Greenwald writes: "The Republican candidate leading every poll, Donald
Trump, recently unveiled his plan to forcibly deport all 11 million human
beings residing in the U.S. without proper documentation, roughly half of
whom have children born in the U.S. (and who are thus American citizens)."
Glenn Greenwald. (photo: PBS)
Jorge Ramos Commits Journalism, Gets Immediately Attacked by Journalists
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
26 August 15
The Republican presidential candidate leading every poll, Donald Trump,
recently unveiled his plan to forcibly deport all 11 million human beings
residing in the U.S. without proper documentation, roughly half of whom have
children born in the U.S. (and who are thus American citizens). As George
Will noted last week, Trumps roundup would be about 94 times larger than
the wartime internment of 117,000 persons of Japanese descent. It would
require a massive expansion of the most tyrannical police state powers far
beyond their already immense post-9/11 explosion. And thats to say nothing
of the incomparably ugly sentiments which Trumps advocacy of this plan, far
before its implementation, is predictably unleashing.
Jorge Ramos, the influential anchor of Univision and an American immigrant
from Mexico, has been denouncing Trumps anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yesterday
at a Trump press conference in Iowa, Ramos stood and questioned Trump on his
immigration views. Trump at first ignored him, then scolded him for speaking
without being called on and repeatedly ordered him to sit down, then told
him: Go back to Univision. When Ramos refused to sit down and shut up as
ordered, a Trump bodyguard physically removed him from the room. After the
press conference concluded, Ramos returned and again questioned Trump about
immigration, with the two mostly talking over each other as Ramos asked
Trump about the fundamental flaws in his policy. Afterward, Ramos said:
This is personal . . . hes talking about our parents, our friends, our
kids and our babies.
One might think that in a conflict between a journalist removed from a press
conference for asking questions and the politician who had him removed,
journalists would side with their fellow journalist. Some are. But many
American journalists have seized on the incident to denounce Ramos for the
crime of having opinions and even suggesting that hes not really acting as
a journalist at all.
Politicos political reporter Marc Caputo unleashed a Twitter rant this
morning against Ramos. This is bias: taking the news personally, explicitly
advocating an agenda, he began. Then: Trump can and should be pressed on
this. Reporters can do this without being activists and some reporters
still try to approach their stories fairly & decently. & doing so does not
prevent good reporting. Not only didnt Ramos do journalism, Caputo argued,
but he actually ruins journalism: My issue is his reporting is imbued with
take-it-personally bias. . . . we fend off phony bias allegations & Ramos
only helps to wrongly justify them. . . .One can ask and report without the
bias. Ive done it for years & will continue 2 do so.
A Washington Post article about the incident actually equated the two
figures, beginning with the headline: Jorge Ramos is a conflict junkie,
just like his latest target: Donald Trump. The article twice suggested that
Ramos behavior was something other than journalism, claiming that his
advocacy of immigration reform blurred the line between journalist and
activist and that by owning the issue of immigration, Ramos has also
blurred the line between journalist and activist. That Ramos was acting
more as an activist than a journalist was a commonly expressed criticism
among media elites this morning.
Here we find, yet again, the enforcement of unwritten, very recent,
distinctively corporatized rules of supposed neutrality and faux
objectivity which all Real Journalists must obey, upon pain of being
expelled from the profession. A Good Journalist must pretend they have no
opinions, feign utter indifference to the outcome of political debates,
never take any sides, be utterly devoid of any human connection to or
passion for the issues they cover, and most of all, have no role to play
whatsoever in opposing even the most extreme injustices.
Thus: you do not call torture torture if the U.S. Government falsely
denies that it is; you do not say that the chronic shooting of unarmed black
citizens by the police is a major problem since not everyone agrees that it
is; and you do not object when a major presidential candidate stokes
dangerous nativist resentments while demanding mass deportation of millions
of people. These are the strictures that have utterly neutered American
journalism, drained it of its vitality and core purpose, and ensured that it
does little other than serve those who wield the greatest power and have the
highest interest in preserving the status quo.
What is more noble for a journalist to do: confront a dangerous, powerful
billionaire-demagogue spouting hatemongering nonsense about mass
deportation, or sitting by quietly and pretending to have no opinions on any
of it and that both sides are equally deserving of respect and have equal
claims to validity? As Ramos put it simply, in what should not even need to
be said: Im a reporter. My job is to ask questions. Whats totally out of
line is to eject a reporter from a press conference for asking questions.
