NYT’s Protest Priorities
A protest against Israeli genocide in Gaza and the Biden administration’s support for it brought at least 100,000 people—organizers suggested it was as many as 400,000—to Washington, DC, on January 13. The rally was part of a global day of demonstrations, including marches in London, Paris and Berlin.
March on Washington for Gaza Gathering Rally, January 13, 2024.
Despite the large size and international reach of the event, it was completely ignored by the New York Times. “The Times has a long-standing bias against activists and protests—especially if the protests are against US foreign policy,” FAIR founder Jeff Cohen pointed out (FAIR.org, 1/25/24).
It’s not that the paper ignores all protests, of course; less than a week later, the Times (1/19/24) ran 1,500 words about the annual “March for Life” anti-abortion rally on the National Mall, said to have been attended by “thousands.”“The crowd appeared smaller than in past years,” DC’s Fox affiliate (WTTG, 1/19/24) noted of the anti-choice rally.
NYT, WaPo Opinion Editors Skew Gaza Debate
Despite widespread support for a Gaza ceasefire, both in the US and internationally, a FAIR study (2/1/24) found that the New York Times and Washington Post op-ed pages published vanishingly few op-eds that called for halting the deadly bombing. In the first two months of the war, three Times op-eds (less than 3% of all bylined opinion pieces) made clear and direct calls for an unconditional ceasefire. Two were written by Palestinians (10/19/23, 10/29/23), and one by Times contributing writer Megan Stack (10/30/23).
At the Post, the only clear and direct call for a ceasefire, outside of a collection of brief solicited opinions on all sides of the ceasefire question (11/3/23), came from Post editorial board member Shadi Hamid, whose call for a ceasefire put preconditions on Hamas but not Israel (11/9/23).
The Impulse to Ban Ideas Is Actually ‘Anti-CRT Logic’
The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf (1/4/24), hearkening back to 30-year-old debates about “speech codes,” repeatedly uses Critical Race Theory as a shorthand for restrictive speech laws—as in, “CRT logic would put countless people on both sides of the [Gaza] conflict in legal jeopardy without solving anything.” It’s worth remembering that CRT is one of the prime targets of restrictive speech laws, placed under legal sanction in 28 states (Statista, 4/19/23).
GOP Debate Moderators Ignore Threats to Democracy
GOP candidates show support for Trump even if he is “convicted in a court of law.”
One of the most important questions hanging over the 2024 presidential election is whether the country’s threadbare democracy will hold together in the face of GOP attacks on voting rights and rule of law, led by former President Donald Trump but widely embraced in the party. Yet of 218 questions FAIR (12/26/23) recorded across four Republican presidential debates, asked by both right-wing (Fox News, Salem) and more centrist outlets (NBC, NewsNation, CW), moderators asked only 10 questions about threats to democracy—and nine of those came in the first debate.
Fox moderators asked three candidates about whether they would still support Trump if he were “convicted in a court of law,” and five whether former vice president Mike Pence “did the right thing” on January 6—referring to his certification of the election. The tenth question about election integrity was not asked until the fourth debate; it pointed out that “many states still don’t require any identification to vote,” and wondered what states should “do now to increase election integrity and voter confidence for the 2024 election.”
Anecdotes Instead of Evidence
Raising the minimum wage for fast food workers actually resulted in increased employment, not more layoffs.
Tying fearmongering over minimum wage hikes to inflation hysteria, Yahoo! Finance (1/4/24) ran this mess of a headline at the start of the year: “McDonald’s $18 Big Mac Meal Goes Viral Again as Fast-Food Minimum Wage Hike to $20 Triggers Fears of Skyrocketing Prices and Layoffs, Leaving People Questioning: ‘Maybe This Went Up Way Too Fast.’”
A recent study (Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, 9/25/23) looking at the effects of large jumps in the minimum wage on the fast-food industry in California and New York found the result was actually higher employment, not mass layoffs. It also found that a “roughly 50% increase in the minimum wage resulted in an approximately 3% increase in prices.” But rather than cite actual data, which would have completely undermined its pro-business framing, Yahoo‘s primary supporting evidence was presented in the form of “Jim” and “Jose,” laid-off Pizza Hut workers quoted in the right-wing California Globe whose initial “anger toward management…later shifted to the policymakers.”
Whistleblower Gets Five Years for Exposing How Rich Avoid Taxes
Charles Littlejohn after sentencing.
Former IRS consultant Charles Littlejohn leaked tax returns that showed that former President Donald Trump and many other rich people pay next to nothing in taxes—a disclosure that resulted in major investigative reports in the New York Times (9/27/20) and ProPublica (6/8/21). On January 29, Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison for his whistleblowing.
While the punishment predictably elicited gloating from the Wall Street Journal (“Let’s hope the sentence…deters others”—1/29/24), the reaction from the outlets that published his scoops was decidedly muted; the Times news report (1/29/24) on the sentencing had four condemnatory quotes from prosecutors (and one from Republican Sen. Tim Scott) before including a single quote from Littlejohn’s lawyer defending him.
CNN‘s description (1/29/24) of Littlejohn as someone who “stole” tax returns (he was actually convicted of “unauthorized disclosure”) is a framing that criminalizes much of what CNN and other news outlets do.
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“Holding firm convictions about the state of inequality is probably a mistake.”
—Vox‘s Dylan Matthews (1/11/24), stating corporate media’s unofficial motto
