Margaret Sullivan

Margaret Sullivan: The Russian president was waiting for the right stooge. With Carlson, he got just that.

Margaret Sullivan: “Huge swaths of the country have turned into ‘news deserts’, lacking credible journalism. I fear for the Baltimore Sun.”

Margaret Sullivan: U.S. news organizations have turned Biden’s age into a scandal and continue to cover Trump as an entertaining side show.

It’s possible – likely, even – that Chris Licht would have survived all of this if it weren’t for the one thing that really mattered: the numbers.

The news media has greeted the supposed scandal of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents with breathless glee.

The pioneering broadcaster was “the first woman I can remember who was widely respected for her career,” said one admirer, “… demonstrating how a woman could self-actualize.”

Margaret Sullivan’s  new book, Newsroom Confidential, traces her career from The Buffalo News to The New York Times and The Washington Post, but its meat lies in the challenge she puts to fellow journalists in the Trump era.

Before signing off, Margaret Sullivan offers advice to her fellow journalists on how to cover a perilous election.

After a decade writing columns puncturing — and praising — the press, the ex–New York Times public editor and departing Post columnist will be teaching at Duke and pursuing book projects, including a fictional series about a laid-off local journalist solving crimes.

A new publication, The Authoritarian Playbook: A Media Guide, is an effort to give reporters and editors some tools in recognizing what’s happening and in covering it effectively. While the guide is intended for journalists, every American would benefit from reading it — especially in conjunction with the House committee hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

The demented ideology flows from many sources. One of them is Fox News.

A conversation with the journalist son of the doctor who endured Buffalo’s abortion wars.

“Access journalism” takes the media to dangerous places when one side of the aisle is turning against democracy.

It’s pure hell for the journalists who are there covering the war. But we will all be worse off if they are forced to leave.

Margaret Sullivan: His ugly defense of Vladimir Putin should be seen in the light of his employer’s argument that no one should take him seriously.

Many questions still swirl around Wednesday’s startling announcement that, after nine years, Jeff Zucker’s reign as CNN president was over. It will all eventually be revealed — teams of reporters are racing to dig into one of the biggest media stories in recent memory. But we already know one thing: When the dust settles, Zucker’s relationship with Donald Trump will define his legacy.

Margaret Sullivan: The veteran host used a “truth sandwich” approach to counter the former president’s election lies. The idea is to avoid magnifying lies; and the technique is to surround false statements with established truths before and after, thus blunting the effect of what can amount to propaganda.

Margaret Sullivan: “In the year since the Jan. 6 insurrection, mainstream journalists have done a lot of things right. And yet, something crucial is missing. For the most part, news organizations are not making democracy-under-siege a central focus of the work they present to the public.”

When Reuters, the global news agency, published its two-part investigation last week of OAN, the most startling finding was that AT&T indirectly provided 90% of the channel’s revenue, after letting it be known that it was eager to host a new conservative cable network. But just as noteworthy as AT&T’s involvement was the way Reuters’s John Shiffman pulled back the curtain on how the San Diego-based network operates.

Bipartisan support in Congress has gathered for the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, and its supporters believe there’s a decent chance it will be a part of the huge spending bill that Congress is now focusing on. The proposal, which provides a series of tax credits rather than direct grants, is intended to give local newspapers, digital-only publications and other local news organizations a chance to be financially viable as they figure out how to make their way in the new digital world.

Journalism has never been the most admired of professions, and in recent years the rap on its practitioners has only gotten worse. But there are many journalists, both veterans and newbies, who share these admirable attributes: persistence, decency, the ability to be both tough and fair. But are journalists too negative? That’s not the problem. Our role is not to cheerlead for the people we cover. Are our ranks jammed with immoral con artists? Not in my experience. But could we — must we — be much better? I can’t argue with that.

Margaret Sullivan: “You may have a hard time understanding how Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and Tom Hanks are connected, but that probably just means you haven’t been watching nearly enough Fox News recently.”

A new study, “A New Way of Looking at Trust in Media,”from the Media Insight Project, a collaboration between API and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, finds that only one of five core values touted by journalists also shares the support of a majority of Americans. Support for these values does not break cleanly along party, demographic or ideological lines but rather seems to be driven by “moral instincts.” Given that trust in the news media has fallen from about 70% in the early 1970s to about 40% now, according to Gallup — it seems worth viewing this report with an open mind.

Some in the right-wing media keep doing their utmost to make the trial of Derek Chaubin for killing George Floyd about Floyd’s drug use and troubled life, in what seems like an attempt to absolve Chauvin long before the jury reaches a verdict. In effect, they are putting Floyd on trial. The “no angel” narrative, and its variations, are racist smears. Unlike George Floyd, they deserve to die.

If defamation suits, even valid ones, are successful, long-standing First Amendment protections could be weakened; aggrieved subjects of news stories, especially those with deep pockets, may be encouraged to go after media companies of all kinds, not just hyperpartisan ones. And long, expensive court battles could put them out of business.

Margaret Sullivan: Misogyny, often racist misogyny, is at the heart of recent attacks on female journalists. And it’s happening all over the world. Sadly, there is a chilling effect on journalism itself. Reporters may decide to pull back to protect themselves, asking whether a particular article is really worth the abuse it will bring. They may decide to leave the profession altogether.

Margaret Sullivan: “With her relentless follow-up questions, compassionate demeanor and focused skill in eliciting bombshell after bombshell, Oprah proved herself the best celebrity interviewer ever. Oprah best displayed her interviewing chops by relentlessly circling back to emotional or news-making comments like a heat-seeking missile. Yet, unlike many an aggressive interviewer, she didn’t make the classic error of interrupting at the wrong time. She was able to let silence gather. She didn’t jump in to ruin a dramatic moment. It paid off time after time.”

Margaret Sullivan: “For years, CNN had a sensible policy about whether Chris Cuomo could interview his older brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Simply put: He couldn’t. But then came the unprecedented events of last spring, as the coronavirus pandemic roiled the world and as New York City became its scary epicenter. All bets were off. These days, CNN’s ban is back and in full force. With the governor under career-threatening fire over recent sexual harassment claims and with the apparent mishandling of some parts of his administration’s covid-19 response in the news, the brother act is over.”

As the 45th president’s second impeachment trial arrives on Tuesday, CNN viewers might want to recall how Trump’s presidency came about in the first place. It was in no small part the work of CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who announced last week that he will leave the network at the end of 2021. It started with Trump’s celebrity breakout on The Apprentice two decades ago. Zucker was the NBC executive who used Trump to boost the network’s troubled ratings. In the process, he made Trump himself a household name.

The first official words by President Biden’s spokeswoman included truth and transparency. Wednesday night’s session with reporters, the first of the Biden administration, was so normal — so weirdly normal — that you could be forgiven for thinking that you had mistakenly put on an old episode of The West Wing. This return to norms is wonderfully welcome after the horrors of the past four years. It’s also potentially dangerous.

Margaret Sullivan: “What’s happened in the journalism sphere is complicated. Tragically, crucial sources of local news have withered, while the toxic media of the radical right thrives. The reality-based national press, though flawed and stuck for too long in outdated conventions, has managed to do its job — with dedication and with bravery, given the dangers created by Trump’s antipathy to what he calls ‘the enemy of the people.’ ”

Despite some flickers of good news, local journalism remains in a state of emergency. Increasingly under the control of corporate chains backed by private equity firms, far too many American newsrooms are hemorrhaging staff. Fifty-five news outlets have closed for good since the pandemic began — and that’s on top of more than 2,000 newspapers that have folded since 2004. Thousands of local journalists have been fired or furloughed.