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With its alternative theories about the shooting, it muddies the waters
Conservative media's frequent homogeneity can be a proselytizing asset, especially in helping Second Amendment diehards fend off gun control pushes. It's more disciplined and far more passionate than the left in what's a policy version of Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope against George Foreman.
Thus it makes its response to the Las Vegas massacre's predictable call for more restrictive gun laws all the more curious: for the moment it's lost the mojo of de facto consensus — at least according to a smart chronicler of right-leaning media.
Will Sommer, a writer at the Hill, produces a weekly newsletter called Right Richter that surveys the conservative press. What for some might be the inevitable basis for an Ativan, Xanax or Valium prescription is an enjoyable side gig for Sommer. And, in the wake of Las Vegas, he's surprised to not find the usual thematic consistency in the right's response.
He writes, "The pro-Trump media hasn't latched onto an alternative — at least not yet. Instead, the right-wing media increasingly reacts to news that's bad for its side like a defense attorney: not by presenting its own alternative explanation, but by "raising questions" and highlighting inconsistencies and niggling facts in the other side's story."
"This time around, they've opened the floodgates to any minor detail that contradicts the Las Vegas stories from the mainstream media and police, even when those details also contradict one another. Its theorizing is like cooking spaghetti, where they throw a whole lot of bizarre, often contradictory ideas at the wall and hope some of it sticks."
Now it seems open to anything, no matter how small, that contradicts anything reported by the "mainstream media." Gateway Pundit depended on a 4Chan post that misidentified the shooter's name and maintained that he was a "far-left loon." Alex Jones pushed ISIS' claim that it was their act and he claimed an exclusive that the shooter's hotel room was filled with antifa propaganda. Mike Cernovich, another conservative conspiracist, finds it curious that no hotel video of the shooter has been released (uh, Mike, it's an ongoing investigation, not a revival of "America's Most Wanted").
But the lack of consensus doesn't mean the right's impact is negligible. "The advantage of seeding 1,000 theories, on the other hand, is that any single one can be disproven while still creating a sense of skepticism about a massacre," said Sommer.
"It doesn't matter if the audience believes any of it, per se. What's important is to make the situation so muddled that the average person, already primed over years to distrust the traditional media, can shrug their shoulders about what 'the real truth' is and move on."
But there are natural reflexes at play, especially on guns. If he'd delayed this week's newsletter a day, he could have seen this morning's Breitbart opus chagrined with word that "On Wednesday Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said a hearing on banning bump-stock devices is 'worthwhile.'" You know Cornyn, that flag-hating socialist from Texas (not).
But he and other Republicans mentioning the possibility of taking some gun control baby steps are derided as wayward by author AWR Hawkins, "the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio."
Sen. Ron Johnson, a rather uninspired and decidedly conservative Wisconsin Republican senator, is really taken to task for calling for a ban. Hawkins did a tsk, tsk finger-waving at Johnson. "1. Bump stock devices do not turn semiautomatics into automatic weapons. 2. Automatic weapons are not illegal. It is legal to purchase and possess a machine gun as long as it was made prior to 1986 and the buyer goes through the burdensome federal approval process for purchase."
Ah, yes those burdensome government rules. That's a tried and true playbook, too.
A text brings down a congressman
Sheesh that was quick. Pennsylvania Republican congressman Tim Murphy said he won't run again less than two print editions after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported how a married Mr. Pro-Life pressured his mistress to have an abortion. He went silent of 24 hours, then threw in the towel.
"The statement mentioned nothing about reports on his marital infidelity, a text message discussing abortion and a document suggesting his staffers viewed him as an angry and erratic boss that preceded his decision to not seek re-election."
From the report: "Mr. Murphy faced a storm of criticism after the Post-Gazette reported on documents that suggested problems in his office and that he had urged a woman with whom he was having an extra-marital relationship to get an abortion. Mr. Murphy has been a strongly pro-life politician."
