New Trust in News Project Research
Joy Mayer summarizes the new report News for the powerful and privileged: how misrepresentation and underrepresentation of disadvantaged communities undermine their trust in news,
A few paras I’ll note:
That does not mean journalists shouldn’t cover polarizing problems. It DOES mean our coverage should avoid giving the impression most people live on the extreme ends of problems. Plenty of research has shown journalists choose sources with especially extreme views. That’s true when we decide which member of Congress to give air time to, and it’s true when we select quotes from parents to at a contentious school board meeting. Our sourcing can lack nuance and paint an oversimplified and fundamentally inaccurate picture.
I’ll note the challenge of finding moderate parents willing to speak to the media. People have a well-founded concern about being attacked by the extremes.
Violence Against Education Staff in Schools
United States Context: Renters and landlords as partners?
The Christian Science Monitor’s editorial today explores how to find balance in the rental market between affordability for renters and incentives for landlords. [Yes, this frames the discussion in capitalism]
“During the pandemic, 43 states imposed their own moratoriums on evictions. In addition, taxpayer money for rental assistance swelled. The federal government deployed $46 billion to help tenants facing financial hardship – including another $521 million in reallocated funds from the Treasury Department last week. Those measures cut evictions by more than 50% nationwide.”
The editorial notes that increasing non-profit housing decreases evictions.
Today, in Hamilton, our City Council discussed a new housing strategy which seeks to incentivize market rentals, and to find ways of increasing supportive housing.
Ralph Nader on Journalism
Frustrantly behind an academic paywall in the journal American Journalism.
Ralph Nader is interviewed by Nicholas Hirshon, Associate Professor of Communication · William Paterson University of New Jersey, on a range of topics regarding Nader’s interactions with journalists and journalism during his decades of effective activism and public advocacy.
Much of the conversation pertains to Nader’s latest project, a non-profit newspaper in his hometown of Winsted, Connecticut (pop. 7000).
The paper is in financial trouble with editorial staff writing that Nader failed to produce the funding he committed.
Nader on the decline of continuing coverage of government:
Well, I also worked through syndicated columnists, especially the daily, very influential four hundred papers Drew Pearson was in—the Washington Post, four hundred papers. [Pearson covered politics and public policy from 1932 to 1969 in an influential daily column named “Washington Merry-Go-Round.”] And I made sure there were five or six reporters regularly covering our movement of the traffic and auto safety legislation, with hearings and legislative debate in Congress, 1965–66. So, we had people from Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, AP, UPI, and Washington Times. And most of them kept covering it. And that had an enormous impact on Congress. Because they weren’t just writing features for Pulitzer Prizes and dropping it. They covered the story as it evolved.
Nader on the media amplifying the worse politicians:
And they helped create him, just like they’re creating [Georgia Congresswoman] Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, it’s unbelievable the coverage they’ve given her. For what? You know? I mean, are they saying if you say violent, crazy things, you’re gonna get covered, but if you’re prudent and evidential and somber, you’re not gonna get covered?
Learning from the Fiscal Crisis of the Texas Observer
Richard Tofel is insightful as always looking at the finances of the Texas Observer, a distinguished non-profit publication founded in 1954 that announced it was shutting down and then reopened after raising nearly $350,000 on GoFundMe.
Two key points noted by Tofel are that the Observer was using its emergency reserve fund for operating the past two years, and that the Board is not a fundraising board – it has too many journalists who cannot give large sums and cannot raise sums of money.
The first is obvious. Reserves are for emergencies, not operating.
The second is not so obvious, at least to me. Here’s Tofel:
After more than 18 months in my new incarnation as a consultant, teacher and columnist, I feel even more strongly than I did when I was a nonprofit news manager that—absent some huge endowment– there is simply no substitute for a fundraising Board. Large numbers of small gifts are wonderful, and heartwarming, and affirm the mission, but small numbers of large gifts are also critical, and actually make up a greater part of total revenues for nearly all successful nonprofits.