanks to reporting by Samantha Maiden of News.com.au and Andrew Clennell of Sky News, it was revealed there was a third portfolio Morrison had acquired – Resources – and that Cormann had not been let in on the secret. </p>
<p>On Monday 15 August, the current Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, expressed his alarm at news of the secret plan and vowed to seek advice about its legality, and its implications for the Westminster system of government. The issue ran all week, prompting calls for Morrison to resign from parliament and launching a thousand comic memes, which Morrison himself wanted everyone to know via Facebook that he too found amusing. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrisons-passion-for-control-trashed-conventions-and-accountability-188747">View from The Hill: Morrison's passion for control trashed conventions and accountability</a>
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<h2>Journalists seduced and betrayed</h2>
<p>On Sunday 21 August, Maiden clarified on ABC TV’s Insiders that it was Cormann who rang Morrison demanding an explanation, rather than Morrison <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/insiders/from-the-couch/14027376">calling his former longtime finance minister</a> to apologise. Something else was becoming clear: Morrison had done <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-janet-malcolm-her-intellectual-courage-shaped-journalism-biographies-and-helen-garner-163005">a reverse Janet Malcolm</a>, first seducing, then betraying his two journalistic courtiers.</p>
<p>He had seduced them with the prospect, unique as far as we know, of exclusive access to him “in the middle of the tempest”, as Morrison put it at his media conference. He gave them the most defensible end of the story – assuming power for Health alongside Hunt at the beginning of the pandemic – and another morsel – assuming power for Finance.</p>
<p>But no more. Now, Benson and Chambers have no one but themselves to blame for failing to ask more questions. They called it “a secret plan” and secrets are to journalism what catnip is to cats.</p>
<p>Then Morrison betrayed them by revealing 58 minutes into the media conference that he’d told them about the shared ministerial arrangement at the time. It’s not clear whether Morrison told them about all five portfolios, and that he had actually overruled one minister, Keith Pitt – on an issue driven not by the pandemic, but the desire to be re-elected. And the authors are being reticent. </p>
<p>Asked by Kieran Gilbert on Sky News when they became aware, Chambers said, “Well, we spoke to dozens of people over two years and this was part of the story and, well, the story is out now. So that’s my response.” If Chambers were a politician bowling up that answer at a media conference, do you think that would satisfy his questioners?</p>
<p>The whole tawdry episode brings to mind <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/09/19/the-deferential-spirit/">a famous essay by Joan Didion</a>, where she argued Bob Woodward wrote books “in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent”. That is, Woodward relentlessly accumulates quotidian details – what people eat, what they wear – but refuses to question the meaning of events or discuss the issues he is reporting. She quotes Woodward saying, essentially, he writes self-portraits of the people who cooperate with him for his books. </p>
<p>This sounds eerily like Plagued. It’s replete with quotidian details: the former PM’s official car in Sydney was a “bullet-proof white BMW 7 Series”; early in the pandemic he and Daniel Andrews enjoyed a “glass of whiskey from a bottle of single-malt Tasmanian lark”. Yet it rarely pauses to question Morrison’s version of events – and equally rarely seeks to contextualise events, or consider alternative perspective in any but the most cursory way. </p>
<p>On the former, Plagued does not mention, for instance, that one of the main reasons Morrison was fiercely criticised for his Hawaiian holiday was because he was <a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-trips-on-a-truth-test-172316">secretive about it</a>. On the latter, the issue of <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-2021-metoo-finally-made-it-to-auspol-what-happens-next-173153">gender equality</a>, for instance, loomed large in the last term of government; but it occupies just two pages in Plagued.</p>
<p>What began as two News Corp Australia journalists’ attempt to secure Scott Morrison’s reputation as the leader who steered Australia through the global pandemic looks most likely to have tarnished his legacy forever. That’s an eye-watering own goal. </p>
<p>When Didion’s essay about Woodward’s work was published in The New York Review of Books in 1996, it was headlined “The deferential spirit”. For its republication five years later in a selection of her essays, she chose another title: “Political pornography”. Sad to say, it is a title that could refer to Plagued.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-janet-malcolm-her-intellectual-courage-shaped-journalism-biographies-and-helen-garner-163005">Remembering Janet Malcolm: her intellectual courage shaped journalism, biographies and Helen Garner</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Murphy, whose work is mentioned in this article, is an adjunct associate professor of journalism at Deakin University. </span></em></p>What began as two journalists’ attempt to secure Scott Morrison’s reputation seems likely to tarnish his legacy forever. It’s an eye-watering own goal – and problematic journalism, in various ways.Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1832902022-06-14T18:25:18Z2022-06-14T18:25:18ZWoodward and Bernstein didn’t bring down a president in Watergate – but the myth that they did lives on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468494/original/file-20220613-13-9yinfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C3748%2C2647&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. President Richard Nixon at a White House lectern reading a farewell speech to his staff following his resignation on Aug. 9, 1974. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-richard-nixon-looks-down-as-stands-at-a-podium-news-photo/3245056?adppopup=true">George Tames/New York Times Co./Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In their dogged reporting of the Watergate scandal, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/05/media/woodward-bernstein-watergate-anniversary/index.html">uncovered</a> the crimes that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency in August 1974.</p>
<p>That version of Watergate has long dominated popular understanding of the scandal, which <a href="https://apnews.com/article/5759bdb4f1414477a7108e0ca0ccaf6f">unfolded over 26 months beginning in June 1972</a>.</p>
<p>It is, however, a simplistic trope that not even Watergate-era principals at the Post embraced.</p>
<p>For example, the newspaper’s publisher during Watergate, Katharine Graham, pointedly rejected that interpretation during a program 25 years ago at the now-defunct Newseum in suburban Virginia.</p>
<p>“Sometimes, people accuse us of ‘bringing down a president,’ which of course we didn’t do, and shouldn’t have done,”<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?87494-1/breaking-watergate-story">Graham said</a>. “The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.”</p>
<p>Graham’s words, however accurate and incisive, scarcely altered the dominant popular interpretation of Watergate. If anything, the intervening 25 years have solidified the “<a href="https://mediamythalert.com/2017/04/28/the-heroic-journalist-myth-of-watergate-and-its-applications/">heroic-journalist</a>” myth of Watergate, which I address and dismantle in my book “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520291294">Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men, one in a topcoat and one in a raincoat, walk away from a building. One is carrying a file folder." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468506/original/file-20220613-14-4qip2p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468506/original/file-20220613-14-4qip2p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468506/original/file-20220613-14-4qip2p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468506/original/file-20220613-14-4qip2p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468506/original/file-20220613-14-4qip2p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468506/original/file-20220613-14-4qip2p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468506/original/file-20220613-14-4qip2p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward, left, and Carl Bernstein on March 1, 1974, Washington, D.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-post-reporters-bob-woodward-and-carl-bernstein-news-photo/53007233?adppopup=true">David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Impact exaggerated</h2>
<p>However <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/opinion/life-lessons-from-watergate.html">popular</a>, the heroic-journalist myth is a vast exaggeration of the effect of their work.</p>
<p>Woodward and Bernstein did disclose <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bug-suspect-got-campaign-funds/2012/06/06/gJQAyTjKJV_story.html">financial links</a> between Nixon’s reelection campaign and the burglars arrested June 17, 1972, at headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, in what was the signal crime of Watergate.</p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/092972-1.htm">publicly tied</a> prominent Washington figures, such as Nixon’s former attorney general, John Mitchell, to the scandal. </p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post">won a Pulitzer Prize</a> for the Post.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://mediamythalert.com/2013/07/14/the-nixon-tapes-a-pivotal-watergate-story-that-wapo-missed/">they missed</a> decisive elements of Watergate, notably the payment of hush money to the burglars and the existence of Nixon’s White House tapes.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the heroic-journalist myth became so entrenched that it could withstand disclaimers by Watergate-era principals at the Post such as Graham. Even Woodward has disavowed the heroic-journalist interpretation, once <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/press/interviews/woody2.html">telling an interviewer</a> that “the mythologizing of our role in Watergate has gone to the point of absurdity, where journalists write … that I, single-handedly, brought down Richard Nixon. </p>
<p>"Totally absurd.”</p>
<p>So why not take Woodward at his word? Why has the heroic-journalist interpretation of Watergate persisted through the 50 years since burglars linked to Nixon’s campaign were arrested at the Watergate complex in Washington? </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The movie ‘All the President’s Men’ placed Woodward and Bernstein at the decisive center of Watergate’s unraveling.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Glosses over intricacies</h2>
<p>Like most <a href="https://mediamythalert.com/2009/11/02/media-myths-faqs/">media myths</a>, the heroic-journalist interpretation of Watergate rests on a foundation of simplicity. It glosses over the scandal’s intricacies and discounts the far more crucial investigative work of special prosecutors, federal judges, the FBI, panels of both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. </p>
<p>It was, after all, the court’s <a href="http://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/day-supreme-court-history-july-24-1974/">unanimous ruling</a> in July 1974, ordering Nixon to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/072574-1.htm">surrender tapes</a> subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor, that sealed the president’s fate. The recordings captured Nixon, six days after the burglary, agreeing to a plan to deter the FBI from pursuing its Watergate investigation.</p>
<p>The tapes were crucial to determining that Nixon had obstructed justice. Without them, he likely would have served out his presidential term. That, at least, was the interpretation of the late Stanley Kutler, one of Watergate’s leading historians, <a href="https://mediamythalert.com/2011/10/25/historian-dismisses-as-self-promotion-the-heroic-journalist-interpretation-of-watergate/">who noted</a>: “You had to have that kind of corroborative evidence to nail the president of the United States.”</p>
<p>The heroic-journalist myth, which <a href="https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/ben_bradlee_and_watergate_exce.php">began taking hold</a> even before Nixon resigned, has been sustained by three related influences.</p>
<p>One was <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/All-the-Presidents-Men/Bob-Woodward/9781476770512">Woodward and Bernstein’s “All the President’s Men</a>,” the well-timed memoir about their reporting. “All the President’s Men” was published in June 1974 and quickly reached the top of The New York Times bestseller list, remaining there 15 weeks, through Nixon’s resignation and beyond. The book inescapably promoted the impression Woodward and Bernstein were vital to Watergate’s outcome.</p>
<p>More so than the book, the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/">cinematic adaptation of “All the President’s Men</a>” placed Woodward and Bernstein at the decisive center of Watergate’s unraveling. The movie, which was released in April 1976 and starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, was relentlessly media-centric, <a href="https://mediamythalert.com/2011/02/27/wapo-on-historically-faulty-films-ignoring-atpm/">ignoring</a> the work of prosecutors and the FBI. </p>
<p>The book and movie introduced Woodward’s super-secret source, “Deep Throat.” For 31 years after Nixon’s resignation, Washington periodically engaged publicly in <a href="https://greensboro.com/guessing-game-ends-with-few-getting-it-right/article_b7c4403b-bb0a-509c-8d6f-22308b492565.html">guessing games</a> about the source’s identity. Such speculation <a href="https://jacklimpert.com/2018/09/for-the-record-who-first-fingered-mark-felt-as-the-likely-deep-throat/">sometimes pointed to</a> W. Mark Felt, a former senior FBI official. </p>
<p>Felt <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2018/09/07/dozens-trump-officials-say-they-didnt-do-it-so-did-deep-throat-years/">brazenly denied</a> having been Woodward’s source. Had he been “Deep Throat,” he <a href="https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1999-07-28-9907280810-story.html">once told a Connecticut newspaper</a>, “I would have done better. I would have been more effective.” </p>
<p>The “who-was-Deep-Throat” conjecture kept Woodward, Bernstein and the heroic-journalist myth at the center of Watergate conversations. Felt was 91 when, in 2005, he <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2005/07/deepthroat200507">acknowledged</a> through his family’s lawyer that he had been Woodward’s source after all.</p>
<p>It’s small wonder that the heroic-journalist myth still defines popular understanding of Watergate. Other than Woodward and Bernstein, no personalities prominent in Watergate were the subjects of a bestselling memoir, the inspiration for a star-studded motion picture, and the protectors of a mythical source who eluded conclusive identification for decades.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>W. Joseph Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward broke stories about the Watergate scandal that helped unravel Richard Nixon’s presidency. But they were not the sole force to bring him down.W. Joseph Campbell, Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of CommunicationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1492262020-11-04T05:16:41Z2020-11-04T05:16:41ZA Q&A with a historian of presidential polls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367292/original/file-20201103-13-1asuq6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C9%2C5984%2C3947&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voters wait to cast their ballots Tuesday at Johnston Elementary School in the Wilkinsburg neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voters-wait-to-cast-their-ballots-at-johnston-elementary-news-photo/1229437556?adppopup=true">Jeff Swensen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/epic-miscalls-and-landslides-unforeseen-the-exceptional-catalog-of-polling-failure-146959">Epic miscalls and landslides unforeseen: The exceptional catalog of polling failure</a>” is the headline on one of scholar <a href="https://wjosephcampbell.com/">W. Joseph Campbell</a>’s recent stories for The Conversation. Campbell is an authority on the history of presidential polling, and in that story, as well as his recent book, “<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/california/view/title/592278">Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in Presidential Elections</a>,” he details just how polls and pollsters – and those who put their faith in them – have misread public opinion when it comes to elections. With that background, we thought that Campbell was an ideal person to provide readers with a critical perspective on 2020’s election polling. He gave us these thoughts late on election night.</em> </p>
