One factor in that--aside from the valid point of attention spans of readers to which y'all alluded--is that there is very little journalism on the market.
What we have, instead, and I see variations of this in the French, German, and British press, and in the press coming out of southern PRC (or claiming to be so), is a lot of unsubstantiated claims (essentially rumor-mongering), or claims attributed to the writer's invisible friend(s) (one WaPo story early in the Trump administration attributed its claims to nine anonymous sources), or the writers run around repeating each other's rumors. There is very little actual, original reporting and even less sourced back to named sources, much less to original documents, original tapes, original videos. When the docs, tapes, videos are identified, links often are absent, and what gets presented are carefully selected excerpts or sound bites that were chosen to support the writer's predetermined position.
The lack of original reporting is as much a matter of laziness as it is a matter naked bias or a lack of knowing how to do journalism, how to market serious journalism. I claim there is such a market, but on the matter of click bait being what sells and brings in revenue--that perhaps goes back to the idea of targeted ads and the desperation of marketers to track consumers' movements across the Internet and what they click as they move along. Targeting narrows the view, and they create "journalists" (and advertisers) focusing on clicks, which creates a self-fulfilling cycle: it's all we see, so it's all we click on, so it's all the press outlets (and advertisers) present.
Of course, I'm talking here more about mechanics than underlying principles, but with poor mechanics, the principles are incoherently presented--if they exist at all.
"If they exist"--if they can't articulate a thought, it's entirely likely (though not proven) that they don't have a thought to articulate.
I've had pieces of this conversation with coworkers and friends, and every time it sails right past without an effect.
If I point out that, by buying a paper with a mass shooter's face plastered on the front page, you're increasing the odds of another shooting in the next 3 months, people are shocked to hear it. Yet they'll have that same paper under the arm after the next shooting. These are the same people who complain about "the damn mainstream media" but still provide the perverse incentives to keep churning out garbage material.
It's our fault for rewarding these bad practices with our clicks and purchases. I make a conscious effort to never buy a local newspaper with an overblown front page. I try not to click on something titillating that's merely being presented as if it were news. But we're fighting human instinct and a culture that promotes everything from 60 Minutes of Hate (followed by another hour, 2 minutes was just not enough) to the trash gossip that is taking up valuable space on the sheet. Can that even be fought, or are we just complaining about the sea?
Podcast tech support: My podcast app (Google) does not support private feeds. I cannot find a way to download the audio file of the podcast so I can listen with my mp3 player. Am I out of luck?
Okay, Monique says: "What I can do to solve the problem quickly is to post The Cosmopolicast Episode 1 on my podcast hosting website. I'm already listed with Google podcasts, Apple and about 6 others (I think). If he can only listen with Google, that should resolve the problem." I'll post the link as soon as I she sends it to me.
OK, looks like it is coming through on the Google app under "Coffee Talk Politics." Note that there is another podcast called "Cosmopolicast," but that one is in Spanish.
Good to hear that Dennis. We're working on putting the Cosmopolicast on a site with links to Google, Apple etc. For now it's being hosted on CTP but that will be resolved shortly.
Mind, Tom's Guide will pester you with its own wish to shut off your ad blocker (which you can blow off) and its wish to track your location (which you also can ignore)....
Someone on Twitter has asked me to write a rebuttal to Jon Nighswander's piece on Brexit mentioned on the podcast before he even writes and publishes it(This person is really really mad at Claire and the Cosmopolitan Globalists at the moment). I feel as if I can't really rebut a piece before I have even read it or before it is even written but I think I can throw out some open questions and possible answers in the direction of the CG and Jon Nighswander.
1. Should the EU27 be more introspective about the UK leaving? Perhaps, but not in the way I think Jon Nighswander and many others seem to approach the issue. During the negotiations over the Maastricht Treaty back in 1991, there was a group of hardline European Federalist who essentially wanted to lay down an ultimatum to John Major and the British government basically to either commit to EU monetary union and what later became the Euro currency or for the UK to leave what was then the EC right then and there back in 1991/92. Helmut Kohl rejected this approach and basically from the "EU side" negotiated what later became known as the UK's Maastricht opt-out from the single currency. Was Kohl wrong to have cut the UK slack back then and were the hardliners right to have wanted to force the issue way back then especially as Kohl himself during the ERM crisis shortly after this time period was as Adam Posen personally has testified to was quite content to see Britain crash out of the exchange rate mechanism? Perhaps?
