Thread by @airbagmoments

I've thought for a long time about the pithiest way to describe @NPR's ever-more peculiar neutrality towards Trumpism.

Moral nihilism, both-siderism, etc.

I concocted my new favorite this weekend and the below tweet provides a perfect opportunity to roll it out: moral deadpan.

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1116694708170870786

I came up with this because I was wondering "what would it take to shake their Vulcan-like dedication to demonstrating priestly objectivity, refusing to judge any group?"

I don't do this simply because I hate Trumpism the way smart Germans must have hated the rise of Hitler, although that's reason enough.

Trumpism is objectively, proudly trollish, angry. cultish, racist, xenophobic, corrupt, anti-science, anti-environment, anti-truth, etc.

But on top of my deep moral disgust at Trumpism I am profoundly concerned by the impotence of the "Fourth Estate," the news media, to rid ourselves of it.

Ideally the media, via their 1st Amendment rights, would act as our nation's intellectual immune system.

On the right there's a torrent of disinformation originating from both Russia, bent on sowing chaos in the west, and American billionaires bent on maximizing their wealth & power.

On the left there is no equivalent, although the right disingenuously claims the MSM acts as such.

Such claims are called working the ref. After decades of this, not-so-bright conservatives have been convinced that innocuous outlets like CNN. CBS, and NPR are satanic & only FOX (etc) can be trusted.

Trump's hatred of the media is just the latest and shrillest form - so far.

Meanwhile Trump labels (and libels) as "fake news" outlets like @nytimes and @washingtonpost which are, not coincidentally, some of the most careful with their truth claims.

These attacks take a double toll.

The first toll is the shattering of consensual reality, a necessary commodity in a democracy. Consumers are tricked and lured into ever smaller info-bubbles and financial support for the major outlets decreases.

"Infowars" is a brainless outfit, but they got their name right.

The second toll is that the more the mainstream media (the ref) is screamed at the more desperately it tries to conform to some naive and outmoded notion of objectivity.

Media critic @jayrosen_nyu refers to this as "manufacturing their own innocence."

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1037433940057964544

The reason I focus on public media (and its flagship NPR in particular) so much is that they are uniquely positioned: ostensibly they have the potential to be the best truth tellers because, theoretically, they do not rely on advertising and are directly listener-supported.

But in reality they rely on corporate underwriting, including from entities like the Koch foundation, and federal funding, which is periodically controlled and loudly threatened by conservatives.

Thus there is a priestly culture of carefully exhibiting ultimate non-bias in all political coverage that serves the dual purpose of manufacturing their innocence as a brand and only minimally rocking the boat on the gunwales of which are perched the federales and the Kochs.

So what's the problem with non-bias? Some followers ask me things like "shouldn't they just present the objective facts and let us decide?"

In theory, sure, obviously.

But, as a former documentary filmmaker, I can tell you that it's a lot more complicated than that.

The most significant and foundational challenge of creation, whether of a documentary or the Sistine Chapel ceiling, is making the continuous choice of what to include and what to leave out.

There is some form of aesthetic/moral/political bias each time those decisions are made.

FOX News, in a matchless act of post-modern self-parody, initially adopted the slogan "we report, you decide," strongly implying that the preexisting "mainstream" outlets just decided things on your behalf and merely spoon-fed consumers a pre-chewed liberal agenda.

The best satirical pushback to this has always been @StephenAtHome's oddly accurate and prescient statement "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

When conservatives traffic in lies they rudely shove reality into the liberal camp.

And that's something the journalistic cult-of-non-bias is having a devil of a time figuring out how to deal with, especially @NPR.

When both sides are axiomatically treated by a news service with equal respect, but one side has a reality/morality deficit, you get this:

I could have constructed that diagram using decency or morality instead of reality and it would look about the same.

Meanwhile this is what it looks like when a retired journalist renounces his old priestly vows and no longer feels obliged to appear unbiased in all things:

Examples abound of how much more truth journalists can spit when not strangled by conventions of non-bias because they are retired or work for a less inhibited outlet.

@soledadobrien is one of my favs. Former NPR staffer @adamdavidson is another. And everyone at @MotherJones.

It also goes the other way. Comparing old @timkmak pieces from @thedailybeast to his current output at NPR is highly instructive. thedailybeast.com/author/tim-mak

Heck, even late night comedians get to tell so much more journalistic truth about our hideous time than the MSM.

And real journalists can't help but resent them for it. Check this out:

Sam was part of the young, diverse @nprpolitics crew that nevertheless relentlessly normalized Trump throughout his campaign. This practice continues to this day.

I've documented it at the link below, but it boils down to what they choose not to say. airbagmoments.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/mis…

Which brings me all the way back to moral deadpan.

Deadpan humor, of course, is saying something weird but with a totally straight affect, creating an uncomfortable and/or absurd irony between message and messenger.

I have been wondering how bad Trumpism would have to get before NPR would drop its normalizing deadpan reporting of transcripts, annotated retweeting, and interviewing professional liars and I have come to the conclusion that there may not be a threshold.

The lower limit of a completely amoral, astringently non-judgmental media is dry reporting of death figures from Nazi concentration camps.

I see nothing in NPR's current aspect or ethos that would cause them to do anything but that with characteristic moral deadpan.