<p><strong>Q: You’ve written an entire book about polling failure in U.S. presidential elections. Are there any pollsters this year whose work was notable? Which ones, and why?</strong> </p>
<p>It is still too early to say, but at least a few individual polling results were so unusual or unexpected that they stood out in the week or so before Election Day. These included <a href="https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1216a52020StateBattlegrounds-MIWI.pdf">a survey in Wisconsin</a> conducted for The Washington Post and ABC News and released Oct. 28, which pegged Joe Biden ahead by 17 percentage points – an eye-popping margin that no other recent poll even came close to matching. This appears to have been what pollsters call an outlier.</p>
<p>Also <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/politics/iowa-poll-selzer/index.html">standing out</a> was The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll, the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/31/iowa-poll-trump-takes-lead-biden-days-before-election/6109299002/">final results</a> of which were released just days before the election. And they showed President Donald Trump ahead by 7 points in Iowa, which is striking given that the Register’s poll in September indicated the president and Biden were tied. I mention this because the Iowa Poll is highly regarded in the state and beyond.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshot of The Des Moines Register's story about their poll released just days before the election showing President Donald Trump ahead by 7 points in Iowa." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367318/original/file-20201103-19-vy9fpt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A Des Moines Register poll released just days before the election showed President Donald Trump ahead by 7 points in Iowa – very different from the Register’s September poll indicating the president and Biden were tied.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2020/10/31/election-2020-iowa-poll-president-donald-trump-leads-joe-biden/6061937002/">Screenshot, Des Moines Register</a></span>
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<p>Another survey result that stirred considerable comment among pundits and some news organizations was a Gallup poll of registered voters that found 56% of Americans said they were <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/more-voters-better-off-donald-trump-first-term-obama-bush-1537759">better off now</a> than they were four years ago. It’s the highest such percentage Gallup has recorded since first posing the question in 1984. </p>
<p>Given the economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is hard to believe that such a large percentage of Americans feel better off compared with four years ago. But maybe they remember how vigorous the economy was until the shutdowns. If that’s the case, the Gallup reading may be an encouraging indicator for Trump.</p>
<p><strong>Q: Where do we stand with exit polling this year? Have early voting and mail-in voting made exit polling a relic of elections past? And can we trust exit polls in any case?</strong></p>
<p>Exit polling <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/02/politics/exit-polls-2020-pandemic/index.html">has been done</a> this year for a consortium of television networks known as the National Election Pool. But it comes with a twist. Given the popularity of early voting and voting by mail, the polling firm that conducts the consortium’s exit polling, <a href="https://www.edisonresearch.com/election-polling/">Edison Research</a>, has been interviewing voters at early-voting locations and reaching mail-in voters by phone. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="John Kerry and running mate John Edwards before Kerry gave concession speech in 2004." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367319/original/file-20201103-17-1f0rn9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Exit polls have proved to be misleading in presidential elections, notably in 2004 when they indicated John Kerry was clearly ahead of President George W. Bush. Here, Kerry is about to give his concession speech after being introduced by his running mate, John Edwards.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-john-kerry-is-introduced-by-running-mate-john-edwards-news-photo/181166060?adppopup=true">Bill Greene/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Edison Research also conducted traditional exit polling on Election Day by surveying randomly selected voters as they left voting locations in key precincts around the country.</p>
<p>It is important to keep in mind that exit polls have proved to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/upshot/exit-polls-why-they-so-often-mislead.html">misleading</a> in presidential elections, notably in 2004 when they indicated John Kerry was clearly ahead of President George W. Bush – enough so that a senior aide referred to Kerry on election night as “Mr. President.” </p>
<p>Some critics say exit polling <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/exit-polls-can-be-misleading-especially-this-year/">could be even less reliable</a> this year, given disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p><strong>Q: What historical precursors are there for what we’re seeing election night? Does this election remind you of any other in modern times?</strong></p>
<p>Although no two presidential elections are quite the same, the final days and hours of this year’s campaign seemed reminiscent of the race four years ago. Even election night has been at least faintly evocative of 2016. Late in the evening, Trump’s <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/swing-states-poll-results-us-election-day-focus">apparent victory in Florida</a> is one example. It was a state crucial to his victory in 2016 and it is vital to his reelection chances. </p>
<p>But Biden may well win the popular vote nationally, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. On Tuesday morning, Biden had a lead of 7.2 percentage points in national polls, as aggregated by RealClearPolitics.com.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Overall, the election likely will be decided by electoral votes in several closely contested states – much as it was four years ago.</p>
<p>The closely watched states this year include Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which were battlegrounds in 2016. </p>
<p>A surprise of election night 2020 was the unexpectedly tight race in Virginia, which pollsters and pundits regarded as <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/Virginia.html">very safe</a> for Biden. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-voting-elections-virginia-3f75551ada7b2c55e9c053043d2ce01f">A number of news outlets called Virginia for Biden early in the evening</a>, but Trump had maintained a lead in the state well into the night.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149226/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>W. Joseph Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An expert on the history of polling has a first take on how pollsters did this year.W. Joseph Campbell, Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of CommunicationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1471412020-10-01T20:04:49Z2020-10-01T20:04:49ZVital Signs: how to time a bombshell like Trump’s tax returns<p>It’s unlikely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/">The New York Times</a>’ publication of Donald Trump’s tax records just before the first presidential candidates’ debate was a coincidence.</p>
<p>This looks like a classic example of what political scientists and commentators call an “October Surprise” – a news story deliberately timed to influence the US presidential election. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-us-presidential-debate-was-pure-chaos-heres-what-our-experts-thought-147178">The first US presidential debate was pure chaos. Here's what our experts thought</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Much is at stake – the presidency, as well the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate. What is in the minds of voters before they vote is crucial. This gives interested parties great incentive to strategically time the release of information they might have been holding on to for some time. </p>
<p>A well-timed “bombshell” can sway the outcome. But what is the best timing? The first Tuesday in November is still a long way off. Why not wait?</p>
<h2>Remember what happened last election</h2>
<p>Remember 2016, when both Trump and rival Hillary Clinton faced last-minute scandals. </p>
<p>Trump had his “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcZcTnykYbw">Access Hollywood tape</a>”, featuring him talking crudely about women. The Washington Post published the tape on October 7, two days before his second debate with Clinton. Given the recording was from 2005, it is hard to conclude the timing of the Post’s publication wasn’t strategic – if not by the newspaper then by the source of the material.</p>
<p>But this October Surprise arguably proved far less damaging than the bombshell that hit Clinton just 11 days before the election, when FBI director James Comey announced the bureau was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while US Secretary of State. </p>
<p>The FBI had previously investigated and deemed Clinton and her team extremely careless in not using secure government emails to handle classified information. But it recommended no charges. The case was reopened when more emails, sent by Clinton aide Huma Abedin on the laptop of her husband Anthony Weiner, were found. Making the story even juicier was that the FBI found the emails while investigating Weiner for sending sexually explicit messages to a 15-year-old girl. </p>
<p>While there is no suggestion Comey’s announcement was a deliberate October Surprise, its timing certainly didn’t help Clinton. Nothing came of the reopened case. Had Comey made the announcement a few weeks earlier, the election might have gone to Clinton.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-weiner-is-wonderful-61272">Why Weiner is Wonderful</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Credibility versus scrutiny</h2>
<p>The superficial lesson from 2016 might appear to be that the closer to the election you can drop a bombshell, the better. </p>
<p>Indeed analysis of political scandals since the late 1970s show more occur with as as an election get closer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360651/original/file-20200929-22-lqo04b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gabriele Gratton, Richard Holden and Anton Kolotolin, 'When to Drop a Bombshell', Review of Economic Studies, 85(4), 2018: 2139-2172.</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>But too many scandals bunched too close to an election is likely to blunt their impact. Voters might rationally assume scandals are more likely to be fake the closer they erupt to election day. They have good reason to be sceptical. It is also rational for anyone wanting to influence the outcome with fake news to deny voters the time to distinguish between fact and fiction. </p>
<p>So when is the best time to drop a bombshell for maximum impact? </p>
<p>My analysis with colleagues Gabriele Gratton and Anton Kolotilin (in the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-abstract/85/4/2139/4725011">Review of Economic Studies</a>) shows fake scandals are more likely closer to elections. This includes “Billygate” claims in October 1980 that President Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy was a Libyan agent of influence, and “Filegate” claims in 1996 the Clinton White House had improperly acquired access to FBI files on political opponents.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Distribution of real and fake scandal claims concerning US presidents and candidates." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361007/original/file-20201001-25-sl0ipt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Distribution of real and fake scandal claims concerning US presidents and candidates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/richardholden/assets/online_appendix_a.pdf">Gratton, Holden and Kolotilin (2017), 'When to Drop a Bombshell',</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>So there is a strategic trade-off between credibility and scrutiny.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the one hand, dropping the bombshell earlier is more credible, in that it signals that its sender has nothing to hide. On the other hand, it exposes the bombshell to scrutiny for a longer period of time — possibly revealing that the bombshell is a fake.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Time adds credibility</h2>
<p>What, then, to make of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">New York Times</a>’ bombshell on September 27, two days before Trump’s first debate with Joe Biden, that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Donald J. Trump paid [US]$750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another [US]$750.</p>
<p>He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Only the Times knows when it first could have run this story. But it has released its story far enough before election day that there is time for a good deal of scrutiny. Given the nature of the story, the newspaper’s claims are likely to be proven true or false quickly. The lead time is reason to have confidence in the story’s accuracy. </p>
<p>Adding to the story’s credibility is what economists call a high “prior belief” about Trump being someone who lies and cheats.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-washington-to-trump-all-presidents-have-told-lies-but-only-some-have-told-them-for-the-right-reasons-145995">From Washington to Trump, all presidents have told lies (but only some have told them for the right reasons)</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We can probably count on more than a few more bombshells about Trump or Biden as November 3 draws closer. </p>
<p>But the basic strategic considerations highlighted by our model suggests the closer a bombshell drops to election day, the greater the reason to question its credibility.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Holden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The closer to the election you can drop a bombshell, the better, right? Not necessarily.Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1286952019-12-20T13:58:45Z2019-12-20T13:58:45ZFrom Vietnam to Afghanistan, all US governments lie<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307804/original/file-20191218-11939-ml2f68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A memorial procession for Sgt. James Johnston, who was killed in Afghanistan in June, passes through Trumansburg, N.Y., Saturday, Aug. 31, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/The-War-Comes-Home/7ca25e91bd09419897a3da85aec7093b/135/0">AP/David Goldman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Washington Post has, after more than two years of investigation, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/">revealed</a> that senior foreign policy officials in the White House, State and Defense departments have known for some time that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was failing. </p>
<p>Interview transcripts from the <a href="https://www.sigar.mil/">Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction</a>, obtained by the Post after many lawsuits, show that for 18 years these same officials have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/">told the public the intervention was succeeding</a>. </p>
<p>In other words, government officials have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/09/afghanistan-papers-military-washington-post-analysis">lying</a>.</p>
<p>Few people are shocked. That’s a stark contrast to 1971, when the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers">Pentagon Papers</a>, a classified study of decision-making about Vietnam, were leaked and published. The explosive Pentagon Papers showed that the U.S. government had systematically lied about the reality that the U.S. was losing the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>The failure of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan has been known for years. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-goals-in-afghanistan-seem-more-remote-after-attack">Virtually none of the U.S. goals have been met</a>. These goals included a strong, democratic, uncorrupt central government; the defeat of the Taliban; eliminating the poppy fields that contribute to the world’s heroin problem; an effective military and police and creating a healthy, diversified economy. </p>
<p>The Inspector General has repeatedly documented the reality in its widely available (and widely reported) <a href="https://www.sigar.mil/audits/auditreports/index.aspx?SSR=2&SubSSR=11&WP=Audit%20Reports">audits</a>.</p>