2. Is the UK a large and rich economy? Yes, but they are other countries in the EU other than UK that are both richer and more powerful than the UK. Now there was not and has not been much discussion of let's say Germany leaving the EU but it is also true that Germany is both larger and richer than the UK but I am not sure it is a long-run sustainable proposition to say well we have to give a "special" deal to the Brits because they are big and rich but the German public has to pay full price even though Germany is even bigger and richer than the UK.
3. Are people in the US especially those who dislike Donald Trump right to distrust the Brexit “movement” in the UK? I think pretty obviously, yes. The Brexit movement I don’t think has made any secret of its adoration of Trump and Trumpism and I think anti-Trump Americans are strongly entitled to return the favor.
4. Did the various governance failures on part of the EU during the 2010 in terms of the Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis negatively impact sentiment against the EU in the UK? Probably, but both of these crises impacted areas of EU competency such as Schengen and the Euro that the UK opted out of. In fact, I think strong arguments can be made that the UK’s opt-out in themselves complicated the EU’s response to both of these crises (Which is why some hardline European Federalists like blogger Jon Worth wanted the UK to vote to leave). I also think it has been made clear from the UK side even going back to a more pre Maastricht pre Schengen idea of the EU would not be “good enough” to keep the UK in. In effect, the UK's position is to withdraw even from the 1950s level of integration contemplated in the Treaty of Rome and refuse the current level of integration non-EU member states like Norway and Switzerland currently have with the EU.
I do think one long-running problem during the life of the UK’s membership in the EU is this belief among some that EU membership would make the UK just like France and Germany(i.e. food as good as the French and cars as good as Germans). That really wasn’t true quite obviously during the early years of the UK’s membership back in the 1970s and to the degree that the French and German models are no longer as attractive as perhaps they once were like say back in the 1970s hurt the cause of EU membership in the UK even to the extent this idea of making the UK like France and Germany was always a mirage. The challenge I think, however, is much of the economic success the UK did have in the 80, 90, and really right up until last years was highly dependent on being part of the EU. So as a counterfactual if the UK didn’t join in 1973 I think it would be in even worse shape today than it is.
There is a BBC documentary from 1996(which shows how long the UK has been arguing about this) which makes my exact point from above in the below link.
I am also going to recommend before anyone comes to to many conclusions about Brexit in particular the referendum and the preceding campaign, to watch this two part Canadian documentary on the 1979 and later 1995 referendums on Quebec independence. There are obviously huge differences but also huge similarities in ways both the pro-EU and pro-Brexit camps along with EU27 would probably not want to admit. I find it unimaginable that anyone in Britain would admit there are 7 Continental Europeans for every 1 British person like famed hardline Quebec separatist Jacques Parizeau once said of there being 3 English Canadians for every 1 Quebeckers. As much I have always despised Parizeau at least he was honest in admit Quebec could never dictate terms of economic partnership to the rest of Canada unlike Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
And another more recent book interview about what would have probably happened if Quebec voted yes to independence(Hint: It would have been as big of a clusterfuck as Brexit has been)
Excellent. Much more interesting than Oprah’s interview with the Royal (or is it semi-Royal) dullards. Ms Camarra has a melodious voice which makes the podcast pleasant to listen to.
Claire and Vivek missed the biggest problem with journalism (in the United States at least);
it’s become a niche profession for the credentialed elite. Try applying for a job at those four national newspapers in the US without a graduate degree (preferably in journalism). Try showing up for a job interview with just a high school degree.
Claire, that’s why Americans hate the press; every story is told from the perspective of a hypereducated brat who was raised in Brookline, MA, the Upper West Side of New York, Marin County on the west coast or a similar venue and then went to some Ivy League or semi-Ivy League school where any sense they once might have had was beaten out of them.
If newspapers and television networks would ban kids with graduate degrees (especially in journalism) from the profession, the coverage would improve and Americans might not hate the press so much. The New York Times provides the perfect example. The ignorant and obnoxious new arrivals, barely out of diapers, are running rampant and destroying any credibility the paper of record once had.
