mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06I teach journalism at NYU, critique the press, try to suggest reforms. PressThink is the name of my subject and my site. "Chill before serving" is my social media motto. Elvis Costello's version of "What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding" is my theme song.
jr3@nyu.edu
"Describing [RFK's] views as ‘controversial,’ I think, is dishonest. They’re not controversial. They’re false. He’s not spreading controversial views, he’s spreading lies. And so the framing matters enormously, and that’s something that I foresee being a huge, huge issue in the 2024 campaign."
Agreed!
Some key distinctions made by journalist Seth Mnookin in this sharp interview. (He wrote a book about the anti-vaccine movement in 2011.)
Read this item from today's Politico. It describes how false equivalency and both-sides-ing are not just a lazy habit in journalism, but a tool of politics that incorporates the bad journalism into party behavior, thus making a mockery of the images of detachment on which the press sells itself.
CNN headline today:
"McCarthy starts to plot Biden impeachment strategy while GOP skeptics remain."
What the GROUNDS for impeachment might be is addressed in paragraph nine. CNN thus buries the lede of a more striking story: a vibes-based approach, where you establish first the feeling, "we wanna impeach," relegating the small matter of "impeachment for what?" to later stages.
That's news! Instead CNN frames for us another strategy story.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/28/politics/mccarthy-biden-impeachment-strategy/index.html
"Not the odds, but the stakes."
That's my shorthand for the organizing principle we most need in 2024 election coverage. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy— given what's possible in this election. Not the odds, but the stakes.
Here is an example of stakes commentary. Its analysis is both plausible and terrifying.
https://newrepublic.com/article/174535/people-arent-facing-horrors-new-trump-term-bring
I have a high tolerance for repetition, so I consumed a lot of post-debate discussion among journalists.
I don't recall any that tried to rank the candidates — or moderators — on the quality of their connection to observable reality.
Political realities, yes. Any other kind, no.
Most common reactions to my "little comparison" of sharing and favoriting on Twitter vs. Mastodon using a typical post from both feeds.
I think you have a typo that is causing confusion
I didn't say the comparison was straight forward. I just said it was a comparison.
However, what I wanted to compare is the way I would do it on Twitter and the way I would do it on Mastodon