<p>Despite this public record of failure, <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=829643">officials continued to trumpet</a> political and military gains on the ground, even that the U.S. could prevail. </p>
<p>Privately, they have been wringing their hands.</p>
<p>Shades of Vietnam. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307805/original/file-20191218-11929-44xbi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Public confidence in government was shaken by the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-/61378866a8224e64be95556e7b29dcb5/32/0">AP/Jim Wells</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sad history of Vietnam</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Papers-Secret-History-Vietnam/dp/0553072552">Pentagon Papers</a> revealed that senior officials asserted in the 1960s that the Viet Cong were dying in record numbers, enemy leadership was decapitated and there was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/30/arts/general-disputes-quote-in-cbs-trial.html">“light at the end of the tunnel</a>.” Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his commanders, who knew the reality, continuously called for even more force from 1961 to 1969. </p>
<p>H.R. McMaster, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060187958/dereliction-of-duty/">in his classic study of Vietnam decision-making</a>, excoriated the military for not bringing the truth to President Lyndon Johnson, for presenting Johnson with the “lies that led to Vietnam.” </p>
<p>The U.S. was winning in Vietnam, until it was not. Right up to the moment <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/last-helicopter-evacuating-saigon-321254">diplomats in the U.S. embassy turned the lights off</a> and were airlifted off the building’s roof. </p>
<h2>Are comparisons justified?</h2>
<p>Afghanistan is not Vietnam, it is said. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-served-in-afghanistan-no-its-not-another-vietnam/2019/12/12/72b958f0-1d1d-11ea-b4c1-fd0d91b60d9e_story.html">Former Afghanistan Ambassador Ryan Crocker argues</a> that the U.S. must be in Afghanistan for America’s security even if reconstruction fails. <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-washington-post-gets-wrong-about-united-states-and-afghanistan">Brookings analyst Michael O’Hanlon asserts</a> that there were no lies; officials were clear the policy was in trouble. He avoids discussing the voluminous true statements The Washington Post uncovered that were not made publicly.</p>
<p>The U.S. was ignorant about both countries. <a href="https://quincyinst.org/author/gadams/0">Serving in the Obama transition in 2008</a>, for example, I learned that Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Bush-Obama Afghanistan coordinator, <a href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/15/obamas-failed-legacy-in-afghanistan/">was carrying out a policy review process that led to a military surge</a>. </p>
<p>Now we learn, courtesy of The Washington Post, that, when interviewed in 2015 as part of Special Inspector General’s “<a href="https://www.sigar.mil/lessonslearned/">Lessons Learned</a>” project, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/?document=lute_doug_ll_01_d5_02202015">Lute said</a>, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan … we didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”</p>
<p>While Afghanistan is clearly not Vietnam, Washington is still Washington. </p>
<h2>Prevarication as policy</h2>
<p>After <a href="https://quincyinst.org/author/gadams/0">more than 30 years of policy work, government experience, teaching and research,</a> I see no mystery here. Concealment, deception and outright lies have characterized U.S. national security policy for decades – from the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthrew-irans-democracy-in-four-days">overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran</a> and <a href="https://www.umbc.edu/che/historylabs/lessondisplay.php?lesson=101">Guatemala</a> to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/28/iraq.military">overthrow of Saddam Hussein</a> and more.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307806/original/file-20191218-11919-13t2tc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. secretly plotted and carried out the overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadeq, in 1953. Here, an Iranian protests U.S. involvement in the coup.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://ir-psri.com/">Pahlavi Dynasty, public domain</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-viewpoint-aregood-vietnam-war-20170928-story.html">But Vietnam was the big lie</a>, permanently exposing the gap between myth – the government knows everything better – and reality – that policy is failing. </p>
<p>Since Vietnam, the media and congressional, think-tank and scholarly investigators have suspected something with every intervention. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/05/after-17-years-of-war-in-afghanistan-more-say-u-s-has-failed-than-succeeded-in-achieving-its-goals/">To the public</a>, the truth about Afghanistan has been clear; public opinion has been way ahead of what The Washington Post revealed. </p>
<h2>Good reasons for lies</h2>
<p>Lies are an integral part of national security operations. They seek credibility for government policy. They mislead adversaries, cover up mistakes and failures. </p>
<p>Above all, they are intended to secure public support for policy and defeat opposition at home. Political scientist John Mearsheimer has <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/why-leaders-lie-9780199975457?cc=us&lang=en&">noted</a> that governments don’t often lie to their allies and adversaries, “but instead seem more inclined to lie to their own people.” </p>
<p>In particular, secrecy and deception convey power. As philosopher Sissela Bok <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/15606/lying-by-sissela-bok/">says</a>, “Deception can be coercive. When it succeeds, it can give power to the deceiver.”</p>
<p>Secrecy allows policies to be tweaked <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/library/wyden.html">outside public view</a>. Insiders gain influence arguing for new approaches to the same goals. Even the goals can shift as interventions deteriorate. The political consequences of failure may be avoided. </p>
<p>It is rare for an official to acknowledge failure and reverse policy; personal, political and national credibility may be at stake. President Johnson insisted that he was not going to be the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/vietnam-legacy-america-struggles-to-find-meaning-in-defeat/a-18419618">“first president to lose a war.”</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-strategy/">Bush, Obama and even Trump</a> did not want to “lose” Afghanistan. </p>
<p>An act of political courage – like the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Algerian-War">1960-61 Algeria departure decision of French President Charles de Gaulle</a>, who understood France had lost its fight, is rare.</p>
<h2>Trust broken</h2>
<p>Why has The Washington Post series not been explosive? </p>
<p>In part, the Pentagon Papers <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/40-years-after-leak-weighing-the-impact-of-the-pentagon-papers">broke the code of secrecy; the bond of trust</a> between the policymakers and the American people was severed forever. </p>
<p>In part, the lies about Afghanistan have been in plain sight for years, courtesy of the media and the Special Inspector General. </p>
<p>And in part, the public is less directly engaged. The warriors are now <a href="http://www.avfforum.org/home.html">volunteer professionals</a>, not conscripts drawn from the general public. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/magazine/afghan-war-casualty-report-october-2019.html">Casualties are one-twentieth</a> of what they were <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics">in Vietnam</a>. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, lying about military interventions carries a serious risk. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/how-americans-lost-faith-in-the-presidency/537897/">The Pentagon Papers eroded public faith</a> in the credibility of our democratic government. That erosion was later reinforced by the Watergate scandal. As <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NyuxeAMcpU8C&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=Deception+of+this+kind+strikes+at+the+very+essence+of+democratic+government.&source=bl&ots=kATFM1v6J3&sig=ACfU3U2faXa3JgWJIXBgsg9wdh2cDkLxJg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiozeDh-L_mAhWrUt8KHZAFBbEQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Deception%20of%20this%20kind%20strikes%20at%20the%20very%20essence%20of%20democratic%20government.&f=false">Bok, the philosopher, wrote</a>, “deception of this kind strikes at the very essence of democratic government.” </p>
<p>British leader Winston Churchill <a href="https://www.archives.gov/iwg/research-papers/weitzman-remarks-june-1999.html">said</a>, “In war-time truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Deception aimed at the public and the Axis was an essential part of Churchill’s war strategy.</p>
<p>The Afghanistan papers reveal yet again that statesmen still believe the truth should be concealed. But the credibility of statecraft and leadership itself were seriously eroded by the Vietnam lies, weakening the fabric of democracy. </p>
<p>The mild reaction to lying in plain sight about Afghanistan suggests the U.S. may be well down the road to unravelling government’s credibility and our democracy altogether.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon Adams is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute.</span></em></p>US officials have consistently lied over decades about progress in the Afghanistan war. The lies are no surprise, writes a foreign affairs scholar – but they have profound consequences.Gordon Adams, Professor Emeritus, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1004062018-07-27T12:55:49Z2018-07-27T12:55:49ZThe term ‘fake news’ is doing great harm<p>During a recent press conference in the UK, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/13/trump-fake-news-fox-cnn-theresa-may">shut down</a> a reporter from the news network he loves to hate. “CNN is fake news – I don’t take questions from CNN,” he said, moving swiftly on to a reporter from Fox News.</p>
<p>It’s easy to think that everyone knows what “fake news” means – it was Collins Dictionary’s <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/woty">word of the year in 2017</a>, after all. But to think it stops there is mistaken – and politically dangerous. Not only do different people have opposing views about the meaning of “fake news”, in practice the term undermines the intellectual values of democracy – and there is a real possibility that it means nothing. We would be better off if we stopped using it.</p>
<p>We can start to see the problems with “fake news” by seeing how much people disagree about its meaning. Some use it as a catch-all term for problematic or doubtful information, an important example being the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/18/what-is-fake-news-pizzagate">untrue story</a> that surfaced on social media during the 2016 US election campaign that Hillary Clinton was involved with a child sex ring run out of a Washington pizza house. </p>
<p>Some people use “fake news” exclusively to talk about false stories. For example, Facebook seems to think that “fake news” just means news that is false, which is why they prefer to talk about “<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/08/08/facebook_has_stopped_saying_fake_news_is_false_news_any_better.html">false news</a>”. But many journalists use “fake news” to mean something close to “lie”, meaning it involves an intention to deceive. </p>
<p>Buzzfeed editor, Craig Silverman – who is credited with helping to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/i-helped-popularize-the-term-fake-news-and-now-i-cringe#.yaKaGpd9V">popularise the phrase</a> – has investigated Macedonian <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo">clickbait farms</a>, which make up stories to attract profitable clicks. On his definition, as well as intending to deceive people, there is a profit motive involved. This definition fits well with clickbait farms but less well with politically motivated speech.</p>
<p>But “fake news” doesn’t only refer to false stories or lies. American philosopher Michael Lynch has identified what he calls the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/opinion/fake-news-and-the-internet-shell-game.html?_r=1">internet shell game</a>” – the deliberate spreading of a mixture of true and false stories to confuse the public. In this way, some true information is discredited with the false stories they sit alongside. We might think in this kind of case the whole mass of stories — both true and false — counts as “fake news”. This brings the idea of “fake news” closer to Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt’s notion of <a href="http://time.com/4321036/donald-trump-bs/">bullshit</a> than lying. A liar says what he or she believes to be false, whereas the bullshitter says whatever is in their interest, irrespective of its truth. </p>
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<p>The US alt-right has a more diffuse understanding of “fake news” – using it to refer to what they claim is a systematic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOZ0irgLwxU&t=63s">left-wing bias in the news</a>. This allegation of systematic bias is often used to undermine legitimate stories, as when Trump brought up media bias to dismiss The Sun’s reports that he <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/markdistefano/president-trump-called-the-sun-fake-news-but-the-tabloid">criticised the UK prime minister, Theresa May</a>.</p>
<h2>Empty words</h2>
<p>The phrase “fake news” is a mess of conflicting meanings. <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/lang-phi/">Philosophy of language</a> gives us several tools for thinking about terms that are in flux in this way – perhaps their meaning is sensitive to context, or they are contested – but my preferred diagnosis is that “fake news” simply has no meaning. It is nonsense – empty words.</p>
<p>So why use it? In the mouths of right-wing demagogues, the accusation is a command not to believe a story and to distrust the institution that produced it. In a speech on July 24 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention, Trump made this message abundantly clear, saying: “Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1021813720828264449"}"></div></p>
<p>This kind of speech is a classic example of what American philosopher Jason Stanley calls <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10448.html">undermining propaganda</a>: speech that signals commitment to a value while working to undermine it. An accusation that something is “fake news” seeks to be associated with striving to maintain truth, objectivity and critical thinking – but the effect of its repeated use is to undermine those very values. This undermining has several mechanisms: allegations of fakery sap public trust in legitimate news institutions and intellectual insults crowd out reasonable discourse. </p>
<p>Outside North America and Europe, the anti-democratic work of “fake news” is more explicit. In several countries, “fake news” has been used to <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/predators-press-freedom-use-fake-news-censorship-tool">justify censorship laws</a> – the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rohingya-ethnic-cleansing-is-fake-news-says-burma-army-580hbxw6r">Burmese Military</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-17/duterte-hits-fake-news-as-critics-warn-of-media-crackdown">the president of the Philippines</a> have both used it to dismiss reports that oppose their preferred narratives. </p>
<p>Despite its anti-democratic effects, the association of “fake news” with democratic values makes it a honeypot for establishment figures, who have eagerly taken it up, <a href="https://shorensteincenter.org/combating-fake-news-agenda-for-research/">putting on conferences</a> and calling for a “science of fake news”. This attempt at appropriation is problematic. Trying to use “fake news” in a precise way mires the defenders of democratic values in definitional wrangles that could have been avoided by just using everyday terms. </p>
<p>Using the term also lends legitimacy to its propagandistic uses, making them look like reasonable contributions to public discourse. We might also worry that well-intentioned users of “fake news” will be tempted to use the demagogue’s tools to engage in intellectual policing, undermining their own commitment to open public discourse.</p>
