Thread by @FixMediaNow

🧵We wrote in @Salon, "The 2022 midterms are a referendum on how well America's newsrooms have conveyed the authoritarian threat to the voting public."

We called on media to urgently uplift truth & democracy with election coverage. With a week to go... 1/
salon.com/2022/10/23/med…

Things aren't going great. We outline 3 main requirements for pro-democracy election coverage:
1) make threats to democracy clear
2) protect Americans against disinformation
3) treat elections as if they are more important than the sports page
This @AP article fails all 3.
2/

To make threats to democracy clear journalists need to stop saying stuff like candidates "embrace...Trump's lies about the...election." Candidates are lying all on their own. Say so. Timidity from newsrooms is creating a nationwide permission structure to "deny" elections. 3/

To make threats to democracy clear, journalists must convey that MAGA Republicans are strategically lying - to make it harder to vote and ignore the will of the people when they lose. Or worse.

Newsrooms should consult fascism experts like @ruthbenghiat, who explains: 4/

To protect voters against disinfo, reporters must convey the strategic #BigLie effort to undermine democracy, as @DrewGriffinCNN does here. Such context is too infrequent. @AP instead quotes Big Liar Rick Scott praising a "risky" candidate. Not great. 5/

Brings us to stenography. GOP election liars rely on reporters to dutifully amplify whatever they say. Repeating disinfo & normalizing liars fails the journalist's mandate to inform the public. To protect American's against disinformation journalists can't be like @nbc here. 6/

Treat elections as if they're more important than sports. Covering who's up & down in funding trivializes what's at stake & crowds out the substantive information voters need to make decisions in their self-interest. Talk about consequences of candidate's policy proposals. 7/

Democracy is at stake in this election. Candidates who are willing to lie to voters have no place in elections and newsrooms should forcefully convey as much. We are rooting for a big pro-democracy coverage push from national media. It's never too late to #FixMediaNow. 8/

More that journalists can do:
-Celebrate election workers, so they don't remain abstracted & easy to demonize.
-Feature those working to enfranchise voters, like registration drives led by youth organizations.
-Make newsrooms a one-stop shop for voters' information needs. 9/

The @PhillyInquirer has a link to an election newsletter prominently featured on their homepage. Newsrooms can write voting how-to guides, publish editorials, opinion columns, and community sourced pieces of personal stories on democracy. Whatever it takes to uplift voting. 10/

A journalist's duty to democracy and the truth means keeping anti-democratic candidates from power by providing clear warnings to the public. Journalists will be doing our country a service by reporting from a pro-democracy stance. #FixMediaNow 11/11 salon.com/2022/10/23/med…