Face it, Claire, Vivek and company, in 21st century America the more education you accrue, the more dimwitted you become. We would be better off returning to the old days, where reporters learned their trade in the college of hard knocks and spent as much time in a pool room as in a news room.
I have one question that I hope one of the panelists might feel inclined to answer. Disintermediation has disrupted American journalism (and its progeny; punditry) in profound ways. Andrew Sullivan used to work at New York Magazine (and the New Republic). He’s told his readers he now makes more money on substack than he ever did before. Barri Weiss formerly of the New York Times says the same thing. Matthew Yglesias and Glenn Greenwald have followed this exact path. My question is simply whether the same thing is happening in Europe, Great Britain and India? Are famous journalists and pundits leaving more traditional newspapers and magazines to strike out on their own?
Are you under the impression that rich people with little real world experience are a new phenomenon? You seem to assign most of our current grief to them and I'm sure the ancient Greek and Roman curmudgeons were complaining about those "damn rich brats" and how it was better "back in my day."
There’s always been an aristocracy; there always will be. In the United States today, the hypereducated, credentialed intellectual yet idiot class is the new aristocracy or to put it more accurately, they’re our new clerisy.
They really aren’t any more venal than ruling classes in previous eras, but there are a couple of differences. At least occasionally throughout history, the ruling classes had a sense of noblesse oblige; that seems absent in our present rulers. More importantly, throughout history, aristocrats knew they were aristocrats; they didn’t pretend otherwise. The new American clerisy would be horrified to be called what they really are; a group of credentialed morons who’ve lost any common sense that they might have been born with. If you’re an opera fan, you know what I mean. Our current rulers resemble no one so much as Count Almaviva in the Barber of Seville.
Contemporary “journalists” play the role of court jesters. These modern day Rigolettos may or may not realize how buffoonish they really are.
There are a lot of threads to pull on there, you might break me of intent to keep these short.
The existing narrative about the clerical right exists for the reason that, historically, that's been their gig. I'll gladly grant that there are elements of the left who have adopted alarmingly religious concepts and language (Kindly Inquisitors, Rauch, was a great introduction to this concept for me). I'd even go so far to say that the traditionally religious elements of conservatism have gotten better at concealing their intent to control society by changing their language and tone. Together, the movement of these needles has enhanced the disparate appearance between the wings.
I've spent a lot of social energy trying to point out to people on the left that this phenomenon exists. It's usually not the work of a single conversation, but I've seen friends and coworkers stop ignoring this monsters in their closet or (even worse) slipping into apologetics for it. But I've also ended up on some ignore lists.
Still, I know of well educated people who maintain their intelligence and curiosity, despite having gone through advanced degrees. They even have common sense at times, as opposed to suffering its complete removal. You're pretty cavalier with the insults to intelligence, which sets off alarms in my mind. Normally when I've heard some one denigrate The Other like that, it's to shore up an argument that really ought to stand on its own merits. I've probably mentioned it before, but I'm worried about the width of that brush you paint with.
"If newspapers and television networks would ban kids with graduate degrees (especially in journalism) from the profession, the coverage would improve...."
Along those lines, what passes for journalism teaching today no longer even bothers with one early principle of journalism: the first paragraph being given over to the who, what, why, where/when of the story.
Instead what occurs is another early principle of "journalism:" if it bleeds, it leads (and ledes). Not because of tabloid sensationalism, though; today it's because of those clicks.
"No one wants to pay for journalism"
One factor in that--aside from the valid point of attention spans of readers to which y'all alluded--is that there is very little journalism on the market.
What we have, instead, and I see variations of this in the French, German, and British press, and in the press coming out of southern PRC (or claiming to be so), is a lot of unsubstantiated claims (essentially rumor-mongering), or claims attributed to the writer's invisible friend(s) (one WaPo story early in the Trump administration attributed its claims to nine anonymous sources), or the writers run around repeating each other's rumors. There is very little actual, original reporting and even less sourced back to named sources, much less to original documents, original tapes, original videos. When the docs, tapes, videos are identified, links often are absent, and what gets presented are carefully selected excerpts or sound bites that were chosen to support the writer's predetermined position.