<p>If we want to avoid empty talk and legitimating propaganda, <a href="https://medium.com/1st-draft/fake-news-its-complicated-d0f773766c79">we should simply stop using “fake news”</a>. What should we put in its place? I suspect that we can do quite a lot with ordinary terms such as “lie”, “bullshit” and “unreliable”. Perhaps we do need new terms, but we shouldn’t start by trying to repurpose the demagagoue’s tools to defend democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100406/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Habgood-Coote does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘Fake news’ is a meaningless term that is used for anti-democratic propaganda. We should all stop using it.Joshua Habgood-Coote, Vice Chancellor's fellow, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/939752018-04-13T14:50:37Z2018-04-13T14:50:37ZFudged statistics on the Iraq War death toll are still circulating today<p>What happens when a scientific journal publishes information that turns out to be false? A fracas over a recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/20/15-years-after-it-began-the-death-toll-from-the-iraq-war-is-still-murky/?utm_term=.28f6cd9b1ae7">Washington Post article</a> provides an illuminating case study in how, even years after they’re published, uncorrected false claims can still end up repeated time and again. But at the same time, it shows how simply alerting responsible journalists and news editors to repeated errors can do a lot to combat false claims that stubbornly live on even after they’ve been debunked.</p>
<p>It all started with a <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2806%2969491-9/abstract">2006 article</a> published in the eminent journal The Lancet, entitled <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150907130701/http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf">Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey</a>. The article had many problems, but one of its graphs in particular stuck out. That one figure displayed new estimated numbers of violent deaths in the Iraq War, and came up with numbers massively higher than anything anyone had seriously suggested before.</p>
<p>And although the article’s reported violence numbers increased over time far more rapidly than those reported by other sources, including the <a href="https://www.iraqbodycount.org/">Iraq Body Count</a> (IBC) project, the graph gave the inaccurate impression that IBC trends actually tracked their new data quite closely – ostensibly validating what, at first glance, seemed like a very hard-to-swallow new dataset. </p>
<p>In addition, the graph included a third dataset purporting to show violence trends measured by the US Department of Defence (DoD), trends that were again presented as consistent with the authors’ new data. The finished graph was central to the paper’s effort to “mainstream” the shocking new numbers by connecting them with other data on war violence. </p>
<p>Yet a few weeks after the article was published, letters sent to the Lancet from other researchers discredited the graph entirely.</p>
<h2>Falling apart</h2>
<p>First, Debarati Guha-Sapir and two colleagues <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607600610/fulltext">pointed out</a> that the graph <a href="http://andrewgelman.com/2015/10/01/jason-chaffetz-is-the-garo-yepremian-of-the-u-s-house-of-representatives-and-i-dont-mean-that-in-a-good-way/">used two Y axes</a>, a device notorious for creating the illusion that two curves moving in the same direction at different speeds are in fact moving at the same speed. </p>
<p>But this was just one of the problems with the graph. The article’s authors also tweaked the trends by comparing their own data with cumulative IBC data. Specifically, they plotted the first 13 months of their data against 13 months of IBC data, their second 13 months against 26 months of IBC data, and their third 13 months against 39 months of IBC data.</p>
<p>And in another published letter to the journal, IBC’s Joshua Dougherty <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60062-2/fulltext">demonstrated</a> that the DoD curve the authors included did not represent what they said it did. For example, going back to the source, he said the DoD data they cite include both deaths and casualties, and “do not offer any direct means by which to calculate what number might be deaths, let alone civilian deaths”.</p>
<p>Rather surprisingly, in their <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60063-4/fulltext">reply</a> – also published in the Lancet – the authors actually admitted to several problems with their graph. But their mea culpa was grudging and incomplete. In it, they suggested that the issues with the graph are merely technical, and that the trends really do match – but as the letters mentioned above pointed out, that is not correct.</p>
<p>One would think that by this point, deafening alarm bells would have been ringing in the Lancet editors’ ears. After all, they had just published a highly compromised graph that two letters had utterly discredited. And the authors had even admitted errors, an unusual development to say the least. Surely the Lancet would withdraw the graph; maybe they would at least leave it up online but post a warning sign nearby. But no. Instead, they just left the article and the graph online in perpetuity.</p>
<p>And so, in spring 2018, enter the Washington Post and its reporter Philip Bump. </p>
<h2>Caught out</h2>
<p>To his credit, Bump wrote and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/20/15-years-after-it-began-the-death-toll-from-the-iraq-war-is-still-murky/?utm_term=.28f6cd9b1ae7">published an article</a> marking the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, an event that’s getting far too little media attention in the UK and US. The article reads well – that is, until it landed on the discredited graph, which it reproduced and presented as if it were legitimate.</p>
<p>The Lancet could argue that if Bump had only read the follow-up letters it published, he never would have reprinted the discredited graph. But this argument is akin to saying that there is no need for warning labels on cigarettes because people can just read the scientific literature on smoking and consider themselves warned. But in practice, many people will just assume the graph is kosher because it sits on the Lancet website with no warning attached. </p>
<p>As you might expect, the dust-up over the graph is just the tip of the iceberg with the 2006 article. I myself have comprehensively <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10242690802496898?scroll=top&needAccess=true">debunked</a> the article, with at least some of the <a href="http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Mainstreaming.pdf">inaccuracies</a> that propped it up. The article’s lead author, Gilbert Burnham, was <a href="https://www.aapor.org/Communications/Press-Releases/AAPOR-Finds-Gilbert-Burnham-in-Violation-of-Ethics.aspx">censured</a> by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for refusing to explain basic elements of his methodology. He was also <a href="https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2009/iraq-review.html">sanctioned by Johns Hopkins</a>, which “suspended Dr. Burnham’s privileges to serve as a principal investigator on projects involving human subjects research”. Johns Hopkins also said it would send an erratum to the Lancet to address inaccuracies in the article’s text.</p>
<p>Bump did not mention any of this fallout from the article he cited; presumably he just didn’t come across it in the course of his own research. But maybe he would have been primed to dig deeper if the Lancet had done all it could to label the graph with an appropriate warning. Letters to a journal are better than nothing, but they are not enough to correct a published false claim; it is incumbent on all involved to flag inaccuracies and misrepresentions as conspicuously as they can.</p>
<p>That said, this particular chapter at least has a happy ending. I wrote to Bump and the Washington Post and they fixed the story, in the process demonstrating an admirable respect for evidence and a commitment to the truth. The Lancet would do well to follow their example.</p>
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<p><em>The Lancet declined to comment on this piece.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93975/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Spagat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If journal editors fail to retract or properly flag data revealed as inaccurate, they leave open the possibility that it’ll be cited for years to come.Michael Spagat, Professor of Economics and Head of Department, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/684962016-11-09T19:10:57Z2016-11-09T19:10:57ZHow Donald Trump used the media and the ‘industry of outrage’ to win the US presidency<p>The media as an institution in the United States is undoubtedly in a deplorable condition, but not for the reasons asserted by Donald Trump.</p>
<p>If anything, Trump has been the beneficiary of the media’s failings.</p>
<p>High on the list of these failings is what The Economist three weeks ago called “<a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business/21708718-some-americans-are-getting-rich-pushing-politics-extremes-business-outrage">the business of outrage</a>”.</p>
<p>Individual media personalities such as the radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh and right wing populist copycats Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have made global reputations and large fortunes for themselves as purveyors of outrage.</p>
<p>Limbaugh is reported to have 13.25 million regular weekly listeners, an audience size guaranteed to generate a mighty revenue stream. He is also reported to be on an 8 year US$400 million contract, and is <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/rush-limbaugh/">listed by Forbes magazine</a> as the 10th highest earning celebrity in the world.</p>
<p>Online entrepreneurs such as <a href="http://www.drudgereport.com/">Matt Drudge</a> jumped on the outrage bandwagon, adding to its momentum.</p>
<p>Turbocharging the outrage industry has been Fox News, the creation of Rupert Murdoch and a former Republican operative, Roger Ailes. Under the ludicrously misleading slogan of “balance” they combined the dynamics of talk back radio with the visual power of television and a bank of outspokenly conservative commentators to create the highest rating cable news channel in the US.</p>
<p>Factual accuracy hasn’t much to do with what these propagandists publish under the guise of journalism. Drudge has said that only 80% of his material is verified. Even if we accept that optimistic assessment, how do we know which 80%?</p>
<p>In the midst of voting in the current presidential election, Limbaugh claimed that former Republican president George W. Bush and his wife Laura voted for Hillary Clinton, a claim <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/08/media/george-w-bush-rush-limbaugh-hillary-clinton/">immediately repudiated</a> by their spokesperson.</p>
<p>The outrage industry has added fuel to a fiery political atmosphere in the US, but of course much bigger forces provided the ignition. The world has already seen the evidence of this in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-is-on-britain-votes-to-leave-the-eu-experts-respond-61576">Brexit vote</a>, in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/expert-views-of-occupy-wall-street-3891">Occupy Wall Street</a> movement and more recently in the success of racist and anti immigration demagoguery.</p>
<p>Like Trump, the outrage industry has exploited the completely understandable resentment of millions in rich countries who feel left behind by globalisation and sacrificed by governments on the altar of economic rationalism.</p>
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<p>To make it worse, Trump’s exploitation has been characterised by racism, religious bigotry and a complete absence of constructive policy responses to the political crisis thus induced. Instead, he proposed a wall between the US and Mexico, vowed to reject international trade agreements, made bamboozling abstractions about “making America great again” and sowed doubts about the legitimacy of the American electoral and congressional processes.</p>
<p>In these ways, Trump has been able to channel and amplify the outrage of those left behind, and in doing so has placed institutions of American democracy under siege.</p>
<p>Not all elements of the US media are participants in this destructive project. But many have gone along for the ride with Trump – his various atrocities having been good for ratings and circulation, and ultimately for revenue.</p>
<p>An honourable exception has been The New York Times. In late September, it declared Trump to be <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/opinion/why-donald-trump-should-not-be-president.html">unfit for the presidency</a>, describing him as “a man who dwells in bigotry, bluster and false promises”. Two days later, it enumerated what it said were <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opinion/campaign-stops/the-lies-trump-told.html">27 lies</a> told by Trump in the course of the second presidential debate.</p>
<p>The Washington Post also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-unique-threat-to-american-democracy/2016/07/22/a6d823cc-4f4f-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html">took a stand</a> against Trump.</p>
<p>It was too late. It played into the hands of Trump as further evidence of the “liberal” media’s participation in a grand conspiracy against the American people, a conspiracy to which Congress and the Administration were also said to be parties.</p>
<p>The ease with which Trump has been able to sweep aside what he reviles as the corrupt media is evidence of a loss of public trust in the fourth estate. It will be the media’s task to rebuild that trust from the ruins of this campaign.</p>
<p>A particularly difficult challenge for the media will be creating an ethical framework about how to respond when a public figure tramples on all the conventions of democratic politics. Before this election, it was generally enough for the leading newspapers to report a candidate’s behaviour and statements in the news pages, and then make separate judgements in the opinion pages.</p>
<p>In the face of the Trump onslaught and the unrestrained outpourings of the outrage industry, this has seemed insipid and inadequate. But does an ethical media organisation abandon its principles and join in the rule breaking? How is the public interest best served?</p>
<p>The US media will now have to confront this question. It is timely for the media in other Western countries to face up to it as well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68496/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The media as an institution in the United States is in a deplorable condition, and President-elect Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of its failings.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/657312016-09-21T00:01:47Z2016-09-21T00:01:47ZHarvard study: Policy issues nearly absent in presidential campaign coverage<p>Years ago, when I first started teaching and was at Syracuse University, one of my students ran for student body president on the tongue-in-cheek platform “Issues are Tissues, without a T.” </p>
<p>He was dismissing out of hand anything that he, or his opponents, might propose to do in office, noting that student body presidents have so little power as to make their platforms disposable.</p>
<p>Sadly, the news media appears to have taken a similar outlook in their coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. The stakes in the election are high. Key decisions on foreign and domestic policy will be affected by the election’s outcome, as will a host of other issues, including the appointment of the newest Supreme Court justice. Yet, journalists have paid scant attention to the candidates’ platforms. </p>
<p>That conclusion is based on three reports on the news media’s coverage of the 2016 campaign that I have written for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where I hold a faculty position. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-national-conventions/">third report</a> was released today and it covers the month-long period from the week before the Republican National Convention to the week after the Democratic National Convention. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Pre-Primary-News-Coverage-Trump-Sanders-Clinton-2016.pdf">first report</a> analyzed coverage during the whole of the year 2015 – the so-called invisible primary period that precedes the first actual contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Election-2016-Primary-Media-Coverage.pdf">second report</a> spanned the period of the primaries and caucuses. </p>
<h2>10 major outlets studied</h2>
<p>Each report was based on a detailed content analysis of the presidential election coverage on five television networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC) and in five leading newspapers (Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today). </p>
