Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): So @jonathanweisman, we have a problem. This tweet is a classic example of false equivalency in journalism. It posits this as just matter of opposing views, rather than a matter of real existential threats. 1/ https://twitter.com/jonathanweisman/status/1529605106022461440
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): Here the game of politics is all that matters, regardless of the cost, as you say. My question is how much more death we have to face in this nation when reporters stop both-sides-ing everything? 2/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): You may say, we don't take sides, but a studied neutrality is really just an expression of the "deferential spirit," in journalism, which the late great Joan Didion warned us about. 3/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/09/19/the-deferential-spirit/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): "In Washington, however, a community in which the management of news has become the single overriding preoccupation of the core industry, what 'fairness' has too often come to mean is a scrupulous passivity..." 4/ https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1529802949815418882/photo/1
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): So the question arises: what is the threshold for mass death when reporters stop pretending that both sides have points of comparable value, that nothing really matters enough to say what you too know: a nation committed to gun violence, 1M deaths from a pandemic is lost. 5/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): In all fairness, it's not just you. We've normalized all this for years and years now in the media as if we could do nothing else. The press has led us here as much as the decisions of our leaders who cannot be criticized by our reporters lest they be accused of taking sides. 6/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): And there is no reflection here that this might not be about individual liberty versus the collective. It makes it all sound so genteel, which is forgiving too much. Nothing here suggests a deeper political analysis that talks about the raw pursuit of power happening now. 7/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): As Linda Greenhouse said apropos of abortion and the court: "the age of constitutional argument is over. There’s a case to be made that it died a long time ago, but in any event, here is my final question to the justices: What, other than raw power, will take its place?" 8/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): You may say Linda was writing for the op-ed page, but an analysis of power could be part of a news story rather than positing anodyne conceptual pairings for the public in the face of national tragedy? 9/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): As we slide further into chaos in this country as COVID takes its toll, as we only have to wait a week or so for another mass shooting, while we can slow-boil through climate change for a few years, what is the responsibility of the fourth estate? 10/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): Failing to report on the actual dynamics of what is happening in this country, surrendering to the easy tropes of political note-taking of the partisan rancor, the partisan divide is a disservice to @nytimes readers like me. 11/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): And in the end it's a disservice to the nation, to humanity and puts us all at risk. It sinks all of what is happening around us to fate, the way-it-always-was, nothing-to-worry-about, it's DC-doing-DC. 12/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): No one is asking you, your colleagues to go to the barricades, but provide a deeper analytics for current events, realize that reporting what is actually happening might cause offense to the parties you cover and DC may not be a "diorama of decent intentions" as Didion said. 13/ https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1529809123478491139/photo/1
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): Because the assumption of decency here, is a trap, it thus requires neutrality, the even-hand, because if there are real existential questions at stake, ones in which yes, indecency prevails, then you'd all be complicit. 14/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): I am trying not to give in to despair nowadays, but I don't know if I'll make it much further given that most have given up already, decided this is just the way of the world, the way of the US, in its gruesome particulars. end/
Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves): And PS, understanding how we have politically failed is vital to our future--you can't treat something without a diagnosis--and journalists can help us understand the deeper dynamics, histories, forces at work.