The lack of original reporting is as much a matter of laziness as it is a matter naked bias or a lack of knowing how to do journalism, how to market serious journalism. I claim there is such a market, but on the matter of click bait being what sells and brings in revenue--that perhaps goes back to the idea of targeted ads and the desperation of marketers to track consumers' movements across the Internet and what they click as they move along. Targeting narrows the view, and they create "journalists" (and advertisers) focusing on clicks, which creates a self-fulfilling cycle: it's all we see, so it's all we click on, so it's all the press outlets (and advertisers) present.
Of course, I'm talking here more about mechanics than underlying principles, but with poor mechanics, the principles are incoherently presented--if they exist at all.
"If they exist"--if they can't articulate a thought, it's entirely likely (though not proven) that they don't have a thought to articulate.
Eric Hines
I've had pieces of this conversation with coworkers and friends, and every time it sails right past without an effect.
If I point out that, by buying a paper with a mass shooter's face plastered on the front page, you're increasing the odds of another shooting in the next 3 months, people are shocked to hear it. Yet they'll have that same paper under the arm after the next shooting. These are the same people who complain about "the damn mainstream media" but still provide the perverse incentives to keep churning out garbage material.
It's our fault for rewarding these bad practices with our clicks and purchases. I make a conscious effort to never buy a local newspaper with an overblown front page. I try not to click on something titillating that's merely being presented as if it were news. But we're fighting human instinct and a culture that promotes everything from 60 Minutes of Hate (followed by another hour, 2 minutes was just not enough) to the trash gossip that is taking up valuable space on the sheet. Can that even be fought, or are we just complaining about the sea?
Exactly, exactly, exactly. I wrote about this at some length, here; maybe you missed it:
https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/social-media-and-the-new-man-part
https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/social-media-and-the-new-man-part-716
Podcast tech support: My podcast app (Google) does not support private feeds. I cannot find a way to download the audio file of the podcast so I can listen with my mp3 player. Am I out of luck?
Okay, Monique says: "What I can do to solve the problem quickly is to post The Cosmopolicast Episode 1 on my podcast hosting website. I'm already listed with Google podcasts, Apple and about 6 others (I think). If he can only listen with Google, that should resolve the problem." I'll post the link as soon as I she sends it to me.
OK, looks like it is coming through on the Google app under "Coffee Talk Politics." Note that there is another podcast called "Cosmopolicast," but that one is in Spanish.
First, try this: https://cdn.substack.com/public/audio/cf04df5a-c66b-4d1e-9cc2-899aaf4e987e.mpga?post_id=33700181
This works, too, allowing download of the mp3 of the podcast. Thanks!
Good to hear that Dennis. We're working on putting the Cosmopolicast on a site with links to Google, Apple etc. For now it's being hosted on CTP but that will be resolved shortly.
Might any of these work?
https://www.tomsguide.com/round-up/best-podcast-apps#:~:text=Best%20podcast%20apps%20of%202020%201%20The%20best,iOS%29%2010%20Castbox%20%28Android%2C%20iOS%29%20More%20items...%20
Mind, Tom's Guide will pester you with its own wish to shut off your ad blocker (which you can blow off) and its wish to track your location (which you also can ignore)....
Eric Hines
I don't know. Let me ask someone who might.
Someone on Twitter has asked me to write a rebuttal to Jon Nighswander's piece on Brexit mentioned on the podcast before he even writes and publishes it(This person is really really mad at Claire and the Cosmopolitan Globalists at the moment). I feel as if I can't really rebut a piece before I have even read it or before it is even written but I think I can throw out some open questions and possible answers in the direction of the CG and Jon Nighswander.