Indeed, some of the most important and valuable moments in American
journalism have come from the nations most influential journalists
rejecting this cowardly demand that they take no position, from Edward R.
Murrows brave 1954 denunciation of McCarthyism to Walter Cronkites 1968
refusal to treat the U.S. Governments lies about the Vietnam War as
anything other than what they were. Does anyone doubt that todays
neutrality-über-alles journalists would denounce them as activists for
inappropriately taking a side?
As Jack Shafer documented two years ago, crusading and activist journalism
is centuries old and has a very noble heritage. The notion that journalists
must be beacons of opinion-free, passion-devoid, staid, impotent neutrality
is an extremely new one, the by-product of the increasing corporatization of
American journalism. Thats not hard to understand: one of the supreme
values of large corporations is fear of offending anyone, particularly those
in power, since thats bad for business. The way that conflict-avoiding
value is infused into the media outlets which these corporations own is to
inculcate their journalists that their primary duty is to avoid offending
anyone, especially those who wield power, which above all means never taking
a clear position about anything, instead just serving as a mindless,
uncritical vessel for both sides, what NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen
has dubbed the view from nowhere. Whatever else that is, it is most
certainly not a universal or long-standing principle of how journalism
should be conducted.
The worst aspect of these journalists demands for neutrality is the
conceit that they are actually neutral, that they are themselves not
activists. To be lectured about the need for journalistic neutrality by
Politico of all places the ultimate and most loyal servant of the DC
political and corporate class by itself illustrates what a rotten sham
this claim is. I set out my argument about this at length in my 2013
exchange with Bill Keller and wont repeat it all here; suffice to say, all
journalism is deeply subjective and serves some groups interests. All
journalists constantly express opinions and present the world in accordance
with their deeply subjective biases and thus constantly serve one agenda
or another whether they honestly admit doing so or dishonestly pretend
they dont.
Ultimately, demands for neutrality and objectivity are little more than
rules designed to shield those with the greatest power from meaningful
challenge. As BuzzFeeds Adam Serwer insightfully put it this morning
Objective reporters were openly mocking Trump not that long ago, but
Ramos has not reacted to Trumps poll numbers with appropriate deference . .
. . Just a reminder that what is considered objective reporting is
intimately tied to power or the perception of power. Expressing opinions
that are in accord with, and which serve the interests of, those who wield
the greatest political and economic power is always acceptable for the
journalists who most tightly embrace the pretense of neutrality; its only
when an opinion constitutes dissent or when its expressed with too little
reverence for the most powerful does it cross the line into activism and
bias.
(Ramos supposed sin of being what the Post called a conflict junkie
something that sounds to be nothing more than a derogatory way of
characterizing adversary journalism is even more ridiculous. Please
spare me the tripe about how Ramos real sin was one of rudeness, that he
failed to wait for explicit permission from the Trumpian Strongman to speak.
Aside from the absurdity of viewing Victorian-era etiquette as some sort of
journalistic virtue, Trumps vindictive war with Univision made it unlikely
hed call on Ramos, and journalists dont always need to be polite to do
their jobs.
Beyond that, whether a reporter must be deferential to a politicians is one
of those questions on which people shamelessly switch sides based on which
politician is being treated rudely at the moment, as the past liberal
protests over the rudeness displayed to Obama by conservative journalists
demonstrate. That Ramos is not One of Them Joe Scarborough appeared not
even to know who Ramos is and suggested he was just seeking 15 minutes of
fame, despite Ramos having far greater influence and fame than Scarborough
could dream of having clearly fueled the journalistic resentment that
Ramos behavior was out of line).
What Ramos did here was pure journalism in its classic and most noble
expression: he aggressively confronted a politician wielding a significant
amount of power over some pretty horrible things that the politician is
doing and saying. As usual when someone commits a real act of journalism
aimed at the most powerful in the U.S., those leading the charge against him
are other journalists, who so tellingly regard actual journalism as a gauche
and irreverent crime against those who wield the greatest power and thus
merit the greatest deference.