<p>The analysis indicates that substantive policy issues have received only a small amount of attention so far in the 2016 election coverage. To be sure, “the wall” has been in and out of the news since Donald Trump vowed to build it. Other issues like ISIS and free trade have popped up here or there as well. But in the overall context of election coverage, issues have played second fiddle. They were at the forefront in the halls of the national conventions but not in the forefront of convention-period news coverage. Not a single policy proposal accounted for even 1 percent of Hillary Clinton’s convention-period coverage and, collectively, her policy stands accounted for a mere 4 percent of it. </p>
<p>Trump’s policies got more attention, but not until after the Democratic convention, when he made headlines several days running for his testy exchange with the parents of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier.</p>
<p>That exchange sparked a “controversy,” which is sure to catch reporters’ attention. We’ve seen that time and again this election year. Past elections were not much different, featuring everything from Jimmy Carter’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/carter.htm">“lust in my heart”</a> Playboy interview in 1976 to Mitt Romney’s <a href="http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/did-the-47-percent-video-sink-romneys-campaign">“47 percent”</a> statement in 2012. None of these controversies was predictive of anything that happened in the presidency during the subsequent four years, but their coverage during the campaign overshadowed nearly every policy proposal put forth by the candidates.</p>
<p>“Medialities” is the label political scientist Michael Robinson has given to such controversies. Journalists find them irresistible, as political scientist <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jGHNDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=%22Lance+Bennett%22+birther+claims+Trump&source=bl&ots=ex-lGyb3gz&sig=JFqBmO6eUHbTL2MsxgG4Eg7B2y0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNxOrk_Z3PAhXL6YMKHRpHDeQQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=%22Lance%20Bennett%22%20birther%20claims%20Trump&f=false">W. Lance Bennett</a> noted when looking at Trump’s birther claims. When Trump in 2011 questioned whether President Obama was a native-born American, his statement was seized upon by cable outlets and stayed in the headlines and on newscasts for days. </p>
<p>Veteran CNN correspondent Candy Crowley interviewed Trump on this issue, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/us/17trump.html?_r=0">justifying it by saying</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There comes a point where you can’t ignore something, not because it’s entertaining.… The question was, ‘Is he driving the conversation?’ And he was.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In truth, the media were driving the conversation.</p>
<h2>What distracts us</h2>
<p>The leading “mediality” of the 2016 campaign has been Clinton’s emails. That and other news references to Clinton-related “scandals” accounted for 11 percent of her convention-period coverage, following the pattern of earlier stages of the campaign. What Clinton might do in the Middle East or with trade or with the challenge of income equality could reasonably be anyone’s guess, given how little attention her policy statements have received in the news.</p>
<p>At that, controversies rank second to the horse race as a staple of journalists’ diet. No aspect of the campaign meets journalists’ need for novelty more predictably than does the horse race. Each new poll or disruption gives journalists the opportunity to reassess the candidates’ tactics and positions in the race.</p>
<p>Policy issues, on the other hand, lack novelty. A new development may thrust a new issue into the campaign, but policy problems are typically longstanding. If they came and went overnight, they would not be problems. It is for this reason that when a candidate first announces a policy stand, it makes news. Later on, it normally doesn’t.</p>
<p>Granted, election news would be limp without attention to the horse race. The election’s bottom line – who will win in November? – is of undeniable interest. What’s open to debate is the relative importance of the horse race in the middle of the summer. During the convention period, even though questions of policy and leadership were on the agenda within the halls of the national conventions, they were not on journalists’ agenda. Polls, projections, strategy and the like constituted about a fifth of all coverage, whereas issues took up less than 1/12 and the candidates’ qualifications for the presidency accounted for less than 1/13.</p>
<p>As the campaign enters its final stage, one might hope that the press will provide America’s voters with information that can help them better understand the policy choices they face in November. No doubt, the presidential debates will help focus the public’s attention on the differences in the Trump and Clinton platforms. However, press coverage of past campaigns would suggest that news stories will take voters’ minds in a different direction. There’s a distinct possibility that voters will go to the polls in November with “the wall” and “emails” uppermost in their thoughts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65731/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas E. Patterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How is the Trump-Clinton contest being covered by the country’s major newspapers and broadcasters? We look at the data.Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, Harvard Kennedy SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/494162015-10-22T09:51:16Z2015-10-22T09:51:16ZThe New York Times and Washington Post are ignoring civilians killed by US drone strikes<p>The Obama administration has repeatedly claimed its drone strikes are precise and conducted in compliance with international law. </p>
<p>Yet, information provided to online journal <a href="https://theintercept.com/drone-papers">The Intercept</a> by an unnamed source paints a different picture. </p>
<p>The Obama administration’s drone strikes have also been investigated by multiple UN Special Rapporteurs, including <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1928963">Philip Alston</a>, <a href="http://unsrct-drones.com/">Ben Emmerson</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/17/un-rapporteur-heyns-drone-strikes-yemen-pakistan">Christof Heyns</a>. They have been criticized by numerous human rights NGOs, such as <a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/will-i-be-next-us-drone-strikes-in-pakistan">Amnesty International</a>, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/10/22/between-drone-and-al-qaeda/civilian-cost-us-targeted-killings-yemen">Human Rights Watch</a> and <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/2014_11_25_us_drone_strikes_kill_28_each_target/;">Reprieve.</a> <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/publications/living-under-drones-death-injury-and-trauma-to-civilians-from-us-drone-practices-in-pakistan/">Stanford Law School, NYU School of Law</a> and <a href="http://web.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/counterterrorism/drone-strikes/civilian-impact-drone-strikes-unexamined-costs-unanswered-questions">Columbia Law School</a> have raised ethical and legal questions. </p>
<p>The dichotomy between claims made by the Obama administration and the reports by these well-respected observers should attract scrutiny by the media. </p>
<p>To find out what kind of job the media has been doing reporting this story, I recently completed and published a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1073118">study</a> of The New York Times’ (NYT) and Washington Post’s (WP) coverage of US drone strikes between 2009 and 2014. </p>
<p>These papers were chosen as representatives of the “elite press.” The NYT calls itself the “paper of record.” The WP is considered by some to be the official paper of Washington, DC. I picked this five-year period because of the dramatic increase in drone strikes that occurred since Obama took office. </p>
<p>My conclusion: both papers have substantially underrepresented the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, failed to correct the public record when evidence emerged that their reporting was wrong and ignored the importance of international law. </p>
<h2>Reporting on civilian casualties</h2>
<p>My research analyzed the NYT’s and WP’s coverage of the immediate aftermath of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1073118?journalCode=rjos20">sample of articles</a> included 81 NYT and 26 WP stories published within two days of particular strikes.</p>
<p>The reporting in the two newspapers was compared to the London-based <a href="https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/">Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s</a> coverage of the same drone strikes. I considered TBIJ’s findings authoritative because they used a methodology that has been endorsed by the <a href="http://web.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/counterterrorism/accountability-targeted-killings-drone-strikes">Center for Civilians in Conflict and Human Rights Clinic</a> at Columbia Law School.</p>
<p>The 81 NYT articles covered the same number of attacks. TBIJ found that civilians were killed in 26 of the 81 attacks – a rate of 32%. Yet, the NYT reported civilians killed in only two of those 26 attacks – a rate of 7.7%.</p>
<p>The 26 WP articles covered 26 separate attacks. TBIJ found that civilians were killed in seven of the 26 attacks – a rate of 27%. The WP, however, reported civilians killed in only one of those seven attacks – a rate of 14%.</p>
<p>According to TBIJ, in the 33 strikes that resulted in civilian casualties, a total of 180 to 302 civilians were killed. In the three NYT and WP articles that reported civilian casualties, the deaths of just nine civilians were documented. </p>
<p>This trend of underreporting of civilian casualties means readers are not being informed of the real consequences of drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. It represents a failure by journalists at these papers to view critically government claims regarding who is killed in particular strikes.</p>
<h2>On not correcting inaccuracies</h2>
<p>Unlike TBIJ’s accounts, which are informed by its post-strike investigations, the NYT and WP are unable to confirm exactly who was killed when reporting in the immediate aftermath of a drone strike. Because of this inability, the NYT and WP have a responsibility to correct the public record after reporting misleading information.</p>
<p>When I contacted the NYT and WP about the inaccuracies in their reporting on civilian casualties, and to see whether either newspaper published corrections, the answer from both was that they had not. </p>
<p>In response to a query, Joumana Khatib in the NYT’s Office of the Public Editor provided the following quote from an unnamed assistant to the NYT’s corrections editor: “We don’t re-report old stories, and that’s what would be required here.” The assistant made this claim despite the fact that the NYT <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/asia/01pstan.html">revisited</a> earlier strikes with followup stories at least <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1073118?journalCode=rjos20">15 times</a> when such strikes targeted “high-value” targets in order to clarify whether the target was killed. Ordinary civilians who were killed have not received the same treatment. </p>
<p>Sylvester Monroe, the WP’s assistant managing editor, stated that when using “official sources” it is impossible to “independently verify which of the dead were members of militant groups and which might have been innocent civilians.” </p>
<p>Monroe also said: “Even if the CIA were to acknowledge that its count was inaccurate, it would not be up to us to run a correction.” </p>
<h2>The absence of international law</h2>
<p>Because drone strikes are used to employ lethal force, the legality of such strikes is a matter for international law. Depending on the context, lethal force is governed either by international human rights law or international humanitarian law. International human rights law applies at all times, but can be superseded by international humanitarian law in times of armed conflict. </p>
<p>The Obama administration insists that drone strikes are regulated by international humanitarian law. It claims that the US is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda and “associated forces.” </p>
<p>This is far from a decided matter. Historically, international human rights law has governed the use of lethal force outside of recognized conflict zones. </p>
<p>In order to determine whether the NYT and WP placed the drone strikes in their international legal context, I searched the 81 NYT and 26 WP articles to see if they referred to any of the following terms: human rights, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, laws of war and laws of armed conflict. </p>
<p>In the 81 NYT articles, human rights were mentioned five times – a rate of 6%. In the 26 WP articles, human rights were mentioned once – a rate of 3.8%. </p>
<p>Neither the NYT nor the WP mentioned international human rights law.</p>
<p>Neither of the newspapers referred to international humanitarian law, or either of its interchangeable titles, a single time. </p>
<p>The Obama administration’s lack of transparency and dismal reporting by the nation’s top newspapers combine to protect the administration from accountability for the civilians killed during its drone strikes. </p>
<p>Without government transparency and accurate reporting, whistle-blowers, like the source of the Intercept’s “<a href="https://theintercept.com/drone-papers">Drone Papers</a>,” are the only source for information that will allow us to understand the real consequences of the drone strikes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff Bachman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is it enough for the nation’s best newspapers to rely on ‘official sources’ – even when independent investigators say they’re wrong?Jeff Bachman, Professorial Lecturer in Human Rights & Co-Director, Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs MA Program at the School of International Service, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/426782015-06-10T10:17:41Z2015-06-10T10:17:41ZThe business of rankings: did the US News & World Report make substantial mistakes?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83980/original/image-20150604-3371-1qc9gov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What school rankings tell us and what they don't.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=143343007901310780000&search_tracking_id=RIWVpl1cbtrahBpAyDx0Sg&searchterm=school%20%20report%20card%20&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=97315025">Report card image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Here’s an easy task: choose between the following two schools for your child.</p>
<p>School #1 provides high-quality instruction and strong supports in order to academically accelerate students and challenge them to take difficult courses.</p>
<p>School #2 provides high-quality instruction but doesn’t push students to do more than what is normally expected.</p>
<p>If you’re an actual parent, you probably prefer school #1.</p>
<p>But if you’re US News & World Report, selecting the “Best High Schools” in America, you apparently prefer school #2.</p>
<p>This outcome offers a cautionary tale about why it’s never a good idea to design a formula and start plugging in numbers before first understanding the system you’re analyzing. A seemingly small mistake can lead to big problems.</p>
<p>Those problems arose in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/21/did-u-s-news-use-bad-data-in-its-2015-best-high-schools-rankings/">New York State</a>, where three very different math tests were treated by US News as if they were equal, which resulted in its rankings penalizing schools that encouraged students to take on challenges.</p>
<p>Let me explain why I started researching this issue.</p>
<p>As a policy researcher, I focus on practices that can close opportunity gaps. In this context, I have <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/burriswileywelner_accountability_rigor_and_detracking.pdf">examined</a> long-term effects on the achievement of
students at a diverse suburban school, the South Side High School in Long Island. It is one of the excellent schools that lost its high (“Gold”) ranking from US News because of the publication’s altered approach. </p>
<p>And why did that happen?</p>
<h2>Here is how the rating process works</h2>
<p>US News begins its rating process by calculating proficiency rates for reading and math on what it describes as “<a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-york/districts/rockville-centre-union-free-school-district/south-side-high-school-14024">state exit exams</a>” or “high school <a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings">proficiency tests</a>” (both terms are used). </p>
<p>In New York, these exit exams or proficiency exams are (or at least should be) what US News calls “<a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2015/05/22/why-new-yorks-best-high-schools-rankings-changed-in-2015">the required Integrated Algebra and Comprehensive English exams</a>.” </p>