1. Should the EU27 be more introspective about the UK leaving? Perhaps, but not in the way I think Jon Nighswander and many others seem to approach the issue. During the negotiations over the Maastricht Treaty back in 1991, there was a group of hardline European Federalist who essentially wanted to lay down an ultimatum to John Major and the British government basically to either commit to EU monetary union and what later became the Euro currency or for the UK to leave what was then the EC right then and there back in 1991/92. Helmut Kohl rejected this approach and basically from the "EU side" negotiated what later became known as the UK's Maastricht opt-out from the single currency. Was Kohl wrong to have cut the UK slack back then and were the hardliners right to have wanted to force the issue way back then especially as Kohl himself during the ERM crisis shortly after this time period was as Adam Posen personally has testified to was quite content to see Britain crash out of the exchange rate mechanism? Perhaps?
https://youtu.be/EcIkIz98zXU?t=914
2. Is the UK a large and rich economy? Yes, but they are other countries in the EU other than UK that are both richer and more powerful than the UK. Now there was not and has not been much discussion of let's say Germany leaving the EU but it is also true that Germany is both larger and richer than the UK but I am not sure it is a long-run sustainable proposition to say well we have to give a "special" deal to the Brits because they are big and rich but the German public has to pay full price even though Germany is even bigger and richer than the UK.
3. Are people in the US especially those who dislike Donald Trump right to distrust the Brexit “movement” in the UK? I think pretty obviously, yes. The Brexit movement I don’t think has made any secret of its adoration of Trump and Trumpism and I think anti-Trump Americans are strongly entitled to return the favor.
4. Did the various governance failures on part of the EU during the 2010 in terms of the Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis negatively impact sentiment against the EU in the UK? Probably, but both of these crises impacted areas of EU competency such as Schengen and the Euro that the UK opted out of. In fact, I think strong arguments can be made that the UK’s opt-out in themselves complicated the EU’s response to both of these crises (Which is why some hardline European Federalists like blogger Jon Worth wanted the UK to vote to leave). I also think it has been made clear from the UK side even going back to a more pre Maastricht pre Schengen idea of the EU would not be “good enough” to keep the UK in. In effect, the UK's position is to withdraw even from the 1950s level of integration contemplated in the Treaty of Rome and refuse the current level of integration non-EU member states like Norway and Switzerland currently have with the EU.
I do think one long-running problem during the life of the UK’s membership in the EU is this belief among some that EU membership would make the UK just like France and Germany(i.e. food as good as the French and cars as good as Germans). That really wasn’t true quite obviously during the early years of the UK’s membership back in the 1970s and to the degree that the French and German models are no longer as attractive as perhaps they once were like say back in the 1970s hurt the cause of EU membership in the UK even to the extent this idea of making the UK like France and Germany was always a mirage. The challenge I think, however, is much of the economic success the UK did have in the 80, 90, and really right up until last years was highly dependent on being part of the EU. So as a counterfactual if the UK didn’t join in 1973 I think it would be in even worse shape today than it is.
There is a BBC documentary from 1996(which shows how long the UK has been arguing about this) which makes my exact point from above in the below link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXQQGg-UgWI
I am also going to recommend before anyone comes to to many conclusions about Brexit in particular the referendum and the preceding campaign, to watch this two part Canadian documentary on the 1979 and later 1995 referendums on Quebec independence. There are obviously huge differences but also huge similarities in ways both the pro-EU and pro-Brexit camps along with EU27 would probably not want to admit. I find it unimaginable that anyone in Britain would admit there are 7 Continental Europeans for every 1 British person like famed hardline Quebec separatist Jacques Parizeau once said of there being 3 English Canadians for every 1 Quebeckers. As much I have always despised Parizeau at least he was honest in admit Quebec could never dictate terms of economic partnership to the rest of Canada unlike Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
https://youtu.be/Fl7lOundk4Y
https://youtu.be/nnF46gRSPig
And another more recent book interview about what would have probably happened if Quebec voted yes to independence(Hint: It would have been as big of a clusterfuck as Brexit has been)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHKhoe0EBNQ
Does this mean if we had sacrificed Quebec as a cautionary tale, the EU might have remained intact? I would be ok with that.
Excellent. Much more interesting than Oprah’s interview with the Royal (or is it semi-Royal) dullards. Ms Camarra has a melodious voice which makes the podcast pleasant to listen to.
Claire and Vivek missed the biggest problem with journalism (in the United States at least);
it’s become a niche profession for the credentialed elite. Try applying for a job at those four national newspapers in the US without a graduate degree (preferably in journalism). Try showing up for a job interview with just a high school degree.