A tip for those reporters even alluding to Trump's tax plan
The consensus among A-list economists is that there's no clear link between tax cuts and economic growth. (U.S. News & World Report)
The art of the TV lie
When Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a media favorite as a "sensible" Republican, told CNN's "State of the Union" that he's clueless what Democrats "are for," those who bought the line "are in need of serious psychiatric help or a remedial course in Kasich history," according to the blog Plunderbund.
"Not only does Ohio’s current governor know exactly what Democrats are for, since he’s opposed that agenda from his formative days in 1978 as a fresh Republican Ohio state senator, he also knows well what his party stands for after nearly four decades in public office. And never the twain shall meet."
Bloomberg's price cut
"The Bloomberg" is the financial terminal at the heart of Michael Bloomberg's media empire, with about 325,000 installed at a hefty price exceeding $22,000 a year. But it suffered a drop for the second time last year and there's competition afoot, prompting word from the Financial Times that it is " offering cut-price subscriptions to its messaging tool in an effort to fend off competition from Symphony, the rival service backed by some of the biggest names on Wall Street."
"For years, the New York-based financial information powerhouse has had a rigid pricing structure, offering terminals that provide services ranging from financial data to messaging for a fixed price — currently $22,000 a year for a bulk deal, over a two-year term."
"But Bloomberg has unbundled a core feature, say people familiar with its sales efforts, offering a chat-only service for $10 a month per user, subject to conditions. The company began offering the service, known as Enterprise IB, to certain customers this year and plans to roll it out more broadly by the end of this year."
Still, the free food at New York headquarters won't be going away soon. "It remains the clear number one in the $27bn financial data market with a 33 percent share, well clear of Thomson Reuters with 23 percent."
Amateur shrinks
From The Washington Post:
"Relatives say the roots of (Stephen) Paddock’s loner lifestyle may have been planted July 28, 1960. On that day, when Paddock was 7, a neighbor from across the street took him swimming. The neighbor at the time told a local newspaper that she knew authorities were coming for his father, a bank robber, and she wanted to spare the boy the trauma of seeing his father hauled away by authorities."
And everything descended from there, claims this opus, which I showed to Ben Michaelis, a New York psychologist who's dealt with hundreds in the criminal justice system, performing court-ordered cognitive assessments. He was not impressed by the four-byline effort.
"Ugh. So slapdash."
The take in Storm Lake
I checked in with Art Cullen, who won a Pulitzer Prize this year for editorials for the family-run, 10-person Storm Lake Times in Iowa. How big is the massacre story in Storm Lake?
"Unquestionably the biggest story here remains immigration. Dreamers are very fearful and are speaking out. The police chief just signed on with 60 other chiefs urging DACA to the nitwits running Congress, Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa called it amnesty. Katie Couric and crew were here last week shooting a documentary about immigration. The biggest story without a doubt was Couric walking downtown along Lake Avenue. Nobody stops Jim Warren or Art Cullen for a selfie. We couldn’t take a step without seeing an iPhone."
"The second most commanding story is Vegas."
"The most overlooked story is Puerto Rico, where Trump advised a woman to 'have a good time.' What does it mean to be a citizen anymore? To what is a citizen entitled? And, what does all this tell us about climate change and sustainability along the coasts and in the ocean? That is the subject nobody wants to talk about or think about, if they are thinking."
Kudos to Chuck Todd
There's been lots of righteous harrumphing, especially among Fox News on-air employees, about the allegedly inappropriate nature of bringing up gun control legislation in the immediate aftermath of Las Vegas. On his daily MSNBC show, Chuck Todd made a concise, brief case why that is folderol.
Best sports story of the day
Sports Illustrated interviews the mother of Bruce Maxwell of the Oakland A's, the only Major League player to kneel during the national anthem. She discusses the vitriol that's come her way and the utter baselessness of doubting the patriotism of her son, who was born on a military base and identifies as African-American (he's actually part white, part black and part Native-American; she identifies as white).
Your legal system at work
Reveal (via the Center for Investigative Reporting) opens a head-turning opus with the tale of Brad McGahey, 23, who got busted for buying a stolen horse trailer in Oklahoma, "fell behind on court fines and blew off his probation officer" — and wound up not in prison but in court-ordered labor at an awful chicken plant.