<p>But the publication then violated its own guidelines about which tests should be counted and decided to also include scores on optional, more difficult tests.</p>
<p>New York students can, in addition to taking the requisite Algebra exam, take one or both of two elective Math Regents exams, in Geometry and Algebra 2/Trigonometry. All three of these standardized math exams are a <a href="http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/215FF06B-DCA3-442B-89DF-18E674DC867E/0/Acpolicygened.pdf">part</a> of the state’s assessment system. The optional tests are taken by fewer students because they serve a different purpose. </p>
<p><a href="http://data.nysed.gov/reportcard.php?instid=800000081568&year=2013&createreport=1&regents=1">In 2013</a>, the year that supplied the data for the current US News rankings, approximately 290,000 students took the Algebra exam, 162,000 took Geometry and 116,000 took Algebra 2/Trigonometry. </p>
<p>As the decreasing numbers suggest, these elective end-of-course tests are not exit exams or proficiency exams. They are substantially more difficult and are taken mainly by a self-selected subgroup of students attempting to achieve an advanced diploma. Yet these three math exams are all treated equally in the US News analyses. </p>
<h2>Rankings give misleading information</h2>
<p>To illustrate this approach and its inherent problem, imagine an evaluation of schools based on students’ high-jumping ability. Schools are ranked higher if more students clear a high-jump bar set at a minimum of four feet, a standard generally met by 80% of students in this hypothetical state. But if the bar is set at five feet, only 50% succeed; if it’s set at six feet, only 25% succeed. </p>
<p>Now imagine two schools:</p>
<p>School #1 pushes as many students as possible to not just clear the four-foot bar, but also to attempt jumps over bars set at five feet and six feet.</p>
<p>School #2 pushes only its best athletes to attempt these more challenging jumps.</p>
<p>Finally, imagine a ranking system that counts all jump attempts, regardless of where the bar is set. School #2 looks good in the rankings, with 80% success, but School #1 sees its ranking drop, due to all those unsuccessful attempts to clear higher bars, even though 80% of its students also clear the four-foot bar.</p>
<p>When US News counted results on all three math tests taken by a high school’s students, it penalized schools striving to achieve.</p>
<p>Two schools may both have a 95% pass rate on the Integrated Algebra test, but if School #1 convinces many of its students to take the more difficult courses and exams as well, then its overall rates will surely fall — and US News will consequently and misleadingly advise its readers that School #1 is worse.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83976/original/image-20150604-3397-a1sj4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83976/original/image-20150604-3397-a1sj4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83976/original/image-20150604-3397-a1sj4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83976/original/image-20150604-3397-a1sj4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83976/original/image-20150604-3397-a1sj4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83976/original/image-20150604-3397-a1sj4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83976/original/image-20150604-3397-a1sj4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">School rankings tell only part of the story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=14334295011104870000&search_tracking_id=J48tuzh55bkz51Nx7SfdoA&searchterm=%20high%20schools%20best&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=189857525">Rankings image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A scan of the New York results does, in fact, yield examples of schools designated by US News as “Gold” that, by key measurable criteria, have lesser results than schools with similar proportions of economically disadvantaged students, but that are not so designated. </p>
<p>These left-out schools have higher college readiness rates and higher rates of students awarded a Regents Diploma “with advanced designation” (meaning they passed the most difficult math test, Algebra 2/Trigonometry).</p>
<p>This lapse is significant given the importance of the very <a href="http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-014_0e98e232-ae41-4761-974b-5b2fad7acee9.pdf">well-promoted</a> US News rankings. Powerful constituencies in school communities pay attention, and district leaders hear from them.</p>
<p>The rankings are not low stakes; they therefore put in place a series of incentives and disincentives. </p>
<h2>With strong enough incentives, people do nonsensical things</h2>
<p>In sports, NBA teams will sometimes <a href="http://jse.sagepub.com/content/11/2/117.full.pdf">tank</a> in order to better their lottery chances, and college teams will respond to incentives to schedule so-called <a href="http://thewizardofodds.blogspot.com/2008/07/art-of-cupcake-schedule.html">cupcake</a> opponents to improve their win-loss records. </p>
<p>Politicians will cater to the interests of <a href="http://static1.squarespace.com/static/51841c73e4b04fc5ce6e8f15/t/54d24b75e4b00dd8790cf694/1423068021478/paper_poq_unblinded.pdf">donors</a> and the <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo19609787.html">wealthy</a> even if those interests differ greatly from the preferences of the average voter. </p>
<p>Schools will set aside creative, meaningful lessons in favor of <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/esea">test prep</a>, in order to avoid “No Child Left Behind” sanctions. </p>
<p>Colleges and universities will create <a href="http://priceonomics.com/is-applying-early-decision-to-college-for-rich/">early decision</a> systems in order to increase their rating on the US News Best Colleges list. One measure used in the rankings is how many students choose another college. Early decisions simply don’t give admitted students the choice to go elsewhere.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/23/a-different-college-ranking-guide/">According</a> to <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/inside/glastris.html">Paul Glastris</a> and Jane Sweetland, authors of <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/other-college-guide">The Other College Guide: A Road Map to the Right School for You</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“By elevating selectivity, US News creates incentives for schools to game the system by raising admissions standards and accepting fewer students who are less prepared or from lower-income backgrounds — that is, the ones most likely to need extra help graduating.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How I got involved</h2>
<p>Coming back to the issue with the rankings in the case of New York’s South Side High School: in May of this year, the school’s principal, Carol Burris, coauthored a piece on the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/21/did-u-s-news-use-bad-data-in-its-2015-best-high-schools-rankings/">Washington Post’s</a> website that raised some of the problems with the rankings.</p>
<p>Burris had, back in 2013, convinced me to join her in a project to create an alternative way to recognize great high schools. She explained that while existing lists do identify many high-quality schools, the approaches underlying these lists generally fail to reward schools that are unsuccessful in enrolling high-scoring students.</p>
<p>South Side High School had long been <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120614125340/http:/www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-york/districts/rockville-centre-union-free-school-district/south-side-high-school-14024">ranked highly</a> by US News, including during the time when I conducted <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/burriswileywelner_accountability_rigor_and_detracking.pdf">research</a> there, and Burris was certainly happy that her school was highly ranked. Moreover, I can attest, based on my research there, that the school is deserving of the honors it has received.</p>
<p>A long and consistent body of educational research stands for the basic tenet that great schools are those that <a href="http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10421/engaging-schools-fostering-high-school-students-motivation-to-learn">engage and support</a> student learning. No reputable research contends that schools become high-quality by enrolling the strongest students or by declining to encourage students to take the most challenging classes and exams.</p>
<p>Accordingly, we designed a project that we called <a href="http://opportunitygap.org">Schools of Opportunity</a>, which recognizes schools for using research-based best practices and for challenging and supporting their entire student body — including those without rich opportunities to learn outside of school. </p>
<p>It is built on criteria set forth in the 2013 book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/closing-the-opportunity-gap-9780199982981?cc=us&lang=en&">Closing the Opportunity Gap</a>, which I co-edited with <a href="https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/plcarter">Stanford University Professor Prudence Carter</a>.</p>
<p>We piloted it this past school year in Colorado and New York, recognizing <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/07/schools-of-opportunity-the-inaugural-winners/">17 high schools</a> for their excellence. We plan to scale the project up next year, to recognize schools across the US.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the ranking approach used by US News has led parents to wonder what happened to their communities’ formerly excellent schools. Seeking answers, the principals who coauthored the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/21/did-u-s-news-use-bad-data-in-its-2015-best-high-schools-rankings/">Washington Post</a> piece contacted US News. This <a href="http://roundtheinkwell.com/2015/05/16/sean-feeneys-correspondence-with-u-s-news-regarding-problems-with-ranking/">chain of email</a> shows how they were rebuffed.</p>
<p>Also, when Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post asked US News to respond to the concerns raised about the high school rankings, they <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/21/did-u-s-news-use-bad-data-in-its-2015-best-high-schools-rankings/">responded</a> with the following statement:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This test was used for all schools in New York – it was applied equally across the state. Because [our calculations] are relative, schools are being measured against each other. … We applied the data in the way that we outlined in our methodology and technical appendix and these rankings reflect that methodology. We are very clear in our methodology and technical appendix about what assessment data we used and how it was applied.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Compare this explanation with the argument offered in favor of standardized testing, as <a href="http://www.theonion.com/graphic/pros-and-cons-standardized-testing-50388">published</a> just a week earlier in the satirical Onion newspaper: “Every student [is] measured against [the] same narrow, irrelevant set of standards.” </p>
<p>An unreasonable approach remains unreasonable even if it is applied equally to all schools and is openly explained in a methods section.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Welner does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. The Schools of Opportunity project mentioned in this article has received small grants from the Ford Foundation an the NEA Foundation.</span></em></p>In choosing the best school, US News & World Report rankings tend to play an important role. How accurate are the rankings and what could they be missing?Kevin Welner, Professor, Educational Foundations, Policy & Practice, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/333332014-10-22T15:33:55Z2014-10-22T15:33:55ZBen Bradlee: scourge of the powerful, but always an establishment man<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62527/original/2vnbwnc6-1413988614.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C39%2C586%2C488&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Speaking truth to power over a dry martini.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_and_Mrs._Kennedy_with_Mr._and_Mrs._Benjamin_Bradlee.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ben Bradlee, long-time editor of the Washington Post has been celebrated around the world since <a href="https://theconversation.com/ben-bradlee-courageous-editor-who-helped-us-understand-the-world-33331">news of his death</a> broke. And his reputation does indeed remain stellar. But in the rush to praise him, some of his mistakes have been forgotten.</p>
<p>Bradlee built his reputation for integrity as a journalist by pursuing political corruption in high places but he had old-money roots. He attended an elite school and followed generations of his family to Harvard. He was a friend and neighbour to the Kennedys. This background often appeared to stop him from tackling some of the most pressing issues of his time.</p>
<h2>Truth to power</h2>
<p>Being a product of the East Coast establishment, Bradlee believed firmly in the concept of public service. His pursuit of truth in defence of constitutional freedoms went beyond party politics. He was as scathing of the Democrats as he was of Republicans. He was particularly critical of those who exceeded their powers and led the nation down paths to disaster in defence of national security.</p>
<p>He did not mince words in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/from-the-archive-blog/2014/oct/22/ben-bradlee-james-cameron-lecture-1987">1987</a>, for example, when giving his assessment of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. He pointedly accused Lyndon Johnson, who was president at the time, and his senior advisers of lying and essentially fabricating an aggression on a US Navy ship by North Vietnam and then using it to push Congress into authorising US military attacks.</p>
<p>Jim Stockdale, a US Sabre jet fighter pilot, essentially proved that no such attack had happened when he scoured the area around the ship for hours, finding nothing. A compliant media, closely nestled at the centres of political power, took Johnson at face value despite the evidence and reported the incident as the government described it. Much later, it turned out that Johnson had ordered military provocations against North Vietnam. He was trying to bring about an “incident” to be used as an excuse for American military intervention.</p>
<p>But even though Bradlee later lamented the manipulation, he chose not to publish details of the Tonkin deception as part of his coverage of the <a href="http://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/">Pentagon Papers</a> in 1971. By omitting the information, he let The New York Times take one of the biggest scoops of the 20th century.</p>
<h2>East Coast guy</h2>
<p>Bradlee’s establishment roots coloured his work at at other times too. Despite being an enlightened East Coast patrician, he never questioned the character of the American racial order, even during the 1950s and 1960s. For him, as much as the broader political system, the civil rights and black power movements came out of the blue and never received the kind of sympathetic coverage they deserved.</p>
<p>Most famously, Bradlee backed junior reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during their investigations into the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/timeline.html">Watergate scandal</a>. It was a story that eventually led all the way to the White House and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. But it should not be forgotten that in going after Nixon, Bradlee was helping the Democrats.</p>
<p>Nor was the Washington Post ever really concerned with the violent repression of groups that sat outside the mainstream, such as the Socialist Workers’ Party or the Black Panthers. Both stood for radical alternatives to the economic and racial disparities of the US but were destroyed by J Edgar Hoover and the FBI in the late 1960s and early 1970s – just when the Watergate scandals broke.</p>
<p>In the end, though, Bradlee was a great newspaper man and his memoir, A Good Life, remains one of the most interesting, enlightening and self-deprecating of autobiographies. He was a product of his time and of the American East coast establishment but he inspired a generation of investigative reporters and continues to set a significant example today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Inderjeet Parmar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ben Bradlee, long-time editor of the Washington Post has been celebrated around the world since news of his death broke. And his reputation does indeed remain stellar. But in the rush to praise him, some…Inderjeet Parmar, Professor in International Politics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/254992014-04-15T20:35:09Z2014-04-15T20:35:09ZJournalism’s future needs entrepreneurial ‘hackers’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46393/original/tnjpxn2q-1397524611.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some people are looking for a new kind of journalism.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ted Eytan/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Guardian and The Washington Post have been <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/nsa-pulitzer-guardian-washington-post_n_5148015.html?utm_hp_ref=media">awarded</a> the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their work in bringing to light documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.</p>
