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Joshua Benton Profile picture
Joshua Benton
@jbenton
eDo Profile picture Ross Grayson, MPH, CIH Profile picture @AlgoCompSynth@universeodon.com by znmeb Profile picture Save the Free Press Initiative Profile picture Potato Of Reason Profile picture 6 subscribed
Oct 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
For giggles, I checked how this AI company @Seekr_io currently rates the "reliability" of stories on Kevin McCarthy's ouster as speaker.

VERY HIGH: Breitbart, Daily Mail, NY Post, OANN, ZeroHedge, WashTimes

VERY LOW: Bloomberg, NYT, BBC, Guardian, ABC, NBC, Time, Politico

🤔
Sites whose McCarthy stories Seek rates "VERY HIGH" in reliability: BREITBART DAILY MAIL JUSTTHENEWS.COM MONTANARIGHTNOW.COM NEW YORK POST OANN THE BLAZE WASHINGTON TIMES WESTERN JOURNAL ZEROHEDGE Sites whose McCarthy stories Seekr rates "VERY LOW" in reliability: ABC NEWS BBC NEWS BLOOMBERG LOS ANGELES TIMES NBC NEWS POLITICO THE ATLANTIC THE DAILY BEAST THE GUARDIAN THE NEW YORK TIMES TIME @Seekr_io Some "VERY HIGH" reliability stories, including from WorldNetDaily and the deeply centrist OANN:

seekr.com/search?tab=new…



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Sep 8, 2023 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
A while back, I went searching for the most recent instances of Louisiana newspapers using the n-word.

Which was how I found a state rep in 1970 saying, on the floor of the legislature, that:

"I'd see my family die...before I'd have a drop of nigg*r blood in their veins."
La. House Refuses to Halt Labeling By Race of Blood for Transfusions BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The House today refused to stop the labeling of blood for transfusion by the race of blood of the donor after one representative said he did not want "a drop of nigger blood" in his veins. The House voted 42-30 in favor of a resolution by Rep. Ernest Morial, New Orleans, the legislature's only Negro member. The measure needed 53 votes for passage. Morial said the state stands to lose $50 million in federal Medicare and Medicaid payments if labeling of blood by race is not halted in stat... The debate was over whether Louisiana should reverse a 1958 law that had mandated labeling blood donations as "Caucasian," "Negro," or "Mongoloid" based on the race of the donor.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made that illegal — but Louisiana hospitals kept on segregating blood. "Negroid" and "Caucasian" blood labels from New Orleans, 1969.
Aug 24, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Frustrating to come away from a news nonprofit CEO's explanation for layoffs with...no real explanation for the layoffs.

There's no reason there couldn't have been some actual transparency — with real numbers, even — here. Especially since the CEO's staff memo on the layoffs looks, from a distance at least, like word salad.

austinchronicle.com/daily/news/202…
Shah explained, "This year has proven more challenging for us than others - changes in the industry, unsteady economy and the need to explore new platforms and modes of storytelling are all things the Tribune must address head on. We know we must change to stay ahead." Shah cites the industry-wide challenges of "Al, uneven news readership and engagement, changing audience behaviors and the growing phenomenon of news avoidance," and says the Tribune is growing their revenue and development teams.
May 5, 2023 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
58% of adults oppose hormone treatments for 15- to 17-year-olds.

Headline: "Most Americans support anti-trans policies favored by GOP"

58% support a clean debt-ceiling bill with zero spending cuts.

Headline: "Americans split on who they’d blame if U.S. defaults"

Same number! ImageImageImageImage washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…

washingtonpost.com/education/2023…
Apr 25, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The judge in the E. Jean Carroll/Trump case asked all the potential jurors about where they get news. Fascinating sample of real people's media habits.

Some examples:

— Randomly. Internet.
— AM radio
— Not a big news guy.
— News is tough with a 2 year old.
— Channel 7...