"You need to learn a work ethic,” the judge told him, sending him to a supposed drug addiction recovery program that was really slave labor inside "a frigid poultry plant, pulling guts and stray feathers from slaughtered chickens destined for major fast food restaurants and grocery stores." The money he made went to the rehab program and, says this report, is not alone as far as dubious ways to divert potential inmates to "lucrative work camps for private industry."
Trump in Las Vegas
"Trump & Friends" this morning called it "one of the best speeches of his presidency so far. We're looking to our leader to unite us in times of peril and heartache, and this certainly was one of them."
The state of journalism (Part 1,342)
"The Year that Changed Journalism" was topic of a conference in Atlanta sponsored by the Columbia Journalism Review. It kicked off with publisher-editor Kyle Pope asserting the fashionable, and debatable, view of some in elite journalism circles that Trump has inspired a rejuvenation and "some of the best work we've seen" in many years. It seems to bypass a distinct and ongoing qualitative decline throughout the media industry, including local TV and radio news (rarely the subject of even the barest of systematic editorial scrutiny).
One panel included Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple, who said he believes Trump is a racist. "I believe the facts are there for this deduction, this analysis." He also dismissed the notion that Trump uses provocative tweets as a premeditated way to distract all of us from bigger problems facing him. That accords too much strategy discipline to "an operation that proceeds on idiocy," he said.
The American-centric take on tragedy
While some in journalism debate whether there's insufficient coverage of Puerto Rico when compared to hurricane victims in Texas and Florida, there's precious little coverage of greater disasters elsewhere. The evidence comes almost daily, and yesterday it involved a report on Syria and Burundi from the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect at City University of New York. It's in their weekly "Atrocity Alert."
Syria: "After several months of decreased fighting in northwest Syria, on 19 September the Russian and Syrian governments intensified their airstrikes on opposition-held towns and villages in Idlib and Hama governorates, resulting in a drastic increase in civilian deaths. On 1 October the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that September was the deadliest month for Syrian civilians so far this year, with 955 people killed, including 207 children. At least 158 of these civilian deaths occurred in northwest Syria during the last two weeks."
Burundi: "More than 400,000 Burundians have fled since April 2015 and most remain in neighboring countries. On 27 September Amnesty International reported that Burundian refugees are under increasing pressure to return home. Despite government assurances, interviews conducted by Amnesty and the Commission of Inquiry reveal that returnees remain at risk of arbitrary arrest, torture and potential extrajudicial killings."
A question about immigration-inspired education coverage
Writing in The Grade, Conor Williams says, "If the searing heat of national discourse has buried a host of education topics, it has, perhaps perversely, raised awareness of English learners (ELs) and immigrant children in U.S. schools. And so, the horrors of today’s politics offer education journalists some new opportunities: From coverage of the detainment of parent Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez outside a school by LA School Report to reporters from EdWeek and the New York Times seeking out DACA-mented teachers, there are clearly new stories for journalists to tell at the intersection of immigration and public education."
"Hats off to the journalists who are attempting to use this difficult time to shed light on the lives of EL kids and the policies that shape their chances. But we need the topic to be richer than 'Trump Administration immigration decision affects school(s).' Your sources can’t just be educators lamenting those decisions. You can’t just use EL kids as predictable characters in that narrative. Schools are where real-world EL kids learn — immigrant and U.S.-born, with their non-EL peers — to be Americans. Why not use the present state of our immigration politics to tell the country about that process?"
Puerto Rico's take on Trump's visit
The headline in the English language version of El Nueva Dia in San Juan:
"Trump does not present plans for the Island — The president of the United States spent an afternoon in Puerto Rico noncommittal on providing the assistance requested by the state government to promote recovery after Hurricane Maria."
Corrections? Tips? Please email me: jwarren@poynter.org. Would you like to get this roundup emailed to you every morning? Sign up here.