<p>It is fashionable to sprout doom and gloom about the future of journalism, but The Washington Post’s editor Martin Baron isn’t joining in.</p>
<p>At the recent <a href="https://online.journalism.utexas.edu/detail.php?story=463&year=2014">International Symposium of Online Journalism</a> Baron listed nine reasons to be positive about journalism - arguing there was no alternative to optimism.</p>
<p>First, new money is flowing to legacy media corporates as well as to new digital ventures, forcing the media industry to rethink business models. </p>
<p>Since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post last August, he has “not put his nose in the newsroom”, according to Baron. This implies that Bezos doesn’t influence editorial decision making, and so far has shown his willingness to invest in news production. The Washington Post is hiring 300 new people this year.</p>
<p>Baron admits the business models of news media remain unsettled as digital advertising on news platforms isn’t growing fast enough. As he puts it, “we now have a living laboratory of business model experimentation”, and this phase of experimentation will yield some successes and some failures of which news companies shouldn’t be embarrassed. </p>
<p>In Australia, newcomers are also experimenting in media markets, and the new weekly print newspaper The Saturday Paper was launched in March. <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-with-erik-jensen-were-a-niche-product-with-mass-market-aspirations-22526">Its target</a> is to gain 100,000 subscribers, and time will tell if the paper can capture weekend readers and enough advertising income to support it.</p>
<h2>New digital ventures and new jobs</h2>
<p>The second reason for optimism is that new digital media organisations such as <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/3/30/5564404/how-we-make-vox">Vox Media</a> have started to gain momentum, and thirdly the new generation of “digital native” journalists have entered the field. Surely these are positive signs?</p>
<p>Vox Media’s chief executive officer Jim Bankoff hails his company as one of the fastest growing online publications, and he expects his company to be profitable this year. Vox Media’s business model is based on brand recognition, growing traffic and selling audiences to advertisers. Its business model mirrors that of social media companies such as Facebook, which are dependent on traffic numbers.</p>
<p>Pew Research Center’s latest <a href="http://www.journalism.org/2014/03/26/state-of-the-news-media-2014-overview/">State of the News Media 2014</a> report found that in the US, digital news organisations such as Vice, Politico and BuzzFeed have produced 5,000 full time editorial jobs. Yet at the same time layoffs continue in many media outlets. For example, at the start of this year, the US based hyperlocal news platform Patch <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/01/29/post-handoff-patch-lays-off-hundreds/">laid off</a> hundreds of journalists after the company was sold to the private equity firm Hale Global.</p>
<p>However, the new generation of news journalists and news organisations is emerging at the same time as Millenials look for a new type of news. Jake Horowitz, CEO and co-founder of youth-focused PolicyMic, says his generation is “incredibly distrustful of mainstream media institutions”. This mistrust has triggered young journalists to start up their own media companies such as The Texas Tribune (US), Homicide Watch (US) and The News Lens (Taiwan). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.texastribune.org/about/">The Texas Tribune</a> is a non-profit media outlet focusing on local politics, policy, government and other matters, and it promotes “civic engagement.” Since the site was launched in 2009, it has received more than 141 million page views from 18 million visitors. The company has 15-17 reporters, and is funded by individual donors, foundations, corporate sponsorships and advertising. </p>
<p>These kind of ventures and developments are impressive, but yet to prove sustainable in the long-term.</p>
<h2>We need entrepreneurial ‘hacker’ journalists</h2>
<p>The new digital ventures will provide new jobs for journalists, as the PEW figures indicate. But the skills future journalists need have more to do with entrepreneurial and technological skills than learning shorthand. </p>
<p>As Baron states: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Journalists will have to be entrepreneurial — building entirely new companies, working within new entrepreneurial ventures, or behaving as internal entrepreneurs to transform organisations that have stood for decades.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This doesn’t mean journalists won’t need strong story telling skills or journalistic values – it means they must also be equipped with technical skills for example in data analysis, data presentation, coding and video production. The industry is looking to academia to produce journalists who are able to build new digital ventures as well as have all the possible tools to produce stories, and investigate information with ever more sophisticated tools.</p>
<p>As Bankoff put it, we have entered an era where the hacker culture meets journalism. And that goes beyond Edward Snowden.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Merja Myllylahti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Guardian and The Washington Post have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their work in bringing to light documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It is fashionable…Merja Myllylahti, Lecturer, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196242013-10-30T19:43:19Z2013-10-30T19:43:19ZAbbott’s belligerence: putting in the boot or kicking himself?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34083/original/yb8ncwd5-1383106514.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott's interview with the Washington Post has revived Abbott's problem of loose lips - but this time, it's on the international stage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Matthew Newton</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The words won’t rank with the oratorical flourishes of great leaders but I can’t remember Churchill or Roosevelt describing anybody as “wacko”. When prime minister Tony Abbott uttered this word in an interview with the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lally-weymouth-an-interview-with-australia-prime-minister-tony-abbott/2013/10/24/f718e9ea-3cc7-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html">Washington Post</a> on the weekend, it was clear he wished to plant one of his partisan boots in the soft, nether regions of his opponents.</p>
<p>To wit, Abbott answered a question about the National Broadband Network fibre to the premises plan with: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Welcome to the wonderful, wacko world of the former government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abbott replied to the question about the former government “doing a lot of things that were bad for the country” with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I thought it was the most incompetent and untrustworthy government in modern Australian history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such language made American political scientist Norman Ornstein <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-alp-criticism-could-affect-us-links-20131027-2w9lv.html">“wince”</a>. Ornstein is not a left-wing Abbott-hater from the inner west of Sydney, but an American from the profoundly right-wing American Enterprise Institute and one of the world’s leading foreign policy thinkers.</p>
<p>So, we’re dealing with the old Abbott problem of loose lips but now on the international stage.</p>
<p>The lesson Abbott took from the last three years is that fierce partisan politics works with voters. Certainly, many voters were considerably peeved by the major parties. But when Abbott could get a word in between Labor’s frequent shots in the foot, he was taking those tainted tootsies and shoving them in the voters’ faces.</p>
<p>Any prime minister will want to bash the opposition, especially in the first year when the sins of that previous government are fresh in voter’s minds. But that has to be balanced with a certain decorum associated with the office and with what is publicly and politically acceptable. Ornstein outlined one aspect of that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It really does violate a basic principle of diplomacy to drag in your domestic politics when you go abroad. It certainly can’t help in building a bond of any sort with President Obama to rip into a party, government and - at least implicitly - leader, with whom Obama has worked so closely. Perhaps you can chalk it up to a rookie mistake. But it is a pretty big one.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Australia’s leaders don’t want to involve other countries’ leaders in our domestic politics while overseas anyway. Former Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen did this in 1987: while visiting Japan he attacked the Hawke government.</p>
<p>Political leaders abide by what is known as the London Convention of not talking about domestic politics while on foreign policy business. This was invented by Bob Hawke in the late 1980s when he was getting hassled while overseas by Australian reporters about domestic politics, in particular the problems created by Paul Keating. </p>
<p>When Keating was prime minister, however, he didn’t think much of the convention.</p>
<p>Ironically enough, Abbott reminds me of Keating in the similar partisan aggression which can make black into white and white into black, depending on the occasion. Importantly, Keating’s tongue was not only his greatest weapon, cutting through public opinion with clear messages as well as ridiculing opponents, but also his greatest vulnerability. The verbal aggression gradually alienated enough people over time to rebound upon him in 1996.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34092/original/wx35ps8z-1383108863.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34092/original/wx35ps8z-1383108863.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34092/original/wx35ps8z-1383108863.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34092/original/wx35ps8z-1383108863.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34092/original/wx35ps8z-1383108863.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34092/original/wx35ps8z-1383108863.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34092/original/wx35ps8z-1383108863.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As prime minister, Paul Keating’s sharp turn of phrase was a strength as well as a weakness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Miller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Admittedly, Abbott’s Washington Post interview was conducted in Australia, so it wasn’t subject to some of the expectations outlined above. </p>
<p>And let’s not forget this is a transition period for him, as it was no more or less than for Julia Gillard and John Howard who weren’t considered foreign affairs “wonks” upon becoming prime minister. And they adjusted.</p>
<p>Yet Abbott has a reputation for loose lips that was only boxed up by the singular focus of opposition and cannot be so easily constrained by executive office. One need only remember his public belligerence in calling asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton’s petition a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/federalelection2007news/abbott-adamant-over-banton-stunt/2007/10/31/1193618926085.html">“stunt”</a> and his <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/read-my-lying-lips-abbott-admits-you-cant-believe-everything-he-says-20100517-v9ge.html">admission</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark. Which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth [are] those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abbott learnt the lesson that partisan belligerence works and also that his personal belligerence can get the better of him. But this could also be a style of government that he encourages, particularly when it is on shaky ground but believing that attack is the best form of defence.</p>
<p>So far in the Coalition’s short period in office, we have witnessed: environment minister Greg Hunt <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-24/hunt-on-bbc/5043324">get aggressive</a> with a reporter from the BBC World Service; health minister Peter Dutton <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/national/dutton_defends_abbott_wacko_jibe_yvpSLyXSA3T7DtKqhK8GNJ">defend Abbott’s Washington Post interview</a>; and immigration minister Scott Morrison <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-21/immigration-minister-scott-morrison-defends-use-of-illegals-term/5035552">aggressively defend</a> his use of the term “illegals”, incorrectly citing it as warranted by the international legal definition and attacking “politically correct language”.</p>
<p>Abbott has played domestic politics while in opposition and sought to smooth over international relations after being elected, as if both sides of politics here were responsible for the damage. Earlier this month he apologised to Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak for dragging his country into the asylum seeker debate, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-offers-act-of-contrition-to-malaysia-over-asylum-seeker-criticism-20131008-2v5gl.html">explaining</a> that in Australia, “we play our politics very hard”.</p>
<p>This followed an apology to Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that Australia should have <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-offers-act-of-contrition-to-malaysia-over-asylum-seeker-criticism-20131008-2v5gl.html">“said less and done more”</a> about asylum seekers passing through Indonesia to get to Australia.</p>
<p>With Abbott’s belligerence goes a lot of hide. But there’s also the very real possibility he will alienate a lot of people over a fairly limited time, as did Keating. After all, belligerence can leave voters with perceptions of ridiculous stubbornness or humiliating backdown.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Rolfe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The words won’t rank with the oratorical flourishes of great leaders but I can’t remember Churchill or Roosevelt describing anybody as “wacko”. When prime minister Tony Abbott uttered this word in an interview…Mark Rolfe, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167662013-08-06T20:01:27Z2013-08-06T20:01:27ZWashington Post sale points to a quality future for newspapers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28797/original/tr4yd2k8-1375814843.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The internet sent newspapers back to the drawing board.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Achifaifa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Perhaps the proverbial tipping point in US print journalism has been reached. With the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/washington-post-to-be-sold-to-jeff-bezos/2013/08/05/ca537c9e-fe0c-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html">US$250m acquisition</a> this week of The Washington Post by Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos, the US newspaper industry will fully accept it fought technology and technology has thankfully won. </p>
<p>When the web emerged back in the early 1990s, newspapers refused to embrace digital technology. The internet remained a mystery to most newsrooms and even when it was visualised in the web browser many rejected it, calling it a passing fad. </p>
<p>When newspapers did begin to accept the online world, it often was a confused, “not in my neighborhood” approach. In fact, the Washington Post itself created a dot.com, but located its offices across the river from its headquarters rather than start with immediate integration of online and print.</p>
<p>Newspapers’ misunderstanding also led them to charge for the hardcopy while giving the content away free on their websites and to Google, Yahoo and host of other news aggregators. And it was an industry that put little or no money into technology and data analysis training.</p>