1/3 — CNN
— Facebook
— I watch CBS News. And CNN. Read Cape Cod Times.
— No news.
— I like Fox News.
— CBS News Radio
— "The channels"
— Instagram and TikTok
— I scroll my phone
— Cable news, ABC and BBC
— I listen to The Daily...

2/3
Mar 23, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Here's the letter from @theatlantic to Du Bois, January 26, 1942.

The editor says Du Bois' article draft is too radical to publish after Pearl Harbor — and that Black Americans might just have a "biological handicap to contend with," not just "social and political" barriers. "When you say that 'Hitler's race philosophy and methods are exactly the same as ours,' you make an assertion which will antagonize literally 49 out of 50 readers."
Aug 11, 2022 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
So the school this happened in — where a school official took down pictures of MLK, Harriet Tubman, and other Black leaders as "age-inappropriate" — is O. J. Semmes Elementary in Pensacola.

Coupla interesting things about that. (1/x) First, who was Semmes? Oliver J. Semmes was a longtime school board member in Pensacola who also did a stint on the state board that oversaw the state's colleges.

But he was also the grandson of Raphael Semmes, rear admiral of the Confederate Navy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_S…
Aug 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
For south Louisiana folks only:

This new paper talks about a common word among Cajuns "to express surprise" — "kyoo," or "kaw."

I know this word (I think!), but everyone I grew up with pronounced it "kyaw" — and both "kyoo" and "kaw" seem super wrong.

read.dukeupress.edu/american-speec… Kyoo, This Word Sounds Weird: A Case Study of a Cajun Englis Cajuns/Creoles/Acadiana people only:

Do you recognize a local word something like "kyoo," "kaw," or "kyaw" that you or others say when they are surprised by something?

(Or, perhaps more specifically, surprised and *impressed*?)
Aug 9, 2022 • 22 tweets • 7 min read
I just saw that @NPR recently made a pilgrimage to south Louisiana — to the weekly KVPI radio broadcast from Fred's Lounge in Mamou, for a story on the decline in Cajun French.

I have a couple of cranky thoughts!

(1/x)

npr.org/2022/07/09/111… First: This is maybe the *oldest* national media story about Cajun culture.

Reporters have been going to Fred's Lounge in Mamou for a romantic counterpoint to linguistic decline for DECADES.
Aug 9, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Didn't include this in my story today on @CoxEnterprises:

Here's company founder James M. Cox — then the 1920 Dem candidate for president — saying his GOP opponent Warren Harding was trying "to arouse racial hatred" by opposing lynching.

niemanlab.org/2022/08/axios-… Cox Charges G.O.P. Seeking to Stir Up Racial Hatred Says At "There are some clashes of social equality which can not be. To quote the words of the immortal Lincoln: 'We do not want the negroes to be slaves. but that does not mean that we want negro women for our wives.'"

(Not a Lincoln quote.)
Aug 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 9 min read
If you're a news junkie living in Texas, Apple News+ is actually a pretty great deal now.

You get full access to the state's 4 largest newspapers: @dallasnews, @HoustonChron, @ExpressNews, and @startelegram. (No Austin or El Paso, though.) @dallasnews @HoustonChron @ExpressNews @startelegram Same in California, where you get @latimes, @sfchronicle, @sdut, and @sacbee_news (No. 1, 2, 3, and 7 in circulation), plus @FresnoBee, @modbee, and @SLOTribune. (No San Jose, Oakland, or Orange County, though.)
Jun 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
TIL that in the 1950s, @toledonews publisher Paul Block personally funded internecine nuisance lawsuits within the local UAW just to mess with unions

(cc: @bladeguild) From "Tomorrow Never Came: Race, Class, Reform, Conflict, and the Decline of an Industrial City, Toledo, Ohio, 1930-1980," dissertation by @DrHistoryBrad

kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/thesi…
Jun 9, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is a lot of justifying for "A lot of our remaining print readers *really* like Trump and we don't, so let's stop making them mad"

washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/… The retrenchment in mainstream local opinion spaces is an under-appreciated effect Trump has had on the information environment.
Jun 8, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
One way to describe Nellie Bowles' "German great-great-great-grandfather" is as a San Francisco butcher.