UPDATE: Caputo, while noting that he disagrees with many of the views in
this article, objects to one phrase in particular and sets forth his
objection here. I quoted and/or linked to all of his referenced statements
and am happy to allow readers to decide if that one phrase was accurate. I
am quite convinced it was and stand by it.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Glenn Greenwald. (photo: PBS)
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/26/jorge-ramos-commits-journalism
-gets-immediately-attacked-journalists/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/20
15/08/26/jorge-ramos-commits-journalism-gets-immediately-attacked-journalist
s/
Jorge Ramos Commits Journalism, Gets Immediately Attacked by Journalists
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
26 August 15
he Republican presidential candidate leading every poll, Donald Trump,
recently unveiled his plan to forcibly deport all 11 million human beings
residing in the U.S. without proper documentation, roughly half of whom have
children born in the U.S. (and who are thus American citizens). As George
Will noted last week, Trumps roundup would be about 94 times larger than
the wartime internment of 117,000 persons of Japanese descent. It would
require a massive expansion of the most tyrannical police state powers far
beyond their already immense post-9/11 explosion. And thats to say nothing
of the incomparably ugly sentiments which Trumps advocacy of this plan, far
before its implementation, is predictably unleashing.
Jorge Ramos, the influential anchor of Univision and an American immigrant
from Mexico, has been denouncing Trumps anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yesterday
at a Trump press conference in Iowa, Ramos stood and questioned Trump on his
immigration views. Trump at first ignored him, then scolded him for speaking
without being called on and repeatedly ordered him to sit down, then told
him: Go back to Univision. When Ramos refused to sit down and shut up as
ordered, a Trump bodyguard physically removed him from the room. After the
press conference concluded, Ramos returned and again questioned Trump about
immigration, with the two mostly talking over each other as Ramos asked
Trump about the fundamental flaws in his policy. Afterward, Ramos said:
This is personal . . . hes talking about our parents, our friends, our
kids and our babies.
One might think that in a conflict between a journalist removed from a press
conference for asking questions and the politician who had him removed,
journalists would side with their fellow journalist. Some are. But many
American journalists have seized on the incident to denounce Ramos for the
crime of having opinions and even suggesting that hes not really acting as
a journalist at all.
Politicos political reporter Marc Caputo unleashed a Twitter rant this
morning against Ramos. This is bias: taking the news personally, explicitly
advocating an agenda, he began. Then: Trump can and should be pressed on
this. Reporters can do this without being activists and some reporters
still try to approach their stories fairly & decently. & doing so does not
prevent good reporting. Not only didnt Ramos do journalism, Caputo argued,
but he actually ruins journalism: My issue is his reporting is imbued with
take-it-personally bias. . . . we fend off phony bias allegations & Ramos
only helps to wrongly justify them. . . .One can ask and report without the
bias. Ive done it for years & will continue 2 do so.
A Washington Post article about the incident actually equated the two
figures, beginning with the headline: Jorge Ramos is a conflict junkie,
just like his latest target: Donald Trump. The article twice suggested that
Ramos behavior was something other than journalism, claiming that his
advocacy of immigration reform blurred the line between journalist and
activist and that by owning the issue of immigration, Ramos has also
blurred the line between journalist and activist. That Ramos was acting
more as an activist than a journalist was a commonly expressed criticism
among media elites this morning.
Here we find, yet again, the enforcement of unwritten, very recent,
distinctively corporatized rules of supposed neutrality and faux
objectivity which all Real Journalists must obey, upon pain of being
expelled from the profession. A Good Journalist must pretend they have no
opinions, feign utter indifference to the outcome of political debates,
never take any sides, be utterly devoid of any human connection to or
passion for the issues they cover, and most of all, have no role to play
whatsoever in opposing even the most extreme injustices.
Thus: you do not call torture torture if the U.S. Government falsely
denies that it is; you do not say that the chronic shooting of unarmed black
citizens by the police is a major problem since not everyone agrees that it
is; and you do not object when a major presidential candidate stokes
dangerous nativist resentments while demanding mass deportation of millions
of people. These are the strictures that have utterly neutered American
journalism, drained it of its vitality and core purpose, and ensured that it
does little other than serve those who wield the greatest power and have the
highest interest in preserving the status quo.
What is more noble for a journalist to do: confront a dangerous, powerful
billionaire-demagogue spouting hatemongering nonsense about mass
deportation, or sitting by quietly and pretending to have no opinions on any
of it and that both sides are equally deserving of respect and have equal
claims to validity? As Ramos put it simply, in what should not even need to
be said: Im a reporter. My job is to ask questions. Whats totally out of
line is to eject a reporter from a press conference for asking questions.
