Thread by @jfagone

The thing about the Hannity-Manafort texts is that they reveal exactly the sort of media corruption — at Fox — that Fox & its allies are forever projecting onto mainstream outlets

Behind the scenes, Fox was advising Manafort on legal strategy and offering to hook him up with Fox legal researchers. Hannity texts that he wants Manafort’s adversaries to go to jail. Fox information ends up in Manafort’s legal filings. Etc etc.

I get that Hannity is not a journalist, but how many of his viewers really understand that? This stuff is just galaxies away from anything related to newsgathering

I mean, there are multiple categories of things happening in those texts, between a purported news-gatherer and a source, that should never happen in any actual news organization. And they happen repeatedly.

But if people don’t understand how a news org is supposed to function, the texts won’t seem remarkable to them. It’s two friends supporting each other and complaining about some people they both dislike, what’s the big deal.

All of which makes me think that the efforts by mainstream outlets to increase trust by just... explaining what journalism is, over and over, are on the right track

It’s possible that if Hannity had disclosed all of this to his viewers, they wouldn’t have cared. But it would have certainly created problems for the network, and for other employees there. And the fact is that he did not disclose it.

Try to imagine what an honest disclosure would have sounded like.

Here at the Hannity show, we’re not just supporters of the president and critics of the Mueller probe. Behind the scenes, we’re also using the resources of our network and our personal relationships to help the president and his friends work out their legal strategy.

The stories I’ve read about the texts suggest between the lines that the texts are out of bounds from a journalism perspective, but this is left implicit.

Related: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Typical example of reporting on the Hannity-Manafort texts. Doesn’t mention that the relationship violates ethical norms of the news industry and that news outlets aren’t supposed to operate like this. It’s just assumed, not explained. nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/…

I really don’t understand why a place like the NYT, which is bashed by Fox daily, wouldn’t take the opportunity to point out the difference between what they do and what Fox does, given such an obvious and juicy example of the distinction

There isn’t a single NYT reporter who could get away with what Hannity did. If discovered, they’d be fired. Every NYT reporter is more ethical than him and the paper is a more credible source because of that. But you wouldn’t know that from reading the story!