Another is as the "the Cattle King of California," the largest landowner in the U.S., and founder of a family fortune that's lasted six generations.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Henry Miller boasted he could walk from Mexico to Oregon and spend each night on his own land.

His descendants are still described as "heiress" or "philanthropist" in obits, 195 years after his birth.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mil…

sfgate.com/bayarea/articl…

sfchronicle.com/bayarea/articl…
Jun 7, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
New by me —>

They were once known as "The Watergate Three," the 3 @washingtonpost journalists most responsible for breaking open Watergate.

So why did history lionize Woodward and Bernstein — but forget their leader Barry Sussman?

niemanlab.org/2022/06/all-th… Top Post editors Howard Simons (managing ed) and Harry Rosenfeld (metro ed) both said that "if any one individual at the Post was deserving of a Pulitzer for the newspaper’s Watergate coverage…it was Barry Sussman."

(Barry died last week, at age 87.)

niemanlab.org/2022/06/all-th…
May 22, 2022 • 35 tweets • 14 min read
I'm not sure how you write a story about how great the schools in Highland Park, Texas, are without noting that they exist entirely to allow rich white Dallasites to maintain Jim Crow-style segregation.

THREAD

wsj.com/articles/scott… This is a map of the Dallas Independent School District. See the white hole in the middle labeled University Park and Highland Park? Those are called the Park Cities, and they make up Highland Park Independent School District.

It's very white. ImageImageImage
May 21, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
We have kittens!

LEFT: Dr. John (a.k.a. Doc or DJ), in honor of @akadrjohn the Nitetripper himself

RIGHT: Kuiper (a.k.a. Kuip or K-Bo), in honor of the Kuiper belt and its Kuiper belt objects

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_be… (@leahalexis wanted to evoke the inky blackness of space, in case you're wondering about Kuiper. Also, he likes to stay far away and then suddenly propel himself towards us, only to turn back around. Also, he is a very dirty snowball.)
May 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The next step: In Louisiana, a House committee just voted 7-2 to make all abortions homicides, for which both the mother and the doctor can be charged.

(It throws in some old-fashioned nullification as a bonus. The Civil War settled that one, bub.)

theadvertiser.com/story/news/202… These brilliant ideas are from @McCormick4LA, a literal resident of Oil City. You may know him from other brilliant ideas like:

— a bill saying "homicide is justified when committed to prevent imminent destruction of property" (the "Don't Touch My Motorcycle Or I'll Shoot" bill)
May 2, 2022 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
There's one bad-journalism angle on this horrible Lacey Fletcher story, the poor woman allowed to die in filth by her parents.

All the UK tabloids have been claiming (w/o attribution) that she suffered from something called "locked-in syndrome."

google.com/search?q=%22lo… Locked-in syndrome is a real thing in which someone loses control of all muscular movement except their eyes.

That...doesn't seem to describe Lacey Fletcher, for a whole lot of reasons.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in…
Apr 5, 2022 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
One of the many maddening things in this John McWhorter column is his claim that a typical 19th-century American was "better educated in some ways" than today's college graduate.

His evidence: a quote he liked from some dude's diary in the 1830s.

1/x
nytimes.com/2022/04/05/opi… John McWhorter *really* likes that quote. He keeps coming back to it!

Here he is citing is in his 2004 kids-these-days book, "Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care."
Apr 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"The upshot is simple: The idea that in our society, after elementary school the ordinary trajectory is to attend another seven years of school has become arbitrary, purposeless and even absurd."

(or something like that!)

nytimes.com/2022/04/05/opi… Facts that are inconvenient for this thesis:

— A 4-year college is not "the default." Only 44% of American teens enroll in one after HS graduation.

— Most Americans who *don't* graduate from HS typically don't do so via an $80,000/yr early college program, as the writer did.