Marc Ambinder Profile picture
May 17, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Reporting is a verb. I wonder whether there is a correlation beaten people who understand how reporting works (if you haven’t spent a day with a beat reporter, you do NOT know) and trust that the press will try to get things right. (Related: reporters are one part of “the media
In conversations with people who are highly skeptical of “the media,” I’ve found that many have an impoverished or Hollywood-style sense of what real reporting entails... from the moment you conceive of a potential story to the moment it is published.
Much of the pushback focuses on the frame a story gets, which is the most performative and least empirical part of the process. But to actually watch a good beat reporter call 30 people a day, and try to puzzle through competing equities and sources’ priors - is a wonder.
Reporting is not: I get a call from a source and I write what she says and it’s published in an hour. It really, really isn’t. That’s glossing or stenography. Reporting is intricate and requires back and forth with multiple sources many times, even for single facts.
Parts of it don’t look pretty, especially out of context, because talking to different people requires different psychological approaches. And - absolutely good reporters (myself way included) take dumb shortcuts at times.
Blindly bashing stories and slants and headlines and stuff is great and part of the enterprise of knocking down the fruits of reporting - 50 years-old project to discredit “the media.” And hell yes - much of the criticism is warranted. But ...
It is very difficult to criticize the process of real reporting, because it is very hard to do, when done well. I wish there was a way for reporters to more conspicuously show their work - not just by describing it - but giving critics a chance to experience it.
I don’t mean for my defense of reporting to serve as a defense of media tribalism, of hoary and antiquated story tropes, of folks who fear being biased more than anything else. Those criticisms hold up, as does _some_ criticism about cultural liberalism.
I mean to say: if you want to defend journalism, start by defending reporting. #ascj. @USCAnnenberg

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More from @marcambinder

Aug 14, 2022
So, nuclear classification issues. For the @NNSAHruby equities - National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the @ENERGY department, @CherylRofer has a great explainer. As @wellerstein and others have explained exhaustively, a lot of information about nuclear weapons is.
Born classified. That is, by statute, not by executive order, it is protected national defense information. NNSA and DOE declassify various bits ... like, "the yield from this test was x" or "ablative laser refraction is used to help develop more precisely implosion technologies.
These documents don't usually make their way to the White House. They have to do with the technical specifications of nukes, their vulnerabilities, the science of the Super, etc. The most sensitive category of Restricted Data is probably Sigma 14.
Read 19 tweets
Nov 4, 2021
Thread: this isn't a pattern from the noise. During the last few months, the Biden administration has aggressively ramped up its cyber defense and cyber offense efforts, throwing attack groups for a loop.
(1) There was a still-secret national security decision directive ordering a whole-of-government offensive counter cyber intrusion campaign. # (2) Acknowledged offensive Cybercom operations targeting major ransomware firms (reuters.com/technology/exc…)
(3) Aggressive moves to curtail the use of spyware. (See the NSO story today.
Read 9 tweets
Nov 3, 2021
If voters "just knew the truth" is seductive and reductive and gives the media omnipotence (also, weirdly, does the same for the anti-media (the GOP machine)..while giving voters zero agency and treating them like dolts.
The right wing anti-media machine exists. It's powerful. It's asymmetrically powerful. It hurts Dems sometimes. Grieving about it makes a lot of consultants rich. The account that it's *dispositive* fails to plausibly explain so many counter-examples and is unpersuasive.
How much coverage did the VA media give to Youngkin's ties to Trump relative to the GOP gaslighting on schools? I'd be interested in a qualitative and quantitative breakdown. A few selective online headlines from @WashPost don't count. Also, the polls were right this time.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 3, 2021
Others are thinking: If Dems in Congress had passed really the popular stuff that helps eveything, and could point to it, rather than having to rely on/mess up their anti-Trump /cultural messaging - and Dems mess this up regardless of what side you're on ....
Of course there is no single reductive answer as to why... but only the absolute fact that Dems lost to a candidate they had every reason to think they could beat...
The limits of Trump's stench. Macker's campaign. Frustration with Dems in Congress. Gaslighting from the right. Fairly good campaign by Youngkin. Dems lost the salience wars.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 25, 2021
The #AspenInfoCommission on the infodemic will be extraordinarily valuable and the commissioners are first-rate. I wish I was had been selected, but seeing the caliber of the scholars and thinkers who were, I don’t feel put out. I feel obliged to help, where I can.
My focus continues to be on pragmatic intervention: what the ordinary person can do to model good information processing habits, mindful social communication, and effective claim reviews and fact-checking. For a subset: information operations, response matrices, org dynamics.
I see criticism of the commission for adding a few high-profile public figures with deep intuitive knowledge of the press and communication. I know that Aspen is Aspen and is going to Aspen, but I see value in the perspectives.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 18, 2021
A Threat About the Nuclear Transfer of Power: When President Trump departs Joint Base Andrews at 8:00 am on 1/20, he will be accompanied by a military aide and an emergency actions team, never more than 2 doors or 2 minutes away... for the last time.
Simultaneously, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris begin their day and prepare to depart for the U.S. Capitol, two teams of military aides -- with two other satchels -- will shadow them.
As VP Pence departs in a motorcade from the Naval Observatory, a FOURTH team from the White House Military Office will ride a few cars behind him.
Read 26 tweets

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