Claire, that’s why Americans hate the press; every story is told from the perspective of a hypereducated brat who was raised in Brookline, MA, the Upper West Side of New York, Marin County on the west coast or a similar venue and then went to some Ivy League or semi-Ivy League school where any sense they once might have had was beaten out of them.
If newspapers and television networks would ban kids with graduate degrees (especially in journalism) from the profession, the coverage would improve and Americans might not hate the press so much. The New York Times provides the perfect example. The ignorant and obnoxious new arrivals, barely out of diapers, are running rampant and destroying any credibility the paper of record once had.
Face it, Claire, Vivek and company, in 21st century America the more education you accrue, the more dimwitted you become. We would be better off returning to the old days, where reporters learned their trade in the college of hard knocks and spent as much time in a pool room as in a news room.
I have one question that I hope one of the panelists might feel inclined to answer. Disintermediation has disrupted American journalism (and its progeny; punditry) in profound ways. Andrew Sullivan used to work at New York Magazine (and the New Republic). He’s told his readers he now makes more money on substack than he ever did before. Barri Weiss formerly of the New York Times says the same thing. Matthew Yglesias and Glenn Greenwald have followed this exact path. My question is simply whether the same thing is happening in Europe, Great Britain and India? Are famous journalists and pundits leaving more traditional newspapers and magazines to strike out on their own?
Are you under the impression that rich people with little real world experience are a new phenomenon? You seem to assign most of our current grief to them and I'm sure the ancient Greek and Roman curmudgeons were complaining about those "damn rich brats" and how it was better "back in my day."
Matt, same as it ever was.
There’s always been an aristocracy; there always will be. In the United States today, the hypereducated, credentialed intellectual yet idiot class is the new aristocracy or to put it more accurately, they’re our new clerisy.
They really aren’t any more venal than ruling classes in previous eras, but there are a couple of differences. At least occasionally throughout history, the ruling classes had a sense of noblesse oblige; that seems absent in our present rulers. More importantly, throughout history, aristocrats knew they were aristocrats; they didn’t pretend otherwise. The new American clerisy would be horrified to be called what they really are; a group of credentialed morons who’ve lost any common sense that they might have been born with. If you’re an opera fan, you know what I mean. Our current rulers resemble no one so much as Count Almaviva in the Barber of Seville.
Contemporary “journalists” play the role of court jesters. These modern day Rigolettos may or may not realize how buffoonish they really are.
There are a lot of threads to pull on there, you might break me of intent to keep these short.
The existing narrative about the clerical right exists for the reason that, historically, that's been their gig. I'll gladly grant that there are elements of the left who have adopted alarmingly religious concepts and language (Kindly Inquisitors, Rauch, was a great introduction to this concept for me). I'd even go so far to say that the traditionally religious elements of conservatism have gotten better at concealing their intent to control society by changing their language and tone. Together, the movement of these needles has enhanced the disparate appearance between the wings.
I've spent a lot of social energy trying to point out to people on the left that this phenomenon exists. It's usually not the work of a single conversation, but I've seen friends and coworkers stop ignoring this monsters in their closet or (even worse) slipping into apologetics for it. But I've also ended up on some ignore lists.
Still, I know of well educated people who maintain their intelligence and curiosity, despite having gone through advanced degrees. They even have common sense at times, as opposed to suffering its complete removal. You're pretty cavalier with the insults to intelligence, which sets off alarms in my mind. Normally when I've heard some one denigrate The Other like that, it's to shore up an argument that really ought to stand on its own merits. I've probably mentioned it before, but I'm worried about the width of that brush you paint with.
"If newspapers and television networks would ban kids with graduate degrees (especially in journalism) from the profession, the coverage would improve...."
Along those lines, what passes for journalism teaching today no longer even bothers with one early principle of journalism: the first paragraph being given over to the who, what, why, where/when of the story.
Instead what occurs is another early principle of "journalism:" if it bleeds, it leads (and ledes). Not because of tabloid sensationalism, though; today it's because of those clicks.
Eric Hines
What--no visuals? No three-camera production, no clever shots of the others' reactions to what a speaker is saying?
No hiss tracks to tell us when to be disapproving?
Jeez....
Eric Hines