Be Wary of USA Today’s False Balance
“With 50 Days Till Election Day, Voters ‘Anxious,’ Wary of Trump, Biden Alike,” a headline in USA Today’s print edition (9/14/20) read. But that framing glossed over a key difference between the two candidates: At the time, about 3 percentage points more people viewed Joe Biden favorably than unfavorably, according to Real Clear Politics’ average of approval polls, whereas those with an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump outnumbered those who favored him by 14 percentage points.
‘Armageddon’ Time
Axios (9/20/20) described as “Democrats’ Armageddon Option” the “total war” that executive editor Mike Allen foresaw Dems waging if Republicans confirmed Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. One apparently apocalyptic option: “statehood for DC and Puerto Rico,” which would mean extending representative democracy to the nearly 4 million residents of those territories for the first time. Other “profound changes” that Allen said Democrats were contemplating: ending the Senate filibuster, which allows senators representing 11% of the population to block legislation supported by the other 89%, and expanding the Supreme Court, where Republican presidents will have appointed (if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed) 16 of the last 20 justices, despite losing the popular vote in six of the last seven elections.
A Fracking Ban in Pennsylvania Is Surprisingly Survivable
“In Crucial Pennsylvania, Democrats Worry a Fracking Ban Could Sink Them,” a New York Times headline (1/27/20) declared. Quartz (10/8/20) said a fracking ban could be “political suicide in swing states like Pennsylvania.” But as independent journalist David Sirota (Daily Poster, 10/8/20) pointed out, there’s little evidence that Pennsylvanians are overwhelmingly attached to the climate-wrecking fossil fuel extraction technique. A January 2020 poll of the state’s voters by Franklin & Marshall College found 48% favored a fracking ban, vs. 39% opposed. An August 4–7 poll by CBS/YouGov found 52% of Pennsylvania voters opposed fracking, while 48% favored it. A survey by the Global Strategy Group (8/27/20) reported that 72% in the state supported a gradual phase-out of fracking, with only 28% in opposition.
Failing to Note How Fossil Fuels Fueled Western Fires
Media Matters (9/11/20) noted that despite hours of coverage of the West Coast wildfires on cable news, most segments on the conflagrations neglected to mention the contribution of human-caused climate disruption, which scientists have long warned would produce more extreme fires as global warming led to hotter and drier summers. Only 10% of wildfire segments on CNN mentioned climate, and just 4% on Fox News—two of 54 reports, including one in which Tucker Carlson (9/11/20) falsely claimed that there was “no evidence” climate change contributed to the severity of the fires—and suggested that climate change itself was imaginary, “like systemic racism in the sky.” One bright spot noted by Media Matters: MSNBC’s Katy Tur, who “brought up the climate change connection on every show she hosted throughout the week.”
War Is ‘Peace’ Deals
Headlines like “US Brokers Peace Deal Between Israel and Bahrain” (Forbes, 9/11/20), “Trump Announces Peace Deal Between Bahrain and Israel” (MSNBC Live, 9/11/20) and “‘This Day Is a Pivot of History’: Netanyahu on Peace Accord” (CNN, 9/15/20) took it for granted that agreements to normalize relations between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were “peace” deals. This is a dubious use of the word “peace,” given that the ongoing violence Israel was inflicting on its Palestinian subjects continued unabated, leading to peculiar headlines like “Israeli Jets Attack Targets in Gaza After Middle East Peace Deal Signing” (Today, 9/16/20). The accords also open the door, according to the Wall Street Journal (9/15/20), to the US selling “cutting-edge weapons to the Emirates, including F-35 fighter jets and Reaper drones,” which the UAE will presumably be able to deploy in the longrunning Saudi-led assault on Yemen. The accords would more reasonably described as a military alliance against the countries’ mutual enemy, Iran—or what the Journal (9/15/20) referred to as “strategic cooperation against Iran’s regional mayhem.”
Kathleen Kearney Naureckas: 1936–2020
Kathleen Kearney Naureckas, journalist and poet, died on September 30, 2020, aged 83. Born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, Kathleen Kearney chose her career path, she later wrote, when she “learned that journalism was one way to make a living as a writer.” She wrote a speech for her 1954 high school graduation denouncing McCarthyism, asking, “Why is it that those who attempt to destroy the core of our democracy insist upon doing it in the name of patriotism?”
In 1958, Kathleen got a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism; she returned to Northwestern in 1985 to get a master’s in English literature. In 1959, she married Edward Naureckas of Libertyville, Illinois.
Kathleen Naureckas worked at the Libertyville Herald, an Illinois weekly, from 1970–77, eventually becoming managing editor there; she then moved to the Chicago Tribune, where she was (among other assignments) photo supervisor, editor of the “Friday” entertainment section and page-one editor, before retiring in 1999. After she retired, she published a collection of poetry, For the Duration (Finishing Line Press, 2012).
Kathleen gave her son, Jim Naureckas, his introduction to editing and journalism, including telling him the maxim, “If your mother tells you she loves you—check it out.” He did, and she did.
