Donald Trump came out of hiding last week for a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago home, and the performance of the press triggered a wave of media criticism the likes of which I haven’t seen in a long time. Read more.

Nothing sets up the news media for errors and remorse better than the bad combination of major breaking news and the immediate lack of information about that news. Audiences demand information pronto, and the media have zippo.

This was the case when an explosion occurred Oct. 17 at a Gaza City hospital. The New York Times soon posted this big, online headline: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.” The headline went through several versions, including one that added “At Least 500 Dead.” The “Palestinians” in “Palestinians Say” was the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Health Ministry. Other media around the globe produced similar headlines, including some with no attribution. Read more.

Here’s a rare Arenblog cooking tip: Don’t marinate your next chicken dinner in NyQuil. It’s terrible.

OK, I didn’t really do that. But you’d think from a wave of news media reports last year that a lot of people did.

The “sleepy chicken challenge” is just one example from a long list of supposedly widespread social media “challenges” that the news media have dutifully reported on and warned against in recent years.

Letting the public know that reckless social media posts are inviting people (especially young people) to try bizarre, alarming and even dangerous stunts is a worthy public service. The problem is, evidence indicates that in most cases the challenges were not widespread on social media and people really weren’t doing them in any significant numbers. Read more.

I’ve never seen “sneakiness” listed among the requirements for any reporter jobs but maybe it should be.

A reporter for the McCurtain (Oklahoma) Gazette-News ended up with a flabbergasting story when he secretly left a voice-activated audio recorder in a public meeting room after citizens were told to leave a session of the McCurtain County Commission. The reporter, believing county officials had a practice of continuing to discuss government business in violation of the state open meetings law, retrieved the recorder and discovered comments lamenting that Black criminals couldn’t be lynched anymore and talk of killing local reporters. Read more and take the test..

You ought to do some soul-searching if you’re a big-time media figure who gets fired and the media reporters have to offer possible reasons in list form

But that won’t happen with Tucker Carlson, who, despite being fired by MSNBC, CNN and now Fox, is incapable of shame. And maybe he couldn’t find his soul anyway.

One remarkable aspect is that Fox even did this to its biggest ratings winner. Read more.

After Alabama basketball player Darius Miles was charged with capital murder, coach Nate Oats called NFL Hall of Famer Ray Lewis for advice. I don’t know what Lewis might have told Oats beyond what has been reported, but he might have said: “The damn news media will never let it go.” Read more.

The news media love crime stories, which, of course, is the fault of the audience for giving them clicks and ratings.

But some commentators on the press offer unreservedly brutal words for how journalists do crime coverage:

—Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli of Free Press wrote for Nieman Lab in 2020: “Crime coverage is terrible. It’s racist, classist, fear-based clickbait masking as journalism. It creates lasting harm for the communities that newsrooms are supposed to serve.”
—Kelly McBride of Poynter told an online seminar in 2021 that years from now, “newsrooms will issue apologies for the harm they caused” with their crime reporting. For good measure, she called it “journalistic malpractice.”

Yikes. Read more.

Whenever a large-scale crime of violence grabs national media attention, it’s gut wrenching to watch those interviews with grieving families and witnesses. It’s only natural to think, “Leave those poor people alone.”

But reporters have reasons for doing it. Here’s one: To try to figure out if the police are lying to everyone.

We are seeing this now with the mass murders at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Interviews and social media videos have shown that early law enforcement accounts of quick confrontation and bravery by officers were bogus. Read more.

The news media that cover the White House have a really great plan for combating the common public perception that they are elitist and out of touch with the rest of the world.

They hosted a black-tie dinner in Washington to schmooze and hobnob with government leaders and politicians. Really.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner returned Saturday night after a two-year absence because of the pandemic. The gala event featuring Beltway journalists, leading political figures and celebrities presents such a terrible picture.

The message to media consumers (and haters) says this: The D.C. press and politicians are quite cozy, actually, and what we see 364 days a year is just a game they play to fulfill prescribed roles and maintain access. It makes one wonder if the independent and sometimes adversarial relationship that’s needed to produce accountability journalism truly exists in untempered form. Read more.