<p>“Even a valuable product, however, can self-destruct from a faulty business strategy …” legendary investor <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-buying-newspapers-2013-3">Warren Buffett has said</a>, noting publishers “ … have offered their paper free on the internet while charging meaningful sums for the physical specimen. How could this lead to anything other than a sharp and steady drop in sales of the printed product?”</p>
<p>In 1994 meanwhile, in a parallel universe, Jeff Bezos saw the web and saw the future. He left his job in finance and began the classic out-of-his-garage venture that became the retail behemoth Amazon.com.</p>
<p>So this week, two decades later, the universes finally merged and the digital Bezos bought the declining Post from the Graham family.</p>
<p>Many traditional newspaper folk in the US say they are shocked by the sale. They fear for the future of journalism and they are worried about a hidden political agenda. But if there is any shock, it is that there is hope – hope, because those with money are investing in newsrooms again.</p>
<p>Last week a local business group led by John Henry, better known as a sports team owner, bought the Boston Globe and other newspapers for a bargain. Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway has been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/feb/26/warrenbuffett-us-press-publishing">scooping up local and community newspapers</a> throughout the nation for the past year. (Buffett has also profited nicely from the Post sale.)</p>
<p>The right-wing billionaire Koch brothers have been considering buying the Tribune papers, a collection of ten daily newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.</p>
<p>And there is talk that when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets out of office he may make the Sulzberger family an <a href="http://money.msn.com/now/post--will-bezos-inspire-mike-bloomberg-to-buy-the-times">offer for the New York Times</a> they can’t refuse. Bloomberg, another billionaire, already owns the profitable Bloomberg News.</p>
<p>Until these recent purchases, the primary business model has been one of plunges in news quality and the “harvesting” of profits from what is perceived as a dying industry. In the past decade, nearly a third of editorial print jobs – 18,000 out of 56,000 – have disappeared from newspapers, according to a study <a href="http://asne.org/content.asp?pl=121&sl=15&contentid=284">released last month</a>. </p>
<p>And it continues. In the past weeks Gannett, owner of USA Today and a host of local papers, <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-02/business/40995439_1_newspaper-division-job-cuts-stations">laid off dozens more</a> and the Plain Dealer in Cleveland <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/plain-dealer-cuts-layoffs_n_3684564.html?utm_hp_ref=media">cut a third</a> of its newsroom staff.</p>
<p>The result is that coverage at US newspapers has been reduced to reporters rushing to write quick stories, take photos and fire off blog updates while owners hope for citizen journalists (previously known as unpaid stringers) to fill the gaps. And staffing at state capitols and foreign bureaus is nearly non-existent.</p>
<p>But the purchase of the Post may be the most prominent signal in the turnaround of the news industry in the US. We could be witnessing the evolution of a leaner, more focused digital business model that merges various delivery systems and makes content more targeted and meaningful.</p>
<p>Henry Blodget, whose site Business Insider was bought by Bezos last year, sent out the message of hope last week in what some saw as an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-and-future-of-journalism-2013-8">overly optimistic column</a>. He said the sustaining digital business model had been found. As evidence of his point, he cited the hundreds of millions of dollars that the New York Times has gained in digital advertising.</p>
<p>Whether Blodget is right, it appears the smart money has waited until the corporations and families have mismanaged the newspapers to fire-sale prices, digital ad revenue has increased substantially and customers have started to pay subscriptions for content on the web.</p>
<p>As Buffett, one of these “smart money” investors, <a href="http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2012ltr.pdf">has said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… Papers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to tightly-bound communities and having a sensible internet strategy will remain viable for a long time. We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So unlike the previous generation of newspaper owners, the new investors see a future in quality. And this might just mean a quality future for newspapers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16766/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brant Houston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Perhaps the proverbial tipping point in US print journalism has been reached. With the US$250m acquisition this week of The Washington Post by Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos, the US newspaper…Brant Houston, Knight Chair in Investigative & Enterprise Reporting, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167842013-08-06T14:04:47Z2013-08-06T14:04:47ZFive things the Washington Post can learn from Amazon<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28785/original/b73xm5vr-1375788362.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Learn from the master to take over the world</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">fugutabetai shyashin </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Washington Post’s purchase by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos is the latest example of a new generation of internet moguls spending big on pet projects. </p>
<p>It was also <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/google-sergey-brin-synthetic-beef-hamburger">revealed</a> this week that Google founder Sergey Brin was the financial backer behind the world’s first lab-grown hamburger. While the synthetic hamburger is a new idea, the Washington Post is an institution. The Graham family has owned it for 80 years, including during the time it famously exposed US president Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal. It is a well-respected newspaper and one of the few apparently running at a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/business/media/washington-post-profits-drop-sharply.html?_r=0">profit</a>, despite decreased circulation, as readership migrates online.</p>
<p>This purchase is a sign of how the new world is taking over the old. And, a by-product for Bezos is increased political influence. At the same time, his proven reputation as a technology and business genius makes his interest in the Post a great opportunity, so what can the newspaper learn from its new owner?</p>
<h2>1. Think big, very big</h2>
<p>Amazon did not enter the bookselling market place with the aim of becoming a major player, it entered with the aim of becoming the only player. The Washington Post is not exactly a minnow but newspapers have tended to act tentatively when it comes to building their online presence. Digital readers are an impatient bunch and won’t wait around for you to catch up. Brand loyalty is put to the test on a daily basis in a way that has proved difficult for big-name newspapers to cope with. The Post should strike out online with the same boldness that characterised its prime years after Watergate.</p>
<h2>2. Adapt to survive</h2>
<p>Bezos and his team are fearless when it comes to continuously shifting the business model for Amazon. Having started with books, the site expanded its remit to sell electronics, CDs, DVDs and even jewellery and clothes. Then it opened up to allow registered sellers to market their own products. As a result, it has become the biggest online retailer.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28790/original/wn5dq6dw-1375795703.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bezos is a man who knows how to deliver.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">dfarber</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Newspapers could follow suit, for instance, by offering sections in which news from several sources is compared or integrated. Readers often have a voracious appetite for information about a particular topic, regardless of who produced it. This could work well when a major news story breaks, such as political events in Syria or the football transfer window.</p>
<h2>3. Know your customer forensically</h2>
<p>Amazon users know to check out the reviews of the products in their baskets before ordering to make an informed choice. A community has grown on the site because people want to know what others think when they make a purchasing decision. </p>
<p>In the old world, newspapers balked at the idea of producing content that readers “wanted” to read. Journalists are still wary of allowing reader stats to influence their content but are warming up to the value of getting the reader involved. This includes having sections for readers to comment on live issues but also means offering up content that is tailored to individual readers. </p>
<p>Amazon recommendations can go wrong with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/12/the-most-ridiculous-amazo_n_496445.html#s73483&title=Coyote_Urine_">hilarious results</a> but there is no denying that the site is the master when it comes to personalising the e-commerce experience. News websites do already suggest content to readers but most could do so in a much more sophisticated way.</p>
<h2>4. Add items to your basket</h2>
<p>When Lovefilm entered the market, offering an online DVD rental service, Amazon was quick to spot an opportunity and snapped up the company. The Post may have to jump-start its renewal process through acquisition of, say, a highly-regarded print magazine and/or e-news agency now that the Post has become separated from Slate magazine in the sale to Bezos. It could also “purchase” highly regarded online columnists to write for it as a way of reinforcing its branding as a digital news provider.</p>
<h2>5. Choose your weapons</h2>
<p>Amazon’s brand power has enabled it to extend its product line and it’s not just about purchases that arrive in a brown box. The company’s arsenal includes Amazon Studios for example, which produces films and TV shows based on online submissions and user feedback. The Post has a very prestigious brand in the US and should use this to consider sponsoring an existing online news channel or even starting its own. </p>
<p>Amazon also knows how to lean on its brand to reel customers in to its latest products. We should probably expect to see this playing out again with the Post. It won’t be long before Kindles come with an in-built Washington Post app, with email alerts on breaking news.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16784/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sunila Lobo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Washington Post’s purchase by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos is the latest example of a new generation of internet moguls spending big on pet projects. It was also revealed this week that Google…Sunila Lobo, Research Fellow, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167962013-08-06T14:04:06Z2013-08-06T14:04:06ZWhy would anyone buy a newspaper?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28791/original/zw9bq84t-1375796854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Washington Post: yours for a mere $250m.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel X O Neil</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/washington-post-to-be-sold-to-jeff-bezos/2013/08/05/ca537c9e-fe0c-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html">bought iconic newspaper</a> The Washington Post for US$250m. Cash. The first question to ask, then, in age where newspaper readership and sales are plummeting, is: why?</p>
<p>The main thing to note is that this is not a purchase by Amazon itself. Bezos will be sole owner of the title that broke the Watergate scandal. This in itself suggests that the acquisition maybe a vanity procurement – though this does not necessarily mean that it is a whimsical exercise on Bezos’s part. He has certainly made the right noises in terms of the ethics and traditions of the Post. He <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3057992-fe10-11e2-a5b1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2b5CmhP69">stated</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The key thing I hope people will take away from this is that the values of the Post do not need changing. The duty of the paper is to the readers, not the owners.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A digital brand</h2>
<p>Part of the purchase deal is <a href="http://washingtonpost.com">washingtonpost.com</a>, and what Bezos can clearly bring to the table is an expert knowledge of digital communications. One of the criticisms of the newspaper industry in recent years has been its inability, or unwillingness, to fully embrace new technologies. This has led to falling sales everywhere with the Post’s own operating revenues over the last six years or so <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/business/media/the-washington-post-reaches-the-end-of-the-graham-era.html?_r=0">dropping by 44%</a>. It is no secret that the Post has been criticised for failing to adapt its coverage to the net and attract advertisers.</p>
<p>It could be that Bezos sees the as yet unrealised potential of “brand Washington Post”. This is possibly the most renowned newspaper in the world, famous for having the tenacity to stand up to presidential power. By the very purchase alone, business interest in the title will have risen dramatically. Bezos has the digital acumen and crucially the financial leverage to create a 21st century media model which delivers effectively and economically through a variety of formats. In an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post-purchase/2013/08/05/e5b293de-fe0d-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html">open letter on the Post’s website</a> Bezos wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So a vanity purchase the Post may be, but billionaire businessmen become successful by ruthlessness and seeing the profit margins in everything.</p>
<h2>Playing politics</h2>
<p>Perhaps Bezos is attracted to the political influence ownership will bring. It is no secret that he has donated to the funds of several senators, mainly democrats, over the years and last year he contributed US$2.5m to support a <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/amazons-founder-pledges-2-5-million-in-support-of-same-sex-marriage/?_r=0">referendum on gay marriage</a>. </p>
<p>More business-pertinent is the fact that, as many have already pointed out, Amazon has been involved in many legal battles recently on the pricing of eBooks. Buying the Post will presumably give the company more lobbying power in Washington DC and of course the platform to air its particular views. Some commentators have already <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/06/jeff-bezos-washington-post-media-marriage">asked how willing</a> the Post might be to print stories about the NSA and the willingness of big corporations to collude in the monitoring of citizen activity. </p>
<p>How will the Post react to any negativity or controversy which may arise from <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/19/aws_allegedly_helps_cia_build_spook_cloud/">Amazon’s US$600m contract</a> to provide cloud services to the CIA? These are serious issues at the heart of democracy and the public’s right to know. </p>
<p>We may see Bezos’s personal acquisition of the Post as a means of deflecting attention away from Amazon. It suits, perhaps, to see this as a vanity purchase and not something which has at its heart the desire to control the flow of information.</p>
<p>This is a rapidly changing media universe, one which is seeing the death throes of print and the continuing emergence of a new digital culture. But some things remain the same and that is the desire of the very rich, or very powerful, to own a great deal and eliminate dissenting voices. How can the media act as a watchdog of government when it is actually a part of that government? In the sense that it holds the same views and propagates the same business interests?</p>
<p>In any case, the deal has been done, and the Post now belongs to Bezos. And who better to comment on the sale than Watergate’s own Carl Bernstein, who worked on the paper’s greatest scoop.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It represents a great moment in the history of a great institution: recognition that a new kind of entrepreneurship and leadership, fashioned in the age of the new technology, is needed to lead not just The Post, but perhaps the news business itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We can only hope this proves to be true.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16796/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, has bought iconic newspaper The Washington Post for US$250m. Cash. The first question to ask, then, in age where newspaper readership and sales are plummeting…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.