Indeed, some of the most important and valuable moments in American
journalism have come from the nations most influential journalists
rejecting this cowardly demand that they take no position, from Edward R.
Murrows brave 1954 denunciation of McCarthyism to Walter Cronkites 1968
refusal to treat the U.S. Governments lies about the Vietnam War as
anything other than what they were. Does anyone doubt that todays
neutrality-über-alles journalists would denounce them as activists for
inappropriately taking a side?
As Jack Shafer documented two years ago, crusading and activist journalism
is centuries old and has a very noble heritage. The notion that journalists
must be beacons of opinion-free, passion-devoid, staid, impotent neutrality
is an extremely new one, the by-product of the increasing corporatization of
American journalism. Thats not hard to understand: one of the supreme
values of large corporations is fear of offending anyone, particularly those
in power, since thats bad for business. The way that conflict-avoiding
value is infused into the media outlets which these corporations own is to
inculcate their journalists that their primary duty is to avoid offending
anyone, especially those who wield power, which above all means never taking
a clear position about anything, instead just serving as a mindless,
uncritical vessel for both sides, what NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen
has dubbed the view from nowhere. Whatever else that is, it is most
certainly not a universal or long-standing principle of how journalism
should be conducted.
The worst aspect of these journalists demands for neutrality is the
conceit that they are actually neutral, that they are themselves not
activists. To be lectured about the need for journalistic neutrality by
Politico of all places the ultimate and most loyal servant of the DC
political and corporate class by itself illustrates what a rotten sham
this claim is. I set out my argument about this at length in my 2013
exchange with Bill Keller and wont repeat it all here; suffice to say, all
journalism is deeply subjective and serves some groups interests. All
journalists constantly express opinions and present the world in accordance
with their deeply subjective biases and thus constantly serve one agenda
or another whether they honestly admit doing so or dishonestly pretend
they dont.
Ultimately, demands for neutrality and objectivity are little more than
rules designed to shield those with the greatest power from meaningful
challenge. As BuzzFeeds Adam Serwer insightfully put it this morning
Objective reporters were openly mocking Trump not that long ago, but
Ramos has not reacted to Trumps poll numbers with appropriate deference . .
. . Just a reminder that what is considered objective reporting is
intimately tied to power or the perception of power. Expressing opinions
that are in accord with, and which serve the interests of, those who wield
the greatest political and economic power is always acceptable for the
journalists who most tightly embrace the pretense of neutrality; its only
when an opinion constitutes dissent or when its expressed with too little
reverence for the most powerful does it cross the line into activism and
bias.
(Ramos supposed sin of being what the Post called a conflict junkie
something that sounds to be nothing more than a derogatory way of
characterizing adversary journalism is even more ridiculous. Please
spare me the tripe about how Ramos real sin was one of rudeness, that he
failed to wait for explicit permission from the Trumpian Strongman to speak.
Aside from the absurdity of viewing Victorian-era etiquette as some sort of
journalistic virtue, Trumps vindictive war with Univision made it unlikely
hed call on Ramos, and journalists dont always need to be polite to do
their jobs.
Beyond that, whether a reporter must be deferential to a politicians is one
of those questions on which people shamelessly switch sides based on which
politician is being treated rudely at the moment, as the past liberal
protests over the rudeness displayed to Obama by conservative journalists
demonstrate. That Ramos is not One of Them Joe Scarborough appeared not
even to know who Ramos is and suggested he was just seeking 15 minutes of
fame, despite Ramos having far greater influence and fame than Scarborough
could dream of having clearly fueled the journalistic resentment that
Ramos behavior was out of line).
What Ramos did here was pure journalism in its classic and most noble
expression: he aggressively confronted a politician wielding a significant
amount of power over some pretty horrible things that the politician is
doing and saying. As usual when someone commits a real act of journalism
aimed at the most powerful in the U.S., those leading the charge against him
are other journalists, who so tellingly regard actual journalism as a gauche
and irreverent crime against those who wield the greatest power and thus
merit the greatest deference.
UPDATE: Caputo, while noting that he disagrees with many of the views in
this article, objects to one phrase in particular and sets forth his
objection here. I quoted and/or linked to all of his referenced statements
and am happy to allow readers to decide if that one phrase was accurate. I
am quite convinced it was and stand by it.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
